Airtel Africa has tapped Bayo Adekanmbi to lead its strategy, partnership, and sustainability roadmap. The role is based in the company’s headquarters in the UK and Adekanmbi is now part of the company’s executive committee and reports directly to the the CEO Segun Ogunsanya.
In this role, according to the company’s website, Adekanmbi will be “responsible for leading strategic business-wide initiatives, including innovation, strategic investment, operational efficiencies, and partnerships. In addition to this, he is also responsible for delivering Airtel Africa’s Group Sustainability.”
Adekanmbi has spent decades working at the intersection of data and marketing strategy in the telecommunications industry. Before joining Airtel Africa, he worked with MTN Nigeria and South Africa for 14 years, holding different senior roles, including Strategy Director (MTN Business Unit), Global Marketing Strategist, General Manager (Business Intelligence), and most recently Chief Transformation/Strategy Officer for MTN Nigeria.
He is a hands-on technology leader who was awarded the prestigious MTN Yello Manager award for the conceptualisation of an AI-powered customer value/risk management framework, which led to multi-billion naira revenue growth.
Besides building cutting-edge strategy, Adekanmbi is a data science professional who supports the development of talents in this space. In 2016, he co-founded Data Science Nigeria, an organisation that set out to train 1,000,000 data scientists and has, so far, trained over 500,000.
Adekanmbi graduated with distinction from the University of Reading’s postgraduate school and has had an education in many other leading institutions, including Columbia Business School, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, INSEAD Business School, Telecoms Training Institute, ETH Zurich, and University of Kentucky.
