30 million abandoned children. One workbench. A blueprint the world needs.
On Wednesday, July 29, in Abuja, 21 children once written off as street beggars will assemble their own computers and drones, live, on camera, as the pioneer graduates of the Almajiri-to-Tech Initiative.
Six months ago some couldn’t speak English. Today they repair phones, laptops, fans, power banks, microwaves, other electronics, build inverter batteries, and are walking away with tools to start their own businesses.
The Almajiri to Tech Foundation in partnership with New Horizons Nigeria, the world’s largest ICT training institution decided to experiment with 21 out of school children. We showed them love, changed their uniform, feed them with good food, gave them logistics money to come to school and above all got them religious instructors of their choice to attend our school once a week to give them moral instructions about how to achieve peak performance and Good Success in life.
The experiment we did revealed 3 important variables of life, 1) No child is useless, with love and motivation, every child carries a seed of genius. Mohammed is one of the graduates,.he could not speak a single word in English but within 3 months in our school he was able to speak English. He is from Niger Republic, a neighboring country. We decided to include him for the empowerment package so that he can be a LIGHT in Niger Republic. If Niger gets rid of darkness, which Almajiri represent Nigeria will be one of the greatest beneficiaries.
Why this matters far beyond Nigeria:
Nigeria’s 30 million out-of-school/Almajiri children would rank as West Africa’s 4th largest country, bigger than Benin, bigger than Togo x2, close to Ghana and Ivory Coast. That’s roughly the combined population of Taiwan + Singapore, economies worth $1.4 trillion combined.
Same size population. Untapped potential. One choice: train them, or lose them to insecurity, migration, and despair.
4 global crises, 1 intervention:
- Insecurity & extremism recruitment
- Nigeria/Africa’s Human Development Index
- The Mediterranean migration crisis
- Youth drug abuse & exclusion
Cost to transform 21 lives: ₦100m ($75,000).
The Almajiri- to -Tech Foundation and New Horizons is taking another novel step in youth empowerment. We realized that training youths without setting them up as MICRO BUSINESS OWNERS, .means that in 8 out of 10 cases, they will go back to the streets, to their old vomit. This is why we have rented an office space for them in Wuse 2 Abuja where members of Public can visit and patronize them . We have paid for one year and the best 3 students will get all the required business and technical tools to do their business inside their new ALMAJIRI REPUBLIC WORKSHOP. Additionally, we are creating a YELLOW PAGE that contains their details on the portal of Almajiri to Tech Foundation website for members of public to reach out to them. Finally, a dedicated telephone landline will be unveiled to access the ALMAJIRI REPUBLIC workshop. Finally, both Almajiri to Tech Foundation and New Horizons will provide the 3 best graduates with some cash prize to cover their logistics for the first few weeks of their mirco business journey, pending when they will start earning money for themselves.
The chances are 10/10 that these ones we have empowered will not do terrorism or drug, rather they will become net contributors to Nigeria’s GDP within the next 6 months.
“You do not end migration by building higher walls in Europe., you do not end insecurity and terrorism only by kinetic solutions, you do not end poverty by preaching patriotism. You end it by building higher hopes in Africa and providing youths with KOW-HOW and quality opportunities .” – Tim Akano
CNN , Al Jazeera, ARISE, etc have been invited. This is Nigeria’s proof that the world’s most written-off children can become its most underpriced asset.
THE ALMAJIRI REPUBLIC RISES, AFRICA RISES
Abuja | Wed, July 29, 2026
#AlmajiriToTech #TheAlmajiriRepublic
Tim Akano, Founder, Almajiri-to-Tech Foundation and CEO New Horizons
