By Tosin Adesile
Abeokuta, the capital of Ogun State, has produced many outstanding professionals who are making remarkable contributions in their respective fields. One of them is Azzim Aina, a technology entrepreneur and product designer whose innovative platform, SkillTeach, is addressing real-world challenges through artificial intelligence.
While working as a product designer, Aina realised that many of the problems he wanted to solve required more than delivering client projects, they required building products of his own. This conviction led to the creation of SkillTeach, an AI-powered communication practice platform inspired by his personal experience as a learner.
According to Aina, the idea emerged from a challenge he repeatedly encountered after completing online courses and classroom training. Although he understood the concepts he had learned, confidently explaining them to others proved much more difficult. Practising alone by imagining an audience exposed a gap that existing learning platforms failed to address.
Unlike traditional online learning platforms such as Udemy and Coursera, which primarily focus on delivering educational content, SkillTeach is designed to help users apply what they have already learned. Through AI-powered simulations, users can practise teaching, participate in mock job interviews, rehearse business pitches, and receive structured feedback aimed at improving their confidence, communication, and presentation skills.
One of the platform’s notable features is Build Project, which helps students in higher institutions generate structured research project outlines and academic reports based on their institutions’ requirements. This feature addresses a common challenge faced by many undergraduate and postgraduate students working on dissertations and theses.
Aina believes SkillTeach should not be seen as a replacement for conversational AI tools such as ChatGPT because both serve different purposes. While conversational AI assists users in generating information and responses, SkillTeach evaluates communication performance in realistic scenarios, providing personalised coaching that helps learners develop practical speaking, presentation, and interpersonal communication skills.
Since its launch, SkillTeach has expanded beyond teaching practice to include Interview Practice for job seekers, Pitch Mode for entrepreneurs and innovators, and the Build Project feature for students preparing academic research.
Beyond education technology, Aina is also the Co-founder of Transpendly, a financial transparency platform developed to help organisations, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), government agencies, and businesses monitor expenses, manage verification workflows, and publish transparent accountability reports. The platform is designed to strengthen public trust by making financial accountability easier to manage, verify, and report.
Alongside product design and entrepreneurship, Aina has built practical expertise in cybersecurity, which he considers an essential component of modern digital product development. Rather than treating security as an afterthought, he integrates security monitoring, audit logging, governance, and compliance principles into the products he designs to enhance user trust and strengthen digital resilience.
He believes the future of digital innovation lies at the intersection of artificial intelligence, thoughtful product design, and cybersecurity. As AI becomes increasingly integrated into everyday life, Aina argues that innovation must be accompanied by systems that are transparent, secure, and designed with users’ long-term interests in mind.
Through product development, technology education, and continuous innovation, Aina hopes to contribute to building technology solutions that originate from Africa while solving problems with global relevance. His long-term vision is to create digital products that improve learning, strengthen accountability, and make technology more trustworthy for individuals, organisations, and communities.
Reflecting on his journey from studying Oracle SQL in Abeokuta to founding technology platforms focused on education and financial transparency, Aina believes the greatest opportunities in technology come from understanding people’s everyday challenges.
“The best innovations are not those with the most complex technology,” he said. “They are the ones that make people’s lives easier, build trust, and solve problems that genuinely matter.”
As a Senior Product Designer, Aina has collaborated with multidisciplinary teams, business stakeholders, and software engineers to transform complex ideas into practical digital solutions, including projects developed for government institutions and private organisations.
Today, his work reflects a broader commitment to ensuring that technology is not merely innovative but genuinely impactful, creating solutions that empower people, strengthen institutions, and address real challenges in education, governance, and digital transformation.
