When most people in tech think about communications or “comms,” as many call it, they think of a shiny press release announcing a seed round or a colourful Instagram post describing a new product. But for Toluwanimi Onakoya, communications is less about the high of a launch and more about the precision of a pivot.
Formerly the Head of Communications at Lingawa (formerly Topset), an African language learning platform, Onakoya has built a career as the person startups call when things are changing fast. The changes might include product transition, navigating a high-stakes election, or translating local jargon for a global audience, and she has become one of the ecosystem’s communications specialists.
Passion over pedigree
Onakoya’s tech communications journey started with a love for the craft of communication itself. She says that in secondary school, classmates teased her for wanting to be a broadcaster. She leaned in and obtained her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Mass Communication from Covenant University, graduating with a perfect 5.0 CGPA in her Master’s degree in 2021.
“It wasn’t that I had the highest IQ,” she says, “but it’s so much easier to do well when you’re excited and passionate about what you’re learning or what you’re interested in. And my career has followed that same trajectory.”
From the agency grind to corporate strategy
In 2021, her graduation year, Onakoya’s communications career began at RED Media Africa, a public relations and communications agency. There, she was thrown into the deep end of the news cycle as a writer for YNaija, an arm of the RED brand.
“You had to churn out like three articles per day, and it was based on what was trending,” she says. “I was really always putting my ear to the ground, and you would find that all these things are such great building blocks to build your career. It taught me how to find a good story [and find] an angle that people would love to read.”
Onakoya’s hard work paid off: within six months, she was promoted to a content analyst. She then began asserting herself in high-level strategy sessions for global brands like Lipton. While maintaining her standard content analyst responsibilities, she consistently contributed and prepared ideas outside of her department, making her presence in those communications brainstorms something the team actively anticipated. Because she had already demonstrated her value and clear ambition, transitioning into corporate communications became a “no-brainer” for her team lead once she formally requested the move.
Three months later, she was promoted to a corporate communications role.
“I was very excited,” she says. “I would say one of the things that I remember then was always communicating what I wanted to do next. You know, when [your superiors] see that you’re doing really well at something, sometimes [they can assume] you want to continue doing that.”
It was in corporate comms that Onakoya learned that public relations (PR) is often more science than art. She recalls her first task, writing a speech for a top executive at Access Bank, Nigeria’s biggest bank by assets. Influenced by the TV show Scandal, she penned something deeply poetic, beginning with the line: “When I look into the audience, I see Ugochi, the mother of three…”
The feedback was negative.
“It was very rejected,” she admits. “I learned quickly that there is a formula [to corporate communications writing]. That’s not where your creative juices need to be [at work]; you just have to follow the formula. It was very intense.”
Navigating the startup jargon
While at RED, Onakoya got her first taste of the tech world working with clients like 54Gene, an African genomics company: “It was a one-case scenario, but it opened my eyes to what was needed [to work in a startup].”
That experience bridged the gap between traditional corporate firms and the high-speed world of tech. When she eventually left the agency in 2022 to join OurPass, a one-click checkout startup at the time, she realised that the core of tech comms is translation.
“A lot of tech startups don’t know how to translate their jargon in a way that the stakeholders, particularly the audience, would understand,” she says. “ With tech, there is more verbose jargon that has to really go down to ensure that [the message] is being communicated as clearly as possible. I would say that’s one big difference between the startup culture and other organisations.”
The crisis specialist: From Stears to Lingawa
After eight months at OurPass, Onakoya joined Stears, a financial data and research provider, as Communications Manager, where she faced the ultimate test: the 2023 Nigerian elections. Her goal was to position Stears as the “election go-to product,” and it worked—too well. The platform hit the one million-signup mark and earned over $6 million in earned mentions, featuring in Bloomberg, The Financial Times, and Consumer News and Business Channel (CNBC).
But success brought a different kind of pressure. When technical lags occurred during the high-intensity polling collation, the public narrative turned sour. Speculation grew that the company was being paid by political parties.
“I actually cried,” Onakoya confesses. “But it was a big learning point. We realised we hadn’t planned for the worst-case scenario. For the governorship elections, we did a ‘pre-mortem.’ We listed everything that could go wrong and had statements ready to go so the narrative wouldn’t get ahead of us.”
This ability to manage sensitive transitions became her signature. While helping Stears transition from a B2C to B2B product, and or managing their East African expansion, she focused on empathy.
“We had to close the B2C products, and we had to transition to B2B. This is something that there was still an audience [for]. There were still people, but this was a business decision, and how do you communicate that? It’s really difficult to say, ‘I’m taking away something that you love from you, and I don’t want you to be angry’.”
By treating the announcement like a relationship pivot, she maintained a 70% positive sentiment score. This reputation followed her; when Lingawa needed to pivot from a general edtech platform to a language-learning one, the CEO of Stears recommended her for the job.
Owning the narrative (and knowing when to exit)
A recurring theme in Onakoya’s career is the “rookie mistake” of letting the narrative get ahead of the company.
“As a comms person, you have to have the foresight that whatever is happening,” she says. “It is important that you are setting the narrative for the organisation.”
However, she notes that this is only possible when management treats communications personnel as partners. At OurPass, she found herself constantly playing “catch-up” as the company was moving so fast, pivoting from one-click checkout to POS systems to microfinance.
“I think it’s one of the reasons why [my work there] wasn’t a very long-term thing.”
She reveals that the comms team was often informed of changes after they happened.
“I remember just resigning,” Onakoya says. “I didn’t have any offer [from another organisation], I just resigned. “You cannot do good work if there is no alignment with management. As a comms person, you can’t be the last to know. If the narrative gets ahead of you, you’ve already lost.”
The “feeling” of expansion
At Lingawa, Onakoya focused on marketing a feeling rather than just a service. In her view, a startup expansion isn’t just about moving into a new geography; it’s about “wearing the shoes of the audience.
“I did a bit of research, and it is called cultural arbitrage,” she says. “ When you know you’re kind of selling a local product that is connecting two values. A local commodity now becomes this rare product, and you then bring that connection, and you get to put a price on it. “
Her strategy during Lingawa’s expansion was less about language lessons and more about “reconnection” for the diaspora. Similarly, at Stears, expansion was framed as the only way for the world to access accurate African data.
“Trust the comms people”
As Onakoya reflects on her journey through pivots and crises, her message to the tech ecosystem is one of integration. She believes PR is more than just a “nice-to-have” add-on.
“My advice to tech people? Listen to your comms people. Lord, listen to them! We aren’t just here to make things look pretty; we are here to ensure you don’t lose the trust of your stakeholders.”
Editor’s note: At the time of publication, Toluwanimi Onakoya had already exited her role at Lingawa. The article has been updated accordingly.
