Science Day 2026: Whose future? Imagining technology from Lagos

On Sunday 15 November 2026 LAGOSTECH takes part in Dag van de Wetenschap, the Flemish Science Day, with a drop-in game stand at KU Leuven’s Campus Gasthuisberg in Leuven.

Whose future? Imagining technology from Lagos

Lagos is often called Africa’s Silicon Valley. But who gets to build the tech future there? At the stand you draw a life in Lagos’s technology economy: a young man who walks customers to the stalls of Computer Village, one of the largest electronics markets in Africa; a phone repairer with a degree in computer science; a self-taught cloud engineer; or a start-up founder who pitches to investors from Lagos to Singapore.

You receive a year’s income in chips, pay what the market takes from you, and then see which futures for 2036 you can reach: a laptop to learn to code, a desk in a tech hub, a solar panel, a bigger shop, a move to Canada. Some futures need more than money: a degree, a repair skill learned through years of apprenticeship, steady electricity, people who vouch for you.

Every price and every quote on the cards comes from interviews and fieldwork with people working in Lagos’s tech sector between 2024 and 2026. Within a few minutes you see how the same city offers very different futures depending on where you start, and you can compare your own guesses about Lagos with what people there actually said.

A game, and a chat

The game takes about ten minutes, but you are welcome to stay longer: I will be at the stand all afternoon, happy to chat about Lagos’s tech sector, about Computer Village and its repairers, and about what I have learned in the LAGOSTECH project. If you want, just come by with your questions, or with your own guesses about the future of technology in Africa.

What the game shows

The game turns one of the project’s findings into something you can hold in your hands. The capacity to imagine a future is not equally shared: what people in Lagos could picture for 2036 depended on where they stood, on money, degrees, infrastructure and networks. The stand also brings to Leuven a different idea of innovation, the everyday invention of repairers who keep sealed devices alive in Computer Village.

Practical information

• When: Sunday 15 November 2026, 14:00 to 17:00. Drop in at any time; a round takes about ten minutes.
• Where: entrance hall of building ON1, near Blauwe Straat 6, Campus Gasthuisberg (Onderwijs & Navorsing), Herestraat 49, 3001 Leuven.
• Who: from 16 years old; adults very welcome. The game is in English.
• Cost: free, no registration needed.

Official page of the activity: Dag van de Wetenschap – Whose future? Imagining technology from Lagos.