Eyitayo Ogunmola is a Nigerian tech expert. He is the CEO and founder of Utiva, a technological education firm that assists students and new graduates in Sub-Saharan Africa in developing the necessary skills and knowledge to compete in the global employment market.
Eyitayo has been named a Global Good Fund Fellow for 2019 in honor of his pioneering work to boost young people’s employment rates by developing their technical and leadership abilities.
His entrepreneurialism was inspired by his own experience after graduating from the University of Ilorin when he was dissatisfied with how difficult it was to find solid work. He battled for two years before meeting a mentor who assisted him in consultancy, which launched his career.
He realized that many other young people were facing similar roadblocks to his, and he wanted to find a solution. So, in 2015, he founded Utiva to push a new approach to address the skills-gap problem. Utiva merged an online platform with traditional face-to-face lessons given within universities to produce job-ready graduates.
He now works with local and global firms to determine the talents they require. Utiva has benefited over 12,000 graduates to date, and they presently partner with 25 universities across Nigeria.
With an eye on the future, he is pushing Utiva to make a difference by assisting organizations in digitalizing their workforces and encouraging debates around data science, machine learning, and AI.
Dovenet Nigeria recently collaborated with Utiva to develop a two-day boot program to help women break into the tech industry. In addition, Binance Africa, the largest blockchain exchange in Africa, has teamed with Utiva to organize a blockchain Bootcamp to educate women interested in learning about blockchain.
Utiva’s foresight has prompted the Nigerian government to seek its assistance with policy development and program actions.
