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By Damilola Fatunmise
A three-day event positions African tech products for global markets
Lagos, March 2025 – Over 1,200 product management professionals from 15 African countries converged on Lagos’s Landmark Centre last week for the Product Managers Africa Summit 2025, marking one of the continent’s largest gatherings of digital product leaders.
The three-day summit, held March 15-17 under the theme “Building for Scale: African Products for Global Markets,” featured over 40 sessions and drew support from 25 partner organizations as African tech companies intensify efforts to compete on the global stage.
Chinonso Onodi, Programme Coordinator for the summit, expressed satisfaction with the turnout and quality of engagement. “We set out to create a platform where African product managers could engage with global best practices while addressing our unique market challenges. The response has been overwhelming, with participants from 15 countries and some of Africa’s most respected tech leaders sharing their insights.”
Global ambitions take centre stage
The summit’s opening keynote by John Onifade focused squarely on scaling African fintech products internationally, setting the tone for discussions that moved beyond local market challenges toward global competitiveness strategies.
Microsoft’s Bolaji Oladipupo led a packed workshop on AI-driven product development, addressing how African tech companies can leverage artificial intelligence in user research, feature prioritization, and analytics—capabilities increasingly essential for international competition.
Chinonso Ukadike, Founder of Agile Bridge and one of the featured speakers at the summit, delivered a session on building product management capacity across Africa. “The 2025 summit was a turning point for African product management,” Ukadike noted. “The quality of discussions and networking opportunities exceeded all expectations. We’re seeing a shift from just learning the fundamentals to strategic conversations about how African products can compete globally.”
A panel discussion titled “From Lagos to the World” featured Samuel Fabayo from UK-based Monzo, exploring how African product teams can build locally while maintaining global scalability. The session tackled thorny issues including payment infrastructure gaps and regulatory complexity across multiple jurisdictions.
Industry Leaders Share Battle-Tested Strategies
Representatives from Nigeria’s leading fintechs—Paystack, Flutterwave, and Interswitch—presented detailed case studies of successful product initiatives, offering rare insights into decision-making processes within Africa’s fastest-growing tech companies.
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The networking component proved particularly robust, with structured sessions connecting attendees to representatives from over 50 African technology companies actively hiring product managers—a direct response to the acute talent shortage plaguing the sector.
New Mentorship Programme Launches
The summit marked the official launch of the PM Africa Mentorship Programme, designed to create structured pathways for aspiring product managers across the continent. The initiative pairs experienced practitioners with professionals transitioning into product roles, addressing the shortage of formal product management education in Africa.
“We’ve structured this programme to mirror the kind of guidance that’s helped product managers succeed in more established markets,” Onodi explained. “Mentorship is critical because so much of product management involves judgment calls and stakeholder dynamics that can’t be taught in a classroom. This programme extends the summit’s impact throughout the year.”
Bridging the Skills Gap
The summit’s scale and ambition reflect growing recognition that product management capability will determine which African tech companies successfully expand beyond their home markets.
According to industry reports, African tech companies are losing significant revenue due to skills shortages, with product management roles consistently among the hardest to fill. The challenge is particularly acute as companies scale rapidly and face pressure to compete with global players entering African markets.
The 15-country representation—spanning West, East, and Southern Africa—facilitated knowledge sharing across markets with vastly different regulatory environments, infrastructure maturity, and consumer behaviors.
Ukadike, who has trained hundreds of product managers through Agile Bridge, emphasized the strategic importance of events like the summit. “We’re at an inflection point. African tech companies are no longer just serving local markets—they’re building products that can compete anywhere. But that requires product managers who understand both global standards and African realities. This summit brought those two worlds together.”
Beyond Lagos
Organizers indicated plans to expand the summit model, with discussions underway for regional editions in other African tech hubs. The success of the Lagos gathering, they noted, demonstrated appetite for high-quality product management discourse beyond basic skills training.
“We’ve had inquiries from Nairobi, Accra, and Cape Town about bringing similar events to their cities,” Onodi revealed. “The demand is clearly there. We’re exploring how to scale this while maintaining the quality that made this year’s summit successful.”
As African technology companies increasingly position themselves as global players rather than regional solutions, events like the Product Managers Africa Summit appear poised to play a growing role in shaping the continent’s digital talent pipeline and competitive positioning.
The summit concluded with commitments from several partner organizations to support ongoing initiatives, including quarterly meetups in major African cities and an online community platform connecting the continent’s product management professionals year-round.
