Ayantola Alayande

Christian, Social entrepreneur, Student, Writer/Editor

Growing up in the rural community of Apaara in Oyo Nigeria (a community with ‘locational’ disadvantages) impelled me to develop strong passion in accelerating grassroots development by employing the tools of community mobilization, dialogue and advocacy, to create social cohesion and bring about equity in social services and opportunities between young people in urban and marginalized areas. This narrative led to my voyage into the impact-driven space, starting first with my own self-development, I later moved on to co-found other youth-led organisations focused on youth leadership, civic education, youth engagement and youth skills development. As the years rolled by, I have grown my passion by maximizing every platform available to me to drive conversations that promote social development. This passion has reflected in my engagements in social development driven by diversity of people (team) became a propeller for me to organize initiatives and projects that directly impact social development. This has led me to work (and volunteer) with over 7 non-profit organisations across Africa; building a cross-border relationship. I am currently a Program Officer with JA Nigeria – a part of JA Worlwide; the world’s oldest and largest non-profit economic education organisation. I am currently on the MPP Program at the KDI School, with concentration in Public Finance and Development

Fostering inclusive global development through the power of evidence and data.

We are more connected in more ways than we can imagine.

Data Analysis, Policy Analysis, Product Development, Program Management, Research

Attending the TEDX UI 2017 was a major inspiration for me to come up with the idea of a TEDx KDI School. When I got to KDI School, I was amazed at the quality, quantity and diversity of discourses being rolled out from time to time at the Institute and the School, and I thought that holding an event such as the TEDx is an effective way to amplify these thoughts on a platform that transcends the institution. More so, the fact that despite having a rich resource of ideas and talks for changing the world (being a policy school), the KDI School has never held a TEDx event, motivated me the more to want to organize the pioneer TEDx event, in the hope that we will be able to hold a larger event next year.