The Geek Circle The Voice of Africa’s Tech Community
Tosin Olugbenga grew up in Ekiti State, Nigeria, where academics were the pinnacle of success. It was only natural that after completing his first degree at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, he pursued a master’s degree in physics. His path seemed clear: get a PhD, become a lecturer, and join the ranks of the academics he admired, but the Nigerian job market had other plans.
When Tosin approached the HOD Physics of a top university in Nigeria seeking a lecturing position, the response was sobering. “If you had a PhD now, it would have been something we would consider,” the HOD told him. Then, pointing to a pile of files on his desk, he added, “These are people who finished their master’s degree abroad. Even when you finish that PhD and come back, it’s not a guarantee.” That moment changed everything.
Earlier during his MSc program in UNN, Tosin had met SharePoint developer named Chuks. Chuks would come to campus once a week, laptop on his back, dressed differently from other students. When Tosin asked what he did, Chuks introduced him to the world of software development and gave him PDF books to study.
Tosin started reading those books on a Galaxy Tab, teaching himself PHP. He would visit websites, view their source code, and try to replicate what he saw.
After coaching himself for a while, he was ready for his first gig. He went door to door in his postgraduate hostel, Odili PG Hall UNN telling people he was a web developer. He was recommended for a website project and built them a website using just HTML and CSS.
After working on the project, and completing his MSc, he moved to Lagos and saw a tweet from his friend about a programming school that offered free training. Tosin enrolled. He was almost 30 years old, married, and had started his PhD. He was probably oldest and maybe most educated person in the class.
But his determination showed. While others finished their assignments at a leisurely pace, Tosin completed his before anyone else.
While learning to code, things were not too easy. He lived in Ibafo, a part of Lagos that had no electricity for years. He couldn’t afford to run a generator constantly while jobless, so he went from house to house, asking neighbors to let him plug in his laptop when they ran their generators. He would sit outside in the sun, laptop balanced on his knees, coding while connected to someone else’s power supply.
“I was determined because I knew even with a PhD, if I got a job, I would eventually become a lecturer in some village and just continue that cycle,” he recalls. “I thought tech would take me somewhere more open, exposed, global. And I was right.”
Today, Tosin works for a company that serves about 25,000 companies globally, with offices in central London, United Kingdom. He is also the founder of GAMMS APP, a community-as-a-service platform. Gamms is an AI-powered, community-building platform designed specifically for the African market.
His journey from being physicist to a developer and being founder is one of resilience and reinvention.
Building GAMMS and giving access to community builders in Africa
Gamms App addresses a critical problem: existing community platforms such as Circle.io, School.com, and Mighty Networks cost around $25 per month, which is prohibitively expensive for most Africans. Tosin saw many Nigerians create communities on these platforms only to abandon them because they couldn’t sustain the monthly subscription.
Gamms makes community building free while offering premium features. The platform includes multiple domains beyond just community: an online school system (LMS), Consultation Hub, Digital product hub, a startup spotlight (similar to Product Hunt), and a professional network called Circle (similar to LinkedIn) within the community ecosystem.
He compares its approach to Zoho, which offers everything Google offers but is cheaper because its developers are in India.
Tosin plans to grow Gamms in Nigeria first. Then offering an affordable alternative to Skool or Circle.
He wants everyone to start building startups. “Look at your environment, what startup can you build? Even if 1,000 people use it and they are paying you around 500 naira every month, you will not need to hire a lot of people. It might be three of you. If your customer base is just 1,000 people and they are paying you 2,000 or 3,000 naira every month, you can make 3 million.”
Building in Africa without connections
Tosin’s perspective on building in Africa is shaped by direct experience. His first startup, Investa, launched about a year after Piggyvest. It followed the exact same model, but while Piggyvest became a household name, Investa struggled to gain traction.
The difference, Tosin believes, came down to exposure and network.
“The guys who own Piggyvest went to Covenant University. For your first office to be in VI, it means you are not a LAPO baby. You are most likely a Nepo baby who has access to a lot of things that some of us from Ekiti may not have access to,” he explains. “I did not have that when I started my startup in the early stages. I didn’t even know who to talk to when I wanted to raise money.”
He points to other successful founders who also had international exposure. Flutterwave’s founder spent years in Canada and brought Andela back to Nigeria. This realization shaped Tosin’s controversial but pragmatic view on brain drain.
“It’s better if everybody leaves and comes back,” he says firmly. “For techies in Nigeria, I advise that they leave the country first to see places where they meet people with different experiences. Then they can come back.”
He practices what he preaches. His product, Gamms, employs people in Nigeria. “I’m contributing back. And now that the world is a global world, no matter where I am, I can contribute. Brain drain is not drain. It creates space for other people to move in.”
Tosin encourages young developers to study abroad if possible. “It gives you a different perspective about life and it can speed your progress. When you look at almost all the unicorns we have right now, the founders have spent some time abroad.”
Getting the early years right
Tosin’s biggest regret is one many young developers are currently repeating: jumping straight into entrepreneurship without building foundational skills in a structured environment.
After finishing his programming course, he immediately started his own coding school instead of getting a job. “It was a very big mistake,” he admits. “Because I’m involved in direct teaching, I didn’t have the opportunity to improve myself. By the time I’m done teaching for the day, I’m already tired.”
The disadvantage showed up later when he moved abroad. Despite having built a startup, when he attended his first interview with a big company in the UK, he was asked about system design. He was hearing the term for the first time.
“When I went to the UK, I found it difficult landing a job quickly because when you see my CV. I’ve built a startup. But I still built that startup without knowing some of those critical things. It even hurt the startup. Pushing code from my local machine to production made us lose money because there was no testing phase, no SIT or UAT.”
He had to spend months quickly learning system design, software architecture fundamentals, and enterprise development practices.
He advises anyone starting, to work within a structured organization, even if they would pay you less. “You are learning processes. You are learning how to relate. You are learning that you don’t just push code. “
We need fewer gatekeepers and more support for younger developers
“The African tech community is very fluid,” Tosin observes. “It’s not structured, it’s not regulated. Anybody can build anything. But one of the things that’s really wrong has to do with those who are categorized as gatekeepers.”
He points to a young developer who built Stunk, a state management tool similar to Zustand. “That tool is even more powerful than Zustand. But as I speak to you presently, the guy even told me he’s sent DMs to some of the popular tech guys and nobody is supporting him, nobody is giving him responses.”
Tosin believes that if developers like him receive more support, the visibility of locally built tools will increase. “If there is something Nigerians are using, Africa will definitely use it. And it will not take long before a big voice within the global tech space speaks about it.”
Tosin started his Twitter Space specifically to give younger developers a platform. “I used to bring people to come and talk, use my platform. I don’t need Twitter money. I’m not running after gigs. I’m well paid. Those who already have platforms should give younger people their platform to showcase what they are building.”
AI’s impact on remote work in Africa
Tosin’s most controversial take is about the future: “Things will be very difficult for techies going forward in Nigeria and Africa generally. Remote work, that is going to drastically reduce this year because of AI.”
To solve this problem, he believes we need to develop our own economy. “People should start building startups. The solution is not 10 years ago, five years ago, when you could get a remote job. It is going to increasingly become much more difficult because those remote jobs will not be created because AI will be filling the gap.”
As evidence, he points to his own experience with Gamms. “Ordinarily, we’re supposed to have at least one DevOps engineer who is supposed to be in charge of our infrastructures. I don’t need that. I just use AI to understand server deployments.”
He recounts a recent incident where his team needed to move production data to a pre-prod environment. The SQL file had thousands of lines and exceeded Docker’s memory. “AI went to the SQL, broke it into 20 different bash scripts, and wrote a bash script again itself to run it on Docker and insert it into the DB. What would have cost a month…this thing happened in less than an hour.”
Do the hard things to get ahead
Despite the challenges, Tosin sees opportunity. “Tech is no longer the get-rich-quick scheme. The game is changing so fast. AI will play a major role in that future and give humans the back seat.”
His advice is to pivot to harder problems. “For those who want to stay in tech, start moving away from web development. Move to writing software for machines, embedded systems, software for the military. Those are where the future is. “
“This is the season of learning the very, very hard things because AI is going to be able to do the easy things.”
He’s already planning his next pivot: from software engineering to financial engineering. “I’m doing a master’s in financial engineering presently. Before AI gets to financial engineers, it will take time. So I will have positioned myself there.”
