Babatomiwa Adesida is the Head of Stakeholder and Community Relations for Sahara Group, a leading international energy and infrastructure conglomerate with operations in over 38 countries across Africa, Middle East, Europe and Asia. He can be best be described as a tactical and accomplished External Relations specialist with over 19 years of cognitive experience leading local and international teams with an excellent track record of forging partnerships, identifying and engaging a wide range of stakeholders, promoting sustainability across organizations, resolving conflicts, managing complex policies, promoting equity, diversity and inclusion, as well as designing, implementing and monitoring projects and policies.
He has carried out these functions across multiple organizations including Sahara Group, the United Nations, O.E.C.D in partnership with governments in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa with the goal of facilitating innovative partnerships between the Public and Private sectors to achieve sustainable development.
His professional background spans across developing strategic partnerships and collaborations across government parastatals and private sector stakeholders, ensuring equity, diversity and inclusion across organizations, promoting the alignment of his team’s corporate governance and impact strategy with the strategic objectives cross-cutting priorities, policies, procedures, and equity considerations of his organization.
In his robust experience, leading up to his current role as the Head, External & Community Relations for an oil and energy conglomerate, he has successfully harnessed his abilities to deploy impactful development strategies and programs designed to ensure sustainable development for all through adequate representation of all people in developmental strategies, nurture relationships between organizations and their operating regions, external organizations, the media, and their communities. He has recorded unprecedented success with facilitating advocacy efforts in difficult terrains like the Ogoni region in Nigeria and amongst unlikely target audiences such as the g7+ countries recovering from conflict and fragility.
His passion for meaningful and measurable impact in indigenous communities has led him to develop experiential and technical skills as a certified (PMP) project manager to meticulously monitor and evaluate community development programs and projects, deploy project efficiency tools to analyze impact, and determine the overall success of engagement programs.
Babatomiwa’s academic background includes a BSc. In Sociology from University of Ibadan and MSc. In Public Policy from the University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom.
Babatomiwa is also a motivational speaker and a firm believer in Africa’s inherent greatness. He has travelled vastly delivering numerous papers to the continent’s youth. Married with two children, he is an avid Manchester United fan and also enjoys swimming, table tennis and travelling.