Dr. Omobola Olubusola Johnson

Dr. Omobola Olubusola Johnson, born on June 28, 1963, is one of Nigeria’s most accomplished women, a technocrat, engineer, investor, and trailblazer who has consistently broken barriers across multiple sectors. She received her early education at the International School, Ibadan, before earning a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Manchester, a Master’s in Digital Electronics from King’s College London, and a Doctorate in Business Administration from Cranfield University.

She began her professional career in 1985 at Arthur Andersen’s Management Information Consulting division, where she gained experience working with the banking sector, and rose steadily through the ranks to become Country Managing Director of Accenture Nigeria, a position she held for five years before taking early retirement in 2010 to pursue broader interests.

In 2011, she was appointed Nigeria’s first-ever Minister of Communication Technology under President Goodluck Jonathan, a role in which she oversaw the launch of the NigComSat-IR Satellite, deployed over 700 computers to secondary schools, connected 193 tertiary institutions to the internet, and presented the National Broadband Plan for 2013 to 2018. During her four-year tenure, internet penetration in Nigeria nearly doubled, growing from 24 percent to 43 percent of the population.

Beyond government, Dr. Johnson co-founded WIMBIZ (Women in Management, Business and Public Service) in 2001, a non-governmental organization dedicated to elevating women’s status and influence in Nigeria’s public and private sectors. She currently serves as a Senior Partner at TLcom Capital, a venture capital firm focused on technology companies in Sub-Saharan Africa. She also sits on the boards of MTN Nigeria, Custodian Investments, Guinness Nigeria, Liquid Telecom Holdings, and the Nigeria University of Technology and Management (NUTM), and in 2021 became the first female Chair of the Guinness Nigeria Plc board. She is Honorary Chair of the Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI), a board member of the World Wide Web Foundation, a Trustee of the World Economic Forum’s Future of the Internet Initiative, and a Fellow of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.

She married into the prominent Johnson family; her father-in-law was the late Brigadier Mobolaji Johnson, the first military governor of Lagos State. She is married with children.