Before Bosun Tijani was responsible for a ministry, he worked at an online food-delivery business in Lagos. DeliveryKing had a plausible idea and an awkward problem: too few customers could get online. The business eventually closed. An attractive service still needed a market that could reach it. Years later, as Nigeria’s Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, Tijani would be dealing with that gap on a national scale.
There is a useful way to read his career through the things around an invention. Someone has to provide a connection, a place to learn, a collaborator, a route to customers. Tijani helped create one such setting at Co-Creation Hub in Yaba. Public office has given him responsibility for some of the systems beyond its doors. The distance between those jobs is measured in institutions as much as kilometres.
A bakery, then a business too early
His childhood offered a rather more tangible introduction to making things. Tijani grew up in a family of bakers in Agege, Lagos. In a public account of those years, he recalled a home attached to the bakery, mornings with the smell of bread and afternoons spent shaping dough into animals. When the brick oven needed work, the family made bricks themselves. Experimentation had flour on its hands.
He has described that environment as one where curiosity was encouraged. The detail gives his later interest in innovation spaces a human scale. A place where you can try something, with materials and other people nearby, is an ordinary childhood pleasure. Making that kind of opportunity available to strangers is a more demanding organisational project.
An economist walks into a computer lab
Tijani’s education crossed the boundaries his work would later cross. At the University of Jos, he studied for a diploma in computer science and then a degree in economics, graduating with the latter in 2002. A master’s in information systems and management at Warwick followed in 2007. He completed a doctorate in innovation and economic development at Leicester in 2023.
Computer science concerns what a system can do. Economics asks about resources, incentives and choices. Information systems brings organisations into the picture. His doctoral work examined innovation through networks, including how developing countries adopt and adapt new ideas. Those subjects sit comfortably beside a career spent trying to connect people who possess different parts of a solution.
Before CcHUB, he worked with Hewlett-Packard and the International Trade Centre, and became European Innovation Manager at Pera Innovation Network. His work included helping small enterprises use technology and coordinating organisations concerned with turning research into practical applications. The journey took him through European and African institutions before the hub in Lagos gave that experience a local home.
A room with more than desks
In 2010, Tijani and Femi Longe co-founded CcHUB. Its organising idea was to bring people from different walks of life together around social problems. Technologists could meet entrepreneurs, investors and public institutions. A shared workspace was part of the arrangement; so were the relationships and support that could help a venture move beyond an interesting conversation.
By the time Tijani joined Stanford’s 2014 Draper Hills fellowship, his work had included advising European universities on research funding and managing the European Commission-backed VALOR project. Knowledge sharing and collaborative work were recurring interests. By then, convening people around useful knowledge had become a recurring occupation.
The money and attention came through particular relationships. In 2012, the Tony Elumelu Foundation invested $100,000 in CcHUB. In August 2016, Tijani hosted Mark Zuckerberg during the Facebook founder’s first visit to Nigeria. A famous visitor made an easy photograph. The earlier backing helped support a place worth visiting.
The network gets a passport
The geographical ambitions became concrete in 2019. CcHUB opened a Design Lab in Kigali in February, adding a setting for design and research. In September it acquired Nairobi’s iHub for an undisclosed sum. Tijani became chief executive across both locations. The deal joined communities in West and East Africa under a broader support structure.
The acquisition announcement included an instructive detail: iHub would keep its name and senior management structure. Its team would join CcHUB’s central support and strategy network, with additional hires planned in areas including programme management and community support. Expansion involved keeping a local identity while sharing more organisational capacity.
That arrangement helps explain the kind of operator Tijani had become. The work depended on people already building things, and on giving them useful reasons to belong to something larger. The responsibilities of an incubator include a good deal of patient coordination. Even a network with an international map needs somebody to make the next introduction and keep the programme running.
The other side of the lectern
On 21 August 2023, Tijani took office in President Bola Tinubu’s cabinet. The transition carried political friction. Critical posts from his X account resurfaced during his ministerial screening. The entrepreneur who had publicly criticised officials now had to answer questions as a prospective official himself.
He has described government as a continuation of his work in the startup ecosystem. The attraction, in his account, was the chance to act at a scale that a private organisation could struggle to reach. Schools offered a practical example: an education venture still encounters the public institutions responsible for much of the system.
That explanation also sets a demanding standard. A minister’s constituency includes people who never chose to join a technology community. Programmes must work across regions, agencies and differing levels of access. A founder can assemble a willing circle. Public administration inherits a much wider set of needs, alongside procedures that require decisions to be examined and explained.
A large number, a practical syllabus
The 3 Million Technical Talent programme, usually shortened to 3MTT, puts a workforce ambition in its name. Its first phase began in December 2023 with 30,000 fellows selected across all 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory. The programme combined self-paced online courses with applied learning sessions delivered through partner organisations.
Its initial subjects included software development, cybersecurity, data analysis, product management, animation and game development. That breadth is useful to remember when the conversation narrows to artificial intelligence. A digital economy needs several kinds of work done well, including the testing, design and maintenance that rarely supplies a dramatic stage demonstration.
“We may not have the compute and infrastructure, but we do have the talent.”
Bosun Tijani, 2025
In 2025, Tijani was included in TIME’s list of influential people in AI. His argument for Nigeria’s participation placed technical talent alongside the need for infrastructure. It is an ambition with several dependencies. Training has to connect to opportunities where skills are used and developed. A course can begin that process; employment, useful projects and continued practice have to carry it further.
His foundation’s second AI fellowship cohort adds a smaller setting to the picture. Its published programme listed Abeokuta and Kano, with separate tracks for AI engineering and applications and a September 2026 start. The distinction is practical: building and operating models requires different work from integrating them into services that people can use.
The unglamorous work underneath
Project BRIDGE addresses the connectivity side of the agenda. The ministry describes a plan to deploy at least 90,000 kilometres of fibre through a public-private structure, with an estimated implementation cost of $2 billion. Those figures describe the intended build. They should be read as commitments to deliver, with construction and usable connections supplying the eventual test.
Planned fibre deployment
Project BRIDGE
Planned telecom sites
NUCAP
A different part of the connectivity work produced a visible milestone on 16 October 2026. Tijani joined Deputy Speaker Benjamin Kalu in Bende, Abia State, to commission the first tower under the Nigeria Universal Communication Access Project. The wider programme aims to deploy 3,700 telecommunications sites for communities with limited or absent service.
At the event, the practical examples included farmers contacting buyers and traders completing transactions. Tijani also asked community leaders and residents to protect the infrastructure. It is a suitably grounded addition to a digital policy speech: equipment installed in a place needs people in that place to help keep it working.
An address for the next idea
His international work has continued. Tijani chaired the 2026 ITU Council session, part of the machinery through which governments coordinate telecommunications policy. In September, however, he withdrew from the separate contest for ITU deputy secretary-general. He said he wanted to concentrate on Nigeria’s digital transformation agenda. The distinction matters: the council chairmanship and the election were different responsibilities.
By October, another domestic initiative offered an unexpected echo of his early career. Following the launch of a national digital alphanumeric postcode system, the ministry announced a showcase for developers building on it. Delivery and logistics were among the proposed uses, alongside commerce and payments. The first sessions were scheduled for late October and November.
“The value of infrastructure is ultimately measured by what people can build with it.”
Bosun Tijani, October 2026
That is a useful measure to apply to the whole career. The bakery gave a child room to experiment. CcHUB gave collaborators a place to meet. The ministry’s plans now include fibre, training and addressing systems. Each invites the same practical examination: who can use it, what can they make, and does it work when they need it? For someone who once worked in online food delivery, an address that helps a customer receive something is a pleasingly concrete place to begin.