It is a pleasure to welcome you to this year’s Byte Busters Coding Club Showcase, and to celebrate once again the energy, imagination and promise of our young people.
When we gathered for the inaugural Showcase last year, we were witnessing the early fruits of an ambitious idea. Today, that idea has grown in reach, confidence and substance. Byte Busters now operates across all six South-West states, and the quality of the projects before us shows clearly that our students are not merely learning how to use technology, they are learning how to think with it, build with it, and apply it to problems that affect their schools, families and communities.
That distinction is important.
Our young people are growing up in a world in which artificial intelligence, digital platforms and new technologies will shape how they learn, work, communicate and create. It is therefore not enough for them to become passive users of technologies developed elsewhere. We must give them the confidence and capability to participate actively in shaping the digital future.
This is the purpose that sits at the heart of the DEFINED Project.
I wish to commend Professor Seun Kolade, Project Director, for the clarity of vision and sustained leadership he continues to bring to this work. I also congratulate the Assistant Project Manager, Temilorun Okediji and the DEFINED Project team, our Project Assistants, ICT teachers, our fantastic college of mentors, school leaders and all those working quietly behind the scenes across the various centres. The progress we celebrate today is the result of their collective persistence, creativity and commitment.
I am especially delighted by the continued expansion of the programme and by the increasing sophistication of the projects being developed by the students. From applications addressing learning and accessibility to ideas connected with agriculture, commerce, public safety and indigenous language, these young people are showing us what becomes possible when talent is given opportunity.
The Foundation has also widened its approach through the Digital Literacy Training for Teachers programme, recognising that sustainable transformation in education must include those who stand in our classrooms every day. By equipping teachers with practical digital skills and using a Train-the-Trainer model, we are building capacity that can multiply far beyond the first cohort.
Yet we must not become satisfied too quickly.
The success of Byte Busters should strengthen our determination to reach more pupils, particularly in under-served communities. There are many more children across our region with the same curiosity and potential as those presenting here today. What they need is access.
I therefore call on our six owner states, corporate partners, philanthropists, old students’ associations and friends of the Foundation to deepen their support for this work. The task before us is one of scale, continuity and shared responsibility.
To our Byte Busters, I say this: keep learning, keep experimenting and keep believing in what you can build.