Every time I talk to a young person who wants to start, the same question comes back: where do I begin? Not for lack of desire — the desire is there, sometimes too much of it. The problem is that the path between "I want to do something" and "I make a living from it" looks blurred, long, out of reach.
Skill as the starting point
In a country where the formal market is saturated and access to capital is limited, technical skill is the only lever you genuinely control. Learning to code, to photograph, to run a project, to use AI — none of it requires an expensive degree. It requires time, regularity, and ground to practise on.
I have seen young people learn in six months what some courses fail to transmit in three years. The difference? They practised on real problems, not on theoretical exercises. They had a concrete project: a site for a friend, an app for a business, a portfolio for a client.
The informal model as a springboard
The informal market is an excellent training ground. It offers three things school does not always give: the pressure of the real, immediate client feedback, and the need to adapt fast. A young person selling development services in their own neighbourhood learns more in three months than in three years of theory.
It is also a way to build a portfolio without waiting for a job to appear. Every small project delivered is proof. Every satisfied client is a reference. And every mistake is a lesson that costs less than a failure inside a corporation.
The traps to avoid
Wanting to learn everything before starting. Paralysis by analysis is enemy number one. You can learn by building. The first site will be imperfect. The first photograph will be average. The first client will be difficult. That is normal. That is the process.
Copying foreign models. What works in Paris or San Francisco does not necessarily work in Lomé. The contexts are different. The means are different. The needs are different. Local innovation runs through local understanding.
Learning in isolation. Finding peers, communities, mentors — even remotely — changes everything. Solitary learning is slow. Shared learning multiplies.
What I wish I had known
I wish I had known that starting small is not failing. That selling your services for ten thousand francs is not selling yourself cheap — it is buying yourself the freedom to learn. That technical skill is not an end in itself; it is a way to solve problems for people who have them.
And I wish I had known that the hardest part is not learning to code. It is learning to sell yourself, to pitch, to convince, to absorb a refusal and come back the next day. Those skills are not taught in tutorials. They are learned in the street.