The board members at Co-creation HUB provide governance, oversight, and support to ensure CcHUB’s success in empowering entrepreneurs and driving sustainable change in Africa.
Funke Opeke, is founder and CEO of MainOne, a digital infrastructure company that built
West Africa’s first open-access submarine cable system interconnecting Nigeria; Ghana;
and Portugal in 2010.
In 2015, the company launched its data centre operations in West Africa with MDXi – a
$40M investment resulting in West Africa’s largest Tier III data centre in Lagos, Nigeria,
and now with presence in Accra and Abidjan.
In 2019, she chaired the Presidential Committee to develop Nigeria’s National Broadband
Plan for 2020 – 2025.
MainOne was acquired by Equinix, the global digital infrastructure company as its entry
point to doing business in Africa on April 1, 2022.
Yewande is a chartered Engineer, Innovator, Consultant and Speaker.
Her engineering experience includes the design and construction, innovation and manufacture of buildings and systems in the built environment. She has worked on projects in the UK, Africa, the Middle East and East Asia and has been named one of the 100 Most influential Engineers in Europe by the Financial Times and Inclusive Boards. the UK Young Woman Engineer of the Year by the Institution of Engineering & Technology. She has also been awarded the Exceptional Achiever Award from the Association for BAME Engineers and the Association of Consultancy and Engineering, U.K. (ACE).
She sits on the governing body at the University of Warwick and is a Visiting Professor at the University of Westminster. She is passionate about STEM Education and communication and has presented Engineering programmes for Television. In the 2020 New Year Honours list, Yewande was awarded an MBE for services to engineering innovation and diversity in STEM.
She has served as the UK's Innovation Agency (Innovate UK) Ambassador for Clean Growth and Infrastructure and was recently awarded Top 50 Workplace leaders in the UK. Yewande has been appointed as Vice President of the Institution of Engineering and Technology and serves as Chair of the Institution's Knowledge Services & Solutions (KS&S) board. She sits on the Global Advisory Board of Warwick Business School. She's the founder of Innovation for Impact.
She has recently been appointed non-executive director of Midlands Mindforge , a patient capital investment company for university spinouts and early stage IP rich businesses in the Midlands United Kingdom
Stephen is the CEO of Luminate Group where he leads the team and strategic vision, overseeing the organisation's operations. With over 25 years of leadership experience, he has dedicated his career to leveraging media and technology for positive social impact and accountability.
Before Luminate, Stephen served as a Partner at Omidyar Network, focusing on Governance & Citizen Engagement initiatives and expanding the network's global investments. His tenure at BBC Media Action, where he held the role of Chief Executive, solidified his reputation as a leader in using media for promoting better governance, transparency, and improving the lives of vulnerable populations globally.
Stephen's executive roles span various nonprofit organisations and companies across the UK, North America, and Asia, highlighting his diverse and impactful career journey.
Abiodun Ajanaku is a Chartered Accountant and Financial Data Scientist with a deep passion for problem-solving and providing comprehensive financial management support to startups, CEOs, Board of Directors, and investors. Currently serving as the Group Finance Lead at Co-Creation Hub (CcHUB), Abiodun emphasises the critical role of financial data in organisational decision-making. He focuses on creating effective financial management systems that leverage financial data to drive growth and performance. Abiodun's expertise covers various areas of finance, including financial planning, analysis, and management using modern analytic tools like Tableau and Power BI, financial reporting, risk management, compliance, operations management, financial governance, analytics, financial modelling, investments management, and applications of machine learning/AI in finance automation. His professional background includes roles as a Data Scientist at Solent University, Financial Management Consultant and Chief Financial Officer at Co-Creation Hub, and various finance-related positions in Nigeria.
Abiodun holds a BSc. degree in Economics and an MSc. degree in Artificial Intelligence and Data Science from Solent University, UK, and is an associate member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN).
Adetunji Tunji leads the creation of bridges between the supply of GCC-supported innovations and the demand for solutions in Sub-Saharan Africa. His approach focuses on honouring GCC’s collaborative advantage in the innovation ecosystem and increases the likelihood of scale and sustainability of GCC-supported innovations in Sub-Saharan Africa. Tunji is an investment and business support professional with over two decades experience supporting clients in financial services, manufacturing and technology sectors in Nigeria and Africa. Prior to joining GCC in 2019, he was at Co-creation Hub Nigeria (a pan African social innovation centre dedicated to accelerating the application of social capital and technology for economic prosperity) where he provided capital and support to early-stage enterprises. Tunji has a Master’s degree in International Development from the University of Manchester, UK and a Bachelor’s degree in Estate Management from Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. Tunji in his spare time is an avid football follower and supporter.
Femi Longe is a social entrepreneur, innovation consultant, learning experience designer & speaker who enjoys contributing at the intersection of technology, learning, design & social change. He is very passionate about helping individuals and organisations be their best self and do their best job to enable a better world.
He currently serves as the CEO of QALA Africa, an organisation supporting African software developers to transition into careers in Bitcoin & Lightning development. Alongside this, he is the co-founder of PathFound, a platform empowering African secondary school students, parents, and schools to make informed education and career choices.
Femi co-founded Co-Creation Hub (CcHub), Africa’s premier social innovation centre, where he served as the Director of Innovation for nine years, leading a wide range of co-creation experiences & unique partnerships across sectors. Earlier in his career, he gained experience at the UK's The Young Foundation, where he established the UpRising Leadership Programme. He also contributed to international youth leadership organisation AIESEC International as the Director overseeing strategy & operations across Africa.
Femi holds an MSc in EdTech/Learning Science from Centre de Recherches Interdisciplinaires (CRI) at Universite Paris Cite, and is part of AIESEC International's Global Supervisory Board.
Ojoma Ochai is the managing director of CcHUB - Africa’s largest innovation centre which supports and invests in tech and creative entrepreneurs and innovators to promote African prosperity. She is also a co-founder of CcHUB’s Creative Economy Practice.
She is a member of the UNESCO Global Expert Panel on the 2005 Convention on Cultural Expressions, a group of about 40 experts from around the world who support UNESCO and its state parties on strategies and approaches for growing the global Creative Economy. In this role since 2015, she has delivered projects and provided Technical Assistance to support Creative Economy development in various locations worldwide, particularly in Africa and the Caribbean.
Her almost 20 years of experience spans International Cultural Relations and leading Creative and Digital Economy projects. Her previous roles have included being Regional Director for British Council Sub-Saharan Africa Arts and Creative Economy Programme and other roles working on projects for institutions like the Swedish Arts Council, World Bank, and various national governments to support the development of the global Creative Economy.
She sits on various creative and technology organisation boards, including the board of ₿ Trust (a trust set up by musician and entrepreneur Jay Z and Jack Dorsey - CEO of Block Inc. and co-founder and former CEO of Twitter, to support Bitcoin development in Africa and other locations), Africa No Filter (a narrative change organisation funded by a collective of donors including Ford Foundation, Luminate and Bloomberg) and Pixel Ray Studios (a global film infrastructure development company).
Since inception, we set out to leverage technology to effect social change. Below are a few milestones we have achieved.
December 2015, CcHUB launched the CcHUB Growth Capital – Nigeria’s first social innovation fund to invest in next-generation infrastructure for change in Nigeria and beyond – with targeted fund size of over N1Billion over the next 24 months
Through our Incubation unit, we have supported over 95 early stage ventures providing solutions to social problems with technology. Some of these ventures have in turn created over 450 jobs.
In partnership with Google for Entrepreneurs, CcHUB launched PitchDrive, a three-week five-city European tech hub tour across London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Zurich and Paris with the aim to raise €20M in funding from investors.
Along with a consortium of 2 African and 5 European partners, in our quest to improve learning outcomes in STEM across Africa, we secured part-funding from the European Commission totalling 1.5 Million Euros (under the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Funding Scheme).
By adapting the successful Go-Lab Ecosystem, GO-GA will improve students’ participation & outcomes in STEM; deploying engaging digital STEM content as well as the capacity development of teachers in modern, effective teaching methods.
GO-GA will pilot in Nigeria, Kenya, and the Republic of Benin, with built-in plans to scale across Africa in 3 years.
In partnership with Facebook, we launched NG_HUB in May 2018. The hub is a deep-tech focused innovation lab for entrepreneurs, students, researchers, technologists and other stakeholders building solutions with advanced technologies.
Located in Yaba, it is home to startups in the FbStart Accelerator who are building solutions that leverage Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, Internet of Things and Virtual Reality.
Through CcHUB’s Education Practice (re:learn), we have delivered world-class STEM education to thousands of students by providing support for the smart application of technology in schools across Nigeria. Our in-school and out-of-school programmes have served to provide students aged 5-18 year with skills and resources relevant to the 21st century.
Over the past 5 years, we have worked with Google, the MacArthur Foundation, Oracle, the Raspberry Pi Foundation, the Ministry of Education amongst others, to deliver quality education at scale.
The i-HQ project is helping to build an ‘innovation city’ – a hotspot for creative ventures where all key stakeholders (academics, industry and government) find adequate infrastructure, resources and enabling environment to strive while collaborating. From a vision, a virtual tour was launched to communicate the vision and engage the larger tech community and key stakeholders.
In 2013, CcHUB constituted a consortium of core implementation partners which includes MainOne, Technovision and the Lagos State government.The i-HQ project is home to over 30 technology companies in Yaba.
On the 23rd of June, 2017, stakeholders of the Yaba technology ecosystem came together to discuss the current state of the ecosystem and share their ideas on actions required to build the ecosystem into a successful one.
At the town hall meeting, it was agreed that if we succeed in building a functional ecosystem in Yaba, it can serve as a template for building other technology clusters across the country and maybe someday, Africa. The seven pillars decided upon include: Culture, Infrastructure, Policy, Talent, Research & Development, Funding and Smart City.
We’ve had the joy of collaborating with these brands and many more over the last few years