Joomla in Faces. Adedayo Makinde (Joomla advocate)

Hi there! I’m Adedayo Makinde, a solutions architect, tech entrepreneur, author, and harmony advocate and coach. I work at the crossroads of tech and personal growth. I built Jibi Tech, where I provide IT solutions and develop (mostly free) Joomla! and WordPress extensions, and Esme Care, a community built to bring clarity and balance to work and life. I can also be found online under the names ‘Adedayo Adeniyi’ and Daydah.

My first encounter with Joomla! was around 2008. I had built some websites using Flash for a few clients, and I needed to find a way to hand over basic updates to the site owners. With SWF one can’t do that. A friend at the time consistently suggested using Joomla! and I went digging to find out about it. The rest, as they say, is history.

I am motivated to contribute by problems I encounter that have no inherent solutions available. That was how I created my first Joomla! extension - several Nigerian clients needed a payment integration and could not afford to pay the foreign experts to make one.

By contributing to Joomla, I have gained many new friends across the globe - having that community of people that share my passion for helping others has been the bedrock of my career over the decades.

This year has been gracious, from rebuilding an extensive glossary package (component and plugin) called Dictionary from Joomla! 3 to Joomla! 5, for a reputable French Joomla! company, I have gone on to update my Joomla! plugins, and I’m currently building a feedback system for a reputable university in Rwanda, East Africa. I also started a community to help creators organize their work, energy, and purpose at Esme Care.

Every event gives me at least one memory to treasure, but the most memorable CMS Africa Summit conference was the one my team and I hosted in Abuja, Nigeria, in 2017. It was the first time I was responsible for so many diverse foreigners coming into my country for an event, and there were some interesting scenes, like when I had to call the Nigerian Embassy in a European country to demand they grant an important speaker’s visa to come. I enjoyed watching so many new friends I had made while attending previous CMS Africa Summits interact with my local community at the two-day event. And the food! They all enjoyed the food.

Overall, I was happy that their impression of Nigeria as a whole changed positively during and after the event.

I was ecstatic when Joomla! launched the training and certification program. In fact, I was the first African Joomla! Learning Partner as Daydah Concepts Ltd). It tied to my reality, in the country as a whole - Nigerians love and recognise certifications. It gave many people a unique reason to join the community, especially because there was a clear path for the technical aspects, and provided alternative careers for a nation with a vibrant young population and very few employment opportunities. I believe that the best way we can bring more people in, in Nigeria, and Africa as a whole, is to shift the focus back to the Joomla! Learning program once again. It is still at J3 while we are at J6 now, so we need continuity for the newer versions in the program.

By highlighting the sites built with Joomla! in a showcase, and perhaps those (certified) entities that built them, we can increase the spotlight on Joomla! in the country. And with better exposure and more collaborations with educational institutions, we can achieve better visibility and have more people join our ranks.

The e-commerce market in Nigeria is still growing. The major blocker is trust, and the good thing is that the people are beginning to trust online payments more and more, and on the other side, merchants and vendors are also seeking alternatives to overcome this, e.g., adding pay on delivery options.

The most popular local online payment system is PayStack. Compared to the others, PayStack has made it easy to develop integrations for several systems, both web and mobile. I remember struggling with VoguePay integrations until I found PayStack. I have built several Paystack Joomla! extensions since then.

There are so many things I like about Joomla, but I will highlight these:

I realise that Joomla! might not have the financial budget to market excessively yet compared to other CMSes, however, I believe that we can find other ways to actually get more people into the ecosystem in Nigeria. Thanks to CMS Africa, I have had the opportunity to be part of other CMS communities, and apart from donations towards events, what they actually do is, position as a solution for more groups of people beyond the ‘techies’.

By highlighting how Joomla! is the better choice for different groups of front-end users for instance, WordPress has been able to bring in a lot more users. I believe we can do that better especially because we have the solid infrastructure built in for security in Joomla. We can sponsor more events that cater to microbusinesses, schools and more, and showcase how Joomla! is the better option.

It is a great achievement to have lasted this far. Many projects fall apart after a few years, especially if more than a few people are involved. So many predictions about Joomla! dying off has been proven wrong and I think our uniqueness is our strength.

Our community-driven nature is what keeps us going, and we can build on that to grow. Now that Joomla! is no longer a teenager, it is time to explore even bigger plans, and touch more lives. I believe with proper planning, we can achieve much more in the coming years.