The SkillUp50 Bootcamp successfully began its latest cohort in Lagos, Nigeria. Organised by deestincts, a creative and digital agency, SkillUp50 is an initiative programme dedicated to equipping young professionals and entrepreneurs with in-demand digital and business skills.
Starting on Monday, December 1, 2025, the bootcamp gathered a select cohort of 50 participants for hands-on training, expert mentorship, and strategic networking designed to propel their careers and ventures in Nigeria’s rapidly evolving digital economy.
The first day of the SkillUp50 Bootcamp lived up to its promise of delivering transformative ways to scale in tech, offering participants a full day of immersive learning split into two parallel tracks: design and development.
The design track
In the design track, the lead tutor, Ayomide Bello, delivered a session on what it truly means to position as a design professional. He emphasised that beyond raw talent, successful designers stand out by building a clear identity and strategic presence. Core ingredients, according to Bello, include finding your niche, developing a signature style, cultivating a strong online presence, maintaining a polished portfolio, and above all, demonstrating effective communication.
He framed this using the 4 P’s principle: Person, Purpose, Place, and People, guiding designers to think deeply about who they are, what they stand for, where they want to be, and who they want to serve (or collaborate with).
“If you’re not clear on what you want to be known for, you’ll confuse your audience. And if you don’t know how to clarify yourself, you can’t speak the language your audience will understand,” Bello stated during the design track.
Another major topic during the first session was monetisation as a designer. A major take was that monetisation comes from a blend of skill mastery, smart positioning, well-structured systems (workflows, client outreach, project delivery), consistency in output and visibility, and confident pricing.
To put theory into action, participants were walked through a workshop. They had to draft their own career blueprint: defining their identity as designers, crafting a crisp “positioning sentence,” choosing a niche, and sketching out a 30-day plan to begin building or strengthening their brand.
The development track
The second session focused on developers, offering a comprehensive overview of market-relevant and monetisable developer skills.
Participants were introduced to specialisations such as web development, mobile app development, backend engineering, UI/UX design, WordPress, data analytics, QA/testing automation, and even AI automation. Tools and platforms suitable for each path were showcased, providing attendees with a clear sense of what’s required to launch a successful dev career.
“One of the key mistakes I see many developers making is that when they start learning a tech skill, they don’t build projects alongside. As a developer, you need portfolio projects,” Eniola Ademola told participants during the development track.
In the practical workshop, dev-track students were tasked with conceptualising and pitching three product ideas, clearly stating why each product could succeed and what would make it stand out. This exercise encouraged creative thinking, market awareness, and early product-definition skills.
Why SkillUp50
At its core, SkillUp50 is an exclusive cohort-based bootcamp for only 50 selected participants, offering hands-on learning and expert mentorship in Lagos. For attendees, this is more than a casual seminar. It’s a focused, physical-attendance bootcamp, requiring participants to bring their laptops and commit fully.
By combining strategic career planning (in design) and technical exposure (in dev), the program aims to prepare attendees not just to learn, but to build real, monetisable careers.
As announced, after the bootcamp, participants will have the opportunity for one-on-one mentorship, a key value-add that could help graduates transition from learning to earning. For the most outstanding participants, prizes and rewards would be awarded for top performances.
