About us
About The Luminary Project
We back Africa’s change makers: the people showing up for their communities every day, usually with little recognition and even less funding.
Placeholder image for About teamOur mission
Shining light on Africa’s Change Makers
Across Africa, people are feeding communities, building schools, running clinics, training young people and creating opportunities for women. They are solving problems that nobody else is solving.
Most of them do it quietly, without much money behind them and without anyone paying attention.
When you back a Luminary, you are backing the whole community they serve.
The gap we exist to close
People across Africa are solving hard problems in their own communities, and most of them run out of road for the same three reasons: no money, no systems, and no way to show a funder what they have already done.
Passion is not what is missing. Training, capital and proof are what is missing, and closing that gap is the whole of our work.
Theory of change
How change happens
African changemakers are already solving urgent problems. What most of them do not have is a way to evidence results, the funding to test what works, or the visibility to grow.
If we train them
They build the governance, finance and reporting systems that make their work consistent and possible to measure.
If we fund them
Funding released against milestones lets them put those systems to work, deliver results and show what is working.
If we amplify them
Results that can be checked earn trust, and trust brings the partners, donors and longer-term investment needed to grow.
LegitGood is how we solve for trust. Changemakers run their finances, records and teams on our platform, and that everyday use turns ordinary work into evidence a funder can check.
Our values
What guides us
Impact Over Intent
We measure success by the change achieved, not the effort promised.
Community Before Competition
We grow further by sharing knowledge, access and opportunity.
Innovation With Purpose
We use new tools and ideas to solve real human problems.
Integrity in Action
We act with transparency and remain accountable for results.
Sustainability Through Empowerment
We build capability and independence, not long-term dependency.
Faith in God and His People
We believe in Jesus Christ and in the God-given potential of every person.
Our vision and mission
Vision
Empower 1 million African changemakers by 2050 to build trusted, sustainable organisations that transform their communities.
Mission
Find · Foster · Fund · Amplify · Sustain. We equip African changemakers with systems, funding and visibility to produce verifiable impact and build organisations that last.
Our team
The people behind the project
Napa Onwusah
Executive Director
Business leader with 25+ years in sales, marketing, business development and public policy. She leads Placidcode Labs in Atlanta and B4B Partners, a revenue consulting and capacity development firm. A former executive at AWS, Google, Microsoft and Visa, she founded The Luminary Project to support social changemakers across Nigeria. Featured in Forbes Africa and named one of the Top 100 Career Women in Africa in 2024.
LinkedIn — Napa OnwusahNneoma Edeh
Programmes Manager
Leadership
Our board of directors
Experienced leaders who set our direction and hold us to it.
Board ChairOgochukwu Onwuzurike
Chairperson
Business development strategist and market leader with extensive experience driving growth, partnerships and profitability across Africa's technology, FMCG and payments sectors. She is Director of Market Development at Truecaller, and previously Sales Director for Africa at MetaMap, where she built the African business from the ground up, growing annual recurring revenue past $3 million and the team from one to twenty in the first year. Her career also includes leadership roles at Interswitch Group, Philip Morris International and GlaxoSmithKline.
LinkedIn — Ogochukwu OnwuzurikeNapa Onwusah
Executive Director
Business leader with 25+ years in sales, marketing, business development and public policy. She leads Placidcode Labs in Atlanta and B4B Partners, a revenue consulting and capacity development firm. A former executive at AWS, Google, Microsoft and Visa, she founded The Luminary Project to support social changemakers across Nigeria. Featured in Forbes Africa and named one of the Top 100 Career Women in Africa in 2024.
LinkedIn — Napa OnwusahNneoma Edeh
Board Clerk
Eliezer Ajah
Director
Talent and learning leader and advocate for Nigeria's next generation of changemakers. As Head of Job Creation & Placement for the 3 Million Technical Talent (3MTT) Programme at the Federal Ministry of Communications, Innovation & Digital Economy, he sources, nurtures and deploys tech talent into the digital economy. An IVLP alumnus, he works through public speaking, mentorship and strategic talent initiatives, guided by his philosophy of "building builders".
LinkedIn — Eliezer Ajah
Ebere Nkoro
Director
Technology sales executive with over 18 years driving business growth, leading high-performance teams and championing digital transformation. She has held leadership roles at Microsoft, Oracle, Cisco, McAfee, Dimension Data and Amazon Web Services, and is respected for solution and value selling, customer management and strategic partnerships. Beyond her corporate work she is a passionate advocate for African innovation and capacity building.
LinkedIn — Ebere Nkoro
Funmilola Akinteye
Director
Project management and operations leader with a track record of delivering strategic, high-impact initiatives across sectors. A certified Project Management Professional (PMP) with an MBA, she has overseen complex programmes, optimised operational efficiency and championed change management. She is committed to growing other leaders and supporting initiatives that strengthen systems, processes and purpose-driven outcomes.
LinkedIn — Funmilola Akinteye
Collins Ndukwe
Director
Seasoned technology leader with deep experience in software engineering, product management and digital transformation. He has led teams delivering scalable digital products, architecting systems, managing product roadmaps and aligning technology with business goals. A community builder and promoter of knowledge sharing, he supports developer communities, tech meetups and learning initiatives for emerging technologists in Nigeria and across Africa.
LinkedIn — Collins Ndukwe
Ogochukwu Onwuzurike chairs the board; Nneoma Edeh serves as board clerk.
How we are governed
The board meets every quarter and oversees strategy, money and programmes. Three committees sit under it, covering finance, governance and technology.
We have safeguarding, data protection, whistleblowing and conflict of interest policies in place, and they are published in full.
Where we are registered
Luminary Empowerment Foundation is registered in Nigeria, CAC 8178351, and in Georgia in the United States, EIN 41-2838812, where we hold 501(c)(3) status.
Join us
Let us have a conversation
Whether you are a change maker, a company or someone who wants to give, it starts the same way: one call, about forty minutes, to work out whether we are the right fit for each other.