Decolonising Africa's Business Practices : Pro-Indigenous Marketing Pathway to a Paradigm Shift

Ogechi Adeola is a marketing professor and the head of the Department of Operations, Marketing, and Information Systems at Pan-Atlantic University's Lagos Business School in Nigeria. Adeola has a doctorate in business administration and a Master of business administration from Manchester Business School in the United Kingdom. She also holds a Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of Nigeria and a Barrister at Law diploma from the Nigerian Law School, following which she was admitted to the Nigerian bar. She is an Independent Non-Executive Director of Cornerstone Insurance Plc in Nigeria, a member of the Governing Board of the University of Kigali in Rwanda, and a Business Administration Advisory Board member of the University of the People in California, USA. Prior to her academic career, she worked for nearly a decade in several jobs in Nigeria's financial industry, most notably at Citibank Nigeria.

Adeola's academic interests include marketing, strategy, tourism, and gender studies, with an emphasis on conveying a favorable image of Africa. Her intellectual output includes more than 100 academic and practitioner publications, books, conference papers, and business and marketing case studies. Her research works have appeared in prestigious peer-reviewed publications like the Journal of International Business Studies, Annals of Tourism Research, Tourism Management, Journal of Business Research, Industrial Marketing Management, Psychology and Marketing, and International Marketing Review. Her co-authored articles also earned Best Paper Awards at international conferences from 2016 to 2019, and the coveted Emerald Literati Award for Outstanding Paper in 2022. Her co-authored contributions have also been published in important, high-ranking academic journals, including those with ABS 3, 4, and 4* rankings from the Chartered Association of Business Schools (ABS).

Professor Adeola's work has received national and international recognition, placing her among the best scientists in her profession in Nigeria and Africa. According to the global January 2023 Alper-Doger Scientific Index, she is the second-best scientist in Nigeria for marketing, the sixth-best scientist in Nigeria for business and management, and one of the top ten scientists in Africa for marketing. SciVal (Elsevier) rated her among Nigeria's top 100 scholars across all disciplines from 2020 to 2023.

Aside from her scholarly achievements, Adeola has excelled at teaching and mentoring students. She has taught marketing classes at the Women Entrepreneurship & Leadership for Africa (WELA) program of the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) in Lagos, the MSc program at the University of Ghana Business School, and the PhD program at the University of Professional Studies Accra (UPSA). She also serves as an External Moderator for the MBA Program at the University of Free State Business School in South Africa, as well as an External Examiner for the PhD Program at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS), University of Pretoria in South Africa, and Strathmore University in Kenya. She is a 2016 Visiting International Fellow at the Open University Business School in Milton Keynes, United Kingdom, and a 2017 Paul R. Lawrence Fellow in the United States.

Adeola has provided strategic marketing and brand management consulting, intra-regional consultation, and gender equity services to a number of businesses. She is a member of the Center for Global Enterprise's Alpha Team and has offered virtual consultancy services to major international organizations such as London Taxi Company in the United Kingdom in 2015, Texas Capital Bank in the United States in 2018, and Dusit International (Dusit Thani) in Thailand in 2021. Adeola also works as an Afreximbank consultant, where she focuses on the African Sub-Sovereign Governments Network (AfSNET) initiative.

Adeola, who is passionate about women's empowerment, worked as the National Consultant for an International Labour Organization initiative in 2022 to promote women's economic development in Nigeria. In March 2022, she got the coveted Female Achievers' Recognition Award, which recognized her substantial contribution to women's emancipation and was held by American Corner and other important organizations in Lagos. In June 2023, The Peak Performer presented her with The Peak Performing Woman of the Year 2023 Award in the Super Achievers category for Executive Education. Adeola is a Fellow of both the Nigerian Institute of Strategic Management and the Nigerian National Institute of Marketing.