This Nigerian NGO Is Doing What Silicon Valley Couldn’t For Africa by Roberto Popolizio

Roberto Popolizio

Updated on: May 2, 2025
Managing Editor

In 1991, ‘Gbenga Sesan was barred from entering his school’s computer room because the teacher didn’t trust newcomers. That moment of exclusion set him on a lifelong mission: not just to learn technology, but to make it accessible for every young African, regardless of income, gender, or geography.

Today, he leads Paradigm Initiative, a nonprofit operating in eleven countries that equips African youth with the digital, financial, and entrepreneurial skills they really need to change their lives.

In this interview for Safety Detectives, Sesan explains why most solutions for Africa’s digital divide will keep failing, and why locally grounded, people-first training is the right fix.

In 2-3 sentences, why does your company exist? What’s the fundamental issue it was designed to solve?

In my third year in secondary school, I was denied access to the Computer Room in my school because the teacher did not want those of us who were new to computers to destroy the school’s only two units.

Walking away in tears, I promised to learn how to use computers, build a career around it and also teach everyone so that they would avoid the kind of embarrassment I faced.

Many years after that encounter and my learning, I saw the huge digital divide that plagues Nigeria–and later, other African countries–and decided to connect as many young Africans as possible with digital opportunities, which should be a right.

Going more into details, what makes this pain point so severe in your industry that you set out to create your own solution to solve it?

While the global internet penetration average is about 67%, only one in three Africans (36%) have internet access, and even fewer, just one in four (25%) in Sub-Saharan Africa, regularly use mobile internet despite 85% coverage.

The problem is not just connectivity. Affordability, access to devices, digital literacy and digital rights come in to play as well:

• The average cost of 1GB of mobile data in Africa is $3.40, which is more than 5% of monthly income in many countries—well above the UN Broadband Commission’s affordability benchmark of 2%.
• Entry-level smartphones still cost 30–40% of a person’s monthly income, making them inaccessible to many.
• Digital tools remain a luxury, with fewer than 10% of households owning a personal computer, and in rural areas, fewer than 25% of schools are connected to the internet.

Meanwhile, these students in rural areas are expected to compete with their colleagues in the city when they write the Computer-Based Tests required for university entrance examinations.

There is also a glaring gender gap—women are 36% less likely than men to use mobile internet—and electricity access remains limited, with 52% of the population in Sub-Saharan Africa still living without power. Last but not least, the region is also infested with power-hungry political leaders who are quick to clamp down on dissenting voices or public opinion through surveillance, censorship and other acts that violate the digital rights of citizens.

Combined, these factors create a systemic barrier that leaves millions excluded from opportunities in education, work, and civic life. It was clear to me that if we wanted real digital inclusion and rights-respecting development, we couldn’t wait. We had to build tailored, locally grounded solutions to bridge these gaps.

People who live in rural areas, young people, persons with disabilities and women are mostly affected, and one of the reasons that many people are stuck is the lack of opportunity which ironically is more available online.

Want to learn more about the REAL state of digital rights and inclusion in African countries?

Check out Paradigm Initiative’s 4th short film, Undersight, which is based on data from their Digital Rights and Inclusion Report, Londa.

It’s an eye-opening story about a problem we’ve all overlooked for too long — and one that deserves your attention.

What’s everyone else doing to solve this problem, and why do you think these solutions are flawed?

There were many attempts in the past that focused on giving free devices to people, including a popular $100 laptop project that ended up in the hands of families that sold some of the devices for the next meal. Many of the solutions that did not work were short-term and not focused on building the capacity of beneficiaries of the devices.

How is your approach fundamentally different from what’s already out there? What’s the #1 thing you do that competitors CAN’T or WON’T do?

At Paradigm Initiative, our interventions begin with building the capacity of the individual over the long term and connecting them with post-training mentorship opportunities. We also got out of the way when our own processes became more expensive, and Cost per Outcome was near-unsustainable, in order to support smaller organisations in under-served communities to do the work while relying on our curriculum, resources and oversight.

What’s one major milestone that proves your solution works?

When Famous Onokurefe came to Paradigm Initiative, he had completed secondary school but could not afford college. And his options in life were limited. When I asked Famous recently about where he would have been without our training programme, he rolled out a list of “could haves”, including ending up on the streets jobless and homeless, at risk of doing things he would not be proud of. But luckily Famous came to Paradigm Initiative, in 2007, because his friends–who were part of a youth group I told about my plans–kept talking about a free computer training program. And during his training, Famous paid close attention and excelled.

When the United Kingdom Trade and Investment team at the UK Deputy High Commission in Lagos asked us to recommend a few potential interns, we recommended Famous and a few others to be interviewed. He got the internship and while there, he heard about an Entry Clearance Assistant job at the UK High Commission in Abuja, he applied—even though without a college degree, no one thought he had a shot. He was starting behind but it wasn’t just the technology that helped him get ahead, it was the extra training, training rooted in his community, training that understood his context and his challenges, training that helped him change his life for the better.

He got the job, saved enough money to pay his way through university and is now a Chartered Accountant and a Manager with one of the world’s Big Four professional services firms, where he has won innovation awards, and moved from their Lagos to New Jersey offices.

There are many others like Famous who have gone through our training, and have, in less than one generation, changed their lives and that of their families. They demonstrate that our model, called the Life skills, ICT skills, Financial readiness skills and Entrepreneurship skills (LIFE) Legacy Programme, works.

What’s the BIG vision for the future of your company? What’s the ultimate legacy you want to leave?

I want to make sure that no young person faces the embarrassment I was met with in 1991, while in my third year in secondary school, and that no young African gets locked out of digital opportunities because of their location of birth, gender or lack of opportunity.

The big vision of Paradigm Initiative is to extend the LIFE-changing programme we lead beyond the 11 countries where we currently run them into every African country, working with–and empowering–grassroots youth-led organisations to scale the impact within communities that would otherwise not have the opportunity.