The social entrepreneur believes that poverty should not be allowed to deprive any Nigerian of the IT skills they need. As a school student Gbenga Sesan was denied access to the computer room at his Nigerian school and told he was not clever enough to operate one. “I’m the kind of guy you don’t tell not to do something, I will do it. If you tell me it’s impossible, I’ll take it as a challenge… I think the first thing that hit me was: ‘Do I want to raise a child in Nigeria?’ There were things that I didn’t have access to myself because I was raised here, but I think it makes me double my effort because I want to raise my child in a country that works,” he says. The social entrepreneur is spreading his good fortune by teaching ICT and life skills to young adults in Nigeria’s poorest neighbourhoods. Gbenga was appointed Nigeria’s first IT Youth Ambassador in 2001. With up to 56 percent of youth in Nigeria being unemployed, he is determined to “training young people, connecting them with opportunities, through technologies.”
