We all use AI every day now, regardless of what we do. It is in the tools we code with, the research we start at 1am, the projects we scramble to finish before a hackathon deadline. Google is giving eligible university students across Africa a year of Google AI Plus for free, while Anthropic is running Claude Campus globally, allowing undergraduates to build Claude Builder Clubs on their own campuses. Naturally, you and I go looking, so you've probably seen the campus maps, or more literally, you didn't, because Babcock isn't on them.
Can't lie, the Claude one pained me too. So, I decided to take us on a deep dive into why our school isn't appearing on these AI campus maps yet, and there's a lot more to it than you think. Our answer isn't as simple as a company forgetting Nigeria exists, and the more you look at how these programmes actually work, the more interesting the problem becomes. These aren't just lists of universities where students happen to use a particular AI tool. They are networks built around people: alumni, student communities, events, workshops, hackathons and, most importantly, someone willing to create the connection between the company and the campus.
UNILAG is one Nigerian example that makes the difference obvious. Its Claude Builder Club has already become a visible student community, including a 2026 hackathon that attracted more than 110 teams. That kind of activity gives a company something tangible to point to because there is already someone organising students, there is already an audience and there is already a community that can grow. The important part isn't that UNILAG has a Claude club and Babcock doesn't. It is that somebody built the bridge. That is where I think we are asking the wrong question when we look at these maps.
Instead of asking, "Why aren't we on here?", we should be asking, "What would it take to put Babcock here?"
Because waiting for a company to discover our campus is probably the slowest possible strategy. We already have students building software, people writing about AI, developer communities (you're literally reading a Google Developer Group's on-campus publication), hackathons, technical workshops and organisations that can actually host these things. So, we don't need to manufacture an ecosystem from scratch; we just need to make our ecosystem visible, organised and useful enough that a company has a reason to work with it. None of that has to start with another big programme, another application form or somebody designing a shiny new logo. Picture a regular build session where someone brings an API they've never touched and leaves having called it successfully. Now put them next to someone already deep into quant tools, sports analytics or whatever rabbit hole they've fallen into, and suddenly you have two people who would probably never have worked together otherwise, teaching and learning in real time.
The things people are already building in isolation finally have somewhere to collide instead of sitting in a folder nobody else sees. And when the session is over, document what happened instead of letting another useful workshop disappear into an Instagram story after 24 hours. Do that consistently and you get something far more useful than another event flyer: a public record of what Babcock students are actually building with AI, what they're learning, and what the next person can pick up without starting from zero. There's also a different way to approach the companies themselves. Not with "please put our university on your map," but with "here is what already exists, here is the community we can reach, here is the person who can organise it, here is what we want to build with you, and here is what we can give your team in return."
That is a much stronger conversation. And this is where the gap becomes interesting.
We already have a developer community on campus through GDG, but when you look at the formal student programmes being advertised by major AI companies, Babcock can still feel invisible. There is an odd gap between what exists on campus and what appears on the outside, and maybe that gap is exactly where student communities are supposed to operate. Not waiting to be noticed, but making what already exists impossible to miss. RADAR doesn't have to become a Claude club or a Gemini club. It can do something much more useful: become the place where students discover these programmes, understand how they work, build projects around them and eventually create enough activity that companies have a reason to pay attention.
One community does not need to wear every company's logo to make a campus more visible to all of them.
And honestly, none of this is glamorous. It's five students who actually want to build, given somewhere to start. It's one useful session instead of ten announced ones. It's a project landing in the hands of someone who's never touched an API before, watching what happens, writing down what worked, and doing it again. We've done it before; we just have to keep doing it, on purpose, until it stops being a one-off and starts being how things get done here. Give it enough time and what we're left with won't look like a request for recognition. It'll look like evidence. Maybe that's the actual point of the empty space on the map. It shows you where the bridges already exist, not where the next one is being built. Babcock isn't on it yet, and honestly, that's fine. The blank space isn't a verdict; it's just unclaimed. The only question left is who's going to stop staring at it and start building.