Ayo Arikawe

Ayo Arikawe is the Co-Founder & CTO of ThriveAgric LTD, a fast-growing agricultural technology company that is passionate about ensuring food security and productivity in Africa by empowering smallholder farmers through its flagship proprietary products; Agricultural Operating System (AOS). Till date, ThriveAgric has partnered with several organizations to unlock over $150m financing for farmers; worked with over 500,000 smallholder farmers; produced and traded over 800,000 metric tonnes of grains; impacted over 2800 communities across 26 states in Nigeria and targeted 10,000,000 farmers in 2027. Thrive Agric also directly employs over 2,500 people with an average age of 27 and indirectly engages over 40,000 youths all over Africa. Ayo also leads the market access thematic group of the Nigeria Economic Summit Group (NESG); a notable platform for public-private dialogue in Nigeria and he serves on the Advisory board of Ukhanyo Farmer Development (a non-profit organization that helps South African farmers unlock finance). He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering from Covenant University and is an alumnus of YCombinator, Google Launchpad, and World Food Programme Accelerator. Recently he emerged winner of the 2022 Visa Everywhere Initiative (VEI) for Central Europe, Middle East Africa. In 2019, he also emerged Top 10 Jack Ma Foundation Africa Netpreneur Prize Initiative (ANPI) and is a 2019 YTech 100 recipient from the Future Awards Africa. His noteworthy achievements all started as a result of his flair for solving big problems and real life issues on a large scale.