Dr. Oluwatosin Akande is Lead Consultant & Founder of RED Universal Consulting where she provides strategic leadership and oversight. She is a political scientist, policy analyst, development economist, and clean energy expert with work experience that spans the U.S., U.K., and Nigerian governance and economic development sectors. This includes multiple development project work-experience with local, state, federal government and multi-lateral institutions. Her consulting-assignments includes work with UK Agency for International Development (FCDO / UKAID / DFID), European Union (EU), United Nations Development Program (UNDP), and the World Bank (WB).
Tosin started her international career with the City of Baltimore Department of Housing & Community Development working in the Asset-Management office, where she was responsible for the disposition, management, as well as the statistical tracking of city-owned property. Deepening her experience in asset-management, she segued into the Water-Engineering sector while working for Thames Water in London, UK. There she managed the utilities pipes, mains, and reservoir-assets, assessing the-firm's key performance indicators (KPI's) with respect to company's response times on reduced leakages, bursts, customer-flooding, and water-quality for City of London residents. After her exposure overseas, Tosin decided to chase her blue flame, purpose, and passion for national transformation and development in Nigeria. She worked both in the Banking Supervision and Risk Management departments of the Central Bank of Nigeria. As a Risk Analyst, her work focused on macro-prudential regulation in addition to identifying and mitigating credit, market, operational, and concentration risks in Nigeria's monetary financial system.
To further buttress her economic development focus, Tosin worked as the Monitoring & Evaluation Lead for World Bank/DFID private-sector development project (Growth & Employment in States -- GEMS 2). The project which leveraged a Making Markets Work for the Poor (M4P analytic approach) to creating jobs was aimed at increasing construction-firm productivity, turnover-earnings, and employment for artisans, laborers, and women in Nigeria’s Construction & Real Estate Sector across four States -- Lagos, Abuja, Kano, & Kaduna. She also worked as a Market Analyst & Intervention Lead at UKAID Business Innovation Facility--BIF 2, which applied inclusive-business principles to rectify market-inefficiencies in high-growth agricultural value-chains geared at expanding opportunities for people at the base of the economic-pyramid (BoP) so that producers, workers, and suppliers can improve incomes/livelihoods, while simultaneously spurring balanced-growth and inclusive-development.
To cement her career in development, deconstruct root-causes of lingering problems plaguing Nigeria's power sector (a pivotal vertical for other vectors of the nation's economy), Tosin took up PhD studies to decipher an enduring solution. Her research therefore explored the nexus between energy for productive uses, green-growth theory and its intersectionality with industrialization, economic-growth, and development. In specificity, her specialist inquiry into how solar-voltaic and carbon-neutral development investigated how Nigeria could circumvent the capital-intensiveness of its inefficient grid-networks; diversify its energy mix; and exponentially augment power supply using solar to boost nano-ventures, SME, and large-enterprise manufacturing output, gross revenues, profits, and enterprise competitiveness in the nation. She therefore desires and is committed to engaging stakeholders who are passionate about broadening energy access through Solar Renewable-Energy Initiatives, Deployment, and Ideations, including the design of other clean-energy-models and electricity-generation solutions in Nigeria.
Academically, Tosin, holds B.A Honors dual-degrees in Governance & Public Policy from Syracuse University in New York, USA and a M.Sc. Honors degree in Development Studies from the London School of Economics in London, UK. She earned her Doctor of Philosophy Degree from the University of Massachusetts in Global Studies with a concentration in Socio-Economic Development.
Civically, Tosin sits on the boards of the beverage-enterprise Waterboy, the architectural-firm MASTERMiNDS-DESiGN, and the clean energy catalyst Renewable Energy Bank of Africa (REBA), where she provides advisory and strategic-counsel to the organizations. She was the 2006 Miss Nigeria in America 1st Runner Up and is a Nigerian Leadership Initiative (NLI) Associate as well as a member of the American Evaluation Association (AEA).
Dr. Oluwatosin Akande