Bhluemountain is effective, reliable, and easy to work with. Schedule a free consultation and we’ll show you why we were named one of the top IT firms in Nigeria
start Now
We are a team of top-accredited professionals who are unceasingly committed to delivering trailblazing solutions that ensure your maximum productivity. We help our customers build the core foundation for a successful and secure digital transformation journey
Quality is at the heart of everything we do, and we continuously challenge ourselves to improve our services to meet or exceed the needs and expectations of our customers, while always complying with regulations and specifications.
Whilst we have a big smile on our faces about our recognition, we never forget that our team and our clients work together as one, so thank you for all of your support.
Together with our team of accredited experts, we assist businesses in navigating their current IT estates and digital future through informed and cost-saving IT models.
At Bhluemountain we help small and large enterprises, run their mission-critical systems and operations while modernizing IT, optimizing data architectures, and ensuring security and scalability across public, private and hybrid clouds. We deploy our technology solutions and services to enable businesses drive performance, competitiveness, and customer experience.
Whatever your industry area, we provide full-spectrum IT support services to help you meet changing business needs.
Effective Cloud Solutions and strategies that help you drive overall efficiency and scale effortlessly.
Gain key insights from data to drive impactful outcomes for strategic objectives.
Technology and industry consulting expertise to help you drive your digital transformation journey.
The year was 2013. During his second year studying computer science at the University of Ibadan, in Oyo, southwestern Nigeria, John Robert stumbled on a pattern that changed the course of his life. He had been reading about Nigeria’s biggest banking chief executives and business leaders, trying to understand how they built companies that stretched beyond the country’s borders. He kept noticing one detail: nearly all of them had spent part of their lives abroad. Some had studied overseas. Others had worked there. A few had built careers before returning home. Whatever the route, international exposure seemed to be a recurring advantage. At 19, that trend became Robert’s biggest motivation for wanting to leave Nigeria. “The only way to do business in multiple countries, and have the knowledge to do so, is [to] actually [leave] my country, I thought, and to learn with people from other countries, to understand how they think,” Robert said. He began saving, scraping pennies from his daily allowance, to gather enough money to travel. At the time, Robert had no destination in mind. But he knew he wanted to take his chances abroad. In March 2018, he moved to Germany. In the thirteen years since Robert first desired to become globally mobile, the AI engineer has found a home and stability in Germany, where he said he holds permanent residency. Robert said he is living his dream. Yet, that dream began from a strong desire to become a globally mobile business leader, which still drives him to this day. Turning a plan into a visa By the time Robert graduated from the University of Ibadan in 2015, Germany had become more than an idea. It was now a project with a price tag. He spent months researching universities and eventually applied for a master’s degree in Data Analytics at Stiftung Universität, a public university in Hildesheim in Lower Saxony, northern Germany. Getting admitted was only the first hurdle. Long before Germany introduced newer immigration pathways, such as the Opportunity Card, most international students entered the country through a traditional route: secure admission, prove they could support themselves financially, obtain a student visa, and only then board a flight. The financial requirement was often the hardest part. Back then, German authorities required prospective students to deposit about €8,000 ($9,400) into a blocked account (Sperrkonto) before issuing a visa. The money remained theirs, but it could only be withdrawn gradually after arrival to cover living expenses, Robert said. Today, the country requires prospective students to hold €11,904 ($13,600) in a blocked account—€992 monthly over twelve months—before they can obtain a standard student visa. Fresh out of university, Robert had little margin for error. He secured a software engineering job before proceeding to the compulsory one-year National Youth Service Corps (NYSC). During his service year, he earned about ₦150,000 ($349) monthly and moved in with his cousin instead of renting his own place, reducing his living expenses enough to save a larger share of his income. To earn extra income, he took on extra freelance projects to increase his earnings, saving even more money. His parents also financially supported his move, Robert said. “I’ve had this idea since my 200-level,” he said. “So it’s not something that I just woke up and said, ‘I want to study abroad.’ Every time I got money, anytime I had a gig, I was already saving for a long time.” Money alone did not secure a place. Robert said he spent months emailing professors, introducing himself, asking about research opportunities, assistantships, and scholarships. Most never replied. Some declined. A few conversations progressed. “I wrote to a lot of professors and a lot of schools about scholarships, about their research, and about their courses,” he said. The admission eventually came through. Once the blocked account had been funded, he bought the mandatory health insurance required for a German student visa, submitted proof of funds alongside his admission documents, and received approval to leave. Robert landed in Germany in 2018. Nothing about the move felt familiar. He had left behind family, friends, and everything he understood about daily life in Nigeria for a country whose language he was still learning, where punctual trains, orderly streets, and colder winters quickly replaced the organised chaos of home. The adjustment was immediate, but so were the opportunities. Within months of arriving in Hildesheim, Robert had secured a scholarship and an internship at Mercedes-Benz, the German car manufacturer. More than a higher salary As a data science intern at Mercedes-Benz, Robert said he began earning €1,600 ($1,888 ~ ₦683,000) in his first salary abroad, which instantly quadrupled what he was making back home as an entry-level software engineer. According to him, the salary was only part of the financial equation. His scholarship covered a significant portion of his living costs, while Germany’s tax rules for students meant he paid relatively little tax on his internship income. At one point, he said he was saving close to €1,000 ($1,180) monthly. Yet, beyond the instant stability, Robert noted the biggest gain resulting from his move to Germany came from something else entirely: access. Living and working in Europe’s largest economy placed him much closer to the people, companies, and conversations emerging in artificial intelligence. “In 2018, I was already curious about artificial intelligence,” he said. “Everybody talks about AI now, but back then, I knew it was going to be big. I used to read a lot about it and pray. Now, things have changed.” Robert now works as an educator and lead AI engineer at Sunnic Lighthouse, a German digital trading platform for electricity and renewable energy. He said he has been to about 50 countries—mostly in Europe, the United States, and Canada—frequently travelling for leisure and attending conferences first as a participant and later as a speaker, researcher, and technology professional. “I can imagine how difficult it is for founders without the same opportunities to apply for visas every time,” he said. “Today, I can go to
Read More
When Zimbabwe went into lockdown in 2020, some people turned to baking, binge-watching television, or scrolling social media. Courage Nyoni taught himself how to code. The civil engineering graduate spent months watching online tutorials before building his first app, a study aid for sociology students at Zimbabwe’s Bindura University. But it was his second project, an Android app that calculates lobola/dowry, the bride price traditionally negotiated between two families before marriage in many Southern African cultures, that unexpectedly travelled much further than he ever imagined. Nyoni’s Lobola Calculator, housed on the Google Play Store, has attracted users across Southern Africa, Europe, and even Japan, where it was featured on national television. The Calculator may look like a novelty app, but it reflects a broader trend. Across the continent, developers are increasingly building software rooted in African traditions and languages. From digital ancestry platforms to indigenous language apps and now a Lobola Calculator, culture itself is emerging as a competitive advantage, one that only African founders can authentically encode into software. That is exactly what happened with the 26-year-old Zimbabwean developer’s app. “The concept actually originated from a light-hearted conversation with my brother, Charisma,” Nyoni told TechCabal in an interview. “We laughed about it initially, but quickly realised it was a fun and doable project.” He said he deliberately avoided building another fintech or delivery app. “Coming from a Civil Engineering background as a self-taught developer, I wanted to be strategic with my early projects,” he said. “A conventional delivery or finance app would have required massive backend infrastructure and investment. The Lobola Calculator was the perfect project to tackle. It solved a unique, real-world cultural need, didn’t require major funding to publish, and allowed me to build my development confidence without overextending myself.” More than a joke Lobola is a customary marriage practice observed in many Southern African communities in which the groom’s family presents gifts, cattle, or money to the bride’s family during marriage negotiations. While often simplified as a “bride price,” families generally view it as a symbolic expression of appreciation, respect, and the joining of two families rather than a commercial transaction. Nyoni’s app doesn’t attempt to replace that process. Instead, it turns it into an interactive experience. Users answer questions ranging from educational qualifications, country of origin, and totem to deliberately playful questions about childhood breakfasts, footwear preferences, and whether weekends are spent at church or at clubs. Behind the scenes, an algorithm adjusts a fictional lobola amount using weighted variables. The Lobola Calculator. Image Source: Supplied. “I didn’t just want a random number generator,” Nyoni said. “I wanted it to reflect the actual conversations happening in our communities.” He said he researched common cultural considerations and consulted elders before building the algorithm. “The app essentially gamifies those real-life dynamics,” he stated. “It’s a fun, digital mirror held up to the real negotiation room.” What began as lockdown entertainment soon became something else. “When I first built it, it was definitely just for fun,” Nyoni said. “The lockdowns had taken a toll on everyone. Dropping something light-hearted like the Lobola Calculator into the mix seemed like a great way to spark conversation.” Then the app began attracting attention far beyond Southern Africa. Emails from users in Europe started landing in Nyoni’s inbox, not about bugs or new features, but with a simple question. “A few months after release, I started getting feedback from users in Europe asking what Lobola actually was,” he said. “That was a turning point.” He responded by adding educational content explaining the custom. Today, the main goal is simply to preserve our tradition, help people across the globe learn about Lobola, and still have a bit of fun with the calculations.” African culture as software Nyoni believes the app points to a much larger opportunity for African developers. “I absolutely believe African traditions are an untapped opportunity,” he said. “As the world becomes more digitised and people spend more of their lives on screens, there is a massive opportunity to build software that reflects how we actually interact offline.” Lobola Calculator is part of a wider movement across African tech. In Ghana, language-learning platform Kukarella helps users learn African languages through interactive lessons and conversation practice. African Storybook, developed in South Africa, has created a free digital library of thousands of children’s stories in dozens of African languages. Similarly, developers are building African language keyboards, genealogy platforms, digital ancestry tools, traditional medicine apps, and local naming applications, products whose value comes from cultural knowledge rather than technological novelty alone. He argues that Africa’s social systems are full of products waiting to be built. “Imagine fully digitising the popular Stokvel system in South Africa to make it more secure and scalable,” he said. “That is a massive untapped market. We have a rich cultural heritage, and if we pause to think in other terms, we can see vast digital opportunities right in front of us.” A stokvel is an informal community-based savings group in which members contribute a fixed amount of money weekly or monthly, and the funds are either paid out to one member on a rotating basis or pooled for a shared purpose. Curiosity travels further than code The biggest surprise for Nyoni was not Zimbabwean users. “Most of the active users are based in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region, which makes perfect sense,” he said. “However, the demographic that surprised me the most was people with little to no connection to Africa. The way they interacted with the app was purely driven by curiosity.” On June 10, the curiosity reached Japan when Nyoni’s app was featured on Nippon TV, one of the country’s largest commercial broadcasters. “Taking a deeply rooted African tradition and packaging it into a modern mobile app makes it incredibly accessible,” Nyoni said. “It allows someone thousands of kilometres away to safely and interactively explore a piece of our heritage right from their smartphone.” In a statement celebrating its alumnus, Zimbabwe’s National University of
Read More
Data Entry Academy, a Lagos-based edtech platform, has won first place in the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Get Ready 4 timbuktoo EdTech accelerator, taking home a $10,000 prize after topping a field of 1,429 applicants from across Africa. The startup, founded by Chioma Ifeanyi-Eze, beat finalists from Egypt and Senegal during a July 1 pitch event in Dakar, Senegal. Another Nigerian startup, Varsity Scape, placed sixth among the top 10 winners. The award underscores the growing prominence of Nigeria’s edtech ecosystem, particularly startups building digital skills and workforce development solutions, at a time when development finance institutions and ecosystem builders are expanding support for education technology across Africa. As venture funding becomes more selective, accelerator programmes such as timbuktoo and the Mastercard Foundation EdTech Fellowship are increasingly helping startups refine their products, access mentorship, and build investor readiness. According to UNDP, the 2026 Get Ready 4 timbuktoo EdTech accelerator attracted 1,429 applications from across Africa, with 1,099 startups meeting the eligibility criteria. Fifty startups were selected for the 12-week programme after nearly 2,850 blind evaluations by 19 independent experts. Twenty startups advanced to the final pitch, where 10 emerged as winners. Data Entry Academy took the top prize, followed by startups from Egypt and Senegal in second and third place, respectively. Founded in 2020, Data Entry Academy operates a 30-day online training programme that teaches workplace software skills, including spreadsheets, cloud accounting, invoicing, inventory management and payroll tools. The startup says it has trained more than 17,000 learners across Africa through courses delivered on Telegram and Teachable. Participants require only basic computer literacy to enrol, with learners ranging from job seekers and entrepreneurs to employees being upskilled by their organisations. Data Entry Academy and Varsity Scape previously participated in the Mastercard Foundation EdTech Fellowship, which provides selected startups with $100,000 in equity-free funding and advisory support. Data Entry Academy joined the programme’s second cohort in 2024, while Varsity Scape participated in the third cohort. The award caps a 12-week accelerator in which startups received support to strengthen their business models, improve their products, develop market traction, and prepare for investment through the broader timbuktoo pipeline. The accelerator is part of UNDP’s broader timbuktoo initiative, launched at the 2024 World Economic Forum in Davos with a goal of mobilising $1 billion over 10 years to support 10,000 startups and generate $10 billion in economic value across Africa. The initiative describes itself as a platform that brings together governments, investors, universities, and private sector organisations. It currently runs six pan-African thematic hubs, has trained 3,480 innovators, and operates 16 University Innovation Pods across the continent, with another 12 in the pipeline. True scale demands moving beyond surface-level integrations to robust execution. We’ve filtered the noise out of Moonshot 2026, optimising the conference strictly for high-calibre connections between startup founders, global financial operators, enterprise leaders and individuals rewiring Africa’s technical frameworks. Get 20% off Early Bird tickets for a limited time.
Read More
