How Mentorship Is Quietly Powering Nigeria’s Next Generation of Tech Talent

Nigeria’s tech industry is expanding rapidly, but the reality is that while thousands of young people are enrolling in coding boot camps and tech training programs, employers consistently highlight that many new hires possess theoretical knowledge but struggle to apply it in real-world settings.
From navigating compliance reviews to managing cross-functional deadlines, the lived knowledge required to thrive on the job is often necessarily covered in boot camps and online courses. At the same time, fewer than one in five tech jobs in Nigeria are held by women, revealing how this gap is even wider for those from underserved backgrounds.

This is why mentorship has become one of the most quietly powerful forces shaping Nigeria’s talent pipeline. Beyond technical know-how, it is the passing on of contexts like what to do when things break, how to respond when things shift, and how to lead when stakes are high that turns beginners into professionals. Global platforms like ADPList, which recently surpassed 100 million minutes of mentor sessions, are helping to structure this knowledge exchange across borders, and Nigerians are equally leveraging this platform.

One of the Nigerians leading this change on the ADPList mentorship platform is Joy Unokanjo. With over 5 years of experience working across fintech and product-led startups, Joy has been at the heart of products that needed to scale securely and meet regulatory standards. She has worked on products that have gotten into accelerator programs, withstood cyber threats, passed regulatory checks, and grown without losing user trust. Because operations touch nearly every layer of a tech product, she found herself exposed to the full product cycle from ideation to compliance reviews to strategic partnerships and revenue-driving proposals. It wasn’t a smooth path, but that’s exactly where her strength came from. She began to see how real insight is often shaped by lived pressure.

Joy joined ADPList because she wanted to offer the kind of support she wished she had earlier in her career. After spending years figuring things out in fintech, startups, and product operations, she knew how helpful it would’ve been to just have someone to talk to, especially someone who’d been through it. Mentorship became her way of giving back, and that reflection led her to open her calendar on ADPList, where she has consistently been recognized as a top one per cent mentor in the no/low code field and top 50 amongst technical product management mentors. One hour turned into ten, ten turned into thousands. Today, Joy has mentored over 60 talents, clocking more than 2,000 mentorship hours, many of them supporting young women and early-career professionals pivoting into tech.

She layers her sessions with the weight of her experience, like explaining how to driven operational clarity, use data to enable smart decision making, or design and scale product processes. She doesn’t just focus on domain knowledge; she helps mentees see possibilities they hadn’t considered and gives them clarity they can act on. “I always say: The gold you’re looking for is already in your hands, mentorship just shows you where to dig.”

Some of her mentees now lead product initiatives in fast-growing startups, while others have gone on to host webinars and take on tech partnership roles of their own. One mentee, a graduate of English and Literary Studies, now trains others after finding her voice through Joy’s guidance. The ripple effect is unmistakable. And it comes at a time when Nigeria is fast becoming one of the most sought-after markets for offshore tech hiring, driven by timezone compatibility, rising developer confidence, and a growing ecosystem of remote-friendly teams.

But the real challenge remains: turning access into readiness.

Joy believes this is where mentorship becomes the backbone of long-term capacity. “One hour of real conversation can shrink months of confusion,” she says. “If every experienced product leader gave just one hour a month, we’d have more confident hires entering teams ready to solve real problems from day one. That kind of confidence spreads, especially among women and people from low socioeconomic backgrounds.” In addition to her sessions on ADPList, Joy has also offered mentorship to startup founders outside the platform, supporting both tech and product-led entrepreneurs with operations planning, product delivery strategy, and decision-making frameworks that help.

Now, with accelerators, bootcamps, and even corporate tech initiatives beginning to fold mentorship into their models, there is a shift happening slowly, but surely. But Joy is quick to point out that mentorship doesn’t need a title. “It’s not about being an expert, and you don’t need to have all the answers,” she says. “You just need to share what you’ve experienced, what you’ve learned. That’s how we build a strong tech future in Nigeria.”

Nigeria’s future in tech will be shaped by many things, including policy, infrastructure, and capital. But behind the scenes, it is also being shaped by people like Joy, and by the simple, consistent act of one person showing another the road they’ve walked.