For Taiwo Akinropo, HeyFood wasn't born out of a love for restaurants. It began with a fascination for broken systems. After leaving the University of Ibadan, he built HeyFood into one of Nigeria's leading food delivery platforms, processing more than ₦6.1 billion in transactions. Now, he's betting on autonomous AI, believing Africa should build—not just adopt—the technologies of the future
By the time Taiwo Akinropo settled into life as a Computer Science student at the University of Ibadan, he had begun to realise that not all classrooms have walls.
The university had earned its reputation over decades, producing graduates who would go on to shape Nigeria's intellectual and professional life. Akinropo became one more student learning the logic of computers, the discipline of programming, and the craft of building software.
But education has a way of escaping the places designed to contain it. While one education unfolded according to a timetable, another unfolded entirely without one.
Outside campus, people he had never met were already using products he had built. There was HeyPay, a mobile payments solution for merchants. Then there was Mate, a social networking app designed for university students. With every new user came another problem to solve, another lesson to learn. Before long, lectures and entrepreneurship were competing for the same hours.
