Adewale: The Coder Who Rebuilt the Grid

Character Profile from The Unscarcity Project

Basic Profile

Name: Adewale Okonkwo
Age: 28 (in 2025); 34 (in Chapter 9 Guild scenes); ~50 (in Epilogue)
Location: Lagos, Nigeria → West African Energy Guild (Lagos hub)
Origin: Self-taught coder in a Lagos cybercafé
Role in Unscarcity: The Global South builder, the man who turned displacement into purpose, Maria’s parallel across the Atlantic

The Eleven Minutes in Lagos

Adewale was 28, sitting in a Lagos cybercafé that smelled of instant coffee and broken dreams, when the email arrived.

Three lines. His biggest client—a San Francisco startup that had hired him to build their backend—explained that an AI agent now did his job for the cost of a Netflix subscription.

Five years of self-taught Python. Tutorials watched on borrowed phones. Late nights debugging code while his roommates slept. He was supposed to be the future—a self-made coder pulling down remote contracts, proof that talent could transcend geography.

Last Tuesday, that future ended in three sentences.

He sat in that cybercafé for eleven minutes, staring at a screen full of skills that had gone from “future-proof” to “quaint” faster than any career counselor could have warned him. He didn’t know it then, but six thousand miles away, a house cleaner named Maria was sitting in a Detroit driveway, having her own eleven minutes.

Different continents. Same terror. Same question: What now?

The Pivot: From Replaced to Rebuilder

Civic Service (2029)

When the Labor Cliff hit globally—25% unemployment, rising unrest—Adewale joined Civic Service in Lagos. Not because he believed in any grand vision, but because the alternative was watching his skills rot while he waited for contracts that would never come.

His Python skills, once “quaint” compared to AI agents, turned out to be exactly what was needed. Not writing code, but teaching the systems that wrote code.

“The Americans built AI that understood Americans,” he told his first cohort of recruits. “We’re building AI that understands everyone else.”

He trained models to understand Nigerian English—the particular rhythms of Pidgin, the way “e go better” carries more meaning than its literal translation. He taught them Yoruba context, Igbo naming patterns, the logistical realities of a city where addresses don’t work the way Google Maps expects.

By 2031, he led the West African Solar Grid team—coordinating microgrids across Lagos, Accra, and Abidjan. The coding job he lost had taught him to think in systems. Civic Service taught him to build them.

The Guild Years (2032-2050s)

Adewale became coordinator of the West African Energy Guild, running morning sync calls from Lagos that connected three continents.

“Detroit, what’s your solar surplus?”

“Fourteen megawatt-hours, available for transfer.”

“Accra needs eight for the hospital expansion. Route the rest to the Sahel grid—they’re running backup generation again.”

This became his job: traffic controller for electrons across continents. The same systems-thinking that once built apps for San Francisco startups now balanced power loads between Detroit and Dakar.

The irony wasn’t lost on him. Five years earlier, an AI agent took his coding job for the cost of a Netflix subscription. Now he coordinated AI agents across a network larger than any app he ever imagined—and the AI worked for him, not instead of him.

His contribution log shows 2,341 successful grid optimizations. More importantly, it shows the lights staying on in places where darkness used to mean danger. His grandmother in Ibadan hasn’t experienced a blackout in three years. She doesn’t know her grandson is why. He hasn’t told her. The work is the point, not the credit.

The Impact Ledger

One night in 2033, unable to sleep, Adewale wrote the first open-source Impact Ledger—a transparent system for tracking contributions that couldn’t be gamed by those who already had power. It drew on everything he’d learned: the M-Pesa model of radical simplicity, the Lagos experience of building systems that work when infrastructure fails, the coder’s instinct for elegant solutions.

The Impact Ledger became one of the foundational tools of the transition. Adewale never took credit. “I just wrote what we needed,” he says. “Someone else would have written it eventually.”

His Perspective: Building for Everyone Else

On the Global South Advantage

“The West has a problem we don’t have: they built things that worked, so now they have to tear them down before they can build better. We never had that luxury. We always had to make do, to improvise, to skip ahead.

“M-Pesa didn’t happen in New York because New York already had banks. Solar microgrids didn’t start in London because London already had a power grid. The leapfrog only works when you have nothing to leap from.

“The mzungu always thought they were ahead. Turns out they were just carrying heavier bags.”

On AI and Displacement

“The AI that took my job was trained on American data by American engineers to solve American problems. It was very good at that. It was terrible at understanding why a delivery route in Lagos has to account for go-slows, why ’next Tuesday’ means something different in Yoruba, why you can’t just map Nigerian addresses the way you map San Francisco.

“I lost my job to an AI. Then I spent five years teaching AIs what they didn’t know. The Americans built intelligence. We built understanding.”

On Purpose

“When I was coding for startups, I was good at my job. I solved problems. I got paid. But I never felt like I mattered.

“Now I keep the lights on for millions of people. My grandmother can run her refrigerator. Hospitals in Accra don’t lose power during surgery. Kids in the Sahel can study after dark.

“I make less money than I did in my coding days. I have more purpose than I ever imagined.”

His Relationship with Maria

Adewale and Maria met once, at the Global Civic Service reunion in 2047. They sat by the Detroit River—finally clean enough to sit beside—and compared notes.

He’d had his eleven minutes in a Lagos cybercafé, staring at a three-line email that ended his coding career. She’d had hers in a Detroit driveway, clutching a severance check.

“The Americans built AI that understood Americans,” he told her. “We built AI that understood everyone else.”

She laughed. “And I learned to install solar panels because I couldn’t stand watching my daughter’s eyes lose their light.”

Neither of them had a grand plan. They just kept showing up. And somehow, that was enough.

They stayed in touch after that—occasional video calls, shared articles, the kind of friendship that forms between people who survived the same storm from opposite shores. When Maria’s memoir came out, Adewale wrote the foreword.

“Maria and I never met during the worst years,” he wrote. “But we were fighting the same battle. The battle to matter. The battle to build something that outlasts the fear. She won hers in Detroit. I won mine in Lagos. The victory belongs to everyone who kept showing up.”

Character Arc: From Displacement to Purpose

Act I: The Fall (2025-2028)

Adewale loses his coding job to AI. Spends three years in the wilderness—odd jobs, diminishing savings, growing despair. Watches friends leave Lagos for opportunities elsewhere. Considers leaving himself but can’t afford the ticket.

Act II: The Rebuild (2029-2035)

Joins Civic Service as a last resort. Discovers that his “obsolete” skills are exactly what’s needed to make AI work for Africa. Rises from recruit to team lead to Guild coordinator. Builds the West African Solar Grid. Writes the Impact Ledger.

Act III: The Legacy (2035-2050s)

Becomes one of the architects of the transition in the Global South. Never seeks fame—just keeps building. His grandmother finally gets reliable electricity. His contribution log grows. His purpose deepens.

At the 2047 reunion, he meets Maria and realizes they’re part of the same story. Different continents, same terror, same choice: build or break.

They both chose to build.

Key Quotes

On Displacement

“The email was three lines. My career was five years. The math didn’t add up, but the email didn’t care about math.”

“I sat in that cybercafé for eleven minutes. Longest eleven minutes of my life. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I just knew I couldn’t stay sitting.”

On Building

“The Americans built AI that understood Americans. We built AI that understood everyone else.”

“I lost my job to a machine. Then I spent five years teaching machines what humans know. Turns out, that’s more valuable than the job I lost.”

“The work is the point, not the credit. My grandmother doesn’t know I’m why her lights stay on. She doesn’t need to know.”

On the Transition

“The Global South didn’t follow the West into abundance. We leapfrogged them. Again.”

“You don’t need to tear down what you never built. That’s our advantage. We get to start fresh.”

“Maria and I never met during the worst years. But we were fighting the same battle—the battle to matter.”

Why Adewale Matters

Adewale is the Global South counterpart to Maria—proof that the transition isn’t just a Western story. His journey from displaced coder to Guild coordinator demonstrates that:

Displacement can become rebuilding. The skills that become “obsolete” are often exactly what’s needed to make new systems work.
The Global South has advantages. Lack of legacy infrastructure becomes an opportunity to leapfrog.
Purpose emerges from action. Adewale didn’t find meaning by searching for it. He found it by solving problems that mattered.
The transition is global. Maria in Detroit and Adewale in Lagos are fighting the same battle. The victory belongs to both.

He represents the millions of people in the Global South who will be displaced by automation—and who might become the architects of what comes next.

"Adewale: The Coder Who Rebuilt the Grid"