Our Founder

Dr. Olubayo Adekanmbi

AI Thought Leader | Data Scientist | Tech Policy Expert | CEO, Data Science Nigeria | Co-Founder, EqualyzAI

Dr. Olubayo Adekanmbi is a globally respected Artificial Intelligence expert, data scientist, and innovation strategist, widely acknowledged as one of Africa’s foremost leaders in AI for development. With over 24 years of executive and technical experience, he brings deep expertise in Artificial Intelligence, geospatial data science, digital transformation, and inclusive innovation. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of London (St George’s/City), where his research focused on social consumption using advanced analytics. He also graduated with distinction from the University of Reading and has completed executive education at world-leading institutions, including Columbia Business School, INSEAD, the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, ETH Zurich, and the University of Kentucky.

Dr. Adekanmbi is the Founder and CEO of Data Science Nigeria and Co-Founder of EqualyzAI, two pioneering organizations using AI to solve Africa’s most pressing socio-economic challenges. Under his leadership, both organizations have developed transformative AI-powered products, five of which were named in the UNESCO/IRCAI Global Top 100 AI Projects for Social Good. His groundbreaking work in inclusive innovation earned him the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Global Grand Challenge Award for developing Large Language Models that expand financial inclusion—selected among the top 50 out of over 1,300 global submissions.

He is also a leading academic contributor, with multiple peer-reviewed papers published and presented at top-tier global AI conferences including NeurIPS, ICLR, AAAI, CVPR, and ICML. Two of his co-authored works won research excellence awards at ICLR in 2024 and 2025, reinforcing his global stature in advanced AI research. He has played a leading role in national and state-level AI governance initiatives in domains like AI Safety and ethics (UK AI Safety Institute), National AI policy development (Government of Nigeria, Tony Blair Institute), AI for humanitarian intervention (e.g. UK Humanitarian Innovation Hub), AI for development (e.g. The GSM Association – GSMA), AI capacity development ( Google, Microsoft, Meta, Nvidia), AI Social good platforms (e.g. Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Mastercard Foundation) and AI Governance framework development (e.g. Lagos State Government, Edo State Government).

His influence extends across private and public sectors, with previous C-level leadership roles at MTN (Nigeria and South Africa) and Airtel Africa UK, where he led advanced analytics and innovation across 30 African markets, directly impacting over 300 million customers. He was honoured with the MTN Y’ello Manager Award for designing an AI-driven customer risk and value management framework that delivered multi-billion-naira revenue impact. Dr. Adekanmbi currently contributes to several strategic AI and data advisory groups, including the National Artificial Intelligence Policy Expert Group (Nigeria), GSMA’s AI for Development in Africa Advisory Group, Meta’s GenAI Community Panel, Lagos State Innovation and Research Council, African Digital Epidemiology Innovation Network, and Insight2Impact’s Data for Finance Advisory Board (South Africa).

Dr. Adekanmbi is a hands-on data scientist with top global rankings on platforms like Kaggle and Data Science Dojo, and a champion of inclusive capacity development. Through Data Science Nigeria, he has trained over 500,000 young Africans, both online and offline, and authored Africa’s first AI book for children, Beginners Artificial Intelligence and Python Programming for Kids. He is also the author of The Future is Shared, a seminal text on sharepreneurship and the sharing economy in emerging markets.

A true innovator, Dr. Adekanmbi has led the development of award-winning solutions such as Spoton.ng, a geospatial addressing system mapping phone numbers to GPS coordinates, and AI-powered adaptive learning tools for feature phones. His contributions span the full spectrum of AI innovation, from foundational research and product development to public policy and talent development, cementing his reputation as a leading force shaping Africa’s AI future.

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Profile Summary

Industry-level Advanced Analytics and Data Science practitioner

Previously served as General Manager, Business Intelligence, and Chief Marketing/Strategy Officer.
Served as the Chief Transformation Officer, MTN Nigeria
Served as Chief Innovation, Analytics and Strategy, Officer, Airtel Africa UK Limited for its Pan African operation where he led strategic business-wide initiatives, including advanced analytics support, innovation, strategic investment, operational efficiencies, and partnerships, including the digitalization and monetization of anonymized and de-identified mobile network data from 14 countries to support commercial and social good use cases.
Developed many operational analytical models for industry applications

Practising Data Scientist and active on the world’s No 1 platform – Kaggle

Patent owner (United States Patent Office final approval stage) for a Data Science product

Doctoral-level scholar –University of London (St George/City)

Community Builder, Pan-African mentor and Knowledge leader

Advisory Board member, insight2impact (i2i) – a global resource centre that seeks to improve financial inclusion through the smarter use of data.
Winner – MIPAD – Most Influential People of Africa Descent (Class of 2018)
Lead co-facilitator, Nigeria National AI Strategy Development
Participant, Network of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence for Development (AI4D) in sub-Saharan Africa
Member, National Artificial Intelligence Policy Expert Group for Nigeria
Member, GSMA’s AI for Development in Africa Expert Advisory Group (EAG)
Member, Meta GenAI Community Panel member
Panel Advisory Board member for the African Digital Epidemiology Innovation Network (ADEIN)
Member, Lagos State Innovation and Research Council
Member, National Mobile Big Data Policy team
Chairman, Data and Advanced Analytics workstream of the Nigeria Economic Summit Group (NESG)
Participant, Network of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence for Development (AI4D) in sub-Saharan Africa
Part-time academic mentor/supervisor

Published Author

The Future is Shared: Sharing Economy and Sharepreneurship in emerging markets.
The Future is Shared is available on Amazon
Artificial Intelligence Simplified: 99 Use Cases and Expert Thoughts
Artificial Intelligence Simplified is available on Amazon

Awards & Recognition ⇀

Awarded the prestigious MTN Yello Star award for the conceptualisation of a Customer Value/Risk Management framework, which led to multi-billion naira revenue growth.

Top 50 winners of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Global Grand Challenges on the use of Artificial Intelligence Large language Models to solve problems in financial inclusion (2023).
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Winner of the Canadian/Swedish government joint Artificial Intelligence for Development Innovation 2019
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Selection into the Most Influential People of African Descent (MIPAD) 2017 – an award recognizes excellence in people of African descent from over 50 countries worldwide
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2020 Global Top 100 Innovators in Data & Analytics by the Corrinium Intelligence
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Winner, Africa’s most prestigious Matthai Impact Award by the Deep Learning Indaba, Africa’s No 1 AI researchers’ network, for strengthening the African machine learning and AI ecosystem more broadly
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Winner of the IRCAI/UNESCO Top 100 AI products in 2021 and 2022

Winner, 2020 Best poster at the 21st ACM Conference on Economics Computer (EC' 20)- the world's premier conference on the interface of economics and computer science with our work - "Shared Trust to end poverty & promote financial inclusion."

The leader of the only African finalist team on the Cognizant-sponsored competition, competing for $500K Challenge from XPRIZE; Teams competing in Phase 2 will develop artificial intelligence-driven models to prescribe actions for safely reopening society and limiting economic impact while minimising COVID-19 transmissions.
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Special Role and Impact Assignments

National Technical leadership on the use of Data Science and Advanced Machine Learning Algorithm to address COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria (200 million population). The body of insight from this has been published in partnership with GSMA to advance data-driven crisis readiness in low-income countries

Contributor Reviewer on the UNESCO Steering AI and advanced ICTs for knowledge societies: a Rights, Openness, Access, and Multi-stakeholder Perspective (name mention on page 9)

Global Co-organizer of the Workshop on Global Challenges in Economics and Computation, at ACM EC 2020, Budapest, Hungary.

Member of a global 12 selection judge and a project mentor to $10 million Inclusive Growth and Recovery Challenge funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Mastercard Foundation

Global Speaking Engagements

Guest Speaker at the Carnegie Mellon University, USA, School of Computer Science Artificial Intelligence for Social conference, 2021

Guest Speaker, JP Morgan organized sponsored Artificial Intelligence in Africa Conference, 2021

4th Artificial Intelligence in Africa Workshop (2023) holding as part of the 2023 ACM International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Finance

Stanford Social Review Data Refineries Webinar (2023)

DataDotOrg, USA webinar to discuss its new 2023 Data for Social Impact, Accelerate Aspirations: Moving to Achieve Systems Change report

Nigerian Academy of Engineering, 2023 on Generative Artificial Intelligence

Nvidia Global GTC Conference speaker, 2022

Pycon Africa conference speaker, 2021

GSMA Big Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence for Impact, 2020 webinar speaker

AI Expo, South Africa 2020 Conference Keynote Speaker

University College London, 2020 Beyond Boundaries on Sustainable Development Goals Conference speaker

GSMA Thrive Africa: AI for Impact Session “Using Mobile Big Data Analytics and AI to combat COVID-19” Conference Speaker

AI Trajectory 2021 Webinar, Switzerland

Keynote speaker at the Lagos StartUp Week

AXA Global insurance Corporate Presentation on the role of Artificial Intelligence in Automation

Invitation as a Guest speaker to the Saudi Arabia AI Summit 2021

Keynote speaker at the 2023 IEEE International Conference on Advances in Data-Driven Analytics and Intelligent Systems, Marrakech, Morocco on the topic, “Data-driven analytics for Agriculture”

Keynote Speaker at the Data Science Africa Conference, 2018

Conference Speaker at the MainOne Nerds Unite, 2021

Guest speaker at the Nigerian Exchange Limited NGX Technovation Conference, 2021

Guest Speaker at Africa’s foremost Artificial Intelligence Conference, Deep Learning Indaba, Ghana, 2023

AAAI New York, Keynote Speaker, Special Track on AI for Social Impact at the Thirty-Fourth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, New York, 2019

Speaking Engagement at the Deep Learning Indaba workshop, Tunisia by DataDotOrg, 2022

UmojaHack Pan African Data Conference

AOT Lagos Speaking engagement

Conference Speaker at the Big Data conference, 2019

Speaking engagement at the Scaling African Research Innovations in Science, Engineering, Health and Development by Utilizing Artificial Intelligence & Data Science, 2021