“When you see someone with a JADA logo on a hoodie at the airport or a tote bag at a cafe, it should immediately signal exceptional ability, much like the respect accorded to a US marine.” — Piero Trivellato, CEO JADA
This powerful vision lies at the heart of JADA’s striking new brand identity designed by FourthCanvas, which aims to fundamentally transform how the world perceives Data and AI talent from Africa, while also navigating a deeply entrenched global bias.
As the rest of the world races for global supremacy in AI and data services, African solutions are repeatedly viewed through a reductive lens: if they cost less, they must offer less. Which is especially problematic in a novel arena like artificial intelligence (AI), where the highest standards of precision, rigor, and innovation are expected at the highest level.
Co-founded by prominent Nigerian tech investor Olumide Soyombo and Ex-Jumia CEO Massimiliano Spalazzi, JADA partnered with FourthCanvas to create a brand that would command the same immediate respect and recognition of excellence that elite global institutions receive. The goal was to craft an identity that communicates precision over volume, excellence over mere availability, and earns respect rather than sympathy from day one.
Victor Fatanmi, Director of Strategy at FourthCanvas led the team in shaping not just how JADA looked, but how it would come to be understood and perceived, especially by a global market conditioned to associate African solutions with cost-cutting, rather than high standards. Instead of competing on scale and accessibility like many competitors in the space, JADA aimed to “shift perceptions” and establish itself as an elite talent hub known for the kind of rigor and excellence typically reserved for Western institutions, while confidently asserting its African origin as part of the value, not the compromise.
This ambition translated into a brand strategy grounded on four deliberate objectives: first, to differentiate JADA within the global talent outsourcing market; second, to signal clear value to European and Middle Eastern clients seeking more than low-cost talent; third, to instill a sense of pride and aspiration within its cohorts of trainees; and fourth, to lay the groundwork for a brand system that can easily be adapted for Pan-African expansion.
“One of our greatest challenges was positioning JADA to compete at the highest global levels while simultaneously transforming narratives around African Data and AI talent,” Fatanmi notes. The team navigated both the global race for AI dominance and deep-seated biases about Africa’s role in this field, positioning the brand as simultaneously elite and proudly African.
The design strategy centers on the concept of a robust “talent pipeline,” expressed through custom, thick-set letterforms conveying intention, structure, and flow. “At FourthCanvas, we see design as the vehicle for expressing strategic narrative,” Fatanmi shares. “The pipeline metaphor was deliberately chosen as it visually represents JADA’s entire business model.” This distinctive typeface also helps JADA stand out in the technology sector, traditionally dominated by minimalist sans-serif designs.
Through carefully chosen language and strategy-led design, FourthCanvas leverages existing associations in the audience’s mind to help shift perceptions, complementing the brand’s identity and solidifying its position in the global AI race for supremacy.
The brand’s verbal identity proves equally crucial in realizing this vision of earned respect. Drawing inspiration from military vocabulary, the language reinforces JADA’s ‘fully equipped’ positioning by referring to recruits as “squads,” fostering the sense of an elite operational group and creating language that feels like a badge of earned respect, reinforcing the core idea that encountering someone affiliated with JADA should evoke the same recognition of exceptional capability as seeing a US marine.
Azeez Busari, VP of Operations at JADA, emphasizes the importance of this branding exercise: “We are trying to groom local talent for impact on a global level, so it matters that the overall experience we create for them, of which brand is a key driver must inspire them to function at the level we expect them to.”
Read the full project case study here
