TechXplorer
Live technology teaching for school-age learners, built to give Nigerian students the practical, hands-on experience my own early education never offered.
The challenge
When I arrived at university in the UK to study engineering, I discovered how much practical technology experience my schooling in Nigeria had never given me. I knew theory. Classmates from other systems knew how to build. That gap does not close on its own, and for most Nigerian students it never closes at all, because their schools have neither the equipment nor the trained teachers to teach technology as a practical subject.
The approach
TechXplorer, which grew out of an earlier Steamledge programme called Creative Computing, took a hybrid route. Rather than waiting for every school to acquire specialist staff, we combined live online classes taught by skilled instructors with in-school delivery and feedback systems, so that a single strong teacher could reach many classrooms. The curriculum covered coding, artificial intelligence and related digital skills for learners from around age six upwards.
Working through schools mattered. Parents trusted the setting, schools kept ownership of their students' progress, and the programme could reach children whose families would never have found a standalone app.
What was built
A learning platform supporting live classes, structured feedback to schools and parents, and technology education pathways for school-age learners, together with the teacher training needed to sustain it. Steamledge trained around 1,500 STEM teachers across its programmes, which turned the platform from a service into capacity that stays in the system.
Evidence of impact
Independently reported. Nigerian press coverage in 2023 described Steamledge's hybrid technology learning platform for ages six and above, and reported more than 80,000 students trained across the company's programmes, with about 1,500 STEM teachers trained and dozens of school partnerships.
Company-reported. TechXplorer itself has served more than 20,000 students through work involving more than 300 schools.
What I learned
Distribution is the product. The teaching content mattered, but the decision to work through schools, and to build feedback loops that schools and parents actually valued, is what carried the programme past twenty thousand learners.
And capacity beats delivery. Training teachers multiplied our effect far beyond anything we could deliver directly.