At 9 years, a time when a lot of kids haven’t figured out what to do with their lives, Nigerian, Basil Okpara Jr. is building mobile games. The young serial game developer uses what he learnt in a boot camp organized for children aged 5-15.
As of today, Basil has developed over 15 mobile games thanks to his dad. At a point, while he was spending so much time playing games on his phone his father rebuked him. ‘You are always playing games, can’t you think about building your own games so others can play yours too?’ his father said. Basil didn’t take it on the chin. He used it as fuel to begin creating his after his father enrolled him at a camp organized by Codefest International.
The camp was organized to give kids like Basil access to emerging technologies like robotics and virtual reality.
Even his dad that didn’t think he took the scolding seriously, had to get him a laptop and get him registered.
The game developer, who wants to be a scientist when he grows uses scratch 2 to create the games. Scratch 2 is handy for users to create games, animations and stories online or offline. Although his games can only be accessed on computers that have Scratch 2 installed, Frog Attack would be available to the public via Google Play Store in August.
Kidpreneurs continue to emerge across Africa and children like Basil, serve as motivation and lead innovation across the continent.
Not too long ago, two 12-year-old Nigerians were celebrated for using codes to build robots to sort out their house chores.
And with tech giants like Microsoft and Google increasing funding in the African region, there is no limiting what children like Basil can achieve in the next few years.
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