In the bustling tech corridors of Lagos, Nigeria, where digital transformation is often a tale of fintech startups and blockchain breakthroughs, one woman is taking an unconventional route. Cecilia Adenusi, founder and CEO of Hsprojects Technologies Ltd, is not building for adults, she is investing in the next generation literally. Her canvas is childhood, and her tool is code.
While most technology programs in Africa target young adults or university graduates, Adenusi’s approach flips the script. She is putting tablets, robot kits, and machine learning tools in the hands of children as young as five. Through her company and its non-profit wing the Kids Technology Empowerment Foundation she’s offering something few others are: structured digital literacy programs for schoolchildren in both public and private schools.
“We don’t wait for students to reach university before exposing them to tech. We start when their curiosity is still wild, unfiltered, and limitless,” Adenusi says.
From Educator to Tech Visionary
Cecilia Adenusi isn’t a conventional tech founder. She trained initially as an educator and instructional designer, with a strong background in curriculum development and pedagogy. With over a decade of experience in teaching, her pivot to technology wasn’t accidental it was strategic. She saw firsthand how a lack of digital tools was putting African students behind their global peers.
Before launching Hsprojects Technologies, she worked across education-focused NGOs and edtech platforms, building hybrid learning models for underserved communities. Her cross-disciplinary expertise in child psychology, STEM instruction, and tech training made her uniquely positioned to build learning systems that were not only technically sound but also developmentally appropriate for young children.
Now based in Lagos but with programs expanding into nearby states, Adenusi’s work is becoming a blueprint for grassroots tech inclusion in Africa.
Coding Before Calculus
At a recent holiday camp organized by Hsprojects in Lagos, children aged 5 to 14 designed everything from mobile health apps to AI-powered gesture-controlled games. For some, it was their first encounter with a laptop. For others, it was the continuation of a journey that had already seen them create educational games, anti-bribery school monitoring tools, and even lung cancer detection systems.
Their learning platforms? Not chalkboards or dusty textbooks — but modern tools like Scratch, MIT App Inventor, and PictoBlox, offering block-based programming interfaces that teach complex concepts through play.
“The youngest ones started coding a maze game and building a computer store app with Scratch,” Adenusi explains. “By age 10, they’re experimenting with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. These kids are not just using tech; they’re building it.”
Africa’s Digital Future Can’t Wait
Adenusi’s vision doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Africa’s booming population and rising mobile penetration offer fertile ground for digital innovation, but the continent still faces a digital literacy gap, one that starts with early education. Most African countries lack structured STEM programs in primary and secondary schools, leaving a generation unprepared for the job market of the future.
“Tech education should not be a privilege. It should be part of our basic literacy,” she argues.
Her frustration echoes a growing concern in development circles: while the continent celebrates unicorns and high-profile tech exits, the foundational layers digital infrastructure in education, teacher training, and curriculum reform are often ignored.
The success of Adenusi’s initiative points to a larger conversation about building Africa’s digital workforce pipeline. By targeting children early, Hsprojects is attempting to close the skills gap before it opens.
More importantly, it’s doing so inclusively. Many of the students in her programs come from under-resourced public schools. And more than half of them are girls, a deliberate choice to counteract gender imbalances in STEM.
“I want these kids to grow up believing there’s no limit to what they can invent not because someone gave them permission, but because they’ve seen themselves do it,” Adenusi says.
Why It Matters
Despite its impact, Hsprojects operates with little government backing. Its programs are funded primarily through private sponsorships, modest student fees, and community support. For Adenusi, this is both a strength and a limitation. It gives her flexibility to design hands-on, playful curricula, but limits how many children she can reach.
Still, she remains undeterred. “We don’t need to wait for big policy changes. We just need to keep building, one curious child at a time,” she says with quiet conviction.
In a digital economy obsessed with scaling fast, Hsprojects Technologies is proof that slow, foundational work still matters. Especially when it begins with a five-year-old, a laptop, and the belief that Africa’s future isn’t waiting to be built it’s already building itself.
