Binance’s Government Affairs Lead, Tola Odeyemi, says there could be plans to partner with Bola Tinubu’s administration to foster crypto adoption in Nigeria

She is the West Africa Government Affairs Lead at Binance, the largest crypto exchange in the world by trading volume.

In an interview with Technext, Tola Odeyemi narrates her journey into the blockchain space and discusses the prospects of partnering with the Nigerian authorities to foster more adoption of the blockchain.

Her first degree was in Electrical Engineering, and her second was in Systems Engineering, although she initially planned to become a medical doctor.

Tola Odeyemi had a technical background but found her way into policy when she joined the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) when the Nigerian Fintech space was just coming up, in the early days of Interswitch, payment gateways and PSSPs.

I was lucky enough to be in under Mr.

That was also interesting because she was in the crossspace between technology and government.

After working with the government works and seeing how the private sector pushes for appropriate and proper regulations for an innovative or disruptive sort of technology, which people saw Uber as at the time, Binance just made sense for her in that this was another sort of technology innovation that need partnerships with governments, with regulators, with policymakers and politicians.

Looking at Tolas records, she had not been in the blockchain industry before joining Binance.

So thats sort of my first gateway into policy and technology.

Tola Odeyemi, West Africa Government Affairs Lead at Binance

After working at the CBN for five years, Tola Odeyemi joined the Lagos State government in 2015 as a special assistant on global affairs and partnerships to the governor, Akinwumi Ambode.