ABOUT
Corporate Social Responsibility & Sustainability
Digital skills outreach across Kano, Jigawa and Katsina, refurbished equipment for schools and clinics, solar-powered edge sites, a working e-waste policy, and pro bono health-record digitisation for community facilities.
Our Approach to Social Responsibility
Brilliant Esystems does its social investment in the thing it is actually good at. We are an engineering firm in northern Nigeria, so our contribution is skills, working equipment, energy efficiency and systems for institutions that could never afford to procure them — not cheques written to unrelated causes. Every programme on this page is run by our own staff, uses our own capability and is reported to the Board through the People Committee with a cost and a reach figure attached, because unmeasured generosity has a way of becoming a photograph and nothing else.
The focus is deliberately regional. Kano, Jigawa and Katsina have large young populations, a shortage of technical instruction and school and clinic infrastructure that is frequently one broken computer away from reverting to paper. Those are problems an enterprise IT firm can move. Our four active strands are digital skills outreach, equipment refurbishment and donation, energy and environmental practice in our own operations, and pro bono systems work for community health facilities. Staff volunteering underpins all four: every employee gets two paid volunteering days a year and roughly two-thirds of them use both.
We are not a charity and we do not pretend the commercial logic is absent. Outreach programmes introduce us to young people who later apply for the graduate trainee scheme; energy efficiency in the data centre lowers a real diesel bill; a refurbished laboratory in a school in Dawakin Kudu becomes a place where our engineers first learn to teach. The alignment is the point. Programmes that serve both the community and the business survive budget season; those that serve neither should not exist.
Our Programmes
Six standing programmes, each with a named owner in the management team and an annual budget approved with the corporate plan.
Digital Skills Outreach
Kano, Jigawa, Katsina
Free short programmes in computer fundamentals, spreadsheets, networking basics and introductory programming, delivered in secondary schools and community centres by ICT Academy trainers and volunteer engineers.
Learn moreGirls in Tech
Secondary schools and holiday cohorts
A programme for girls in senior secondary classes combining coding and hardware sessions, mentoring by our women engineers, and a holiday cohort at the Kano office. Alumnae get priority consideration for internships.
Learn moreRefurbished Equipment Donation
Schools and primary clinics
Decommissioned client and company hardware is wiped to standard, repaired, re-imaged and donated as complete working laboratories — with cabling, a switch, surge protection and a year of remote support included.
Solar-Powered Edge Sites
Remote installations
Where we install network or compute equipment in locations with unreliable grid supply, we design solar and battery power in by default, removing diesel generators from small sites and keeping services available during outages.
E-Waste & Responsible Disposal
Certified destruction and recycling
A written e-waste policy governs every decommissioning: data-bearing media are destroyed to standard with a certificate issued, serviceable units are refurbished for donation, and the residue goes to a licensed recycler — never to an open dump.
Community Health Records
Pro bono digitisation
Primary health centres and community clinics receive a cut-down deployment of our hospital information system, plus training and support, at no cost — so patient records, immunisation and stock data stop living in exercise books.
Learn moreCSR & Sustainability — 2023 to 2025
4,100+
Learners Reached
Free outreach programmes since 2020
1,180
Girls in Tech Places
Across 34 schools
760
Devices Refurbished
Donated to 52 schools and clinics
38%
Data Centre Energy Cut
Per unit of compute since 2021
How the Programme Developed
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2018
First school laboratory donation
Twenty decommissioned workstations from a client refresh are wiped, repaired and installed as a working laboratory in a secondary school in Dawakin Kudu, together with cabling, a switch and surge protection. It becomes the template for everything that followed.
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2019
Staff volunteering days introduced
Every employee is granted two paid volunteering days a year. Engineers use them to teach, repair equipment and set up laboratories, and the scheme immediately outgrows the informal weekend arrangement it replaced.
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2020
Digital skills outreach formalised
Ad hoc school visits become a structured programme run by the ICT Training Academy, with a published curriculum, assessment and certificates of completion. Delivery extends beyond Kano into Jigawa for the first time.
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2021
Girls in Tech launched; e-waste policy adopted
The girls-in-tech programme starts in eight schools with mentoring by our women engineers. In the same year a written e-waste policy is adopted, requiring certified data destruction and licensed recycling for every decommissioned asset.
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2022
First solar-powered edge sites
Solar and battery power is designed into remote network installations as standard rather than as an option. Early sites in rural Kano and Jigawa run without generators and stay available through grid outages that previously took them offline for days.
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2023
Pro bono health-record digitisation begins
Three primary health centres receive a cut-down deployment of our hospital information system, with training and a year of support, at no cost. Immunisation and drug-stock records move off paper and become reportable to the local government health authority.
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2024
Outreach extends to Katsina
The digital skills programme opens in Katsina, taking the outreach footprint to three states. Cumulative reach passes 3,000 learners and the refurbishment workshop in Kano moves into a dedicated space with two full-time technicians.
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2025
Measured and reported to the Board
CSR investment reaches ₦96 million for the year. Reach, cost and outcome figures are reported to the People Committee quarterly and to the Board annually, and data centre energy per unit of compute is 38% below the 2021 baseline.
CSR Investment, Last Three Financial Years
Direct cash cost plus the valued cost of donated equipment and staff time. Figures are drawn from the management accounts and reported annually to the Board.
| Financial year | Digital skills & Girls in Tech | Equipment donation & refurbishment | Pro bono systems & volunteering | Total investment |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FY2023 | ₦21.4 million | ₦14.8 million | ₦12.3 million | ₦48.5 million |
| FY2024 | ₦29.7 million | ₦19.6 million | ₦18.4 million | ₦67.7 million |
| FY2025 | ₦41.2 million | ₦26.5 million | ₦28.3 million | ₦96.0 million |
| Three-year total | ₦92.3 million | ₦60.9 million | ₦59.0 million | ₦212.2 million |
Environmental Practice in Our Own Operations
Sustainability we can actually control: our data centre, our fleet, our offices and the equipment we take out of service.
- Hot and cold aisle containment and raised operating temperature in the Kano data centre
- High-efficiency uninterruptible power supplies and right-sized cooling replacing oversized legacy plant
- Virtualisation and consolidation — fewer physical servers carrying more workload
- Solar and battery power designed in by default for remote edge installations
- Diesel generator runtime tracked monthly and reported alongside energy cost
- Certified data destruction with a certificate issued for every data-bearing device
- Serviceable decommissioned equipment refurbished for donation rather than scrapped
- Residual e-waste consigned only to licensed recyclers, never to open dumping
- Print reduction and electronic close-out packs in place of bound paper documentation
- Travel between offices consolidated and replaced with remote sessions where delivery allows
Volunteering: Two Days, and Most People Use Both
Every member of staff at Brilliant Esystems receives two paid volunteering days a year, and roughly two-thirds of the company uses both. In practice this looks like a network engineer spending a Thursday cabling a laboratory in a school in Gwarzo, a developer running an introductory coding session in Hadejia, or a group from the service desk repairing donated workstations in the refurbishment workshop behind the Kano office.
We keep it close to the work on purpose. Volunteering that uses a professional skill is more useful to the recipient, more satisfying for the volunteer and much more likely to still be happening in three years than volunteering that does not. It has also turned out to be one of the better ways we develop people: teaching a room of sixteen-year-olds how a network works exposes gaps in your own understanding faster than any internal course.
- Two paid volunteering days per employee per year
- Around two-thirds of staff use their full entitlement
- Skills-based volunteering prioritised over general activity
- Volunteer hours recorded and reported to the People Committee
Proposing a Partnership
We work with schools, primary health facilities, local government education authorities, non-governmental organisations and companies who want to co-fund a programme in Kano, Jigawa or Katsina. Write to [email protected] with the institution or organisation name, the location, what you are trying to achieve and roughly how many people it would reach.
Requests are reviewed monthly by the People Committee against three tests: does it use a capability we genuinely have, can we measure the outcome, and can we sustain it for at least three years. We reply to every proposal, including the ones we decline, and we say why. For equipment donation requests, please include the facility’s existing power and security arrangements — a laboratory with nowhere safe to store the machines does not last.
Build something useful with us
Whether you are a school looking for a laboratory, a clinic drowning in paper records, or a company wanting to co-fund digital skills in the North West, we would like to hear from you.