Why BenchBox?
Approximately two years ago, we started Studio14’s Lagos office. It was one of the hardest journeys we have been on till this day. Nevertheless, we soldiered on, but within a few weeks of us being at the new site, we hit that inevitable roadblock anyone who has ever had to start a business faces — finding good talent.
As you probably already know, there is a shallow pool of employable talent But when that is coupled with technical talent, the pool becomes even shallower. On the one hand, employers in this part of the world find it extremely difficult to fill vacant job positions for up to several months with the person with the right skill set, while on the other hand there is a growing concern amongst the average Nigerian that there are simply no jobs. The cycle is unending and the statistics are simply undeniable. Nigeria’s unemployment rate is 23.1%. Of the people that fall within the 15- 34 age bracket, 55.4% of that number are either unemployed or under-employed.
In November 2017, we made our first hires — Titi and AbdulMajid which came as a great comfort to us, however, this excitement was short-lived because, within a few weeks, we were back to the drawing board, we needed more developers. We then hired a brilliant second developer, Philip (who tragically died recently, from health complications) in January 2018, he was a timely addition to the team, but we knew it would only be a matter of time before we needed more.
We began to think about the problem critically; if we were facing this problem at the end, we needed to start from the beginning. The problem had to be attacked from the grassroots — education. We decided to replicate our ‘Digital Day’ by TechHut workshop we had previously only done in the UK office. The premise was simple, once every month, the team would take out a day to visit a secondary school for three to four hours. We would speak to students in the senior classes about various careers in the digital industry, expose them to technologies such as AR/VR, let them interact with 3D printers, drones, Raspberry Pi etc. Ultimately, we would end each workshop with the students presenting their solutions to a real-life scenario provided by our partner companies. Our objective was to cultivate their interest in the digital industry and in effect open their eyes to a possible new career option.
While it was a great start, we knew there was more to be done. Once we left the schools we visited, it was back to the status quo for most students and schools. We almost gave up hope, that was until we started receiving feedback from the students:
“ICT should be included in our curriculum”
“Our school should bring people to come and train us regularly”
We decided to regroup — How could we incorporate preparing for tech careers into the daily lives of these kids? Several answers came to mind:
- Running ICT clubs
- Directing them to online learning platforms that they can work through on their own
- Allowing them to intern with us
- Organising The Digital Day workshops more often.
We did them all, and you guessed it It still was not enough, we had not even scratched the surface. ICT clubs are by their nature activities tailored to groups rather than individuals. They do not factor individual learning styles or pace. Moreso, they are often limited to one or two hours a week, which is simply not enough while learning a new skill. While there is a myriad of online learning platforms available, they all have the same flaw: no one has content specifically tailored to kids. Ever tried explaining electronics to an eight-year-old? Not just that ‘A + B’ works this way but the whys and the hows, the intricacies. That sort of age-appropriate content is not just out there.
What if there was a platform that taught kids the skills they need for a specific digital career path, down to its most granular detail? What if that platform adapted to each child’s learning style using machine learning and AI? What if the platform taught not only technical skills but also soft skills? What if the content on that platform was taught by industry experts and was broken down in such a way that an eight-year-old could understand data wrangling? What if the platform was not merely a set of three to four courses but a child could theoretically learn on the platform for four years and always learn something new?
That is BenchBox.
