Lagos, Nigeria, 1st August, 2023: Paradigm Initiative (PIN) has announced a Call for Applications for the Ajegunle Legacy Scholarship. 

The scholarship is set to benefit bright students from less privileged backgrounds in Ajegunle, Nigeria, a community that hosted PIN in its early days. The call will close on September 30th, 2023. 

As a way of giving back to the community and recognising notable individuals who have been instrumental in the organisation, PIN launched the scholarship in April 2023. Named after the area in Lagos, it will support resident youth/students in securing university education in technology courses such as Information Technology (IT), Software Development and Computer Engineering, among others.

The Project has two arms-the prize and the scholarship. The prize arm will support two young persons (one male and one female) from low-income families resident in Ajegunle to acquire university education in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) or Law annually. This prize is named after the late Taiwo Bankole Ogunyemi, one of the foremost volunteers at PIN’s Life Program (now known as LIFE Legacy Program). LIFE is an acronym that stands for Life Skills, ICTs, Financial Readiness, and Entrepreneurship. The program targets youth who do not have the financial capacity to acquire relevant Information Communication Technology (ICT), Entrepreneurial and Life skills that can make them compete in the workplace. 

 The award is aimed at immortalising the late Ogunyemi’s name for the role he played in improving the lives of young people across Nigeria, especially in Ajegunle. 

Through the organization’s flagship LIFE Legacy Program alone, PIN has impacted the lives of more than 6,700 under-served African youth with improved livelihoods through digital opportunities and protection of their online rights. The program is a capacity-building initiative designed to improve the lives of under-served youth in host communities. 

The scholarship arm on the other hand will also support two young persons (one male and one female) from low-income families residing in Ajegunle to get advanced software development training annually.

Paradigm Initiative, which has for 16 years been connecting young under-served Africans with digital opportunities and ensuring protection of their rights online, started operations in the area in 2007 in a tiny cybercafé known as Stadnet before expanding its footprints across Africa.

The organization, which advocates for digital rights and inclusion on the continent has presence in Nigeria, Senegal, Cameroon, Zambia, Zimbabwe, The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Kenya from where it coordinates its operations across Central, East, Southern and West Africa and beyond.

Paradigm Initiative (PIN) builds ICT-enabled support systems and advocates for digital rights in order to improve the livelihoods of under-served young Africans. The organization has worked in communities in Nigeria since 2007 and across Africa since 2017, building experience, community trust, and an organizational culture that positions it as a leading social enterprise in ICT for Development and Digital Rights on the continent. 

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Links to the scholarship application forms can be found below:

Application

Application