Ololade’s story

How the Africa Venture helped Ololade to find collaborative solutions for hunger

Ololade Raji, Senior Manager, Accenture

Ololade’s passion is to find solutions to address the prevalent hunger epidemic in African cities. He leads a team of analysts, who explore opportunities to create an African Agricultural Exchange Programme to assist entrepreneurs in Nigeria. After participating in the Africa Venture, Ololade used collaborative and leadership skills developed on the programme to pursue his interest in regenerative agricultural practices further, with investments in local crop farming. The programme also enabled him to develop his Cultural Intelligence to work fluidly and flexibly across Africa.

“Emotional intelligence is vital for personal development but Cultural Intelligence is more important for effective leadership.”

Ololade also owns fish farms in Iyesi-Otta, located in the outskirts of Lagos, Nigeria. Here, he has made considerable efforts to understand local upstream farming pain points; become an active player in the sector; and to deploy the use of technology to provide workable agricultural solutions. In these efforts, he found his learnings on Cultural Intelligence helpful as he worked together with multiple people, with varied levels of knowledge, and expertise.

In the coming months, Ololade has fixed his eye on new targets—food processing, and harnessing industry knowledge to help reduce food-waste, and optimize the food production process. Like with his achievements in past ventures, Olalade aims to leverage diversity and utilize collaborative work in order to make these new targets a reality.