One of Nigeria's best-known edtech founders is stepping back. Adewale Yusuf has left the chief executive role at AltSchool Africa after five years, handing over to co-founder Akintunde Sultan, who previously ran the company's technology, Techpoint Africa reports.
Yusuf said he wants to spend more time with his family in the US, where he is based, and that running the business from there had become hard. "It's time for me to move away and actually support the team from maybe the director and leadership point," he said.
From talent pipeline to online school
AltSchool Africa launched in October 2021 under the talent recruitment startup TalentQL; its co-founders are Yusuf, Sultan and Opeyemi Awoyemi. It began as a way to train junior engineers, to replace senior engineers being hired away by bigger tech companies, and has since become an online-first alternative to university.
The company says more than 1,000 students have used AltSchool diplomas to continue to degrees elsewhere. It has now launched an AltSchool Degree Portal that offers degree pathways for its diploma holders, with the American Open University and Tomorrow University in Germany as first partners. "So AltSchool is now more like an edX for Africa," Sultan said.
A swipe at government
Yusuf named a lack of government support as a major obstacle for homegrown tech education companies. In June 2026 the Federal Government partnered with Coursera to train 36,000 young Nigerians through its Digital Training Academy, a deal Sultan has criticised, asking what AltSchool could have done to win a similar partnership.
