Oladapo Ojo
Oladapo Ojo has a giant goal: to make science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education more interesting and accessible to African youth. A scary dream for most, but not Ojo, a colossus in the African media space.
DO, as he is popularly known, is a media entrepreneur with decades of experience producing and marketing innovative TV shows across the continent. He runs one of the biggest audiovisual studios in West Africa.
Staying true to his goal, JustMedia, Ojo’s company, has produced and packaged audience-capturing STEM shows like Cowbellpedia mathematics contests, InterSwitch national science competition, and Brightest national agric science competition, among others.
The latest brainchild of his Ojo’s inventive thinking is the University Duel, a competition for undergraduates to test their ability to apply theoretical knowledge to real-world challenges. The first-ever season of the competition recently wrapped up.
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In this interview, Ojo discussed the challenges of producing the University Duel and the skeletal plan for the TV show’s future.
TheCable: Kindly give us the background to the University DUEL Competition?
Ojo: Thank you. Let me take a few steps back to 2004, when JustMedia, our marketing communications company, began providing content and marketing communications support to discerning organisations such as Guinness — Friend or Foe; GSK Lucozade Boost — Freestyle; Nestle — Golden Morn Rockazz; ZAIN — Don’t forget the lyrics; Seamans Schnapps — Akobu Ndu & Kengbe Oro, etc.
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By 2008, we discovered that Nigerians/Africans are net consumers of technology with little or very low-tech contribution. From our interactions with young people on our various projects at the time, we found that over 80 percent of them especially the females were not interested in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education; they believed in an unfounded myth that the sciences especially mathematics was too difficult to understand; scientists are boring beings and in most cases STEM is not so relevant to activities outside the classroom. We then figured that to correct this situation, we would need more Africans, especially the youth, to be actively involved in STEM.
That was how we found our niche in education, which was to make STEM more engaging and fun and to dispel the myth among students (especially in secondary schools) that STEM fields are difficult and unattractive. It has been a journey of 18 years, but here we are today. We have been able to link the STEM value chain with University Duel, which identifies and celebrates outstanding STEM undergrads and their institutions.
TheCable: Tell us how University DUEL differs from other traditional quiz competitions?
Ojo: University DUEL competition differs from traditional quiz competitions in its approach to making STEM education fun and interactive using technology all the way through its execution.
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From online registrations- schools, students, the CBT, the format of the TV show, which is fully automated using algorithm to shuffle over 7,000 questions, cutting across many topics. While traditional quizzes focus on rote memorisation, the University DUEL competition is an annual contest amongst top institutions where outstanding students collaborate and compete in the areas of critical thinking, problem solving, analytics, sustainable environment, general knowledge and innovations.
The aim is to aid the thought processes of students through out-of-the-box solutions to complex business and societal problems using technology in order to impact lives and change the community. The aforementioned are the things that we can say clearly set University DUEL apart from traditional quiz formats.
TheCable: STEM seems to be the driving force behind your projects, and I see you have produced a couple of STEM-based shows even before university. DUEL, can you tell us about them?
Ojo: Indeed, we have created and produced a number of STEM-based competitions before University Duel. The basic idea for us was to make STEM education more engaging and attractive to African students. We focused on Africa because we recognised Africa has a teeming youth population, so we sought to make STEM education more appealing so as to empower young people to understand the need to, practice, and participate in STEM fields so they can also start producing technology that will impact lives and engender positive change in our continent.
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We created and launched Cowbellpedia, a national mathematics quiz show for secondary (junior and senior) schools in Nigeria in 2015. Cowbellpedia became highly successful by showcasing students’ mathematical prowess. For five consecutive seasons, we produced and managed the project, which had over 250,000 students representing over 50,000 high schools participating in the competition.
What warms my heart the most when I think about all the effort we put into Cowbellpedia is the fact that most of our grads have gone on to become leaders in their chosen field of science and technology across the world.
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In 2017, we launched SPAK, a science (Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Math) competition for secondary school students (SS2/Year 11). Interswitch Africa’s foremost tech giant, saw the potential in the project and became the headline sponsor in 2018. They renamed it InterswitchSPAK. SPAK is the acronym for Speed, Perseverance, Accuracy, and Knowledge.
With an annual grand prize of over N35 million worth of scholarship, InterswitchSPAK competition has engaged hundreds of thousands of secondary school students across Nigeria.
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The competition features: a national qualifying exam, a knockout stage for the top 81 students and a 13-week TV studio quiz competition to determine the best STEM student in Nigeria.
The success of InterswitchSPAK in Nigeria led to the launch of InterswitchSPAK Kenya in 2019, thus replicating the vision and resounding success of making Africans embrace STEM even more.
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In 2023, we decided to bring attention to Food production in Africa through STEM, so we launched Brightest, an agricultural science competition for senior secondary school students in Nigeria with the support of OCP Africa, a foremost fertiliser firm with footprints in over 14 African countries and BlackCountry Farms.
We have been very deliberate in our focus and strategy through our STEMAfrica initiative. Thus, promoting STEM education and innovation in Africa through the development of the next generation of leaders. Building a community of young enthusiasts, enhancing excellent performances, exposing and rewarding STEM talents. Changing the narratives through mentorships and career building
TheCable: You have done quite some work to support STEM education at the secondary school level. Now that you have the University Duel, do you still have plans for the secondary schools?
Ojo: We always have plans for secondary schools, but let me put this in context. The University DUEL project is a part of the DUEL brand, a robust STEM initiative with a wide range of touchpoints: University Duel, this is where the best undergrads from across Nigerian Universities converge to compete on STEM knowledge in determining the best University Champion.
SMART Challenge, (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant & Time-bound) here the focus is to get our undergraduates to focus on identifying and applying their STEM knowledge in solving real-life problems – business, community within our society.
High School Duel: Since 1859, when the first high school was founded in Nigeria, they have produced thousands of leaders both in the public and private sectors. HSD is the platform to encourage Nigerians to give back both physical and mental infrastructure to their alma mater.
STEMCup is designed to address some of the gaps within our government tertiary institutions. STEMCup challenge is where the best institution wins a STEM endowment/ CHAIR in the winning school.
So, you can see that DUEL is a bigger, robust platform that cuts across many strata to deliver a holistic solution in promoting STEM knowledge and impact, scalable across many markets in Africa.
TheCable: Very true indeed. You talked about TheSTEMAfrica. Is this a competition too? What is the correlation with University DUEL?
Ojo: The straight answer here is NO. TheSTEMAfrica is not a competition, but a special purpose vehicle (SPV) created to warehouse all our STEM-based initiatives and leapfrog Africa into the league of advanced countries using technology.
Just as I said earlier, Africa has a huge youth population. If well harnessed through STEM education, we will be building up the next generation with the right mindset and skills required to transform Africa. We are convinced that these CSR-led projects will go a long way in redefining the future of Africa and Africans.
TheCable: I understand season one of University Duel has just finished airing. Can you tell us what it was like? Any positives?
Ojo: So many positives. First of all, it took us 3 years to put together the 2025 season, and I am excited that it came out quite successful. It will interest you to know that we had over 60 professionals (with strong STEM backgrounds) across many industries come on the project as mentors.
The project produced two sets of winners. For the University Duel, Covenant University came tops with a scholarship of N4.5m; 2nd is Veritas University Abuja, N1.5m, and the great OAU came 3rd with N750k scholarships. All these students were outstanding in STEM.
In the SMART Challenge, The Bells University claimed the top spot and a N2m seed funding to further develop ready-for-the-market their project on “Combating Food Insecurity in Nigeria”.
TheCable: How do you fund it?
Ojo: We had to put our money where our mouth is. We bootstrapped this end-to-end because we believed very strongly in this project as a needed catalyst to ignite deliberate actions around the future of Africa
TheCable: Why did you not approach government or the corporate bodies who are STEM inclined?
Ojo: Marketing is a process. We are already engaging different publics towards season two. For us, the 2025 edition was a pilot and proof of the efficacy of the concept.
Seeing, they say, is believing, so we figured that we would be taken more seriously if we took our idea from paper to the finished work.
I must let you know that this has paid off. We are beginning to receive the kind of attention we are hoping for, and the government and the private sector can now see the seriousness with which we are pursuing the furtherance of STEM education.
TheCable: How have the Universities received University DUEL?
Ojo: Resounding positive feedback; we have over 15 top Universities already making enquiries around participation in season two during the transmission of Season One, and this is in addition to the 50 schools that participated. We are convinced that they all see the potential of this tool in driving the narratives around STEM across our institutions of learning.
Season Two will definitely go a few notches higher than what you saw in the last tournament.
You have a really massive project on your hands, don’t you think interested sponsors might just be scared that the project is too massive to take on?
Yes, it is massive, the same way the challenges we are facing in Africa are gargantuan. There are many ways to work this out. We have broken sponsorship and/or support down into sizable plans for ease of investment by all interested parties. The opportunities in engaging this African youth population are massive, and we must get it right.
TheCable: Have you clearly identified the sectors that would be interested and able to walk this STEM journey with you?
Ojo: Any and every organisation that is interested in the exponential growth in Africa is our target. Banks, Fintech, Oil & gas, e-commerce, Agric tech, AI-based organisations. STEM is the future, and the future is now.
