When Bode Roberts struggled to break into the workforce, he realised the problem was not his drive; the system itself was broken. So, instead of waiting for a seat at someone else’s table, he built his own. In his latest My Life in Tech feature, JOHN ADOYI chronicles how Roberts turned years of job-hunting silence into Dataleum, an award-winning EdTech platform transforming African talent into a global export.
297 applications. 48 interviews. Three years without a job.
For Bode Roberts, co-founder of the edtech platform Dataleum, those numbers were more than a record of an unsuccessful job search. They represented three years of hope, rejection, and uncertainty, and eventually forced him to confront what it meant to measure his worth by whether someone would employ him.
“It was a cycle of hope followed by the heavy silence of rejection,” Roberts says.
Some interviews seemed promising. Some applications carried the possibility that things might finally change. Then came the silence, again and again.
“There were moments of genuine confusion and tears,” he says. “The weight of ‘not having work’ began to feel like a commentary on my worth.”
The experience changed the question Roberts was asking. Instead of asking how he could find his place in the workforce, he began thinking about how to make it easier for others to find theirs.
Looking back, Roberts says the experience changed how he understood unemployment.
“I realised that if someone with my background and drive was struggling this much, the system itself was broken,” he says.
That realisation changed the question he was trying to answer. Instead of asking how he could find his place in the workforce, Roberts began thinking about how to make it easier for others to find theirs.
Years later, that shift would help shape Dataleum, the edtech platform he co-founded.
“I am actually grateful for those 48 rejections,” Roberts says. “They were the fuel I needed to build my own table.”
But Roberts’ concern with opportunity began long before he started applying for jobs.
His understanding of opportunity began taking shape in childhood.
Roberts attended a private school while his mother taught in the public school system. He says he sometimes accompanied her to work, where he saw classrooms meant for dozens of pupils packed with more than 300 children. He also saw students sitting on the floor and struggling with basic literacy.
“Talent is universal, but opportunity is not,” Roberts says.
Roberts says he also spent much of his childhood around people older than him. While other children played typical playground games, he played Monopoly, Ludo and cards with adult neighbours.
“Those weren’t just games; they were my first lessons in negotiation, strategic thinking, and emotional intelligence,” he says. “My environment taught me how to navigate spaces where I was the youngest person in the room.”
He says he was drawn to numbers from an early age and became the top mathematics student in his primary school. In 2002, he won the Milo Nestlé award for his mathematical abilities. His interest in solving problems also led him to start his first business while he was still in secondary school.
In 2009, Roberts began studying Computer Engineering at Covenant University, a private university in Ogun State, southwest Nigeria. But he was interested in more than how machines worked. He wanted to understand how technology could be used to solve problems for people.
He treated his university years as a period of experimentation. Roberts says he started about 16 businesses as an undergraduate, using each one to learn about suppliers, customers, marketing, negotiation, and sales.
“Those weren’t just side hustles; they were my real-world classroom,” he says. “I was negotiating with suppliers, sourcing products, managing customer experiences, and marketing to my peers.”
He graduated in 2014 and later pursued a master’s degree in Production and Operations Management because, he says, he wanted to understand how technology could be implemented and scaled within businesses.
His time at Lagos Business School further changed how he thought about building businesses. Roberts says the programme shifted his focus from business survival to long-term sustainability.
“It wasn’t just about learning theory; it was about building relationships with leaders across various sectors who were all grappling with the same question: How do we build businesses that last in Africa?” he says.
After school, Roberts moved into banking. It was there, while working at a financial institution, that he said he encountered a problem that would later lead to Dataleum.
Despite working in a high-growth environment, he says he struggled to find accessible opportunities to upskill. Training was either unavailable or too expensive.
He discussed the problem with his friend and future co-founder, Titilola Bello. They realised that if working professionals were struggling to access quality digital training, the problem could be even greater for unemployed young people.
That conversation became the starting point for Dataleum.
Building Dataleum
Roberts and Bello tested the idea before building a business around it. Roberts says they spoke to 20 people during an early feasibility study, 15 of whom validated the need for accessible and affordable digital skills training.
When they launched their first marketing campaign, 27 people expressed interest. One organisation then paid upfront for 10 training slots, giving Dataleum its first revenue.
“That initial revenue allowed us to build gradually,” Roberts says.
As the company grew, it began working with organisations including the Lagos State Employment Trust Fund, Access Bank, the United Nations, Coca-Cola and Flutterwave.
Building Dataleum also meant making a difficult decision about his career. Roberts left his banking job to lead the company full-time, a move he says was followed by “incredibly rough” months that tested his resolve.
Seven months after Dataleum launched, the company was still operating from a physical training centre when the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted operations in March 2020. It forced Dataleum to rethink how it delivered training.
In March 2020, Dataleum launched a virtual data hackathon, or what he calls “Datathon”. The event brought data analysts from different locations together online.
“Despite the global standstill, we saw data analysts from all over logging in to compete,” he says.
Roberts says the Datathon changed how he viewed Dataleum’s reach. What had started as a physical training centre in Lagos could now bring people together regardless of where they were.
Dataleum expanded into the UK in 2023. Roberts says it became a registered learning centre with the UK Register of Learning Providers within two months.
But the expansion exposed a different challenge. Roberts says many Nigerian Dataleum alumni who had moved to the UK were struggling to navigate the labour market, particularly those from underrepresented groups and people of colour.
“While Nigeria is a familiar, high-volume market for us, the UK is a market of high standards and specific community needs,” he says.
Roberts says Dataleum responded by placing greater emphasis on community-building and support for immigrants and minority communities navigating the UK labour market.
Three years after Dataleum launched, the company won the Lagos State Startup of the Year award. In 2023, it also received the Best EdTech Startup in Africa award at the Global Startup Awards.
“Standing on a stage with innovators from across the globe and hearing Dataleum named the best on the continent was a profound testament to our impact,” he says.
Becoming a builder
Running Dataleum has also changed how Roberts thinks about leadership.
He says he began as an operator, shaped by the hands-on approach he developed while running businesses at university. When Dataleum launched, he was still experimenting with different leadership styles as he worked to get the company off the ground.
As the company grew and he began leading professionals from different generations, Roberts says he realised that leadership required something different.
“High-performance teams aren’t built on ‘command and control,’ but on servant leadership,” he says. “To lead the younger generation, you must be a listener.”
Today, Roberts describes himself as moving into what he calls the “Legacy Builder” phase. His focus, he says, is less on managing every operation and more on creating an environment where other leaders can emerge.
“My goal is no longer just to manage operations, but to architect an environment where other leaders can emerge. I want to ensure that impact isn’t just something we do internally; I want to inspire a movement of young leaders who are on that same ‘impact thread.’”
That shift is tied to what Roberts sees as a larger challenge for Africa. He calls the continent’s talent the “African Asset” and believes much of it remains untapped.
“I believe African talent is the untapped engine the world needs to solve its most complex problems,” he says. “My greatest pressure is ensuring we are building the right infrastructure to make that talent economically viable.”
For Roberts, the impact of developing talent extends beyond the person who takes a course or gets a job. He says he also thinks about the families and businesses that can benefit when people gain access to better opportunities.
“It’s not just about the student who takes a course today,” he says. “It’s about the family that is lifted out of poverty because that student got a global job.”
His experience with the UNDP’s Young Africa Innovates programme in 2025 also exposed him to entrepreneurs who are often excluded from mainstream opportunities, including people with disabilities and founders from underserved communities. Roberts says the experience reinforced his belief that Africa’s progress must include people who are often left behind.
For Roberts, the longer-term goal is to build systems and develop people who can outlast his time as CEO.
“I want to ensure that impact isn’t just something we do internally,” he says. “My leadership today is about building systems and people that will outlast my own tenure as CEO.”
‘The catalyst of human potential’
Roberts’ ambitions now extend beyond Dataleum. Over the next 10 years, he wants the company to become what he describes as a sustainable African talent ecosystem, helping Africa move from consuming technology to exporting innovation.
He is also pursuing a PhD at Covenant University on the impact of artificial intelligence on operational efficiency in systemically important banks. Roberts says he wants to understand how emerging technologies can be applied in the African context and contribute to global knowledge.
But when asked what would remain if everything he had built disappeared, Roberts returns to the qualities that existed before Dataleum, the awards and the titles.
“At my core, I am a practitioner of ‘opportunity maximization.’ Even with nothing, I would still have my faith in God, the resilience my parents instilled in me, and the integrity that has guided every decision.”
He says he would still be a builder, with problems to solve and people to empower.
“I hope the narrative isn’t about the awards I won, but about the thousands of tables I helped create for others to sit at,” he says.
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