How this 16-year-old is creating opportunities for African freelancers

At 16, Ibrahim Kolade is already building a freelance platform designed to help African talent get discovered beyond ratings and platform bias.

At 16, most teenagers are still trying to figure out what they want to do with their lives. For Ibrahim Kolade, the question has been how quickly he could learn enough to start.

For someone who has not yet entered the university system, Kolade has gained experience on freelance marketplaces and in the field of artificial intelligence. Frustrated by a personal problem, Kolade decided to build Tasknory, an Africa-focused work platform for AI specialists. 

In this edition of After Hours, he shares his journey from learning desktop publishing in secondary school to teaching himself coding and experimenting with AI systems.

Early interactions with technology

My earliest interaction with technology was actually at home with my dad. He works as an accountant, and sometimes he asks me to help him type documents. At that time, I didn’t really understand technology deeply; I just liked typing and being around computers.

When I got into secondary school, I became the kind of student who preferred computer practicals to theory. I always wanted to be in the computer lab. My computer teacher noticed my interest and eventually gave me a scholarship to study desktop publishing at a private tech training centre in Lagos.

That was really my first proper exposure to technology. Before then, I didn’t have any technical skills. I just knew the basics we were taught in school. 

At the training centre, we started with Microsoft Word to get used to typing and to understand the keyboard properly. We later moved to Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher, MS Access, and eventually CorelDRAW — where I started learning graphic design.

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