For Afolake Odubote, design wasn’t the plan; it was the discovery. What began as a side task, creating posters during an entrepreneurship programme in 2021, quickly became a calling that would shape her career in product design.
“I didn’t set out to be a product designer,” she recalls. “But the moment I realized I could merge creativity with solving real problems, I knew this was where I belonged.”
Afolake’s interest in technology first took root during her undergraduate years studying Entrepreneurial Studies at the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta (FUNAAB). Between navigating prolonged ASUU strikes and volunteering at tech events, she was drawn to the power of technology to create access where barriers existed.
That curiosity grew into a bigger challenge in 2019, when she joined Ogun Innovate, the state’s first government-led tech initiative under Governor Dapo Abiodun. She played a pivotal role in structuring the project and shaping its first official tech training programmes while still being a student. But while Ogun Innovate sparked her policy-level interest in digital transformation, Afolake knew her real drive was in building tangible solutions.
Her design journey truly began during her National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) year in Oyo State, Nigeria. Struggling to find reliable information as a youth corper, she built and designed OYO Kopa’s official website, a one-stop hub for corps members navigating life in the state.
“I had struggled to find reliable information when I got posted to Oyo,” she says. “I knew there were others like me who needed answers, so I decided to build a solution.”
That mindset of grounding solutions in empathy became the thread that has run through her product design career ever since.
At Alerzo, she took her first step into building functional products with Staffer, a tool that bridged communication between warehouse and tech teams. It was a bold experiment with no-code tools, but it gave her a taste of what it meant to create something that improved workflows at scale.
Her career quickly expanded beyond Nigeria. Joining Oval Finance, a U.S.-based web 3, fintech and cryptocurrency startup, Afolake worked on payment solutions tailored for businesses globally. She balanced design aesthetics with financial inclusion, proving that product design could be both technically sound and socially impactful.
Today, she continues to shape experiences at Lovebox Africa, where she contributes to both product design and community-building projects.
Outside the workplace, Afolake has consistently used her voice and skills to uplift others. She has spoken twice at the Ogun Digital Summit, featured on podcasts and radio, and in 2024 was named one of the top 25 young leaders in the Aleto Leadership Programme, selected from over 3,000 applicants.
From creating simple posters to designing global financial tools, Afolake Odubote’s journey is one of reinvention, resilience, and impact. She embodies a new generation of African product designers who see design not just as pixels on a screen, but as pathways to inclusion, access, and change.
And for her, this is only the beginning.
