How Toluwanimi is redefining the way African startups think about the diaspora

Imagine building an African startup, and your first reference point is Silicon Valley. The tone, the branding, the pitch style, everything was shaped for people outside your region, with little thought about the roots you come from. 

This is the mindset of every founder who wants to earn in dollars, but doesn’t truly understand how to package their product for the diaspora wallet — the people who are emotionally connected to home and financially able to invest in it.

This is the gap Toluwanimi has been closing for almost a decade.

Meet Toluwanimi Onakoya, a communications strategist who has spent the last seven years helping startups rethink how they speak, who they speak to, and what they are really selling. 

What began as a standard communications career evolved into something more specialised. Today, she describes herself as a Transition Architect who helps startups navigate their most volatile moments by mastering ‘code-switching’ for brands.

“Most times, African startups think going global means looking outward for validation rather than inward for connection. In the process, they overlook a powerful audience already searching for a bridge back home, who are the diaspora,” She said.

These are people with spending power, strong cultural curiosity, and a deep emotional desire for identity and belonging, yet many products are not communicated in a way that makes it easy for them to say yes.

“We are not thinking as the diaspora thinks. A second-generation Igbo person in Houston is not the same customer as someone in Enugu. They have different reference points, different emotional triggers, and different buying behaviours. But they’re still searching for belonging, identity, and reconnection,” Toluwanimi said.

This insight became the foundation of how Toluwanimi approaches communication strategy for startups.

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How Toluwanimi built the foundation for brand storytelling

Toluwanimi’s professional journey began in media as a Content Writer at YNaija, where she learned the power of audience-focused storytelling and cultural relevance. She moved on to Red Media Africa as a Communications Consultant, refining her skills in public relations, brand messaging, and campaign strategy for corporate and youth-focused brands across Nigeria.

Her transition into tech started at OurPass as a Content Manager, where she began to understand how product communication influences user perception and adoption. 

This experience prepared her for her time at Stears, where she worked first as Senior Social Media Manager and later as Communications Manager, deepening her understanding of how data-driven platforms must communicate trust, authority, and relevance to different audience segments.

However, the most defining moment in Toluwanimi’s career came when she joined Lingawa, formerly known as TopSet, as Communications Manager. The company was transitioning from a general tutoring platform into an edtech platform focused on teaching indigenous African languages such as Yoruba and Igbo.

“Lingawa is an edtech platform often described as “Africa’s Duolingo”, championing the preservation of indigenous languages. I think of it as an impact-driven powerhouse. Lingawa connects people by empowering tutors who are fluent in local languages to teach on its platform with competitive pay. This is how the Edtech has been helping members of the diaspora reconnect with their cultural roots,” She said.

At Lingawa, Toluwanimi’s work went beyond communications. She viewed language as a means of identity, heritage, and belonging.

In a country where English dominates schools, workplaces, and digital spaces, she champions Yoruba and Igbo as living bridges between generations and across diaspora communities. 

“When it comes to any product, it’s always important to start somewhere, and at Lingawa, Yoruba and Igbo were the natural starting points due to their high demand. But the journey doesn’t stop there! Lingawa is in a continuous phase of growth, and we’re excited to expand to other languages as well,” She added.

At this point, the easy communication route would have been to promote Lingawa as a platform for language lessons. Instead, Toluwanimi reframed the entire narrative. The focus shifted from selling lessons, which is utility-driven, to selling connection, which is identity-driven.

Lingawa was no longer positioned as an app to learn a language. It became a pathway back home for members of the diaspora seeking cultural pride, renewed confidence, and the ability to hold meaningful conversations with family members who only speak indigenous languages. This repositioning transformed how the product was perceived and adopted.

By changing the narrative from education to heritage, Toluwanimi drove organic sales contribution from 20% to 50%. This identity-focused positioning also opened unexpected doors for the brand, including collaborations with Warner Bros, proving that storytelling rooted in culture can create global relevance without abandoning local identity.

Toluwanimi’s trust currency at Stears

Before Lingawa, Toluwanimi faced a different but equally complex challenge at Stears. The company was transitioning from a B2C model to a B2B model, which required sunsetting a consumer-facing product that many users had grown accustomed to.

In many cases, product shutdowns can appear as failure and damage brand perception. Toluwanimi approached this transition from a storytelling perspective, ensuring that the shutdown was communicated as an evolution of the company’s focus rather than a collapse.

Her goal was to protect the brand’s trust currency at home before it attempted to expand abroad. By carefully managing the communication around the sunset, Stears achieved a 70% positive sentiment score during the transition period.

This preserved the credibility needed for the company to successfully launch its UK expansion immediately after.

“Global expansion, in this sense, is not about availability but resonance. It is about storytelling rooted in empathy, so that when someone in Atlanta or London encounters the product, their first thought is that it was made for them,” Toluwanimi said.

She added that when this is done well, expansion becomes less about reach and more about making it effortless for people to invest their diaspora dollars in something that genuinely connects to who they are.

Final thoughts

For Toluwanimi, storytelling is not an accessory to marketing; it is the strategy that determines whether a startup’s pivot, rebrand, or expansion will be misunderstood or embraced.

Her advice to younger women in tech leadership is rooted in the same principle of authenticity and clarity. 

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