Well, it’s Children’s Day, the annual reminder that while many teenagers are still being asked what they want to become, some are already quietly building the future from their bedrooms and school computer labs. One of them is 16-year-old Ibrahim Kolade, a Nigerian teenager who turned frustration with freelance platforms into the idea for an AI-focused work marketplace called Tasknory. Long before university applications and NYSC conversations, Kolade was already teaching himself design, coding, and AI systems while trying to understand why new freelancers struggle so much to get opportunities online.
His first real exposure to technology started at home, helping his father, an accountant, type documents on a computer. But things became more serious in secondary school when his interest in computer practicals caught the attention of a teacher who eventually sponsored him to study desktop publishing at a private training centre in Lagos. There, Kolade learned everything from Microsoft Word and Excel to CorelDRAW and graphic design, eventually graduating as one of the best students and even tutoring others as part of the programme. Around the same period, he began interacting with people at a nearby tech hub focused on freelancing and digital skills, though parts of what he saw made him uncomfortable.
According to him, some of the training around freelancing involved questionable tactics like creating multiple accounts and using identities that weren’t theirs to beat platform systems. Kolade decided he didn’t want to build that way. Instead, with support from his parents, he signed up properly on platforms like Fiverr, Upwork, and Freelancer.com using graphic design as his first skill. But getting work proved almost impossible. The more time he spent on those platforms, the more he realised how difficult visibility was for beginners without ratings or completed projects. At one point, he was even banned from one platform during a client conversation despite believing he had done nothing wrong. That experience eventually planted the idea for Tasknory.
At the time, though, the platform only existed in his head because he still didn’t know how to build software. So he started teaching himself programming through freeCodeCamp, focusing first on responsive web development before later enrolling at ProCode Coding School in Abeokuta to deepen his frontend and backend skills. He moved quickly. After completing frontend development, he immediately began building the first version of Tasknory, even before finishing backend classes. He initially relied on Supabase and AI-assisted tools, later rebuilding parts of the platform with Django as his backend skills improved.
What makes Kolade’s story interesting isn’t just that he’s 16. It’s that his journey reflects how many young Africans are now approaching technology: not simply as consumers, but as builders trying to solve problems they’ve personally experienced. In his case, the problem was access — how difficult it is for new African freelancers and AI specialists to break into global digital work systems designed around existing reputation and visibility. Whether Tasknory succeeds in the long term remains to be seen, but the bigger story is already here: teenagers are no longer waiting for permission to enter Africa’s tech ecosystem.
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