For Anthony Adejuwon, something as simple as an email address kick-started his journey into technology. Two decades later, that curiosity has taken him from urban planning and construction to building civic tech tools that help people make sense of Africa’s opaque mining sector.
Today, Adejuwon runs Urban Alert and has built Minetrix AI, a conversational tool that turns difficult-to-find mining data into information people can actually use.
In this edition of After Hours, he talks about his journey from cybercafés to civic tech, the thinking behind Minetrix AI, and why he believes technology should ultimately make information useful to the people who need it most.
Early interactions with technology
My first interaction with technology was mainly for information. In the early 2000s, when email was something you needed to have, I would visit a cybercafé, pay for some time, and open my Yahoo Mail even when I knew nobody was going to send me an email. I just wanted to interact with it and see what was happening.
At the time, email gradually became more than a way to send messages. It became a source of news and information, and eventually a credential for signing up on other platforms. Before I knew it, technology had become my way of life.
Looking back, those early interactions shaped how I eventually came to see technology. It wasn’t just something for everyday use. It could be used to understand problems, access information, and eventually build solutions for other people.
However, technology didn’t directly influence what I studied at the university. I studied Urban and Regional Planning at Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Ogbomoso.
But while studying, I encountered a part of urban planning that made me see technology differently. There is an aspect that deals with geospatial analysis. You need computers, satellite imagery, and other technologies to analyse spaces and understand problems. I started seeing how it could be used to assess problems and offer solutions to social and environmental issues.
Even before I finished my degree in 2012, I had already decided that I didn’t want to spend my time looking for a job. While some of my classmates were building their curriculum vitae (CV) in their final year, I was registering a company.
Afterwards, I began operating a consultancy firm focused on city planning and construction. I ran the company for several years, employed people, worked on structures, and built solutions within the built environment. Technology was already part of that work because we needed it for drawings and other things.
By around 2019, I started to realise that my interests were shifting elsewhere. I always had a strong connection with the environment. I cared about green spaces and where people live, but I became more interested in how things operate, how people and policies shape situations, and how technology could help address some of those problems.
That pushed me to pursue a postgraduate diploma in technology management. I wanted a stronger foundation for the next stage of my career: civic technology.
Founding Urban Alert and Minetrix AI
After completing the postgraduate programme, I founded Urban Alert in 2020. That decision meant leaving the consultancy business behind. Eventually, the company shut down, but it was really a switch of passion. I felt that operating a for-profit firm limited my ability to achieve the kind of social change I wanted.
Civic technology is a subsector within the technology ecosystem that isn’t as popular as fintech, healthtech, edtech, and some of the other sectors because it is usually non-profit. The world today runs on money, so if you’re money-driven, you might not be attracted to civic tech. For me, it is about public-interest solutions.
But civic tech is also different because you have to understand the problem before developing a solution.
At Urban Alert, we found that the mineral and mining sector had a huge information-opacity problem. I had also experienced problems around that space, which pushed me to take a deeper interest in it. Over the years, we began working with young people to understand the problems around minerals and mining across Africa, taking it one country at a time.
Nigeria, like many African countries, has enormous mineral resources and could benefit significantly from the sector. But a lot of secrecy surrounds what happens within it. We spent years trying to understand the problem, and that eventually led us to build Minetrix AI.
Minetrix AI is a civic tech solution built by Urban Alert. It is a conversational tool, similar to other conversational AI tools, but specifically designed for the minerals and mining sector.
The problem we are trying to address is the difficulty people face in accessing and understanding information about the sector. Researchers, journalists, citizens, community leaders, policymakers, and investors can find it extremely difficult to access minerals and mining data. We wanted to simplify that process and make the information conversational.
Our solutions are built around four things: data simplicity, data readability, data understanding, and data usability. It isn’t enough for information to exist. People need to be able to read it in their own language, understand it in their own reasoning, and use it to solve social and environmental problems.
We spent nine months building the tool, but the foundation for it took years. Over the years, we built relationships with government agencies, stakeholders, civil society organisations, community leaders, mining companies, policymakers, politicians, and investors. Those relationships gave us access to the information we needed to build the platform.
We used what we call a retrieval-first design. Minetrix AI first looks at documents that we have built a database around, rather than simply pulling information from anywhere. We believe that information shouldn’t just be available; it should be trusted.
We started by building a database of information about minerals and mining, with Nigeria as the first step. When someone asks Minetrix AI a question, it doesn’t just provide an answer. It also cites the documents or sources behind that response. We also built an audit log so users can revisit their interactions with the platform and resume where they left off.
Since its launch, Minetrix AI has had more than 1,200 unique users, with 25%-35% returning to the platform. For me, that shows the importance of the sector we’re working in.
Africa holds a large share of the world’s mineral resources, and Nigeria, like other African countries, is attracting growing attention for minerals such as gold and lithium. People are asking questions because they want to know more. They want to understand what is happening around them, what minerals exist in their communities, and what they can do to uphold their rights.
In 2024, Urban Alert received recognition from the Osun State Government for leveraging technology to advance social justice, protect the environment, and promote transparent governance.
Earlier this year, I also received an award from BudgIT for climate change activism, based on my work on climate change and the environment, including using technology to drive change and to promote conversations about technology, the environment, and mining.
Technology has become part of my everyday life
I consume information a lot. For me, information is life, and in this age, information is increasingly digital. So, you have to use digital tools in your day-to-day activities.
With the rise of AI, this has become even more obvious because AI is being built into almost everything we use. Whether it is our devices, automobiles, or even some of the tools we use at home, everything is increasingly becoming AI-enabled.
Technology makes life easier. It saves time and gives you the luxury of time to do other things. It also gives you an opportunity to dig deeper and know more than you might have been able to before this AI season.
If I check the analytics on my phone, I know AI solutions would feature heavily because I use so many of them, including Minetrix AI. But one of the tools I use heavily is WhatsApp because it makes it easy to connect with people anywhere in the world.
One of the most interesting things about technology is how it can expand your thinking. Sometimes, you have a very streamlined mindset. You think you understand something because of what you’ve always known. But technology can expose you to information that makes you see much more than you imagined.
The technology ecosystem is not rigid. In fact, that is one of the beauties of it. If you are ancient in your mindset or you’re not flexible, you cannot keep up with technology. When people build solutions, they build them in versions because they need to continue expanding and improving them. I think that’s also how life works.
One of my biggest challenges with technology is privacy. As a civic tech advocate, I constantly talk about this. We cannot continue depending entirely on big corporations to build local solutions for us. We need to build our own solutions on our own terms of reference. That is what will help ensure our safety, rather than simply trusting someone who says a product is safe.
Many countries are taking privacy seriously and introducing regulations to protect users, including young people. I think that’s good. Nigeria and the rest of Africa also need to understand this and prioritise user safety.
We’ve had laws such as the Nigeria Data Protection Regulation (NDPR), but from my experience in civic tech, having laws and agencies isn’t enough. The bigger question is whether those laws are being implemented.
Are we challenging people and organisations that violate them? Are the laws actually working? Those are the things that will guarantee the safety of users and ensure that people aren’t simply interacting with technology but are confident that their data and activities are protected.
If I were to improve a technology product, I wouldn’t necessarily build something for myself. I would rather build for a demographic that doesn’t usually receive enough attention when digital products and AI infrastructure are being developed: people with disabilities.
They are a significant part of society and can contribute to the scalability of solutions. So, if I’m going to build or improve a solution, I want to prioritise these people and make sure they can use, interact with, and understand it.
The next wave of technology
Civic technology is moving very fast. We’re currently testing Who Is Mining, and the feedback has been enormous. Lithium, especially, has attracted significant attention in Nigeria over the last one or two years. People want to understand these minerals and what their presence means for their communities.
Some people don’t even know that these minerals may be beneath the places where they live, or that mining activities may be taking place around them. Who Is Mining is designed to give people more information about what is happening in their local communities. We are already testing it, and we expect to make it more widely available soon.
We’re seeing organisations like Urban Alert build solutions such as Minetrix AI and Who Is Mining, but we’re also seeing individuals develop public-interest solutions on their own.
People are beginning to take responsibility for solving social problems themselves. They aren’t waiting for validation. They aren’t waiting until they have built a company. They are simply building solutions to solve critical social problems.
I think that’s the future of civic technology in Nigeria and Africa. They will build solutions to solve social problems, and those solutions will scale. For me, that’s what technology has ultimately become.
