NEWS
At 16, Nigerian Teenager, Asanato Mayor Is Building Four Digital Products From Jos, Targets Tech Company Launch
While many teenagers are still exploring their interests and deciding what career paths to pursue, 16-year-old Asanato Mayor is already teaching himself to code, developing digital products and laying the groundwork for his own technology company from Jos, Plateau State, Nigeria.
What makes his journey particularly remarkable is that he is pursuing these ambitions outside Nigeria’s major technology hub, Lagos, and says he learned to code independently with assistance from artificial intelligence tools, including ChatGPT and Google Gemini.
Mayor began learning HTML, CSS and JavaScript at the age of 13. Three years later, he is working on four digital products under his proposed technology company, Mayor Group, with ambitions to build a business that creates opportunities for young people under 18 before eventually expanding into other industries.
Meet the Four Digital Products He Is Building:
1. Notice — A Digital Notice Board:
Notice is an online platform designed to help users publish announcements and distribute them through QR codes, making information easier to share and access. Although the product was launched, it has reportedly been suspended temporarily while Mayor works to resolve some technical issues.
2. Mivo AI — An Educational Artificial Intelligence Chatbot:
Mivo AI is an artificial intelligence chatbot with an educational mode intended to help students understand different subjects, including mathematics. The platform is being developed to make learning more accessible and interactive, with Mayor targeting an early 2027 launch.
3. Zango — A Neighbourhood Social Network:
Zango is designed to connect people within their local communities through a location-based social networking platform. The product is also expected to feature artificial intelligence-powered moderation tools to help manage interactions and improve the user experience.
4. Zeero — A Marketplace and Job Platform for Beginners
Zeero is being developed as a marketplace and job board for beginners who find it difficult to gain access to established professional and freelance platforms such as LinkedIn and Upwork. The idea is to create an alternative space where newcomers can discover opportunities, showcase their abilities and begin building professional experience.
From Early Setbacks to Bigger Ambitions:
Mayor’s journey has not been entirely smooth. His first application reportedly struggled to attract users and secure funding, while he also experienced difficulties collecting payments from some clients for AI-generated designs he sold when he was younger. These experiences have exposed him to one of the toughest realities of entrepreneurship: developing a product is only the beginning.
An idea may appear innovative, but turning it into a sustainable business requires finding real customers, solving problems that matter to them, building trust and convincing people that the product is worth paying for.
For Mayor, these early challenges represent lessons that could shape his approach as he continues developing his products and working towards establishing Mayor Group.
His Vision Goes Beyond Technology:
Beyond building software, the young developer reportedly hopes to establish a company that creates opportunities for people under the age of 18. His long-term ambition also extends beyond the technology industry, suggesting that he sees his current projects as a possible starting point for a broader entrepreneurial journey.
His story also highlights the growing opportunities available to young Nigerians who use online learning resources and artificial intelligence tools to develop technical skills independently, even without living in the country’s biggest commercial or technology centres.
However, access to these tools is only one part of the equation. Building products that people consistently use, trust and pay for remains a separate challenge.
The Real Test Ahead:
Developing four products simultaneously is an ambitious undertaking for a 16-year-old, particularly when the platforms are still being developed and have yet to demonstrate significant user adoption.
The next major milestone may therefore not be launching a fifth product or adding more features to the existing four. It may be concentrating on one platform, identifying a clear audience, solving a specific problem and building a loyal community of users. If one of the products gains meaningful traction, the experience and revenue generated could provide a stronger foundation for developing the others.
At 16, Mayor has considerable time to experiment, learn from failure, refine his ideas and discover what works. His willingness to begin early, teach himself valuable skills and attempt to turn ideas into practical products is an important part of his story.
Ultimately, the measure of his success will not be the number of products he announces, but the problems they solve, the people they serve and the businesses he can sustainably build around them.
For now, the young developer from Jos is taking his first steps towards a much bigger ambition: building a technology company from the ground up.