Africa-rooted · West-based
Samuel
Akintunde
I help African businesses and Western businesses cross into each other's markets intelligently, using design thinking to discover before they build.
The biggest opportunities in global business sit right at the border between Africa and the Western world. I work in that gap.
What informs this work
Training
Royal College of Art
Trained at the world's top-ranked creative university. The RCA sharpened how I think about design as a discipline — rigorous, critical, and grounded in real human need.
Community
London's innovation circle
I move in rooms with some of the most serious innovation thinkers and practitioners in London and I bring what I learn there into every engagement.
Practice
Built inside two worlds
Designing UK national digital infrastructure by day. Running an innovation studio focused on Africa by night. This is not theory, it is lived experience on both sides.
Track record
Africa–West Corridor · Fintech · 2022
1 million active users across 20 African countries.
As a designer at YellowCard Financial — one of Africa's largest crypto and payments platforms — I led the user onboarding experience across 20 countries. The work focused on building trust with first-time digital finance users in markets with distinct language, regulatory, and behavioural contexts.
Where
YellowCard Financial
Focus
User onboarding · UX design · Cross-market adaptation
Outcome
1M+ active users · 20 countries
What I offer
Work with me →From first insight to final product — and every stage in between.
Design Consulting
End-to-end UX, UI, and product design for founders and teams building across African and Western markets. From early-stage discovery to shipped product.
Innovation Workshops
Half-day and full-day sessions that move teams from vague ambition to clear, testable direction. Real problem-framing, not theory.
Brainstorming & Ideation
Structured creative sessions that surface the right ideas — not just the loudest ones. Built around real insight, not assumption.
Speaking
Keynotes, panels, and talks on design thinking, cross-market innovation, and the Africa–West opportunity. Available for conferences, corporate events, and boardrooms.
Training & Capacity Building
Practical design and innovation training for teams who want to build better — from design thinking fundamentals to cross-market strategy.
Strategy & Market Discovery
Helping businesses understand new markets before they build for them. Research, insight synthesis, and strategic direction for African and Western expansion.
Strategy & market discovery
For businesses that want to enter a new market without building on the wrong assumptions.
Most businesses enter new markets with a product they already built and a story they already believe. I work the other way — starting with the market, understanding what is actually true there, and building the strategy around that. Whether you are an African business heading West or a Western business entering Africa.
Discover before you build
We learn what the market actually needs before a single decision is made.
Context-first strategy
No copy-pasting playbooks from other markets. Every recommendation is grounded in local reality.
A direction you can act on
You leave with clarity — not a 60-slide deck that sits in a folder.
Explore
Newsletter
Ideas worth sitting with
I write about design, innovation strategy, and what it really takes to build things that work across cultures and contexts. No noise — just thinking.
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