Okafor: Nigerian Tech Leader Building Stronger Community in China
President of the Nigerian community in Shenzhen, Francis Okafor, shares an insider’s perspective on China’s technology ecosystem, the rise of Nigerian talent in China, and his vision for building a stronger, more organised bridge between Nigeria and the world’s technology powerhouse. Emma Okonji presents the excerpts:
You have been inside China’s technology industry since 2018. What does that let you see that people analysing China from outside cannot?
I have been inside China’s technology industry since 2018, and the biggest thing that gives me a different perspective is that I have seen how quickly an idea can become something real. From the outside, you tend to see China through products, funding rounds, policy announcements and headlines. From inside, you see the process underneath all of that, including how quickly teams adjust, factories respond and products change.
One thing I have watched change since 2018 is the relationship between technology teams and manufacturing. In the early part of my time in the industry, I saw teams spend much more time working through the traditional separation between product development and the factory. Over time, that gap became much smaller. Engineers, product teams and manufacturers increasingly worked in much tighter feedback loops, with changes being tested, implemented and put back into production incredibly quickly.
I remember seeing what would previously have been a substantial product change being discussed, tested and incorporated into production within a matter of days. That was a very different operating rhythm from what I had been used to seeing elsewhere.
That experience changes how I interpret Chinese technology companies. I am less interested in whether something looks impressive as a finished product and more interested in how quickly the organisation behind it can learn, adapt and execute. That is difficult to see from the outside because by the time you read about the product, you are usually looking at the end result rather than the system that produced it.
That is not something you can understand accurately from a distance. You have to be standing in it.
You speak to Chinese and international audiences in Mandarin as well as English. What changes in a room when you address Chinese technologists in their own language?
The questions change. When I present in English through a translator, I tend to get more formal and polite questions. When I present in Mandarin, the questions become much more direct, and they come much faster. Language is access. Without it, I am a visitor being accommodated. With it, I am a participant.
Why and how did you come to China?
I came to China in 2018, two years after completion of my Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical engineering and Chinese language ability opened the opportunity for me to study in China through the Chinese Government Scholarship. At the time, I was particularly interested in the relationship between China and Africa and in what was emerging around the Belt and Road Initiative.
The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) was also taking shape that year, with the agreement being adopted and opened for signature in March 2018, and China was openly supporting Africa’s efforts towards greater continental integration and trade. I was excited by the possibility of being in China at a time when these relationships were developing and of experiencing that environment from inside rather than simply studying it from a distance.
I first experienced China as a student, immersed in an environment where the pace of development was quite different from what I had known. Over time, I moved from studying in that environment to becoming part of its work culture, first as a Software Engineer and eventually as an AI and Technology Lead. I have also had the opportunity to work across Shenzhen and Hangzhou, two of China’s most important technology centres, and to experience different parts of the ecosystem from inside.
That progression is a big part of why I have stayed. I took an academic opportunity and it developed into a professional and intellectual journey that I could not have planned at the beginning. I went from studying China’s technology environment to actually building within it, and that has given me a perspective that I would have struggled to develop from outside the country.
What kept me here is different from what brought me. Shenzhen is where a very large share of the world’s hardware is designed and built, and increasingly where the software and AI around that hardware is being developed too. For an engineer, being inside that ecosystem is not simply a posting. It is a vantage point.
What are you building in AI right now?
What I am building in AI is focused on enterprise grade systems. The difficult part is not getting an impressive result in a demonstration. It is making the system work reliably when it is exposed to real users, real data, operational constraints and the consequences of getting things wrong.
You were recently appointed President of the Nigerian community in Shenzhen. What does that mean to you?
I treat this as an important responsibility and an amazing opportunity. This community was built by people who came before me, and it has established real standing in Shenzhen. I am stepping into something that already has history, relationships and expectations attached to it.
What I have taken on is a specific mandate. Nigerians in Shenzhen are not primarily traders passing through. The community includes doctoral and postdoctoral researchers, engineers, business leaders, professionals and students. My responsibility is to bring greater structure to that community so that it can serve its members properly and engage credibly with institutions outside it.
That is the work. The title is secondary.
Who are the Nigerians in Shenzhen?
The Nigerian community in Shenzhen is much more diverse and professionally established than people might assume. It includes doctoral and postdoctoral researchers at Chinese universities, engineers working in Chinese and multinational technology companies, business and industry leaders and a steady intake of students.
One of the challenges has been that the community has grown organically, without a complete picture of who is here, where they are based or what they do. We are now mapping that properly across Shenzhen, including by profession and institution, so that we can move from having a community that exists to having a community that can be clearly understood and effectively represented.
That matters because you cannot build meaningful programmes, partnerships or representation around a community you cannot properly see.
How would you describe Shenzhen, and its business environment?
Shenzhen is one of the few places where the distance between an idea and a physical product can be extraordinarily short. The city brings together manufacturers, suppliers, engineers, designers, technology companies and capital in an unusually dense ecosystem. It is not simply a place where hardware gets made. Increasingly, it is a place where products are conceived, engineered, tested and taken to market.
For business, that density is the real advantage. You can move from a conversation to a prototype, or from a technical problem to someone who can solve it, remarkably quickly because so much of the ecosystem is concentrated around you.
That is a major part of Shenzhen’s attraction to Nigerian and African professionals and businesses. People come here because of what the ecosystem can produce and the opportunities around it. The challenge is that many arrive without an established network or a clear understanding of how to navigate the environment.
Some of that gap is closing from the Chinese side. The major platforms, Tencent and Ant among them, have done significant work making their payment and service ecosystems usable by people who do not hold Chinese bank cards or identity documents. That sounds like a small thing until you have tried to function here without it. It is the difference between being a visitor and being able to live and work normally.
What is still missing is the human layer. Somebody who has already solved a problem being reachable by the next person who has it. That is where a community organisation adds value, and it is what we are building.
You follow a line of accomplished predecessors. What are you carrying forward?
I am very conscious that I am following people who took this community seriously and built its standing over time. Dr Samuel Oluwarotimi, Dr Omisore Olatunji, Dr Toluwanimi Akiyemi, Dr Usman Saleh Toru and Dr Lukeman Afolabi each contributed to that history, and I see my role as building on rather than replacing that work.
What I am carrying forward is the credibility and relationships that they established. What I am trying to add is structure. The community has reached a stage where informal arrangements are no longer enough to support its size and ambitions. My administration is therefore focused on putting systems around what already exists, so that the organisation can operate more effectively and continue to grow.
Who is working with you on this?
This is not a one-person team, I lead an executive council made up of highly efficient people.
Umezulike Glory is Vice President, Lawan Rabiu is Secretary, Dr Sunday Aboyeji is our Public Relations Officer, Tolulope Oyemakinde is Director of Socials, and Aisha Bello is Welfare Officer.
My role is to provide strategy, direction and coordination, but the work is distributed across the council. Each person has a defined responsibility, and that matters because the organisation we are trying to build has to be bigger than any individual who happens to lead it.
What are the focus areas of your administration?
I have five priorities and I see them as a sequence rather than five things that we try to do simultaneously.
First is structure and data. We are mapping the Nigerian community across Shenzhen by district, profession and institution. We are also putting school coordinators and professional group representatives in place because effective representation starts with knowing who you represent.
Second is talent and workforce development. That means creating stronger career pathways, mentorship opportunities and greater visibility for Nigerian researchers and professionals in Shenzhen.
Third is visibility. Our website is live at https://www.nigeriansinshenzhen.org, and we are building a more consistent presence across our communication channels so that members, institutions and external partners can actually find and understand the community.
Fourth is alliances. I want to develop stronger links with Nigerian and African organisations across the Greater Bay Area, as well as with the wider Nigerian and African diaspora network.
Fifth is membership value. Ultimately, people should be able to point to something tangible and say, “This organisation is useful to me.” That could be professional connections, mentorship, information, welfare support or access to opportunities.
The immediate commitment I would be comfortable making publicly is that we will complete the community mapping and establish the district and professional representation structure before moving into larger programmes. I would rather build that foundation properly than announce five ambitious programmes that we cannot execute well.
Nigerians arrive in Shenzhen constantly. What happens to them now and what should happen?
A student can arrive in Shenzhen for a degree and spend the first few weeks trying to solve problems that nobody warned them about. Registration, payment systems, getting around the city, setting up the apps they need, understanding how things work and knowing who to call when something goes wrong. Almost all of these problems have already been solved by someone who came before them, but that knowledge is often sitting in someone’s phone rather than somewhere the next person can actually find it.
What should happen is that the answer exists before they land. That is why we are building the guides and appointing coordinators at the institutions where our students are actually studying.
My view is simple. If someone has already solved a problem, the next person should not have to solve it again from scratch.
You have a website. What does it do for someone arriving for the first time?
Our website https://www.nigeriansinshenzhen.org exists to help a Nigerian arriving in Shenzhen integrate in days rather than months.
We have built practical guides around the situations people actually encounter. Immigration and registration, payment systems, getting around the city, the essential apps you need in your first week and who to contact when you need help. We are also developing separate guidance for students, professionals and short-stay business visitors because they arrive with very different needs.
The idea is not to give people a generic description of Shenzhen. It is to give them information they can actually use. Someone travelling to Shenzhen from Nigeria should be able to start preparing before they leave, whether or not they already know someone here.
How do you see the Nigerian community in Shenzhen with regard to the Africa-China relationship?
I think the Africa-China relationship is often discussed too narrowly. The conversation tends to focus on loans, infrastructure, trade and investment, which are important, but that framing can make the relationship look entirely transactional.
What I have seen from inside China is a different layer of the relationship. There is a generation of Africans who came here not to buy something and leave, but to study, conduct research, work in Chinese companies and build careers. They have spent years inside Chinese universities, technology companies and professional environments. Many speak the language and understand how the system operates from the inside.
That creates a different kind of connection between Africa and China. It is built around people, knowledge and professional experience, not only capital and physical infrastructure.
For me, organising the Nigerian community is partly about making that contribution visible. There are Nigerians here who understand both sides of that relationship, and I think that knowledge has value far beyond the community itself.
Is a community like this a symptom of brain-drain, or something else?
I do not think the brain drain framework tells the whole story anymore. It assumes that when talent leaves Nigeria, that talent is simply lost. In a connected world, that does not have to be true. A Nigerian engineer or researcher working in Shenzhen is gaining knowledge inside one of the world’s most important technology ecosystems. The question is whether there is a mechanism for that knowledge, those relationships and that experience to connect back to Nigeria.
That is why I think of an organised diaspora as distributed capacity. Unorganised, it is easy for that talent to become disconnected. Organised, it can become a bridge between Nigeria and the ecosystem where that person has developed their expertise. That outcome is not automatic. It requires people to build the networks that make the connection possible.
Nigeria has extraordinary technical talent, but little of it is visible at the frontier of what China is building. What does it take to change that?
I do not think talent is the constraint. Nigerian engineers and researchers are already in these environments. The bigger problem is visibility and access.
Being capable and being seen are two different problems. An individual can be exceptionally good at what they do and still remain invisible to the institutions, companies and networks that create opportunities. That is where organised networks become important.
What matters is not simply that the person is talented. It is that someone who already has access makes the introduction, creates the connection and gives someone else an opportunity to demonstrate what they could do.
That is the kind of infrastructure I want this community to build. Excellence that nobody can see does not compound. Excellence that is organised can.
What would you like to be remembered for?
I would like the next president to inherit an organisation rather than a blank page. For me, that means real membership data, proper records, documentation, functioning coordinators across the city and at least one serious institutional partnership that continues after my administration ends.
Too many community organisations effectively restart every time leadership changes because nothing has been properly documented or institutionalised. I would rather leave behind systems that make the next administration stronger than spend my time building something that depends on me personally.
If this administration can break that cycle in Shenzhen, I will consider that a meaningful legacy.
