Bayo Adekanmbi joins Airtel Africa to head its global strategy

Bayo Adekanmbi has been appointed to lead Airtel Africa’s strategy, partnership, and sustainability roadmap.

The position is based at the company’s headquarters in the United Kingdom, and Adekanmbi is now a member of the executive committee and reports directly to the CEO, Segun Ogunsanya.

Adekanmbi will be “responsible for leading strategic business-wide initiatives, including innovation, strategic investment, operational efficiencies, and partnerships,” according to the company’s website. In addition, he is in charge of delivering Airtel Africa’s Group Sustainability.”

Adekanmbi has spent decades in the telecommunications industry working at the intersection of data and marketing strategy. Prior to joining Airtel Africa, he spent 14 years with MTN Nigeria and South Africa, holding various senior positions such as Strategy Director (MTN Business Unit), Global Marketing Strategist, General Manager (Business Intelligence), and most recently Chief Transformation/Strategy Officer for MTN Nigeria.

He is a hands-on technology leader who received the prestigious MTN Yello Manager award for conceptualizing an AI-powered customer value/risk management framework that resulted in multi-billion naira revenue growth.

Adekanmbi is a data science professional who supports the development of talent in this space, in addition to developing cutting-edge strategy. He co-founded Data Science Nigeria in 2016, with the goal of training 1,000,000 data scientists and has so far trained over 500,000.

Adekanmbi graduated with honors from the University of Reading’s postgraduate school and has also attended Columbia Business School, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, INSEAD Business School, Telecoms Training Institute, ETH Zurich, and the University of Kentucky.