Digital Nomads: The AI engineer who left Nigeria for Germany and quadrupled his income

The year was 2013.

During his second year studying computer science at the University of Ibadan, in Oyo, southwestern Nigeria, John Robert stumbled on a pattern that changed the course of his life.

He had been reading about Nigeria’s biggest banking chief executives and business leaders, trying to understand how they built companies that stretched beyond the country’s borders. 

He kept noticing one detail: nearly all of them had spent part of their lives abroad. Some had studied overseas. Others had worked there. A few had built careers before returning home. Whatever the route, international exposure seemed to be a recurring advantage. 

At 19, that trend became Robert’s biggest motivation for wanting to leave Nigeria.

“The only way to do business in multiple countries, and have the knowledge to do so, is [to] actually [leave] my country, I thought, and to learn with people from other countries, to understand how they think,” Robert said. 

He began saving, scraping pennies from his daily allowance, to gather enough money to travel. At the time, Robert had no destination in mind. But he knew he wanted to take his chances abroad. 

In March 2018, he moved to Germany. In the thirteen years since Robert first desired to become globally mobile, the AI engineer has found a home and stability in Germany, where he said he holds permanent residency.

Robert said he is living his dream. Yet, that dream began from a strong desire to become a globally mobile business leader, which still drives him to this day.

Turning a plan into a visa

By the time Robert graduated from the University of Ibadan in 2015, Germany had become more than an idea. It was now a project with a price tag.

He spent months researching universities and eventually applied for a master’s degree in Data Analytics at Stiftung Universität, a public university in Hildesheim in Lower Saxony, northern Germany. Getting admitted was only the first hurdle.

Long before Germany introduced newer immigration pathways, such as the Opportunity Card, most international students entered the country through a traditional route: secure admission, prove they could support themselves financially, obtain a student visa, and only then board a flight.

The financial requirement was often the hardest part.

Back then, German authorities required prospective students to deposit about €8,000 ($9,400) into a blocked account (Sperrkonto) before issuing a visa. The money remained theirs, but it could only be withdrawn gradually after arrival to cover living expenses, Robert said. 

Today, the country requires prospective students to hold €11,904 ($13,600) in a blocked account—€992 monthly over twelve months—before they can obtain a standard student visa. 

Fresh out of university, Robert had little margin for error.

He secured a software engineering job before proceeding to the compulsory one-year National Youth Service Corps (NYSC). During his service year, he earned about ₦150,000 ($349) monthly and moved in with his cousin instead of renting his own place, reducing his living expenses enough to save a larger share of his income. 

To earn extra income, he took on extra freelance projects to increase his earnings, saving even more money. His parents also financially supported his move, Robert said. 

“I’ve had this idea since my 200-level,” he said. “So it’s not something that I just woke up and said, ‘I want to study abroad.’ Every time I got money, anytime I had a gig, I was already saving for a long time.”

Money alone did not secure a place.

Robert said he spent months emailing professors, introducing himself, asking about research opportunities, assistantships, and scholarships. Most never replied. Some declined. A few conversations progressed.

“I wrote to a lot of professors and a lot of schools about scholarships, about their research, and about their courses,” he said.

The admission eventually came through.

Once the blocked account had been funded, he bought the mandatory health insurance required for a German student visa, submitted proof of funds alongside his admission documents, and received approval to leave.

Robert landed in Germany in 2018. Nothing about the move felt familiar.

He had left behind family, friends, and everything he understood about daily life in Nigeria for a country whose language he was still learning, where punctual trains, orderly streets, and colder winters quickly replaced the organised chaos of home. The adjustment was immediate, but so were the opportunities.

Within months of arriving in Hildesheim, Robert had secured a scholarship and an internship at Mercedes-Benz, the German car manufacturer.

More than a higher salary

As a data science intern at Mercedes-Benz, Robert said he began earning €1,600 ($1,888 ~ ₦683,000) in his first salary abroad, which instantly quadrupled what he was making back home as an entry-level software engineer.

According to him, the salary was only part of the financial equation. His scholarship covered a significant portion of his living costs, while Germany’s tax rules for students meant he paid relatively little tax on his internship income. At one point, he said he was saving close to €1,000 ($1,180) monthly.

Yet, beyond the instant stability, Robert noted the biggest gain resulting from his move to Germany came from something else entirely: access.

Living and working in Europe’s largest economy placed him much closer to the people, companies, and conversations emerging in artificial intelligence. 

“In 2018, I was already curious about artificial intelligence,” he said. “Everybody talks about AI now, but back then, I knew it was going to be big. I used to read a lot about it and pray. Now, things have changed.”

Robert now works as an educator and lead AI engineer at Sunnic Lighthouse, a German digital trading platform for electricity and renewable energy.

He said he has been to about 50 countries—mostly in Europe, the United States, and Canada—frequently travelling for leisure and attending conferences first as a participant and later as a speaker, researcher, and technology professional.

“I can imagine how difficult it is for founders without the same opportunities to apply for visas every time,” he said. “Today, I can go to those conferences. I can apply for opportunities.”

A German passport, which grants visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to 186 countries, according to the Henley Passport Index, has made that freedom of movement possible.

Each trip expanded his network and exposed him to different ways of thinking about technology, research, and company-building. 

Seeing founders, researchers, and investors collaborate across countries fundamentally changed how he thought about building his own businesses.

Becoming a permanent resident in Germany

Learning German became another long-term investment.

Robert said he arrived in Germany speaking little of the language, but quickly realised that mastering it was about far more than ordering food or navigating everyday life. In Germany, language proficiency can determine how quickly skilled migrants qualify for longer-term residence and how easily they integrate into the labour market.

While studying for his master’s degree and later working full-time, Robert enrolled in German language classes and steadily worked through the country’s proficiency levels. He eventually attained B1-level German, an intermediate level that allows speakers to hold conversations on familiar topics and handle most everyday situations without assistance.

According to Robert, reaching that milestone accelerated his pathway to permanent residency in 2022.

After graduating, Robert said he secured skilled employment and transitioned from a student residence permit to Germany’s work-based immigration pathway. 

He later applied for a Settlement Permit (Niederlassungserlaubnis), Germany’s form of permanent residence, after meeting the country’s employment, residency, and language requirements, according to him.

He progressed to the B2 level of language proficiency. According to Robert, meeting the higher language requirement alongside Germany’s residency conditions enabled him to qualify for German citizenship in 2024, six years after arriving in the country.

Language changed his career as much as his immigration status.

Robert said speaking German made it easier to communicate with colleagues, deal with government offices, access opportunities that were not advertised to English-only speakers, and participate more confidently in professional settings. 

It also made everyday life less transactional and helped him build relationships beyond the international student community.

Germany offered another advantage that proved just as valuable as the higher income: stability.

According to Robert, life became more predictable. Public transport generally ran on schedule. Electricity and Internet outages, common frustrations for many professionals in Nigeria, rarely interrupt work. 

Government services followed established processes, making it easier to plan months, sometimes years, ahead. That stability gave him room to focus on his career instead of constantly adapting to uncertainty.

The adjustment, however, was not without its challenges.

“You are still seen as a second-class person,” Robert said. “It’s much more difficult to do business.”

It became more apparent as his ambitions shifted from building a career in artificial intelligence to eventually building companies around it, Robert said.

Germany had given him financial stability, international mobility, and access to a global technology ecosystem. But building a fast-moving technology company, he said, presented a different set of constraints.

The country that had proved ideal for launching his career was no longer, in Robert’s view, necessarily the best place to build his next chapter. He said the United States, where he is planning a move through an employment‑based Green Card route, is the country he believes will take him further. 

The teenage bet is still paying off

Looking back, Robert does not describe leaving Nigeria as a decision driven solely by money.

The higher income mattered. Economic and financial stability mattered, too. Yet, Robert said the greatest return on leaving Nigeria has been the life it has allowed him to build.

“Now I have a house here. I’ve travelled to about 50 countries. I’m now a citizen. Quite a number of things I used to worry about before, I don’t worry about them anymore,” Robert said.

“[In June], I was in Prague. If I wanted to do that before, it would have taken visa applications and planning. Now, I can decide to travel, attend a conference, or visit another country much more easily. Those are opportunities I didn’t have before.”

For Africans hoping to follow a similar path today, Robert believes the economics have become more difficult. Germany’s blocked account requirement has increased significantly since he moved in 2018. Additionally, the Naira has lost much of its value against the Euro, making the study route more expensive than when he left Nigeria.

He noted that preparing “hard and long-term” is still a bet that’d pay off for anybody looking to settle in Germany. 

More than a decade after a 19-year-old undergraduate began reading biographies in search of a pattern, Robert has become part of one himself.

The “touch of abroad” pattern he once noticed in the lives of Nigeria’s business leaders did not guarantee success. But it gave him a conviction he had been chasing since his teenage years: the freedom to build a career that stretches beyond one country.

Exchange rate as of 2018: €1 = ₦429.6; €1 = $1.18. 

Exchange rate as of 2026: €1 = $1.14.

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