By 
By Elisha Chebwawaza Gideon
For Jethro Mark Da’ar, popularly known as JMB, the biggest question facing Jos’ technology ecosystem is not whether the city has enough talented developers, entrepreneurs or innovators.
It does.
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The harder question, he argues, is whether those individuals and organisations can move beyond working in isolation and begin building the kind of interconnected ecosystem capable of turning technical talent into enduring technology companies.
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As founder and CEO of CBrilliance AI-Techs Ltd, JMB has spent years moving across artificial intelligence, blockchain, fintech, cybersecurity, education and digital media. His journey has taken him from experimenting with software solutions as a student to an internship experience at Google in California and, ultimately, to building a portfolio of technology and creative ventures in Africa.
But his experience has also convinced him that technology ecosystems are built on something more fundamental than code, capital or even individual brilliance: people working together around a shared vision.
The Missing Link in Jos’ Tech Ecosystem
Speaking to IT Edge News in Jos, Plateau State, JMB identified what he believes is one of the most significant weaknesses holding back the city’s technology ecosystem.
“The gap I see first, and it’s a bit of a serious conversation, is disunity. There isn’t one cohesive thread connecting the entire Jos tech ecosystem,” he said.
His observation is not a criticism of the city’s talent.
In fact, it is almost the opposite.
JMB believes Jos has developers, technology hubs, founders and innovators capable of producing impressive work. What is missing is a stronger mechanism for connecting those pockets of excellence into a collective force.
“When you move around, you see one tech hub, and you’re blown away. You move to the next one, and you’re wowed again,” he said.
“But when you step back and look at the broader output, you realise there still isn’t quite enough to show for all that individual brilliance. Why? Because people aren’t working together.”
For JMB, collaboration cannot simply emerge when there is a contract or immediate financial opportunity.
“People collaborate strictly when there’s a specific piece of a pie to share, and once it’s divided, everyone retreats to their corners. That’s not how you build an industry,” he said.
From Student Problems to Technology Solutions
JMB’s philosophy of building technology around real-world problems can be traced back to his student years at the University of South Africa (UNISA) in Kimberley, Northern Cape.
As a student, he and his colleagues encountered seemingly ordinary problems that exposed opportunities for technology.
One involved manually transcribing meetings. Another involved processing video files that were difficult to use on low-end smartphones.
Rather than simply accept the limitations, they began experimenting with Python scripts and basic web technologies to automate parts of the process.
Those early experiments helped establish a principle that continues to shape JMB’s entrepreneurial thinking: technology should begin with a problem, not with technology for its own sake.
That mindset would later be reinforced by his internship experience at Google in California.
The experience, he said, taught him that technical expertise alone does not determine whether an idea succeeds.
“It was never about how good my technical skills were alone, but how strategic I was with the idea,” Da’ar said.
That distinction—between being able to build something and knowing what to build, why to build it and how to position it—has become central to his approach to entrepreneurship.
Building CBrilliance Around an Ecosystem
JMB eventually brought that experience back into his African entrepreneurial journey, where he began developing a wider portfolio of technology and creative initiatives.
Today, CBrilliance AI-Techs Ltd operates across several technology verticals, with projects including CBrilliance Exchange, CBC Network, CWealth Flow and Rents & Fees.
His wider ecosystem includes AfrESH Innovation Academy, Genius WAV Studioz, JOSCITY.COM and the Nigerian AI Builders community.
Rather than seeing these as completely separate ventures, JMB views them as interconnected components of a broader business and innovation pipeline.
CBrilliance’ Jethro Mark Da’ar
“If an entertainment or media gig comes in, it routes to our creative arms. If someone needs AI or digital skills training, AfrESH handles it. If a project requires heavy tech automation or financial infrastructure, CBrilliance takes the lead,” he explained.
Adding:
“I focus on securing the vision and directing it to the right arm.”
The model reflects an important lesson from his own evolution as an entrepreneur: technology businesses are ultimately built around people and capabilities, not just products.
The Lesson That Came From a Small Business
That understanding emerged from an earlier entrepreneurial experience in South Africa.
Around 2016, JMB operated a business centre that gradually evolved into an informal network for sourcing technology talent.
When a client’s requirements went beyond his own programming capabilities, he would identify developers with the appropriate expertise, coordinate the work and manage delivery.
Within about a year, he says, the network had grown to approximately 14 technology professionals.
The experience transformed his understanding of what it means to run a technology company.
“Running that operation taught me how to manage different personalities, emotional moods and mindsets,” Da’ar stated.
Adding:
“I learned that businesses are fundamentally made of people.”
That lesson now informs the way he approaches his different ventures.
For JMB, building a company is therefore as much about managing relationships, personalities and capabilities as it is about deploying technology.
HackJos and the Case for Collective Action
JMB believes initiatives such as HackJos can play an important role in creating the connective tissue the ecosystem needs.
By bringing developers, entrepreneurs, technology organisations and other stakeholders into the same space, such initiatives can create opportunities for people to identify common problems and build solutions together.
But JMB is also careful not to position collaboration as someone else’s responsibility.
“I won’t exclude myself from that critique,” he said.
His own response has been to focus on connecting people within his network and encouraging them to build collectively.
The philosophy is straightforward: if Jos is to develop a stronger technology industry, individual founders and organisations must become part of a larger ecosystem rather than operate permanently as isolated islands.
His Advice to Young African Tech Founders: Keep Your Job
JMB’s experience has also shaped his advice to young Africans attempting to build technology businesses in an increasingly difficult economic environment.
His first recommendation may sound counterintuitive in an entrepreneurial culture that often celebrates quitting one’s job to pursue a startup.
“Keep your day job. Don’t rush to quit your job unless your safety is at stake. Even if the pay is small, you need a baseline of financial resources,” he said.
For an early-stage founder, he argues, financial pressure can kill an otherwise promising idea.
“Running out of money to buy a basic domain name or handle daily internet data will kill your momentum faster than a lack of ideas,” he said.
His message is therefore less about abandoning ambition than managing risk.
Entrepreneurship, in his view, requires enough financial stability to allow an idea time to mature.
Stay a Perpetual Student
JMB’s second lesson is continuous learning.
Technology changes too quickly for developers and founders to assume that yesterday’s knowledge will remain sufficient tomorrow.
“Never stop learning. Be a perpetual student. If you aren’t adding new knowledge or building something, even if it’s just writing one line of code or reading one business strategy daily, you will stagnate,” he said.
For young African technology professionals, that means learning cannot end with a university degree or technical certification.
AI, cybersecurity, blockchain, fintech, cloud computing and other technologies are continually changing the skills that businesses need.
The ability to remain curious and continuously acquire new knowledge may therefore become one of the most valuable forms of career insurance.
Entrepreneurship Also Means Learning to Handle Disappointment
JMB’s third lesson is considerably less comfortable.
Entrepreneurs, he says, must accept that not every partnership will work and not every relationship will survive the pressures of business.
“Accept that you will be betrayed,” he said.
The point is not to encourage distrust, but to prepare founders for the unpredictable human dimension of entrepreneurship.
Partnerships can fail. Employees can leave. Investors can change their minds. Projects can collapse. People who once shared a vision can eventually pursue different interests.
For JMB, those experiences should be treated as part of the cost of building rather than as evidence that the entrepreneurial journey has failed.
Can Jos Turn Talent Into Technology Businesses?
The question surrounding Jos is larger than CBrilliance.
Across Africa, technology talent is increasingly distributed beyond the continent’s traditional startup centres. Cities that were once peripheral to the technology conversation are producing developers, founders, digital creators and technology communities.
But talent alone does not automatically create a technology industry.
The transition from skilled individuals to scalable companies requires access to capital, infrastructure, customers, mentors, skills development and—perhaps most importantly—networks capable of connecting those resources.
That is where JMB’s argument about collaboration becomes particularly relevant.
Jos may already possess many of the ingredients required for a thriving technology ecosystem. The challenge is turning those ingredients into something greater than the sum of their individual parts.
Building From Jos, Not Just in Jos
For CBrilliance, the ambition is to build businesses across AI, blockchain, fintech and related digital services while remaining connected to the ecosystem that helped shape its founder.
For JMB, the future of African technology will ultimately belong to builders who understand local problems and have the capacity to develop commercially viable solutions around them.
That future does not necessarily require every promising founder to move to Lagos, Nairobi, Cape Town or another established technology centre.
It may instead require emerging ecosystems such as Jos to become better at retaining talent, connecting innovators and converting local ingenuity into globally competitive businesses.
The city’s next phase of technology growth, therefore, may not be determined simply by how many developers it produces or how many startups its hubs incubate.
It could depend on something less visible but far more powerful: whether its innovators learn to build together.
For JMB, the technology may be the starting point—but collaboration is what turns individual brilliance into an industry.
