Recognized among an elite international cohort for a two-decade campaign to reach Africa’s 100 million out-of-school children and reposition the continent’s economic future
Mr. Timothy Olukayode Akano, Founder/CEO of New Horizons Africa Group and one of Africa’s most decorated technopreneurs, has been named a Finalist for the 2026 Humanity Flourishing Prize, a global recognition awarded by I AM HUMANITY, the U.S.-registered nonprofit movement dedicated to the long-term flourishing of humanity and life on Earth.
The nomination places Mr. Akano among what organizers describe as “an extraordinary group of nominees working across many countries and fields of endeavor,” selected for contributions making a measurable difference in the lives of people, communities, and the world, and winners will be announced globally on October 24, 2026, which is Humanity Day. It is a celebration that expanded to 53 countries as at 2025.
“Being named a Finalist is itself a recognition of contribution to humanity flourishing,” organizers told Mr. Akano in notifying him of his selection. “This nomination is not about me. It is a spotlight on 100 million children the world has not yet found a way to reach, and proof that we already know how,” Mr. Akano said, reacting to the news.
A Career Built Around One Conviction
For more than two decades, Mr. Akano has operated on a single premise: human potential should never be wasted because of poverty, disability, lack of access to education, or the circumstances of one’s birth. That conviction has translated into concrete, measurable interventions across Nigeria and the African continent, most urgently, into the lives of the 100 million children currently out of school across Africa, a crisis Mr. Akano has built his life’s work around solving.
In 2026, Mr. Akano launched the Almajiri-to-Tech Empowerment Scheme, enrolling 21 Almajiri children, among Nigeria’s most visible faces of childhood vulnerability in structured technology training. Beyond instruction, the program provided daily meals, transportation, clothing, tools, and a safe learning environment throughout the six-month curriculum. On graduation, rather than releasing the children back to the streets, Mr. Akano built a dedicated workshop where the graduates now work, and earn, a philosophy rooted in his belief that young people routinely treated as social problems can instead become net economic contributors when society invests in their capacity. The initiative has since grown into the Out-of-School-Almajiri-Vulnerable Children-to-Tech Foundation.
His humanitarian reach extends further. Through the Tim Akano Foundation, he returned to Baptist Day School, Oluponna, the primary school he attended as a child in Osun State between 1972 and 1978 and adopted it outright, providing fencing, borehole water, toilets, uniforms, and learning materials for the 300 pupils walking the same halls he once did.
Also, through his support of the Federal School of the Blind, Oshodi, Lagos, he computerized the institution, provided internet access, and sponsored blind ICT instructor Olayinka Akinbiyi to teach fellow visually impaired students free of charge, a conviction, in Mr. Akano’s own words, that disability should never be grounds for exclusion from the digital economy, and that technology should remove barriers rather than create new ones.
Africa’s average income per person today stands at roughly $2,370 a year. Mr. Akano’s central thesis now central to his Humanity Flourishing Prize candidacy is that equipping Africa’s excluded youth at scale could move that figure toward $10,000 per person, lifting the continent from the World Bank’s lower-income tiers into its upper-middle-income band.
For a movement built around education, economics, communal well-being, and environment as the four pillars of human flourishing, Mr. Akano’s model speaks directly to at least two of those dimensions at the continental scale.
Beyond his humanitarian portfolio, Mr. Akano serves as President of One Africa Initiatives and One Africa Academy, uniting African intellectuals, professionals, and diaspora leaders around technological, civic, and economic development for the continent and empowering youths across Africa with life skills like entrepreneurship, critical thinking and good citizenship among others.
He is also the pioneering convener of the World Cyber Security Conference and has championed semiconductor knowledge-transfer partnerships between African stakeholders and international partners, including the Taiwanese government and Taipei University work aimed at positioning Africa, for the first time, inside the $1 trillion global semiconductor economy.
He has received more than 350 national, continental, and international awards recognizing his contributions to youth empowerment, education, leadership, technology development, and humanitarian service, spanning sectors from business and education to philanthropy and public leadership. In 2026, TOP 10 MAGAZINE named him Africa’s Most Awarded Personality.
Mr. Akano earned a B.Sc. (Hons) in International Relations from Obafemi Awolowo University (1983–1987). He later furthered his executive education at Lagos Business School, WITS University in Johannesburg, and the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) in Geneva.
Before founding New Horizons, Mr. Akano spent nearly two decades in senior corporate roles spanning marketing, sales, strategic planning, media relations, supply chain management, production, and general management at Unilever, DEBIS Computers, Dunlop, and the Nigerian Bottling Company/Coca-Cola. At Nigerian Bottling Company, he rose to Senior Executive Manager, won the 2001 North America & West Africa Division President’s Award in the Silver category, and was selected as one of Coca-Cola’s Global 50 Future World Leaders, a corporate foundation that later gave his humanitarian work institutional discipline at continental scale.
That combination of corporate rigour and grassroots conviction has made Mr. Akano a sought-after voice well beyond Nigeria’s borders. He is a public intellectual whose commentary has reached senior African heads of state, and a Fellow of several professional bodies, including the Nigeria Computer Society, Nigeria Institute of Public Relations, Nigeria Institute of Entrepreneurship, Nigeria Institute of Courier and Logistics and the Institute of Information Management. He sits on the boards of multiple institutions across the technology, education, and development sectors.
Founded by Mr. Akano in 2005, New Horizons Africa Group is Africa’s largest ICT training institution, with more than two decades of continuous operation across Nigeria and the wider continent. The organization has pioneered the integration of certification-based ICT training into Nigeria’s education and academic curriculum, and has since produced more than two million certified technology experts. Annually, close to 20,000 students, youths, and National Youth Service Corps members receive ICT scholarships through the institution, while more than 150,000 additional students receive ICT certification training each year through partnerships spanning universities, secondary schools, corporations, and public institutions. Its most recent expansion includes an Artificial Intelligence laboratory model deployed in partner schools, and a Semiconductor Knowledge Transfer partnership with the Taiwanese government and Taipei University, positioning Africa to participate for the first time in the global semiconductor economy.
New Horizons operates alongside a family of mission-driven organizations founded by Mr. Akano, including the Tim Akano Foundation, One Africa Initiatives, and the Out-of-School-Almajiri-Vulnerable Children-to-Tech Foundation.
I AM HUMANITY was
Founded in 2020 and registered as a U.S. nonprofit organisation. I AM HUMANITY is a global movement built around four dimensions of human flourishing which includes education and cognition, economics, communal well-being, and the environment. Its mission is to foster global awareness and empower individuals and institutions to act on behalf of humanity’s long-term future. Its annual Humanity Day celebration expanded to 53 countries in 2025, and the Humanity Flourishing Prize recognizes individuals whose work helps humanity move from merely reacting to global challenges toward becoming a creative, collaborative, world-building force.