Meet MARKETING EDGE Summit & Awards panelist – Adebola Williams
Adebola Williams is the co-founder and Group CEO of RED | For Africa, the continent’s leading one-stop storytelling shop with the largest portfolio of youth-focused media brands including Red Media Africa, StateCraft Inc., The Future Awards Africa, and Y!/YNaija.com.
A pioneer at the intersection of media, democracy, and social change, Adebola has been profiled by Forbes and CNN as the man who helped elect a trifecta of Presidents in Africa. His journey in media and television began in the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) with advocacy for youth and good governance. He later became presenter for Economy Watch at 17 and producer of Nigeria International which aired in Nigeria, the US and Europe at 19.
In the last 18 years, he has used storytelling and marketing to shape perceptions and ultimately outcomes.
Adebola was the co-founder of Enough is Enough (EiE), Nigeria’s foremost civic participation platform and a premier voice for young people on politics. He later resigned as the board chairman to steer the rebranding of the current Nigerian president, Muhammadu Buhari through a re-aligned national discourse and optimized media engagement, changing longstanding perceptions, and swaying the elections.
Adebola and his team’s stellar storytelling skills also helped Ghana’s opposition candidate Nana Akufo-Addo win the presidency on his third attempt. They proceeded to Francophone Africa where he also served President Macky Sall of Senegal to extend his presidency into a second term. Adebola constantly consults in different regions on the continent.
His work in corporate marketing and communication across different sectors from oil and gas to banking, FMCG to HNI management has earned him and Red Media Africa several awards on the continent including SABRE, LaPriga, Marketing Edge, Young Cannes and the C4F Marketing awards in Davos.
A sought after thought leader, he has delivered keynote speeches from several Ivy League schools including Harvard, Columbia, Yale, and Oxford University to his address during the Obama Summit which went viral and earned a rare standing ovation from the former US President, Barack Obama.
In 2017, Adebola was named The African Young Achiever by EMYGhana and recognised as one of the 100 Most Influential People of African Descent under the United Nations international decade for people of African descent.
A Mandela Washington Fellow, British Council global change-maker and Oxford Business School fellow, Adebola has been named by Forbes as one of Africa’s best entrepreneurs under 30 and is a recipient of the CNBC Young Business Leader of the Year award. In 2018, he was bestowed Marketing Edge Innovative Leader in PR and Image Management award, and awarded an Archbishop Desmond Tutu Fellowship in South Africa and Oxford.
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