Lagos: Hemingway’s Safaris Africa and the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) have hosted a five-day robotics bootcamp to equip young Africans with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics skills. This initiative aims to solve real-world challenges in alignment with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
According to News Agency of Nigeria, the Head of Member Experience at Hemingway’s Safaris Africa, Ms. Eucharia Egbuaba, announced via a communique in Lagos that the bootcamp targeted young Africans aged 12 to 15 years. The goal is to equip these young individuals with AI and robotics skills to address real-world challenges effectively.
Egbuaba highlighted that this initiative marks a fundamental change in the company’s approach to engaging Africa’s luxury travel market. By integrating education, innovation, and human capital development into family travel experiences, Hemingway’s aims to reshape the ‘global African’ identity. The bootcamp also follows a previous explorers’ club mission to the NASA teen space camp in Alabama.
Participants in the bootcamp were tasked with developing practical solutions across four real-world problem areas aligned with the United Nations SDGs. These challenges included building hospital delivery robots to ease medical staff workloads, designing smart health alert devices for elderly care, engineering route optimization vehicles to reduce urban carbon emissions, and developing smart traffic bollards to enhance pedestrian safety in busy city centers.
LCCI President Mr. Leye Kupoluyi noted that Nigeria’s AI market is projected to exceed $430 million by 2026, with around 88 percent of Nigerian adults having interactions with AI tools. However, enterprise-scale deployment remains limited, creating a productivity and innovation gap that businesses need to address urgently. He emphasized that AI is a strategic imperative for Nigerian businesses, urging enterprises to embrace structured AI adoption across various sectors.
Kupoluyi also called on the Federal Government to position Nigeria as a regional AI hub through coordinated policies, digital infrastructure investment, and AI-ready workforce development. He advocated for an enabling regulatory environment to support innovation and responsible AI deployment and called for stronger collaboration among government, academia, startups, technology providers, and the organized private sector.
Mr. David Alozie, Founder of Workhen AI, reinforced the club’s commitment to aligning technology with tangible societal benefits. The communique also unveiled ‘Maestro,’ Hemingway’s proprietary travel technology solution currently in its pilot phase, which is designed to guide members towards transformative travel experiences and deepen engagement with destinations beyond tourism.