A young man who was employed as a security man in a company in Lagos, has now turned software developer in that same company he was working for.
Daniel Adekunle, who was trained to profile visitors and ensure the security of the entire building in Andela, never really knew what the company was into until he understood that the company was into software developing.
According to Adekunle who shared his story..
“I thought Andela was a cybercafé, a very good one at that to have attracted such young and sharp guys I saw walking into the building every day.” He was shocked to later realize that Andela was a global company, building a community of world-class developers in Lagos, Nigeria! He said he never even thought applications were built in Nigeria. “The realization that software applications can and are actually built in the country sparked my interest in computer programming,” he added.
Somehow Adekunle caught wind of the CodeLagos Out-Of-School Programme, a free coding programme by Lagos State Government to train Lagos residents to code. A new session was about to commence at the time, so he signed up and was picked to participate in the FREE Python Development Class at the Ilupeju training centre.
CodeLagos is 6-week training programme that exposes participants to courses in Python programming language, Java, BlockChain and Web Development. Adekunle was able to develop a game as his project during the training.
In an interesting twist of events, he was scheduled for an interview with Andela the same day he rounded up his classes at CodeLagos. The knowledge he acquired at CodeLagos came very in handy during the interview and he got the role. He aced the interview, and now, the former gate man has been re-employed by Andela as a developer!
Adekunle’s story is one amongst thousands that have been empowered by the CodeLagos initiative which started in 2017. It reveals that dreams can become reality if you make the right choices and seize opportunities. Adekunle’s choice to be dutiful at his post as a security guard and the decision to take advantage of the opportunity CodeLagos brought his way has paved the pathway for a very promising career as a software developer.
Today Daniel has moved from securing physical buildings to building firewalls and other software that secure complex tech systems.