Jonathan Olufowobi Asked 30 Global African Leaders What Success Really Takes
— Afridiaspo Editorial Team
Jonathan Olufowobi’s Tips From The Top gathers lessons on leadership, purpose and success from 30 influential figures of African descent.
What happens when access to presidents, CEOs, athletes, artists and changemakers is turned into something other people can actually use?
That is the idea behind Tips From The Top, the leadership book by British-Nigerian author and speaker Jonathan Olufowobi. Instead of presenting success as a polished destination, Olufowobi draws on conversations with 30 influential figures of African descent to examine the habits, values and decisions behind it.
The result is not simply a collection of impressive names. It is an attempt to make rare access useful—especially for younger Africans and members of the diaspora who may have ambition but not the mentors, networks or proximity that often shape a career.
Turning access into a bridge
Olufowobi’s own journey sits quietly behind the book. Raised in East London, he became chief executive of the Most Influential People of African Descent, known as MIPAD, at 25. The role placed him in conversations with political leaders, corporate executives, entrepreneurs, creatives, athletes and humanitarian figures around the world.
Rather than keeping those encounters as private career capital, he began asking what could be learned from them.
“Success without purpose is meaningless,” Olufowobi says in press materials supplied to Afridiaspo. That sentence is the book’s clearest dividing line. Tips From The Top is interested in achievement, but it keeps returning to the reason for the climb: who benefits, what survives and whether influence becomes service.
Thirty voices, not one formula
The book brings together 16 men and 14 women across five continents. Its contributors span politics, business, media, culture, sport and humanitarian work—a structure that allows readers to compare how leadership changes across industries without pretending there is one universal route to the top.
Among the political voices are former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo, former Ghanaian president Nana Akufo-Addo, Prime Minister Terrance Drew of St Kitts and Nevis, former Costa Rican vice-president Epsy Campbell Barr, and British parliamentarian Taiwo Owatemi.
The business and entrepreneurial contributors include MTN Nigeria chief executive Karl Toriola, oil and gas executive Wale Tinubu, entrepreneur and speaker Vusi Thembekwayo, Goldman Sachs managing director Clare Ashley, Foundervine chief executive Izzy Obeng and UK Black Business Show founder Raphael Sofoluke.
Music, media, sport and culture are represented through voices including Banky Wellington, Afro Nation co-founder SMADE, NFL player Efe Obada, visual artist Kelvin Okafor, singer Anthonia Edwards and television host Lloyd Randall.
That range matters. A political leader working through institutions, an entrepreneur building a company and an artist building an audience may operate in different worlds, but the pressures around discipline, credibility, resilience and purpose can still speak to one another.
The real subject is access
Former Costa Rican vice-president Epsy Campbell Barr, who wrote the foreword, frames the problem sharply: information may be everywhere, but wisdom remains difficult to reach.
For many emerging professionals, the missing piece is not motivation. It is context. They need to know how decisions are made when the stakes are high, how leaders recover when a plan fails, how relationships are built without losing integrity, and how success can remain connected to community.
Tips From The Top positions lived experience as a form of infrastructure. The book cannot reproduce every contributor’s network or opportunity, but it can make their thinking more visible. That is especially relevant across African and diaspora communities, where talent is abundant but access to senior decision-makers is still uneven.
Leadership beyond the photograph
There is always a risk with books built around powerful people: the names can become the story, while the harder lessons disappear behind prestige. Olufowobi’s challenge is to move beyond admiration and help readers interrogate what successful people repeatedly do—and which lessons remain useful outside the circumstances that produced them.
The strongest idea in the project is therefore not that readers should copy 30 accomplished people. It is that they should study patterns, test those lessons against their own reality and build a definition of success that includes purpose.
The book was released in May 2026 and introduced through an Africa Day programme in London themed “Telling Global African Stories.” The framing fits the larger ambition: Africans and people of African descent should not only appear in stories about achievement; they should be able to pass the knowledge behind that achievement forward.
That is where Tips From The Top finds its most useful role—not as a shortcut to influence, but as a bridge between people who have already entered powerful rooms and those still working toward the door.
Learn more: Visit Jonathan Olufowobi’s official website, read the PublishU conversation about the book, or find Tips From The Top on Amazon UK.
Editorial note: This feature was developed from press materials and media assets supplied to Afridiaspo, with additional reference to the author’s official website.
Jonathan Olufowobi Asked 30 Global African Leaders What Success Really Takes