The Geek Circle The Voice of Africa’s Tech Community
Ronald Eguh was the kid everyone called when something broke. A frozen phone, a dead laptop, mysterious Wi-Fi issues—he fixed them all. “I was the family IT guy,” he says with a laugh.
Naturally, he wanted to study computer engineering. But like many Nigerian kids, what he wanted didn’t matter as much as what looked prestigious. His family pushed for medicine. So he tried, spending years on a path that never quite fit.
Then 2020 came. The world stopped, and tech moved to the center of everything. Ronald found his way back—not as an experiment this time, but as a homecoming.
What caught him off guard wasn’t the technical work. It was realizing his real strength: leadership. By 18, he was managing teams, often leading people twice his age. Even as he explored cybersecurity and earned his SOC analyst certification, one truth kept surfacing—he was built to lead, to align people, to turn ideas into action.
That instinct pulled him into product management. Today, he works at Asia Labs, overseeing projects across engineering, design, and business. He’s quick to push back on the idea that product work is all soft skills and meetings. “You have to understand what’s going on,” he says. “I’ve had to get technical—working with teams, reviewing APIs, getting deep with engineering.”
But Ronald’s story isn’t just about jobs. It’s about what he built on his own—especially the thing that failed.
In 2023, he launched BuildHub, his first real startup. By the end of 2025, it was over. He said it plainly on X: “This year my startup failed. But I think it’s the most educative thing I’ve done.”
No drama. No spin. Just honesty. BuildHub taught him community building, real-world product marketing, and how emotions can cloud judgment when you’re too attached. “I used to see people call themselves two-time failed founders and never understood it,” he says. “Now I do. The scars teach you.”
After stepping back, he leaned into something that had been quietly growing—his online community. By 2025, he’d built an audience of over 25,000, training about 1,500 people for free in just two months. Why? Because he saw a problem bigger than talent or access: the knowledge gap.
“There is a serious knowledge gap in Nigeria and Africa,” he says. “People like to think people know—but people don’t.”
He saw it everywhere. Dozens of training programs, yet people still don’t know where to start. Even those who learn don’t know how to turn it into opportunity—they stay stuck collecting certificates without positioning themselves, building proof of work, or getting visible.
This is why Ronald believes product education and empathy matter so much. Too many African founders build as if users have stable data, reliable devices, and time to explore. But most users are juggling survival—food, rent, transport. When founders ignore that reality, they build things people can’t use or trust.
He’s also clear-eyed about why talented Nigerians leave. It’s not hatred—it’s dignity. Poor pay, toxic work culture, unrealistic expectations. He recently turned down a role managing five projects for ₦150,000. The founder called it “experience.” Ronald’s response: “Are you for real?”
Still, he’s not cynical. He’s focused. His advice for breaking into tech in 2026 is sharp: learn the skill, but don’t stop there. You need positioning, visibility, and to build in public. “Solve real problems,” he says. “That alone can take you from zero to ten.”
For Ronald, success isn’t a title or salary. It’s impact. How many people can he help move forward? How many lives change because he shared what he learned?
As 2026 begins, he’s restructuring his startup with clearer thinking, building partnerships to close the knowledge gap, and expanding toward underserved groups—women in tech, young people in transition, communities without access.
Ronald Eguh isn’t a neat success story. He’s a builder still building, failing forward, learning out loud, and bringing others along. In a world that celebrates lone winners, he’s proving something different: the real win is what becomes possible for others because you showed up.
For young Africans watching from the sidelines, wondering if tech is for them, his message lands quietly but clearly: the barriers are real, but the possibilities are bigger—and sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is teach someone else.
