Chukwuemeka Chukwu
People Leader | Talent and AI Governance in Africa
Lagos, Nigeria
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Chukwuemeka works on the part of technology that code doesn’t solve: people.
For more than 12 years, he has built and run teams for international organisations funded by major donors such as USAID, the Global Fund, the Gates Foundation and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. As Country HR Manager at Wildlife Conservation Society and Nutrition International, he led people practice across Anglophone and Francophone West and Central Africa, from safeguarding training for forest rangers to retreats for more than 200 staff across two countries. He sat on country management teams, moved international staff across borders, and worked with UK colleagues to keep contracts fair and consistent for people working between Europe and Africa under very different labour laws.
He is known for unblocking careers. At one organisation, staff had waited up to eight years for promotion. He led the work that cleared it: more than 14 promotions, four moves into senior leadership, and a smooth succession from a Country Director of 30 years to a leader still in post today.
As an Independent Policy Advisor, he works on digital and AI governance across Africa, with engagements from GITEX Africa in Marrakech to the Africa CISO Summit in Nairobi. His question for tech teams is simple: when algorithms start deciding about people, who is accountable?
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Your Next Senior Engineer Lives in Lagos. Are Your People Practices Ready?
Remote hiring has opened Africa’s talent market to European tech teams. Hiring is the easy part. Keeping that engineer paid on time, legally employed, fairly treated, and still on your team two years later is where most companies get it wrong.
I have spent 12+ years running people operations across West and Central Africa, working alongside UK and US teams on staff and contractors who moved between both regions. I have seen contracts that broke local labour law without anyone noticing, notice periods that differed country by country until a termination went wrong, and benefits that looked generous on paper but failed on the ground.
You will leave with:
- What changes when you employ someone in another country, and when an employer-of-record helps or hurts.
- The contract, payroll, and benefits mistakes that quietly push good engineers to leave.
- How to keep policies consistent across countries without pretending every law is the same.
- The questions to ask before you send that first offer
Real cases, anonymised, and what fixed them. No legal jargon.
The Algorithm Rejected Her. Who’s Accountable?
AI now screens CVs, scores interviews, and ranks candidates. Developers build these tools. HR teams buy them. Candidates live with the results. When something goes wrong, nobody quite owns it.
I sit where these worlds meet. I use AI daily in my people work, and I serve as an Independent Policy Advisor on digital and AI governance across Africa, with engagements from GITEX Africa in Marrakech to the Africa CISO Summit in Nairobi.
This talk looks at AI in hiring from the people side of the table:
- Where hiring AI quietly fails candidates, especially those outside the data it was trained on
- What people teams actually need from the tools engineers build: explainability, audit trails, and a human override that works
- Who should be accountable when a model makes a bad decision about a person
- Practical design choices developers can make today
Stuck for Eight Years: Fixing a Broken Promotion Pipeline
At one organisation I joined, some staff had waited up to eight years for a promotion. They weren’t underperformers. The system simply had no way to move them.
After a structured assessment, we cleared the backlog: more than 14 promotions, four moves into senior leadership, and job reclassifications that were years overdue. We also handed over from a Country Director who had led for 30 years to a successor who is still in post today.
Tech teams have the same problem in a different shape. Career ladders that exist on a wiki but not in practice. Senior engineers who leave because the only way up is out. Leads who are “too valuable” to promote.
This talk covers:
- How to spot a stalled pipeline before your best people do
- Running talent reviews and calibration that people actually trust
- Succession planning when a key person has been there forever
- What to do when the budget says no but the person deserves yes
For anyone who has ever asked “what do I need to do to get promoted?” and got a vague answer, and for the managers who gave it.
Chukwuemeka Chukwu
People Leader | Talent and AI Governance in Africa
Lagos, Nigeria
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