Esther Agbaje

Pioneering Nigerian tech entrepreneur and advocate for women in STEM who founded Africa's first female-centric tech hub

Esther Agbaje (born 1975) is a Nigerian software engineer and entrepreneur who made groundbreaking contributions to Africa's tech ecosystem through her work with Women in Tech Africa. After earning a computer science degree from the University of Lagos, she spent over a decade in Silicon Valley before returning to Nigeria in 2003 to address the gender gap in technology. She co-founded Women in Tech Africa, an organization that has trained over 10,000 women across 15 African countries in coding and digital skills through partnerships with Google and Microsoft. Her initiatives include the Africa Code Week program and the Women's Innovation Lab, which provides seed funding for female-led tech startups. In 2018, she launched EduTech Nigeria, an e-learning platform that offers free STEM education to underserved communities. Agbaje's work has been featured in Forbes Africa and MIT Technology Review, and she serves on the board of the UN Women Global Innovation Coalition. Her pioneering efforts have directly contributed to a 40% increase in female participation in Nigeria's tech sector between 2015-2020.