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Lagos, Nigeria Seated in a stylish living room of a home in a suburb of Nigeria’s commercial center, Lagos, Basil Okpara Jr. is tapping away on his laptop keyboard.<\/p>\n
The 9-year-old is building a hide and seek game, using a free programming application called Scratch 2.<\/p>\n
Scratch 2 allows users to create games, animations, and stories online or offline. So far, Basil has used it to generate more than 30 mobile games.<\/p>\n
The camp, organized by Codefest International, was put in place to give children like Basil access to emerging technologies like robotics and virtual reality.<\/p>\n
Growing up, Basil used to play a lot of mobile games says his father, Basil Okpara Sr.<\/p>\n
“I bought him a tablet when he was 4 years old because I saw that he was always grabbing phones to play games with. He played Candy Crush and Temple Run a lot,” the father told.<\/p>\n
But Basil’s interest in creating his games grew at age 7 after he got scolded for spending all of his time playing.<\/p>\n
“There was this day he was on the tablet, as usual, he was so carried away with the game he was playing that I got upset with him,” his father said.<\/p>\n
“Out of annoyance, I said to him, ‘you are always playing games, can’t you think about building your own games so others can play yours too?’. I was angry when I said it, and I did not know he took it seriously,” he added.<\/p>\n
Why Tech giants like Google and Microsoft are investing in Africa continent.<\/p>\n
Two Nigerian 12-year-olds were recently celebrated for using codes to build robots to sort out their house chores.<\/p>\n
In May, team Acrobot, a Ghanaian all-girls high school team won the 2019 Robofest competition by programming robots to stack boxes.<\/p>\n
And with Africa experiencing increased investment from tech giants like Google and Microsoft, Basil and his peers are on their way to becoming future coding stars.<\/p>\n
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