Founder · Board Director · Speaker
Mayowa Adeosun
Founder and CEO of Assetrica, governance infrastructure for African real asset capital markets. Board director at Sycamore and Bedrock Residencies. Speaker and writer on capital, governance and technology in African markets.
Founder & CEO, Assetrica
Fifteen years across Central Bank of Nigeria, Leadway Assurance, Accenture and Sycamore
Non-executive director on two boards.
SPEAKING
Ideas for building trusted African markets.
Keynote
Panel
Fireside Chat
Workshop
Executive briefing
Who I am
Building institutions for the next chapter of African growth
I’ve sat in three seats. At Leadway Assurance I priced the risk, underwriting whether contractors and counterparties would deliver before a guarantee was issued. At Sycamore, which I co-founded, I took the risk, building a regulated financial services group and running its operations and finance for seven years. At Assetrica I record it: an independent, verifiable record of every mandate, so that institutional capital can move into African real assets on evidence rather than on trust alone. Each seat taught me what the next one needed. I also sit on the boards of Sycamore and Bedrock Residencies, and I speak and write for the institutions, builders and diaspora professionals deciding whether Africa is worth their capital and their careers.
Mission
To build institutions that let Nigeria and the wider continent grow, and to strengthen the ones already standing, as a director, adviser or collaborator, wherever a perspective shaped on three continents and in three very different seats is useful. And to bridge the diaspora to that work, so that Africans at home and abroad are prepared for the opportunity in front of them and able to contribute to it.
Vision
Institutions that Nigerians and Africans born and raised here are proud to work in: that pay well, take their talent seriously, and give them room to do groundbreaking work without leaving for the West to find a fulfilling career. Institutions strong enough to last, so that they keep creating opportunity for people at home and abroad. And, in time, an Africa that the world’s best talent chooses, as the West has been chosen for a century: a place to build a life and a career rather than a posting to endure. I want to be one of the people building those institutions, and to make the case loudly enough that others do the same.
Outlook
Where I think this is going
Nigeria has leapfrogged before. It happened in telecommunications and in banking, and it’s beginning in energy as new refining capacity comes online. I remember when most Nigerians wouldn’t type their card details into anything online. Today nobody thinks twice, because trust was built into the system, and whole industries grew on top of it. I think the next one is happening now. AI is changing how work is done everywhere, and the continent is positioned to take a larger share of that value chain than it has in any previous shift, through its people, through data that reflects African realities, and through the energy and natural resources that data centres and the industries around them will need.
The frontier market story has been told for twenty years. What’s different is that the infrastructure is finally being built, and it’s being built here. I don’t want Nigerians, Africans or the diaspora to watch it happen from the outside. If you’re working in the West, work hard, learn everything you can, and stay open to the moment when your experience is needed here. That moment is closer than it looks.
Principles
What I work by
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Stay optimistic.
I moved to Nigeria in 2010 with no network, no plan and a lot of people telling me it was a step backwards. Optimism was all I had going in, and it turned out to be enough to start. It still is.
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Decide.
The path forward is rarely clear. Leaving Atlanta, starting Sycamore, rebuilding Assetrica from its first version: none of those decisions felt certain when I made them. Waiting for certainty is its own decision, and usually the worse one.
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Stay disciplined.
Underwriting taught me that a promise is made of details: every clause read, every document checked, every risk priced before anything is signed. The institutions that last are the ones that keep doing that unglamorous work after the excitement has worn off.
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Look around the corner.
The answer is rarely in front of you. Assetrica came from noticing that a housing price problem was actually a trust problem, and that the judgement I’d built as an underwriter was the missing piece. Every role I’ve held has turned out to be preparation for one I couldn’t yet see.
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Collaborate.
Nothing I’m proud of was built alone. I co-founded two companies, represented my business school at Yale with three classmates on an idea we built together, and run Assetrica as a small team that works as one. Bright, committed people, working together, is the whole method.
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Keep learning.
Wisdom lives in lived experience, mine and other people’s. The hundred files at Leadway were the first time I was handed a problem with no instructions, and they taught me that most of the work worth doing arrives that way. I’ve treated every room since as a chance to learn.
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