Charming, charismatic, and innovative describes Adaeze Sokan, our Woman Crush Wednesday. She is a firm believer that the future of Africa will be built by entrepreneurs leveraging innovation and technology to tackle complex problems. According to her, the more successful innovation-driven entrepreneurs, the more jobs are created, tax revenue is generated, investment opportunities increase, and improvements are made to society.
It is easy to identify a woman on a mission, Adaeze is one of such. She envisions a Nigeria that would be at least top 10/20 of the Human Development Index by the next decade. This purpose was birthed in her final year of secondary school. Her economics teacher drew on the blackboard a pyramid ranking different countries according to their level of growth and Nigeria was far below. Through tech-enabled start-ups, collaboration and resilience, this vision can be a reality.
Adaeze is a highly sought-after digital economic development professional who has spent over six years working in various aspects of the field. Her major focus is on supporting the growth of the tech-enabled start-up ecosystem by facilitating both local and international investment in start-up companies, promoting talent development, providing thought leadership, and fostering partnerships between government and donor organisations. She is most proud of co-designing the framework and leading the secretariat driving the Nigeria Startup Bill.
Adaeze is currently the Country Director for the UK Nigeria Tech Hub. The organisation supports the growth of sustainable digital ecosystems in Nigeria through the development of high-end skills, supporting start-up growth and development, and facilitating linkages/partnerships between the UK and Nigeria. It has been in existence in Nigeria for two years and has supported over 5000 entrepreneurs across various programs such as the Future Females Business School Programme, Africa-UK Female Tech Founders event, Build to Accelerate, Investor Readiness Bootcamp, Building from Ground Up and the INOVO Accelerator programme which supported 110 early-stage companies in the education, healthcare and agriculture sectors in Nigeria working at the forefront of solutions to mitigate against the effects of COVID-19.
Prior to joining the UK Nigeria Tech Hub, Adaeze held different roles at the Ventures Platform Foundation. First, as the Director of Programs, Policy, and Strategy where she helped develop the strategic focus of the organisation as well as designed and implemented some of its programmes focused on capacity building and policy advocacy, among others. She then served as the Acting Executive Director of Ventures Platform Foundation where she led the team in designing and implementing initiatives that support start-ups and the ecosystem as a vehicle for creating jobs and addressing local challenges.
She has worked with different partners across government agencies including the Office of the President and Vice President to provide advisory support and programme design. She also worked with international partners such as the European Union, World Bank, US Embassy, USAID, FCDO as well as private sector partners such as ARM, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook interested in supporting and engaging the ecosystem. She led the first delegation of start-up participants from Nigeria to SLUSH, Finland one of Europe’s foremost accelerators and conferences in 2016, and has facilitated other intercountry initiatives.
A trained political scientist at Illinois State University, Adaeze also holds a master’s degree in African Studies from the University of California Los Angeles. She is also an Obama Fellow and a 2021 NESG Bridge Fellow. She is passionate about Africa’s development starting with Nigeria and leverages her skill set in programme design, policy analysis, strategy formulation, and facilitating multi-stakeholder partnerships towards achieving this goal.
Whenever she is not engulfed with her primary work responsibilities, Adaeze devotes time to either blogging about strategies and frameworks for digital access and innovation in public service or coaching young people. She does this to imbibe the leadership mindset and values required to build a better world. This is remarkable and worthy of emulation. Hence, she doubles as our Woman Crush and role model.
Just like Adaeze, remember to #TakePrideDaily in who you are and what you do.