As head of the BIG Portal unit at GEM (Growth & Employment), $160M World Bank funded programme, with the key objective to increase firm growth and employment in participating firms (MSMEs) in Nigeria.  The project is aimed at job creation and increased non-oil growth in specific high potential value chain sectors, such as ICT, Construction, Entertainment, Hospitality & Tourism and Agro Processing/Light Manufacturing. My responsibilities include managing the design, development and implementation of the BIG Portal (Currently with 90,000 MSME Applications), SME dashboards for grant applications, e-Learning Management System and the Business Development Marketplace (BDMP). I am also responsible for coordinating input, managing the contract and relationships with delivery partners such as EDC, PwC and KPMG.  The $160m fund will support and give grants to 4,000 MSMEs and create 100,000 jobs within 5 years.

Prior to working in international development, I gained invaluable experience managing complex projects & programmes in the private sector both in Nigeria and Europe. From 2013 to 2016, I was the Chief Operations Officer for Anchor Telecoms, whose core operations were to design and build telecoms infrastructure for clients including MTN, Huawei and Globacom Group. I was responsible for all Anchor’s operations, real estate management, service delivery issues, programmes and projects within Africa.

From October 2010 to August 2012, I was a Business Project Manager at Lloyds Banking Group UK on various short-term assignments. Responsibilities included managing the build and delivery of a £2M integrated strategic data warehouse for the PPI Programme (Payment Protection Insurance), which was initiated to provide accurate analysis, draw cradle-to-grave information about a customer’s PPI policy and to support the consolidation of data from disparate sources leading to quick, consistent, efficient & informed decision making.

 From February 2009 to September 2010, I was the Country Manager & Programme Manager for CSG International, onsite at MTN Nigeria. As Country Manager I was responsible for the service delivery and management of the $2M Application Management Services (AMS) contract for all CSG’s products (InterConnect, InterMediate & SingleView Convergent Billing) at MTN Nigeria. I also managed the successful implementation of the $1M hardware migration on Intermediate (Mediation Platform) at MTN Nigeria.

 From October 1997 to October 2008, I was a Project Management Consultant, on various short-term assignments with organisations such as Dell, Vodafone, T-Mobile, British Telecom, BP, Hedra Limited and Royal Bank of Scotland. Certified PRINCE 2 PRACTITIONER with over 20 year’s project & programme management experience.