Akinwale Goodluck named AfricaNenda Deputy CEO 

Mr. Akinwale Goodluck, former GSMA Sub-Saharan Africa Head, has been named Deputy CEO of AfricaNenda, an organisation that promotes financial inclusion across the African continent.

AfricaNenda announced that Goodluck, a Nigerian and “prominent expert in the operations and regulations ecosystem of African mobile networks” will function in the key role as the non-profit pools together a team to advance its goals of accelerating “the growth of instant and inclusive payment systems that will benefit all Africans, including the poorest and currently unbanked.”

A respected Nigerian professional and thought leader, prior to joining the GSMA, Goodluck worked across key positions within the MTN Group, where he rose to become the Corporate Services Executive at MTN Nigeria, the largest mobile network operator in the country.

At AfricaNenda, Goodluck’s primary role as Deputy CEO will be “to build the project pipeline and determine the level of effort and investment needed across the payment system and the project deployments”, the organisation says.

AfricaNenda says its team brings together experts in digital payments and leaders with regional expertise to support African institutions, governments, and the private sector.

“We believe that the growth of instant and inclusive digital payment systems is critical to achieving universal financial inclusion in Africa by 2030” AfricaNenda says on its website underscoring its plans to “address key bottlenecks around pre-project support and institutional capacity building that are currently restricting the scale-up of instant and inclusive payment systems by advising governments, regional economic communities, and private sector associations across the continent.”

About Akinwale Goodluck

Mr. Akinwale Goodluck is a prominent expert in the operations and regulations ecosystem of African mobile networks. His primary focus at AfricaNenda is to build the project pipeline and determine the level of effort and investment needed across the payment system and the project deployments. 

Prior to joining AfricaNenda, Akinwale served as Head of GSMA sub-Saharan Africa. There, he spearheaded the fulfilment of GSMA’s goals of promoting the best regulatory and policy practices for the mobile sector, and advocated for a strong environment in the mobile-payment sector to achieve universal financial inclusion. 

He has also worked with MTN where he specialized in the regulatory and policy regime surrounding ICT and mobile communications throughout Africa. 

Akinwale is an alumnus of the Lagos State University, the Nigeria Law School, and the Harvard Business School.