What Prize-Giving in Technology Is Really For: SMARP 2026 AI and Robotics Prize
SMARP 2026 AI and Robotics Prize? Some years ago, a young man won a book through one of the free technology competitions I ran online, back when we were just starting out. I do not remember the exact competition but I believe it was on our website. I ran several of them over the years. It was part of a sustained effort to encourage interest and ambition in technology, when computing was new and emerging as a career, among young Nigerians who might otherwise never see it as something that was genuinely for them.
He remembered it. Much later, he posted online to say that the book he won was what set him on his path. That it sparked something. That it moved him from someone who was casually aware of technology to someone who began to take it seriously as a future. He went on to become the CTO of a leading electronic payment firm in Africa.
He posted that I had changed his life.
I share that not to take credit for the career he built. He built it. But because it illustrates something I want to say clearly about what prizes and competitions in technology advocacy are really for, and why I am sharing the Salako Maven AI and Robotics Prize (SMARP) 2026, now in its fifth edition, run by the Nigeria Computer Society Lagos Chapter in partnership with the Salako Maven Foundation.
The deadline for submissions is July 31st 2026. It is open to individuals from schools and tech hubs with ongoing projects in AI or robotics. Details to: smarp [at] ncslagos [dot] org [dot] ng
But first, the deeper point.
What the prizes were actually doing
When I gave out books and magazines as prizes through Jidaw and through my technology advocacy work, I was not primarily rewarding performance. I was not saying: you have already achieved something, here is recognition. I was doing something different and, which I considered more important.
I was trying to move young people from casual curiosity to genuine commitment.
There is a stage in a young person’s relationship with a field, with technology, with science, with any demanding discipline, where they are interested but not yet invested. I remember telling attendees of the free IT career seminars at the time that “there is a difference between interest and commitment.” Interest is cheap. Commitment will cost you. They have seen enough to be curious. They have not yet had the experience that converts curiosity into desire, and desire into the kind of sustained effort that actually produces a career.
That conversion does not happen automatically. It needs a catalyst. Sometimes the catalyst is a person (a mentor, a teacher, a professional) who takes the time to speak directly to someone who is still finding their way. Sometimes it is an experience, a competition, a programme, a career forum, a challenge that asks something real of them and gives something real back and something to think about.
Sometimes it is a book.
At that the book probably contained information they could not have found elsewhere. But that wasn’t the primary motivation. It was because I believed and decided they were worth giving it to. Because an institution or an individual looked at a young person in the early stages of curiosity and said: we see your interest, we take it seriously, and here is something that you can use to build on that seriousness.
That is what the young man who became a CTO received. It was not a a credential. Not a certificate of participation. It was a signal that his interest mattered and early enough that it could still shape his future.
The difference between training and ignition
I spent quite some time running technology training programmes. I know what training does. It transfers knowledge and skill to people who are already committed enough to show up and engage with it. Training is essential. But training operates on people who have already made a decision.
What competition and prize-giving does is different. When done right, for the right reasons. It can work on people who have not yet made a decision. It finds them in the space between exposure and commitment and tries to tip the balance toward commitment.
Some prizes are for top performances. But in my book contests, I did not limit the prizes to top performers. Some of what I gave out went to young people who showed enthusiasm, those who demonstrated genuine curiosity and engagement, those made an effort to spend a Saturday afternoon at our free IT career seminar. Often their technical work was not yet ready. This was what the free book competitions and free IT career seminars were about. It was about rewarding something that formal assessment systems often miss: the desire to become, not just the achievement of having become.
From exposure to commitment. From casual interest to burning ambition. From “maybe technology is interesting” to “I am going to build my life in this field.” That is the movement the prizes were designed to encourage. The CTO story is an example of what that movement looks like when it plays out fully.
Why this matters for AI and robotics right now
I have been writing about technology in Nigeria for quite sometime. I was writing about ICT for development when most national newspapers did not consider it a mainstream subject. I co-hosted Information Society, one of Nigeria’s earliest weekly television programmes on digital awareness. I built Jidaw.com, one of Nigeria’s earliest technology websites, from cybercafés in Ikeja when reliable internet was not available at home or in the office.
From that vantage point I want to say something specific about this moment.
AI and robotics are not the future of technology in Africa. They are the present. The question is not whether these technologies will shape African economies and societies. They already are. The question is whether Africans, and Nigerians specifically, will be among the people who shape those technologies, or whether we will once again be primarily recipients of what others design for us. Consume only or create as well?
That question will not be answered in policy documents. It will be answered in the paths and roles of young individuals. Will the student or the tech hub member with a half-formed AI project in 2026 eventually become the innovator or entrepreneur or technical leader who builds something that matters? And these paths and roles will be shaped, often at critical early moments, by whether someone or some institution decided to take their curiosity seriously before it had fully formed into capability.
SMARP does that. Five editions in, it has demonstrated staying power, which matters in a context where many initiatives launch and disappear. The Salako Maven Foundation and the NCS Lagos Chapter are investing in the ignition phase. It is the phase before credentials, before formal achievement. It is where the most important thing that can happen is that a young person’s interest meets something that takes it seriously.
To the young Nigerians and Africans who might be reading this
The talent was never the problem. I have been saying this for years and I have the evidence to back it. I have watched young Nigerians who started from zero, who came to free seminars with no computers at home, who accessed computers for this first time in our training school, who learned in borrowed time on shared machines, in cybercafes, who went on to build careers and companies and technical leadership roles across the world.
What has consistently been inadequate is the infrastructure around that talent. The competitions, the mentoring, the recognition, the moments that tell a curious young person that their curiosity is worth developing into something more.
If you have an AI or robotics project, in a school, a tech hub, anywhere, submit it. Not because winning guarantees anything. However, submitting your work shows you take it seriously, and that you are ready to have others engage with it. This process is part of how you become someone who builds things that matter.
Submission: smarp [at] ncslagos [dot] org [dot] ng, copy
info [at] salakomavenfoundation [dot] org Deadline: July 31st 2026.
One book changed the trajectory of someone who became a CTO.
You do not know yet what this moment might do for you.
Author: Jide Awe
Science, Technology and Innovation policy advisor.
Nigeria’s Inaugural Tech Mentor of the Year
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