Navigating the Future: Challenges and Opportunities for Nigeria’s Finance & Banking Sector in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Navigating the Future: Challenges and Opportunities for Nigeria’s Finance & Banking Sector in the Age of Artificial Intelligence - as part of our "Innovation into Impact Africa Alumni Webinar Series."

• Hakeem Muhammed, Executive Director of Global Markets and Institutional Banking (FSDH
  Merchant Bank Limited)
• Yinka Daramola, Chief Executive Officer (Qucoon Limited)
• Faculty Presentation: Professor Ebehi Iyoha (Harvard Business School)

Date: Thursday, November 20
Time: 5:00-6:15pm CAT | 4:00-5:15pm WAT | 10:00-11:15am EDT

Artificial Intelligence is reshaping how business, financial services, and regulators operate and
compete across Nigeria and much of Africa. The rise of fintech, increased mobile penetration, and digital banking present opportunities for inclusive development, and complexity for regulating a dynamic market. This conversation features Harvard researchers working on documenting for the first time the nature and pace of AI adoption in Nigerian businesses and understanding how those trends compare to other private sectors across Africa and around the world. Already, Professors Khwaja and Iyoha have identified rapid changes in the way of doing business since the large scale public introduction of generative AI tools. Leaders in the Nigerian financial sector will present their own experiences and early analysis of AI as a catalyst for positive or negative disruption and development trends. This "Innovation into Impact” webinar, co-hosted by CAS Africa Office and the Harvard University Alumni Club of Nigeria, is designed for business leaders, innovators, and policymakers seeking to understand and harness the full potential of AI for their organizations and societies.

Register here: https://harvard.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_zPRo1X_ATRa2hKUn5vQlxQ

Speakers Bios

Ebehi Iyoha

Ebehi Iyoha is an Assistant Professor of Business Administration in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit at Harvard Business School, where she teaches the required MBA course The Entrepreneurial Manager, the elective Launching Global Ventures, and in Executive Education programs. She is also a Faculty Affiliate at Harvard’s Center for International Development. Her research sits at the intersection of industrial organization and international trade, examining how inter-firm networks shape productivity, innovation, and trade in both advanced and emerging economies. She combines structural and reduced-form empirical methods to study questions central to firm strategy and economic policy, including how trade policy, global value chains, and emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence reshape firm performance and industry dynamics.

Professor Iyoha’s work has received multiple awards, including the 2025 UNCTAD-AIB Award for Best Research on Investment and Development, the 2025 Motsepe Presidential Research Accelerator Fund for Africa, and the 2021 Young Economists’ Essay Award from the European Association for Research in Industrial Economics (EARIE). Her research on tariffs and trade has been featured in major media outlets including Bloomberg, The Financial Times, The New York Times, Nikkei Asia, and Fortune.

Hakeem Muhammed

Hakeem Muhammed is the Executive Director of Global Markets and Institutional Banking at FSDH Merchant Bank, where he leads the Bank’s strategy across trading, investments, and institutional client solutions. With over two decades of experience spanning financial markets, asset management, and investment banking, he has been instrumental in driving innovation and growth across Nigeria’s financial sector. Prior to FSDH, spent over 16 years in trading and sales roles, supporting Citi clients in Nigeria and Africa.

A passionate advocate for technology-driven transformation, Hakeem is focused on leveraging emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence, to deepen financial inclusion and enhance market efficiency. Hakeem holds a B.ScAccounting from Ahmadu Bello University and an MBA from the Lagos Business School. He is also a CFA charterholder, Fellow of the Chartered Certified Accountants (UK) and an alumnus of the University of Oxford’s Advanced Management and Leadership Programme.

Yinka Daramola

MBA, ACA, AAI | CEO, QUCOON Yinka Daramola is a seasoned technology and business leader with years of experience spanning banking, strategy, and digital transformation. He has held key leadership roles at Citibank and Ecobank, where he successfully led initiatives in E-Business, Finance, Strategy, and Technology. As the CEO of Qucoon Limited, Yinka leverages his expertise and passion for innovation to drive digital transformation across Africa, Europe, and North America—developing solutions that enhance efficiency, optimize operations, and accelerate growth.

The “Innovation into Impact” Africa Alumni Webinar Series is a collaboration between Harvard’s Center for African Studies and Harvard Alumni Clubs across Africa, focused on delivering cutting-edge research findings to innovators, decision-makers, and thought-leaders around the world. It builds on the lessons of Harvard Africa Office STEAM symposia to bring emerging research findings and novel agendas to audiences of applied expertise, African researchers, and practitioners. The online format of the series aims to maximize reach and impact. It showcases new ways of thinking about Africa-centered research in STEAM fields to foster engaged global conversations on scientific and theoretic advances for the public good.