Made In Nigeria: The Untold Rise Of African Robotics

Global Footprints, Local Fault Lines

NIGERIA’S robotics journey is often told like a feel-good tech fable: brilliant minds, impossible odds, and robots that speak local languages. But behind the celebratory reels lies a more layered story — one shaped by diaspora advantage, infrastructure deficits, capital constraints, identity symbolism, and the scramble for ownership of “African firsts.”

The Diaspora Launchpad

Silas Adekunle did not invent robotics in Nigeria, but he became one of its earliest global proof points. A robotics engineer trained in the UK, Adekunle founded Reach Robotics in 2013 and introduced MekaMon, a four-legged consumer gaming robot blending machine intelligence and augmented reality (AR).

MekaMon was significant for three reasons:

• It entered the rarefied world of consumer robotics, not prototypes.

• It fused entertainment, AI, and AR, signaling design ambition beyond utility.

• It sold internationally, including in Apple stores — a milestone no Nigeria-based robotics hardware had achieved at the time.

Yet his success also highlights a persistent pattern: Nigeria exports talent but imports the environment that enables it. Reach Robotics was built in Bristol, funded in pounds, engineered in UK labs, and scaled through Western retail networks. Nigeria supplied the mind; Britain supplied the machinery.

The Local Manufacturing Paradox

Back home, the story shifts from consumer markets to cultural engineering. In 2021, Uniccon Group — a Nigerian firm led by Chuks Ekwueme — unveiled Omeife, a six-foot humanoid robot. Unlike MekaMon, Omeife was not built for mass retail, but for representation.

The robot speaks English, Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo, Nigerian Pidgin, and performs gestures modelled after Igbo cultural semiotics. It became instantly viral, celebrated as Africa’s first humanoid robot built in Nigeria.

But the investigative questions begin here:

• Was Omeife a leap in robotics capability or a leap in narrative positioning?

• What percentage of its core components were locally fabricated vs. imported?

• Does symbolic primacy (“first humanoid”) translate into industrial competitiveness?

• Can Nigeria sustain robotics hardware innovation without semiconductor plants, precision-motor supply chains, or advanced fabrication hubs?

Omeife is not evidence of a mature robotics industry, but it is evidence of a nation refusing to stay invisible in one.

The Missing Middle

Between Adekunle’s global commercialization and Omeife’s national symbolism lies the real story Nigeria has not yet solved:
labs without factories, prototypes without supply chains, headlines without hardware ecosystems.