Akinola taught at the
University of Ibadan in Nigeria from 1984 until 1989 and was on the training and research faculty of the Pan African Institute for Development (PAID) in
Buea,
Cameroon 1990. He was country director of
TechnoServe, a US-based international development agency between 1993 and 1998. He founded and served as the CEO of Enterprise for Development International (EfDI), a development sector market leader based in
Lagos, Nigeria between 1999 and 2008. He was the Nigeria National Coordinator of the Sustainable Tree Crop Program (STCP), a multi-agency, public-private sector effort involving the
United States Agency for International Development and the chocolate industry in facilitating the improvement of small holder agricultural systems focusing on cocoa and cashew in West Africa between 2001 and 2005. He was a founding director of Community Development Foundation (CDF), Nigeria's premier wholesale development finance agency between 1993 and 2006.
Consultant He was variously Founding Partner, Hybridea Partnership, a Public Sector Innovation and Strategic Management Consultancy between 2008 and 2010. He worked at structuring and managing Cross-Sector Partnerships involving Government, Private and Development Sectors in different parts of Nigeria and West Africa and participated in the
University of Cambridge, UK program on Cross-Sector Partnerships in 2005 and Public-Private Partnerships at the
Harvard Kennedy School between 2009 and 2010. He has consulted widely across the Public, Private and Development sectors to, governments, the
World Bank, the
United States Agency for International Development, the
Department for International Development,
Ford Foundation,
Shell International,
Chevron Corporation,
ExxonMobil and
West African Gas Pipeline among others. He authored research reports, studies and papers focusing on sustainable development and cross-sector partnerships. Dr Akinola was most recently, Mason Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and Fellow at the Harvard Weatherhead Center for International Affairs (WCFIA) where his work focused on Innovation for Economic Development.
SWDC On 8 May 2025, President Bola Tinubu appointed Dr Akinola as the pioneer Managing Director of the newly established South West Development Commission. ==References==