Things You May Not Know About The New Osun Chief of Staff, Charles Akinola

Hours after AMILOADED broke the news of the appointment of Charles Akindiji Akinola as the new Chief of Staff to the Osun state Governor, Gboyega Oyetola,  We found it imperative to bring to her large audience the person and personality of the new CoS.

Akinola was born in July 1956. He attended the famous Christ School, Ado – Ekiti before proceeding to the prestigious Government College GCI, Ibadan. He got admission to study at University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University for his tertiary education.

 He is a Nigerian government official, businessman, academician and consultant. He was the Director General of the Office of Economic Development and Partnerships in the state of Osun under the Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola administration. OEDP is an initiative to expand the state’s capacity for innovation, promote effectiveness in economic governance, as well as enhance the capacity of the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of government to deliver public value.

He was also a team leader in the Osun Rural Enterprise and Agriculture Program (O-REAP). He has advised State and Federal Governments in Nigeria regarding the design and structure of International Development Cooperation agreements and protocols as well as the management of a wide range of economic development programs. He has participated in the deliberations of the US Government’s Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid (ACVFA).

He 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 is the founder/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), an innovative multi-agency, public-private sector effort involving the USAID 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, Community Development Foundation (CDF), Nigeria’s premier wholesale development finance agency between 1993 and 2006.

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, USAID, and the UK Department for International Development, Ford Foundation, Shell International, Chevron Corporation, Exxon Mobil, West African Gas Pipeline Company among others.

He authored research reports, studies and papers focusing on sustainable development and cross-sector partnerships. “Charlie” as fondly called by his peers 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. He is until his appointment in 2011 a visiting lecturer at the Lead City University, Ibadan. He is from Ilesa West Local Government area of the state, and he is happily married with blessed children.