Olalekan Adeeko: First Nigerian African Union Continental Teacher Prize Winner

Recognised by Nkuzify as Leading Teacher and Educator of the Year.

World Teachers' Day
Happy Teachers' Day from all of us at Nkuzify.

In September 2022, after fifteen years in secondary school classrooms, a teacher pointed his phone camera at himself and began to teach Microsoft Excel in Yoruba, one minute at a time.

He was already famous across Africa. But he asked himself a question many teachers never ask: what else could I do differently?

That teacher is Olalekan Adeeko.

Technology in the language of the home

His short videos show uncommon tricks in Word, Excel and PowerPoint, such as turning text into a table or making a barcode. He is a first-class computer science graduate, a data analyst and a Microsoft-certified trainer, so the content is solid. What makes it different is the language.

The first Nigerian

In December 2020, at a virtual ceremony in Addis Ababa, he became the first Nigerian to win the African Union Continental Teacher Prize, worth 10,000 dollars. At the time he taught at Baptist Boys' High School in Ogun State, and he dedicated the prize to all inspirational teachers in Nigeria and across Africa.

A teacher who never stopped learning

In 2015 he received a Teaching Excellence and Achievement Fellowship in Washington, DC. He was recognised as a Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert in Dubai in 2015 and in Singapore in 2018, became a Microsoft fellow in Paris in 2019, and in 2024 was named a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional in Africa.

Runner-up before champion

Two years before the African Union prize, he was first runner-up at the 2018 Maltina Teacher of the Year finale in Lagos, beside the winner, Olasunkanmi Opeifa.

Why Nkuzify celebrates him

Adeeko shows what teaching looks like when it follows people onto their phones, in their own language. That is exactly the kind of teaching Nkuzify wants to make normal across Africa.

Read more in Nigeria's Education Heroes: Pioneers, Prizewinners and Unsung Teachers, or make a free Thank You card for your own teacher.