When Charis George describes his work, he does not use the language of precocity. He does not say he is gifted, or exceptional. He says he is “building.” That word recurs throughout his account of iCOVE, the teenage-led organisation he founded less than a year ago alongside co-founder Kome Omugbe.
It is the word he uses to describe himself, his peers, his ambitions, and his understanding of what young Africans are already doing, whether institutions acknowledge it or not. George is 17 years old. His entire administrative team is also under 18.
And yet, in under twelve months, George, Omugbe, and their team have built an organisation that has reached more than 15,000 young Africans through programmes, events, and online platforms; mobilised more than 100 active community members; attracted over 200 volunteers; raised ₦1.2 million in seed funding; launched a continent-facing innovation challenge; and begun laying the foundations for a venture-builder.
“In traditional days, a person would still be figuring out what they want to do with their life, even late in their 40s,” George told Techparley Africa. “But the status quo has changed. Teenagers today are already building.”
The youngest continent, the oldest assumptions
Africa has the youngest population in the world with more than 400 million young people aged between the ages of 15 to 35 years. 70% of sub-Saharan Africa are under the age of 30. Over 60 per cent of the continent’s population is also under 24.
Yet Africa’s innovation infrastructure is overwhelmingly adult-centric. Teenagers are largely absent from these systems, except as students or beneficiaries. They are rarely positioned as producers.
This structural mismatch is not accidental. It reflects deep assumptions about legitimacy, maturity, risk and authority. Innovation is imagined as something that happens after education, after professionalisation, after adulthood.
According to George, iCOVE (Innovation, Community, Opportunity, Venture, Execution), is built on the opposite premise, that innovation is already happening, and that the absence is institutional, not generational. Its ambition is to build Africa’s first innovation ecosystem designed by teenagers, for teenagers.
“Teenagers are already building,” George says. “The infrastructure just doesn’t exist for them.”
From global community to local gap
George’s insight emerged not from theory, but from participation.
As a backend developer within the global Hack Club community, he collaborated with teenagers in Bangladesh, India, the United States and across Europe. What struck him was not simply technical competence, but the surrounding ecosystem.
“They weren’t playing,” he says. “They were building real things. But what they had was infrastructure — community, mentorship, platforms.”
What Africa, he realised, did not yet have was a teenage-centred innovation ecosystem that was large enough to matter, yet intimate enough to support. That absence was not individual. It was structural.
iCOVE emerged as a response to that absence. George describes the gap he is trying to close as “the gap between mediocrity and community” – a space where young people with ability remain under-exposed, under-connected and under-supported.
A company that runs between school bells
Perhaps the most unusual feature of iCOVE is not its ambition, but its governance. The entire administrative team is under 18, yet each holds a senior leadership role while the majority are still in secondary school.
The team includes Makayla Lawal, the new Co-CEO; Inioluwa Adedokun, Chief Strategy & Research Officer; Ibukun Jaiyesimi, Chief Sponsorships & Partnerships Officer; Jennie Odusanya, Chief Technical Officer; Elliot Nduibusi, Chief Operating Officer; Emmanuel Umar, Chief Financial Officer; and Bukunmi Okunniyi, Chief Marketing & Brand Officer.
Decision-making is decentralised, task-based and asynchronous, managed through ClickUp, with weekly meetings and clearly defined roles.
“We use a ‘ship first, improve later’ philosophy,” George explains. “As it comes to us, we design, build and release. Then we refine.”
“There are weeks we’ve had to apologise for being inactive because of exams,” he admits. “That’s the reality.”
What holds the team together, he says, is shared belief and emotional support, a recognition that this is not just work, but identity.
From community to pipeline
In its earliest conception, iCOVE was meant to provide funding and exposure. It quickly evolved into something more ambitious, a vertically integrated youth innovation pipeline.
The structure now has four layers:
- Community — a network of teenage builders, designers, technologists and creatives.
- Programmes — including the Tariq Lawal Innovation Challenge.
- The Foundry — a venture-builder for teenage founders launching in 2026.
- Partnerships and capital pathways — connecting ventures to funding, markets and networks.
According to George, each layer feeds the next.
“We’re not just building a community,” George says. “We’re building a pipeline.”
This ethos underpins iCOVE’s Tariq Lawal Innovation Challenge, launching next year, a platform for teenagers to create, build, pitch and publicly showcase ventures.
Finalists from the challenge will enter The Foundry, iCOVE’s venture-builder launching in 2026, designed not as a traditional accelerator chasing safe returns, but as an incubator for unusual, early-stage, experimental teenage ventures.
“We’re not trying to be Y Combinator,” George says. “We’re trying to be the passage to Y Combinator.”
Balance is the governing principle. The Foundry is designed explicitly to prevent school dropouts, not encourage them.
A different model of leadership
George does not present himself as exceptional. He presents himself as a representative. George does not frame his work in the language of disruption or domination. He frames it in the language of continuity.
“I’m not the story,” he insists. “The system is.”
In five to ten years, he sees today’s teenage founders growing into tomorrow’s mentors, investors and collaborators, extending opportunity to the generation coming after them. His advice to young Africans is offered with encouragement rather than instruction.
“The only way to move from the past is to look forward. You can’t base your vision on what you see; if not, it’s not vision,” he says. “Shape the world how you want it to be and move forward.”
Charis George is not remarkable because he is young. He is remarkable because he is building structures that assume young people matter. That assumption may turn out to be one of the most consequential bets Africa makes.
iCOVE is a proposition that when teenagers are treated not as pre-adults but as present actors, new kinds of institutions become possible. If it succeeds, it will not just simply produce companies or founders. It will expand the idea of who gets to build Africa’s future and when. That, more than any individual achievement, is the story.
Talking Points
It is encouraging that Charis George is building iCOVE as a full innovation ecosystem while still a teenager himself. That alone challenges the prevailing assumption that meaningful innovation leadership only begins in adulthood.
By positioning teenagers as present-day builders rather than future participants, iCOVE reframes how youth, innovation, and economic agency are understood in Africa’s technology and entrepreneurship landscape.
At Techparley, we see how platforms like iCOVE can fill a critical gap between education and enterprise, giving young people not just skills, but visibility, networks, and real pathways into venture creation.
The integration of community, challenges, mentorship, and a venture-builder into one coherent pipeline means teenage founders can move from idea to execution within a structured and supportive environment.
With the right support, iCOVE has the potential to become a foundational layer in Africa’s innovation ecosystem, one that ensures young talent is not only seen, but systematically supported.
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