After resigning from Google, Ope Bukola now has her own online university teaching STEM, here’s how

It all happened when she decided she wanted to take a greater risk and challenge herself so she could build her own innovation from the scratch. This realization was also fueled by the uncertainties the Covid 19 pandemic placed each working class in and the need to walk out of her comfort zone.

In 2021, co-founder of Kibo School and Nigeria-born Ope Bukola joined the pool of ‘great resignations’ by quitting her high-paying job as product lead for Google to pursue this sense of purpose. This gave birth to the innovative online university offering STEM education targeted at African students.

“Eleven months ago, I started piloting the idea with my co-partners Keno and Misan. Today we have taught 400 Africans in 13 countries and counting,” Ope Bukola wrote on her LinkedIn page.

This dream has been given a boost after the organization raised a seed capital of 2 million dollars to expand access to education for Africans. The eduTechprenuer said her mission is to train many African graduates to be at the forefront of the technological workforce.

According to her, the education system on the continent must be retooled to stand up to this task and that’s what Kibo School seeks to do. Bukola said this dream is what made it easier for her to bow out of Google as product lead for the Google Classroom even though she worked with the best software team.

She explained that she is targeting young Africans who want to revolutionize the status quo with technology. She indicated that they are targeting students aged 16 years who want to study computer science.

“The school’s curriculum has been designed in a way that grooms the students to excel globally and in setups where their skills are needed,” the co-founder of Kibo added.

She explained that students must be able to build technology using modern tools and that is why at Kibo “we provide them with deep knowledge in computer science”. On what her biggest challenge is, she observed that it isn’t in the online space, but, the perspective and reality that education must be held in brick and mortar structures, which are littered across Africa.

In April, Kibo won the GSV Cup, one of the largest edtech pitch competitions in the world.