With a focus on innovation and technological advancement, Africa’s most populous country is boosting STEM education for youths, exposing them to tech and digital tools from coding robots to flying planes and building apps to prepare them with future-ready skills.
Designed to spark curiosity and fuel innovation, STEM Africa Fest 2025, held at Landmark Event Centre recently in Lagos brought together students, mentors, and industry experts for an electrifying experience that made science and tech exciting, hands-on, and full of possibility.
Titi Adeusi, co-planner of the annual STEM Africa Fest event, told BusinessDay that the fest, which has been going on for five years, is a gateway to bridge the skills gap for the future workforce.
“At STEM Africa Fest, we try to expose young minds to various skills that will help them prepare for the future. At the event, children learn beyond what is taught in traditional schools.
“At the fest, they learn how to use AI tools, for instance, at the flight simulator place, they learn how to take off and land their planes, without having a physical plane to drive; we’re trying to build the skills for the future,” she said.
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Adeusi emphasised that she and her co-organisers came up with the programme to prepare the workforce, especially in Africa, for according to her, Africa is the next frontier, and STEM Africa Fest’s role is to help bridge the skills gap.
“We came up with STEM programmes not for private and public schools; we work with schools in curriculum development.
“Today, the children were exposed to an agro lab, where they learned how to venture into agriculture without soil; in the tech area, the doctors exposed them to how they can use robotics for surgery,” Adeusi explained.
Stan Obiefule, a representative of Imperial EdTech, a technology infrastructure company, said the firm was at the event to help Nigerian children access education digitally because today’s world is transforming into a digital.
“We’re here today for the students, to expose them to what education is supposed to be; not the traditional system of learning, but we’re transforming from the traditional system of education to the digital, and/or hands-on learning skills.
“We train people also on how to assemble hardware, hardware repair, and then device assembly; for students to have that knowledge,” he said.
Obiefule reiterated that today’s education is not just about classroom work; technology, he said, leads classroom learning, hence, children must be exposed to it.
“We’re here to showcase to the children the skills they must have beyond the classroom experience,” he noted.
Adeolu Adediran, a co-founder at Sage IQ Advanced Systems Limited, a smart robotic solutions provider firm, said that the team was at the STEM Africa Fest to enlighten students and make them understand that they can build Africa.
“We’re here to train youngsters in hardware programming and robotics. The robotics training we usually have in Nigeria is imported kits from China, India or the USA. It’s like playing with a toy because they’ve already told one what is supposed to be done.
“But what we do is to build things from scratch; true innovation comes when one builds by himself; that’s the brain behind it. You think about the design and that’s where you create it,” he said.
Similarly, Emmanuel Oguala, from Arc Light Foundation, said the group was at the fest to display their robotics elements.
“We’re trying to see how young ones can develop their engineering skills. A lot of them have skills, but they don’t know how to go about that. Our goal here is to help these young ones be able to develop those inner talents and the skills they have in order to promote technological development in our country.
The knowledge of robotics will help Nigeria’s economy, as the world is tilting toward AI. We can use AI to solve tasks that will take people long hours and even years to do that quantum computing can do tasks in a few nanoseconds,” he stressed.
Joseph Bolajo-Ojo, representing Pirano Energy, said that the firm was at the event to showcase to the young minds attending the potential of solar energy.
“You know everybody is trying to find a way to get affordable power, we’re here to showcase to the young ones the equipment that are needed to harness the power, the energy from the sun and show them how it works so that they would have a good understanding of what the entire solar system looks like,” he explained.
