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Nigerian entrepreneur Chibuike Aguene has built an AI-powered platform to help young people gain practical skills for employment.
Aguene, founder and CEO of BildupAI, said his own experience as a computer science student exposed the gap between university education and workplace skills.
“When I started computer science, honestly, I didn’t learn anything that I’m doing currently or that have helped me in my career,” he said.
He said his university taught courses such as FORTRAN 77, QBasic and COBOL, which he felt did not prepare him for his career.
“I left school with a certificate, but I didn’t have the clarity or the practical skills to apply what I had learnt,” Aguene added.
He later enrolled at the National Institute of Information Technology (NIIT) in Lagos, where he gained practical experience in technology.
“It was an eye-opener; that was where I saw the real practical aspect of technology, how technology can be applied in real life,” he said.
Aguene later developed an inventory management system for Nigerian businesses after identifying gaps in software designed for foreign markets.
In 2008, he sold the system to businesses for ₦25,000 each, earning his first million naira and beginning his entrepreneurial journey.
Years later, Aguene encountered the same skills gap when he advertised jobs to expand his team in Abuja.
He received more than 900 applications but said his team struggled to find suitable candidates.
“It became a problem. But is this problem limited to only the candidates, or is there something we [employers] are missing internally?” he asked.
The question led to the creation of BildupAI in February 2025.
The platform assesses learners’ existing knowledge, goals and skill gaps before using AI to create personalised learning paths.
Its AI facilitator can teach lessons, answer questions and provide feedback, while practical exercises and real-world case studies test how learners apply their knowledge.
The platform also works with employers, allowing companies to identify the skills, tools and outcomes they need from potential employees.
Rather than relying only on CVs, Bildup uses projects and AI-powered assessments to create capability profiles showing what candidates can demonstrate.
The skills gap has also become a concern for employers and policymakers.
Eliezer Ajah, Head of Job Creation and Placement at 3MTT, said the disconnect between university education and workplace demands remains significant.
“The gap between what people are learning in the universities and what they are actually supposed to do in the job is huge,” Ajah said.
In May 2026, Moniepoint CEO Tosin Eniolorunda said the fintech company had struggled to fill more than 500 positions with suitable candidates, prompting debate over Nigeria’s education and training systems.
Aguene said Bildup is priced about 80 percent lower than conventional learning platforms, making practical training more affordable for young Nigerians.
Theodora Onodugo, who joined Bildup as a software tester while planning to study medicine, said the experience changed her career direction.
She later learned coding, built a JAMB application and became a backend developer.
“I’m no longer just a consumer, but a creator,” Onodugo said.
Ajah said AI learning platforms should also be accessible to young people without computers and should connect training to measurable outcomes.
“The most ideal AI tool that would help should be very mobile-friendly, because many youths cannot afford computers, and should be tied to real outcomes,” he said.
Aguene said funding remains a major challenge, with much of Bildup’s development financed from his personal funds.
“The biggest challenge is having to build from personal funds with no institutional framework that can enable us to scale at the level we want and should,” he said.
For Aguene, the goal goes beyond building a technology company to making quality education and advanced skills more accessible.
“The person that can change our world might come from a poor family, but with the kind of barriers that we have now, we are limited,” he said.
Vera Chidimma Okoh by Bird Story Agency.
