Laolu Fagbemi

Nigerian social entrepreneur providing mobile education solutions to 500,000+ children in remote areas through innovative school buses

Laolu Fagbemi is the visionary founder of Eduonwheels, a groundbreaking initiative that transforms school buses into mobile classrooms for Nigeria's marginalized children. Born in 1985 in Lagos, he witnessed first-hand the educational disparities during his childhood in rural Ogun State where only 1 in 5 children complete primary school. In 2015, he launched Eduonwheels with a fleet of specially equipped buses offering free education to children in underserved communities.

Each bus operates as a fully functional classroom with solar-powered devices, interactive whiteboards, and STEM kits. The program's curriculum integrates local languages like Yoruba and Hausa with global standards through partnerships with UNICEF and UNESCO. By 2022, the initiative had impacted over 500,000 children across 20 states, with 78% of participants achieving literacy levels above national averages. The model has been replicated in Kenya and Ethiopia through the Global Education Mobility Alliance.

Fagbemi's innovation addresses Nigeria's 10.5 million out-of-school children (UNESCO 2021) through three pillars: mobile infrastructure, teacher training, and community engagement. His team developed the EduTrack app allowing parents to monitor their children's progress via SMS updates - critical in regions with 90% smartphone ownership but limited internet access. The project won the 2020 Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation and received a $1M grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Laolu's philosophy emphasizes 'education without borders': 'A child's potential shouldn't be limited by geography,' he states in his TED Talk. He recently launched the Wheels Academy, a vocational training program for young educators using augmented reality tools. His work has been featured in Nature magazine's "Innovators Shaping Africa's Future" series and inspired a BBC documentary School on Wheels (2021).