Teco Obi: Banking Executive Turned Mental Health Innovator Driving Change in Africa

By Ugo Aliogo

In Nigeria’s banking halls, Teco Obi has built a reputation as a sharp young professional. From Union Bank PLC to Nova Merchant Bank, he handled complex corporate portfolios in the oil and gas sector, negotiated trade finance deals, and worked closely with high-value clients. His career path looked set — polished, upward, and in line with Nigeria’s fast-rising corporate elite.

But beneath that corporate success lay a more personal struggle. As a teenager, Teco had faced his own battle with mental health. He grew up observing how trauma, depression, and substance abuse silently eroded lives around him. In many cases, families kept quiet. Society, weighed down by stigma, often chose to look away.

That early experience planted a seed that banking alone could not silence. After years of managing financial portfolios, Teco made a sharp turn. He left the spreadsheets of Lagos’ financial district and moved to London, where he pursued a Master’s degree in Psychology at Regent’s University. There, he found a bridge between his business background and his passion for social change.

Today, Obi is emerging as one of Africa’s most dynamic voices in mental health innovation. He is the Co-founder and Head of Business Growth & Innovation at Emotions, a Rwanda-based health-tech company tackling stigma and creating affordable access to mental health care.

Under his leadership, Emotions has built global partnerships, attracted support from innovation ecosystems, and positioned itself as one of the continent’s boldest digital health startups.

Beyond Emotions, he co-founded Mediated (Hopelink) in Sierra Leone, a WhatsApp-based platform that connects users with certified mental health professionals. The need there is urgent — Sierra Leone has just three psychiatrists for over 8 million people.

In its pilot phase, Hopelink reached hundreds of people and increased care-seeking by more than 40 per cent. For Obi, these numbers aren’t statistics — they are lives, and proof that innovation, when localized, can be life-saving.

His work has not gone unnoticed. With his team at Emotions, Obi has participated in the Techfield Healthcare Innovation Program and Techfield Global Accelerate, where their innovative approach to mental health stood out. These programmes gave him a platform to engage investors, international mentors, and policymakers — demonstrating that African-led solutions can hold their own on global stages.

What makes Obi’s journey compelling is the way it ties together different worlds: finance, psychology, and innovation. His story is that of a banker who turned his personal battles into fuel for a mission larger than himself.

He is building solutions that are not just profitable, but deeply necessary for societies where silence has long been the default response to mental health struggles.

Looking ahead, Obi sees the United Kingdom as a natural launchpad to scale his work. With its established health-tech ecosystem, strong research base, and international networks, the UK offers a platform to deepen his ventures and bring African mental health solutions into global conversations.

From the boardrooms of Lagos banks to innovation hubs in Kigali, Freetown, and London, Obi is charting a path few have walked. His story is both a personal journey of resilience and a professional mission to prove that Africa’s future will be built not just by tackling infrastructure and finance, but also by addressing the often-ignored mental health crisis.