Amani Kanu and the long road to building Africa’s next tech community

If you had asked Amani Kanu as a teenager what he wanted to become, software engineering would not have come up. Like many academically strong Nigerian students, he had his future neatly mapped out early. Kanu aimed for medicine, confident that the system would eventually reward his effort.

It did not. Three attempts at JAMB ended without admission. While classmates moved on to university life, Kanu stayed back, taking office jobs to keep himself afloat. He was often the youngest person in the room, watching how work was done and how things broke down. When phones malfunctioned or software confused people, the problem usually found its way to his desk. He fixed things without ceremony, long before he thought of it as a skill worth naming.

“I was just doing it effortlessly,” he says.

At the time, it felt less like destiny and more like survival. He needed to be useful, and this was how usefulness showed up.

Eventually, frustration pushed him towards the National Open University. He chose computer science almost by default, not out of a deep interest in engineering, but because he wanted what his peers already had: a place in university. Once inside, something shifted. He thrived academically, became a group leader, and graduated with a second-class upper. Staff at his study centre knew him by name, not because he sought attention, but because consistency has a way of becoming visible.

Outside school, his working life followed a familiar pattern. In warehouses and offices, processes were slow, manual, and error-prone. Kanu began building Excel systems to track stock, salaries, debt recovery, and inventory movement. One spreadsheet turned into several. Before long, entire operations depended on tools he had quietly designed.

That was the inflection point. If he could build systems this useful with Excel, he began to wonder why he could not build proper software.

Choosing uncertainty on purpose

Learning to code was not a smooth transition. While living in Calabar, Kanu enrolled in multiple programming courses, including Java and C#. Each time, he dropped out within weeks. Work demands clashed with school. Training competed with survival. Something always had to give, and it was usually learning.

After the third attempt, he confronted a difficult truth. If he kept squeezing growth into the margins of his life, he would never get good enough to change it. So he made a decision that still anchors his story today. He quit his job, packed his bags, and moved from Calabar to Lagos with no safety net.

“It was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever taken,” he says.

In Lagos, he finally had structure and immersion. He trained full-time at NESA by Makers and later at Decagon, where momentum replaced hesitation. By the time he finished Decagon, he expected the standard outcome promised by most training programmes: placement, a job, some measure of stability.

Instead, the world stalled. Covid-19 hit, hiring froze, and companies pulled back. While some of his peers secured roles with salaries he could only observe from a distance, Kanu waited. Six months passed without an offer. His first role paid nothing beyond a data allowance. The next paid ₦90,000. He took on multiple contracts at once to survive.

The experience was humbling, but it left behind clarity rather than bitterness.

“We all have our own path,” he says. “Sometimes you pass through pain because of what you’re meant to achieve.”

That period reshaped his relationship with time and comparison. Progress, he learned, does not always announce itself loudly, and delay does not automatically mean failure.

Building people, not just products

While waiting for his own career to stabilise, Kanu noticed something else. Back in Calabar, aspiring engineers were still struggling with the same isolation he had known. There was little guidance, no shared language around hiring, and no community where people could ask honest questions about what the tech industry demanded.

He decided to start small. Five people at first, with evening check-ins, progress updates, CV reviews and accountability calls. The group grew organically, until it needed a name. Calabar Tech Community emerged almost by accident. Today, it has over a thousand registered members and hosts regular events.

Community work did not sit alongside his career. It fused with it.

“Career is how I survive,” Kanu says. “Community is my destiny.”

The same instinct followed him into the Decagon alumni ecosystem. Having been rejected multiple times by Andela earlier in his journey, he understood how disorienting tech hiring could be. Alumni groups became practical spaces for sharing roles, referrals, and context. Sometimes the community helped others land jobs. Sometimes it helped him. He has received roles without formal interviews, based purely on reputation and trust built over time.

People began calling him the Tech Evangelist, initially as a joke. A church-going mentor ushering people into tech. The name stuck, especially when he discovered it was an actual role within the industry. By then, he had been doing the work informally for years.

In 2024, as global conversations around artificial intelligence accelerated, Kanu turned his attention back to public schools in Calabar. He launched what he calls a “tech school storm”, visiting schools to introduce students to ideas far beyond Microsoft Word and Excel. The reality he encountered was sobering. Under-equipped labs. Outdated curricula. A widening gap between what students had access to and what the world now expected.

“When I saw their lab, I cried,” he says.

That experience pushed him to speak more openly about his own background. Growing up, he sold kerosene to support himself. His family lived in flood-prone housing, sometimes placing children on beds while water filled the room. Many people assumed privilege when they saw his trajectory. Few understood the distance he had travelled to get there.

Today, Kanu works across local and international companies and serves as an African lead, helping his organisation understand and expand into African markets. The role stretches him constantly, exposing him to high expectations, tight timelines, and conversations with senior leaders he once watched from afar.

“I’ve met people it would have taken me years to meet on my own,” he says. “It changes how you see leadership.”

That growth came with conscious trade-offs. He reduced his social life, stepped back from friendships that drained time and focus, and learned to set boundaries around family demands by filtering requests through his parents. None of it was accidental. Stability, in his view, is something you build in layers, not a finish line you stumble into.

Looking ahead, Kanu sees himself moving deeper into leadership and management, helping companies enter Africa responsibly while creating real opportunities on the continent. On the community side, his ambitions are expansive. Tech Conference Calabar is only a starting point. Lagos. London. More cities. More schools reached through the Tech School Storm initiative.

When asked what achievement matters most, he does not mention titles or income.

“Helping someone get a job,” he says. “That moment never gets old.”

Kanu’s career is not defined by speed or ease. It is shaped by patience, conviction, and a steady belief that progress matters most when it is shared. From Calabar offices to global tech rooms, from spreadsheets to software, he continues to widen the path for those coming behind him.