Oby Ezekwoh

Nigerian educator and founder of Africa's first all-girls coding academy

Oby Ezekwoh is a Nigerian tech innovator whose Girls Go Tech initiative has transformed STEM education across West Africa. Establishing the first all-girls coding academy in 2015 in Lagos, she created a model that has since replicated in 7 countries. Her "Code for Change" program (launched 2017) trains students to develop apps addressing local challenges like healthcare access and agricultural efficiency.

Ezekwoh's 2018 partnership with UNESCO expanded her program into a continental network, training over 5,000 girls by 2019. Her TEDx talk "Programming the Future" highlights her vision for tech-driven gender equality. In 2019, she co-founded the African Girls' Innovation Initiative (AGII), securing $2.3M in grants to build tech hubs in rural Nigeria.

Her work has been profiled by Forbes Africa and the BBC, and in 2020 she received the Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurship Award. Ezekwoh serves on the World Economic Forum's Global Future Council on Gender Equity and advises Microsoft's Africa Development Fund. Her advocacy led to Nigeria's 2019 policy mandating coding education in public schools.