As we continue to see more innovations in the tech world, we have seen more young Nigerians coming up with new revolutionary ideas that are gradually shaping the world. One of such Nigerians is Silas Adekunle, a young genius passionate about teaching young African’s robotics.
Adekunle is a revolutionary entrepreneur with a degree in robotics. He has constantly made innovations that have attracted international investors. He is the co-founder and former CEO of Reach Robotics, a reality gaming company that creates robots for gaming and for STEM education.
The company created a 4-legged robot with a realistic movement called Mekamon. Mekamon offers a platform that brings video game characters to life by combining robotics with augmented reality.
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They have also developed an app that controls and directs the MekaMon while acting as a portal for digital content. Quite a number of investors invested about $12 million in the company. Among them include, the London Venture Partners. These investments led to the expansion of the company to accommodate over 65 employees.
In 2018, Adekunle was named among the top 100 minority ethnic leaders in technology by Financial Times. That same year, he made it to Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe.
The UK-based company in 2018 signed an exclusive deal with Apple to distribute and sell its products in the US and Britain. However, due to inherent challenges in the consumer robotic sector, the company shut down in 2019.
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Having shut down Reach Robotics, Adekunle moved on to focus on using Mekamon to build a robotics education ecosystem across Africa and cloud infrastructure for industrial automation in the UK.
To make this work, he founded Awarri, an education project for Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Maths (STEAM) that is aimed at exposing young people and educators to robotics and coding. It is targeted at the development and adaptation of advanced AI and Robotics technology in Africa.
Adekunle has started supporting the educational system by introducing cheap, affordable technology that is still able to compete on the global scale robotics kits to Africa.
Through Awarri, young people will start to research and think of ways to solve Africa’s problem. And in the nearest future, Nigeria will have an Awarri lab, Awarri Academic and Mekamon as part of the educational curriculum.