Yewande Akinse blends the artistry of poetry with the ingenuity of entrepreneurship, shaping new paths for sustainable tech, fintech, and creative expression in Africa.
Born in Lagos on September 25, 1992, she holds LL.B and LL.M degrees from the University of Lagos and was called to the Nigerian bar in 2014 .
A storyteller at heart, she has published more than 110 poems across acclaimed collections including Voices: A Collection of Poems that Tell Stories (2016), A Tale of Being, of Green and of Ing (2019), and most recently, The Rise and Fall of Rhymes and Rhythms (2025), a lyrical compendium for her daughter brimming with philosophical insight and emotional clarity .
But Yewande’s artistry is matched by her entrepreneurial ambition.
In co-founding Salubata, she fused sustainable design with social impact, crafting modular shoes from recycled plastic that help mitigate environmental degradation.
With over 150,000 pieces of plastic repurposed and 6,000 pairs sold, the company not only treads lightly on the earth but offsets roughly 145.9 kilograms of CO₂ per pair—an eloquent answer to Nigeria’s pressing plastic waste and climate challenges. Recognized for its innovation, Salubata emerged as one of the winners at the NBA Africa Triple-Double Accelerator in 2024 .
Yewande hasn’t stopped at sustainable fashion. She also co-founded PAP. EARTH, an eco-conscious AI-powered search engine that turns every user query into tangible climate action.
Each search generates a “coin” that can fund environmental projects or be redeemed for rewards—pivoting everyday online behavior into currency for impact.
With this platform, Yewande created a poetry of purpose: digital engagement that writes back to the planet.
Adding layers to her portfolio, she helped establish Genera, a fintech platform designed to help families build intergenerational security through saving, investing, insuring, gifting, bill payment, will-writing, and educational or living trusts.
A response to inconsistent wealth transfer in low- to middle-income households, Genera is a digital ecosystem for legacy—designed to foster planning, protection, and empowerment across generations .
Yewande’s creative talents have earned significant accolades.
She scored the Fidelity Bank Prize for Creative Writing (2013), The Guardian’s Poetry Prize (2019), Project Knucklehead Prize for Creative Rebellion (2020), and the World Bank YouthActOnEDU Spoken Word Prize (2022) .
Her ventures, too, have drawn global attention: she won the African Youth Adaptation Solutions Challenge and received a Commonwealth Youth Green Guru Award during the 2022 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Kigali .
In 2024, she was named a Tory Burch Entrepreneur Fellow, a testament to her cross-disciplinary leadership.
Yewande stands at the intersection of culture, climate, and commerce, designing ventures that are at once poetic and practical.
Through Salubata, she invents shoes that walk lightly; through PAP. EARTH, she transforms searches into carbon removal; and through Genera, she helps secure legacies.
In every stanza she writes and enterprise she launches, Yewande Akinse is redefining what it means to build—with intention, empathy, and enduring impact.
