Ogun State’s Vant Backs Nigeria’s Next Generation of Tech Talent Through Smartan House Partnership

It started with a phone call from Johnson Abbaly. By the time Paul and Raph from Vant walked out of Smartan House, something had shifted.

Smartan House is a social enterprise and residential programme that finds high-potential young Nigerians, including teenagers from underprivileged communities, and places them inside real work environments. Not simulations. Not classroom exercises. Live briefs, actual deliverables, and professional standards that most adults would find demanding. Graduates have won full scholarships to institutions like the African Leadership Academy, secured internships with major organisations, and earned hundreds of thousands of naira from project work while still in their teens.

Abbaly, the programme’s founder and president, has spent years doing something most people only talk about: finding overlooked young Nigerians and giving them access to serious mentorship, high-skill work, and a community that treats their potential as real rather than theoretical.

When the Vant team arrived, what they found wasn’t what most people picture when they hear “youth programme.” The room had sharpness to it. Curiosity. Young people actively working through real problems for real organisations. The kind of energy that tends to settle something in you rather than inspire you temporarily.

At the end of the visit, Vant was formally appointed as a Smartan House Champion, a commitment, not a ceremonial title, to actively support the mission of developing the next generation of African talent. For Vant, a startup building business infrastructure and financial tools for African merchants and operators, the partnership isn’t a detour from its core mission. It’s an extension of it.

Vant was built around a belief that African businesses deserve world-class operational tools regardless of where they’re located or how big they are. That belief, the team says, extends beyond today’s merchants to the teenager currently solving a live brief inside Smartan House who will one day be a founder, an operator, or an employer. Investing in that person now is part of the same story.

For Ogun State’s ecosystem, the partnership is worth noting. It’s a signal that startups building out of the state are not only shipping products but also showing up in the broader Nigerian tech and talent conversation, backing programmes, building relationships, and taking a longer view of what ecosystem participation actually looks like.