Dapo Olagunju is head of West Africa at JP Morgan. In this capacity, he represents J.P. Morgan’s global platform to clients, regulators and other stakeholders in the region. Prior to joining J.P. Morgan, he was a General Manager at Access Bank Plc where he oversaw the Financial Markets Division of the bank. He was a member of the bank'sDigital Council which had overall responsibility for the bank's digital strategy, approved partnership with fintech companies and monitored the implementation of digital initiatives He was, at different times, a consultant on peacekeeping financing at the United Nations in New York and Chief Dealer at Investment Banking & Trust Company Limited (now Stanbic IBTC Bank Plc, a member of the Standard Bank Group). He was also co-founder of 234Give.com – an online fundraising platform.

A fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria and an Honorary Senior Member of the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria, Dapo received his MBA from the University of Oxford. As part of its commitment to helping people across the globe better manage their financial lives and become financially healthy, JPMorgan Chase supports the Catalyst Fund, an initiative that brings together impact investors, including Accion, Grey Ghost, Omidyar Network and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to promote breakthrough innovations that can advance financial health globally. Catalyst offers funding and mentorship to pre-investable financial inclusion social entrepreneurs in emerging global markets.

Chinasa T. Okolo, Ph.D., is a Fellow at The Brookings Institution and a recent Computer Science Ph.D. graduate from Cornell University. Her research focuses on AI governance in the Global South, datafication and algorithmic marginalization, and the future of data work. Dr. Okolo has been recognized as one of the world’s most influential people in AI by TIME Magazine, a global top Futurist in recognition of the United Nations’ International Decade for People of African Descent, and one of 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics™. In addition to her work at Brookings, Dr. Okolo also serves as a Drafting Member of the Nigerian National AI Strategy, a Consulting Expert to the African Union AI Continental Strategy, an Expert Contributing Writer to the International Scientific Report on Advanced AI Safety, and the Editor-in-Chief of ACM SIGCAS Computers and Society. Her research has been covered widely in media outlets and published at top-tier venues in human-computer interaction and sociotechnical computing.

Dr. Mulang' Onando is deeply passionate about the transformative potential of AI to address key human challenges, including enhancing decision-making, driving strategic development, and reducing global inequalities. Currently, Dr. Mulang' serves as a Research Scientist and Technical Lead at IBM Research - Africa, where he has spearheaded a variety of AI-driven solutions across numerous fields. His notable contributions include cutting-edge AI methodologies for rapid scientific discovery, particularly in healthcare, and the application of Foundation Models to biomedical and clinical health solutions. He has also explored Generative AI for text-to-formal query conversion and hybrid mechanistic modeling. Dr. Mulang’s expertise extends to traditional machine learning, where he has utilized statistical methods for subgroup analysis, and post-discovery analysis, and applied subset scanning and stratification to identify anomalous care patterns in health records. Before joining IBM, Dr. Mulang' worked as a Research Scientist at the Fraunhofer Institute for Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems (IAIS) in Bonn and the Institute for Applied Informatics (InfAI) in Leipzig, Germany. There, he contributed to EU projects focusing on Natural Language Processing (NLP) and knowledge graphs. Dr. Mulang' holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Bonn, Germany, where his research focused on bridging the gap between the NLP and Semantic Web communities. An innovator at heart, Dr. Mulang' has filed eight patents at IBM and has been recognized with the Outstanding Technical Achievement Award (OTAA) for his work on the Healthcare Delivery Pattern Discovery Toolkit. His passion for mentorship traces back to his time at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT), where he taught and mentored computer science and IT students. This commitment continues through his initiative, Zerotha Research, which provides free academic and supervisory guidance to students and researchers from underserved regions.

Dr. Segun Aina OFR is a distinguished global banking leader, recognized for his contributions to the ntech ecosystem and his visionary approach. With over three decades of experience in banking, including six years as MD/CEO, Dr. Aina has made signicant impacts in the industry. He has served as President of the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria and the West African Bankers Association Nigeria Chapter, and as the Pioneer Chairman   of   the   Global   Banking   Education   Standards   Board   (GBEStB). Currently,   he   holds   board   positions   across   various   sectors,   including ntech, banking, insurance, agriculture, and technology. Dr. Aina is the President of the Africa Fintech Network and the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Fintech Association of Nigeria (FintechNGR). He has played a pivotal role in incubating several successful ntech start-ups and is a member   of   the   UK-Africa   Fintech  Investment   Group,   a   UK   Government initiative.

Salomey Afua Addo, is a third year PhD student at the University of Cambridge, England. Her PhD research is centred on designing contextual learning interventions for the teaching and learning of AI concepts in high schools in Ghana, Africa. She recently collaborated with her research supervisor, Sue Sentance, alongside other education researchers and teachers  to co-create a guide for integrating Generative AI tools for teaching computing in schools. Prior to doing her PhD studies in AI education, Salomey worked as a resource developer and educator for a data literacy program for university students at the Leuphana University, Germany. She has volunteered as the head of data team at the NLP Ghana organisation and completed a master’s thesis on NLP techniques in 2019.

Dr. Afaf Taik is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at Mila- Quebec AI Institute and Université deMontréal, working on the intersection of fairness and privacy in machine learning. She obtaineda PhD in Electrical engineering in 2022 from Université de Sherbrooke, where she worked onproblems related to distributed machine learning algorithms. Before that, she obtained a DESSfrom Université de Sherbrooke (2018), and a software engineering degree from ENSIAS, Rabat,Morocco (2018).Afaf received multiple awards and recognitions for her work, including Claire DesChênes (2023)and FRQNT (2024) postdoctoral fellowships and Best paper award at IEEE LCN 2021

Odemuno Ogelohwohor is a Senior Associate Data Scientist in the Artificial Intelligence Hub at the Bank of New York (BNY). In the AI Hub, she leverages state-of-the-art Large Language Models (LLMs) to deliver innovative solutions for diverse client needs. She holds an M.Sc. in Artificial Intelligence and Innovation from Carnegie Mellon University and a B.Sc. In Electrical Engineering with a focus on Machine Learning and Controls from University of California, San Diego. Muno has worked with global companies such as Apple, Microsoft, Bosch, Philips, Ford and Chevron, on projects spanning synthetic data generation, data extraction, natural language understanding, and AI strategy for digital transformation. Her work focuses on integrating AI systems, especially Generative AI, into new business models, addressing complex issues around trust, safety, digital literacy, and regulation. 

Her work has also covered using AI methods to analyze investment data to gather insights that guide strategic investments and promote sustainable growth in emerging markets, with applications that can support investing in the African economy.

Edith Luhanga joined CMU-Africa as a postdoctoral researcher in June 2021 and transitioned to assistant research professor in September 2022. Prior to that, she was a lecturer at the Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology in Tanzania (NM-AIST). She holds a Ph.D. in information science from Nara Institute of Science and Technology in Japan, an MSc in advanced computing science, and a BEng (Hons) in electronic and computer engineering from the University of Nottingham, UK.

Luhanga’s research focuses on designing theory-based behavior change systems that consider people’s personal and socio-cultural contexts, through a human-centered approach. Her main domains of interest are health (particularly nutrition, maternal and child health, and disabilities management), financial inclusion, and privacy and security. 

She was the deputy project leader for a 10-year project on capacity building through digital technologies at NM-AIST and served as Tanzania’s representative to the UNESCO intergovernmental committee on drafting recommendations on the ethics of artificial intelligence in 2021.

I am a postdoctoral scholar at Carnegie Mellon University Africa. Starting in January 2026, I will be an assistant professor at UC San Diego, jointly appointed in the School of Global Policy and Strategy and the Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute. My research interests are in machine learning and development economics, with a focus on analyzing large digital traces to inform social protection policy. I received my PhD from the UC Berkeley School of Information, where I was advised by Joshua Blumenstock. I also hold an MS (UC Berkeley) and BA (Harvard) in computer science.

Ganesh Mani is Distinguished Service Professor of Innovation Practice and Director of Collaborative AI at Tepper; he is also an adjunct faculty member at Software and Societal Systems (S3D, part of SCS). Ganesh has worked on scaling human expertise via AI in many milieus. He co-founded Advanced Investment Technology (one of the earliest start-ups to combine investment management and machine learning), which was acquired by State Street Corporation, creating its Advanced Research Center for helping manage multibillion-dollar institutional portfolios. Ganesh has contributed to other AI start-ups, including an entity that is now part of Nasdaq-listed iCAD, employing machine learning techniques for early cancer detection. Ganesh has an MBA in finance, a PhD in AI from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a BTech in Computer Science from IIT-Bombay. He is past-President and long-term board member of TiE's Pittsburgh chapter, co-MD of TiE Pittsburgh Angels; and on the advisory board of the FDP Institute as well as journals such as Financial Data Science and Patterns. Ganesh’s work has been patented, featured in a Barron’s cover story and published in leading academic journals and popular opinion pages. He has taught courses spanning Experiential Learning (incl. capstone projects) for Tepper MSBA students and AI Grand Challenges (overlapping with AI and Emerging Economies) for the CMU Africa and Qatar students.