Cletus Ajibade is a tech advocate, social entrepreneur and software engineer; Co-founder of Babymigo.com and Safer Mom. Recalling his early childhood lifestyle as well as ambitions, he writes: “From my early days, I always wanted to know how things work. I fabricated toy cars from scrap metals, dismantled electronic devices, yes, I did it all. I have always wanted to become an Engineer, even though family wanted me to study medicine.”
Undeterred by his parent’s desires, he joined the science department at Ireti Grammar School, South West Ikoyi, Lagos, where he had his secondary education. Beside his passion for engineering, he also loved to write. He excelled in both his academics and other leadership and extra-curricular roles he took up.
At the time he graduated from secondary school, there was an internet and mobile technology boom in the country and this led him to study ‘Object Oriented Application Development’ at NIIT, Lagos. This decision was the beginning of his journey into the exciting world of programming and software development. Falling in love with Information Technology,he decided to study Computer Science and Engineering at the university.
Cletus studied Computer Science and Engineering at Ladoke Akintola University, Ogbomoso and graduated as the best in the Faculty of Engineering with a First Class Honors. At the university, he developed a few software projects and won a number of awards and scholarships. while in school, he founded CodeHouse Africa, an initiative that focuses on youth empowerment and capacity building through software development and ICT training in the emerging internet and mobile markets in Africa with the goal to change the face of technology adoption and empower youths who will use these technologies to solve Africa’s problems.
In 2015, Cletus co-founded SaferMom, an innovative startup, leveraging mobile technology to solve the problem of infant and maternal mortality in Nigeria. At SaferMom, he believes no woman should die during childbirth, therefore, pregnant women and nursing mothers are empowered to make better health decisions through mobile phones. SaferMom provides vital health information via SMS, calls and mobile App technologies made available in their language of choice.
Prior to SaferMom, Cletus worked as a Software Engineer at Longbridge Technologies Ltd, where he developed commercial software applications and modules on the Finacle Core Banking Platform, CRM Solution, Signature Verification System (SVS), and handled key leadership roles that saw to the Finacle 10 implementation for various banks in Nigeria.
Subsequently, in 2017, he co-founded Babymigo.com, the number one parenting service for African women (pregnant and nursing mothers) providing answers to pregnancy, parenting or child care issues, thereby bridging the gap between women and experienced healthcare professionals. The founders of Babymigo believe that no woman should die during pregnancy or childbirth and they are solving this problem with the use of mobile technology.
Cletus Ajibade is an IBM-powered ACM-ICPC Fellow, Etisalat Scholar, and in 2016, was one of the 150 ‘GES+’ young innovators in the world honoured by President Barack Obama in Silicon Valley, California. In April 2017, he and his team were invited by Facebook to take part in the annual Facebook developer conference at San Jose where he met with Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook.
Cletus is a recipient of numerous awards such as the Etisalat Merit Award, the Nigerian Society of Engineers Award, and the NITDA eSolve Award for Indigenous IT solutions. He’s great passion is to use technology and social entrepreneurship to bring growth and development to Africa and beyond.
References
https://ng.linkedin.com/in/cletusajibade
https://about.me/cletus
Feature Image from: About.me/cletus
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This article was first published on 3rd July 2018
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