Clinton Imaro, the 18-year-old founder of Afrowatch and co-founder of Code Space is our Gen Z of choice for today’s interview. He is also a self-taught Programmer, Story Teller, Filmmaker, Editor, and Tech Content Creator.
It’s quite fascinating to see what these African youngsters are up to.
Gone are the days when all they had to do was go to school, read books and be responsible enough to pass their exams.
Today, they’re taking up positions in the corporate world and building their own startups. It’s quite impressive, really.
Early Years of Clinton Imaro
Clinton, an 18year old Nigerian was born and raised in Benin City, Edo State. His family later moved to Abuja where he currently lives.
Just like John Oseni, Clinton started his journey into tech in primary school. At this stage, he built electronics out of scrap and sold them to his seniors.
Fun fact: He sold an electric toy car he built while in primary school to a group of tertiary institution students at the University of Benin. These students needed it for their semester projects and couldn’t build it themselves.
The 17year old revealed that he also enjoys designing and creating things. He considers himself a good artist. His love for design made him learn graphics design which served as a means of passive income during his early tech days.
In 2018, Clinton participated in a talent hunt competition in his school and emerged as the winner of his category. He designed an electronic Carton Biscuit Dispenser (CBD) to dispense biscuits. In 2020, the programmer participated in the Google Java exam, and he emerged as one of the best. This earned him the award as “Best Java Developer”.
In 2021, Clinton was nominated and won the most Enterprising Youth Male South-South, Edisa award. In the same year, he was among the first teens to have an exclusive interview with KCCA, which was published in their nationwide magazines. He was also one of the young teen speakers for the 1st Nigeria Teen Cyber Festival. This event was held in Jos and partly online due to covid-19.
Clinton started learning programming in 2017 using study materials that he could find online. According to him, he didn’t need to be inspired by anybody to take interest in tech. He simply thought it was interesting and gave it a trial. Soon, he realized he was good at it and just went with the flow from then on.
The Journey Into Tech
Clinton joined the tech space fully in 2017. We asked him about his journey into tech and his challenges. He revealed that when he started his coding journey, he didn’t have access to a laptop to test his codes. When he did get a laptop, unstable electricity situation in Nigeria didn’t make it any easier.
He stuck to writing his codes on paper and waiting for the electricity supply to test it on his desktop. He noted that it was a very stressful experience. However, that was the best way he could make use of any spare time.
The result of this labor is that he now has mastery of 5 programming languages alongside his skill as a Blockchain Developer.
For a young person his age, you might wonder what his motivation was?
He revealed that his mother and uncle were committed to supporting him in every way that they could.
His strong belief in God and an undying passion for solving African-related problems have also fueled his drive. He intends to do more and also become a contributor to so many tech projects dedicated to solving societal problems.
The youngster is currently focused on testing and preparing Afrowatch for launch to the public. Afrowatch is an app designed to redefine online viewing of both local and international TV programs using minimal data consumption.
He noted that the app is currently undergoing a user-testing stage involving 500 participants and the reviews from the test has been positive so far.
Clinton revealed that when he personally tested the app, it consumed only 1.27MB for more than 6 hours of streaming. This is despite the high graphic quality of the app. He also plans to introduce a feature in the app where users can monetize their live streams too.
More Business
Clinton recently shared a screenshot of his big win on Twitter which was a message inviting him to work as Team Lead in a UK company. The news broke in the Nigerian tech space and made many people quite emotional as it shone a ray of hope for teenagers and aspiring techies in Nigeria.
When we asked how he got the job, he said:
“I never applied for the job, all I do is to post projects I’ve worked on and put myself out there. This company viewed my profile and reached out. I didn’t even know I had such a message in my inbox till I did my routine mail checks at night.”
We further asked him what he would like other teens to know and he said:
“Constantly put yourself out there, regardless of how imperfect your project might seem. Don’t hide what you’ve done from others just because you are scared of criticism.”
Clinton appears to also have great plans for teenagers like him in the tech community. He is also a co-founder of Code Space which was established in 2020 and aims at helping teenagers find their way in tech and collaborate to solve technology-related problems.
The major goal of the platform is to show the world how ready and capable African teenagers are to rewrite the African narrative through technology. It is also designed to serve as a tech-based freelance portal that bridges the gap between companies and tech gurus.
Final Words
The tech whiz expressed his sincere appreciation to God, his mom, and his uncle saying:
“In all these, I am grateful to God, my mum, and my uncle for their support. They made my path through the tech space and the creative industry more comfortable.
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