Moyinoluwa Okedusi on a 12-Year Career in Technology

Moyinoluwa Okedusi has spent the last 12 years building a successful career in technology, policy, and international development. Her professional journey has taken her from the Nigerian civil service to the forefront of AI innovation, with each role bringing a different set of problems to solve and a different set of things to learn.

When Tribe Techie sat down with her for a WorkLife conversation, it quickly became clear that the more interesting part of her story is not simply how much work she has done. It is how often she has found herself in a new space, learning something she did not know before, and what all of that work has taught her about the kind of life she wants.

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Her professional life has moved through the Nigerian civil service, migration and international development, innovation ecosystems, AI education and programme management. She has worked on labour policy, supported returned migrants and young people, led programmes reaching thousands of people, worked across Nigeria's innovation hub ecosystem, built an AI education organisation and now leads programme management at Co-creation HUB across several African markets.

There is a very simple reason she has taken that many turns. “In a nutshell, my curiosity.” She likes learning new things. She does not particularly enjoy staying in one place for too long. “I get bored quickly,” she says.

Reflecting on a 12-Year Career in Technology

That has allowed her to move between sectors without treating each move as a complete reinvention. The subject changes, the people change, and the problems change, but she keeps picking up something from one room and carrying it into the next.

It has also meant a lot of work, and recently, she has become much more deliberate about what happens when the work is done. A few months ago, Moyinoluwa would have answered “yes” without hesitation if asked whether her life revolved around work.

A new role, a demanding pace and a growing list of responsibilities had pushed her “on the edge of burnout.” Then she went to Zanzibar. For six days, she snorkelled in the Indian Ocean, ate fresh fruit, visited tourist sites, read fiction and met new people.

She did not try to turn the holiday into another productive exercise. She simply took the break. “That trip was the reset I badly needed because I came back refreshed and revitalised.”

Leadership, Policy, and Lessons Learned

It is a small detail in a much bigger career story, but perhaps one of the most revealing. Moyinoluwa's 12-year journey is about leadership, ambition, the people who helped shape her, and the mistakes she has had to unlearn. Increasingly, it is about figuring out what a good life looks like when there is always something else that could be done.

And she has some strong opinions about what Africa should, and should not, be doing while we are at it.

It started with policy and writing.

Moyinoluwa’s first job after her Master’s degree was not in technology or innovation. In 2013, she joined the Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment in Abuja, working in Occupational Health and Safety and supporting the development of labour and OSH policies.

Her manager, Mrs. Mojisola Sonubi, noticed that she could write. Moyinoluwa began doubling as her manager’s PA, attending meetings, writing minutes and memos and preparing speeches, including one for a Permanent Secretary. The writing eventually earned her wider recognition when she won third prize in the 2017 Federal Civil Service Week Essay Competition.

After four years in Abuja, she was posted to Lagos, where another opportunity came through Ms Mienye Badejo, who was leading the Migrant Resource Centre. Moyinoluwa volunteered to join because she wanted to understand international development and project management beyond what she had encountered in the civil service. That decision kept opening doors.

From Mapping Innovation Hubs to Building AI Programmes

For five years, she managed the GIZ Migration for Development programme, supporting more than 2,000 returned migrants and graduates. She also led communications work with IOM, taking irregular migration campaigns to more than 1,000 secondary school students and young people in Lagos.

Then came another unexpected turn: innovation inside the civil service itself. Moyinoluwa became a finalist in the Federal Civil Service Innovation Challenge for an internal whistle-blowing system. The challenge was implemented by MIT in 2020, and the system was eventually deployed by the Office of the Head of the Civil Service.

In 2022, Moyinoluwa joined Innovation Support Network, where her work expanded considerably. She led a Ford Foundation-funded programme that empowered more than 15,000 women, young people and persons with disabilities across six states. She also led a nationwide enumeration and mapping exercise covering more than 150 innovation hubs across 20 states.

The move into technology and innovation was not a rejection of her policy background. If anything, it gave her another way of applying what she had learnt. That connection between policy and technology has remained central to how she sees the sector.

The Future of AI and Personal Growth

“A lot of people do not understand the importance of the right policies in shaping a sector or industry,” she says. “The right policies can create an enabling business environment, while the wrong policies can stifle development in the sector.”

Moyinoluwa’s own work in AI became more direct in 2023, when she became the founding Country Lead of Optimus Digital Future, an AI education nonprofit. She led the organisation’s setup, strategic programme design and donor and stakeholder engagement.

But while she is clearly excited about AI, she is not interested in the breathless rush to attach the technology to every problem. “First of all, people need to calm down with the AI slop,” she says. “Africa has fundamental issues that we cannot slap technology or AI on.”

The part of leadership she had to unlearn

As her responsibilities grew, Moyinoluwa discovered that one of her biggest challenges was not learning how to manage more work. It was learning that she did not have to do all of it herself. “I’m a recovering perfectionist who would rather do a task myself than let someone else mess it up,” she says.

Moyinoluwa eventually recognised that if an organisation could not function whenever she stepped away, something was wrong. “If everything stops because I am not present — and nobody is indispensable — then I am not delegating enough.”

So she began delegating more and allowing other people to take ownership. She also learnt what she describes as another important leadership lesson: “to lead by influence and not by force.”

Maintaining balance after work

For all the ambition and movement in her career, this may be the part of the conversation Moyinoluwa has thought about most recently: what does she actually want her life to look like when she is not working? The pace of technology and innovation does not exactly help.

“Work became life, and my mind suffered for it.” She has since become more intentional about leisure and hobbies. She is an introvert, so her ideal day off does not necessarily involve a packed itinerary.

The idea came into sharper focus after she saw a TikTok post about being “ruthless with your work and relaxed with your life.” She realised that, since her vacation, she had started doing exactly that.

“When I’m working, I give my best; and when I’m resting, I completely tune out of work.” The career is still important. She is still learning, still building and still interested in what technology can do for Africa. But there is now a little more room around all of that.