Adewale Yusuf, co-founder and chief executive officer of pan-African edtech startup AltSchool Africa, is stepping down as CEO after five years at the helm. Yusuf is moving to a seat on the company's board of directors and handing the operational reins to his co-founder, Sultan Akintunde, who will officially become the new CEO.

The leadership transition marks a watershed moment for the five-year-old company, which began life in late 2020 as TalentQL, a technical recruitment and outsourcing firm co-founded with Opeyemi Awoyemi, before pivoting into digital education in October 2021.

For Yusuf, the decision to step back from daily operations is primarily personal. After more than three years of near-constant commuting between the United States and Africa, he is prioritizing stability and more time with his growing family.

"I'm still with AltSchool, but simply transitioning into the board," Yusuf said in an exclusive chat with Technext. "Personally, I just want to spend more time in the US now with my family. For the last three years, I've gone back and forth a lot, and personally, it's not sustainable for me. My children are also getting to a stage where I want to spend more time with them. Of course, the team is capable. We've been testing this transition for a while now, and honestly speaking, they have been the ones leading the team and driving all the innovations."

Despite the change at the top, Yusuf emphasized that both the corporate structure and the foundational vision of the business remain intact. TalentQL will continue to operate as the parent corporate institution — the entity that "writes the checks" — underpinning AltSchool Africa.

Because Akintunde has helped build the business since day one, Yusuf noted that the handover represents operational continuity rather than a disruptive strategic overhaul.

"The direction will be improved; it's not a new direction," Yusuf explained. "Sultan is my co-founder; he's been there since day one. There's no decision I make that we don't agree on; he is just now at the forefront of it. He also has some exciting things he's launching, and we are using this opportunity to roll them out."

AltSchool positions itself as the "edX of Africa" with global degree

Coinciding with Akintunde's appointment as CEO, AltSchool Africa is unveiling its most ambitious academic expansion to date: a formal degree pathway designed to position the startup as the "edX of Africa."

Under the new model, AltSchool has already onboarded two partner universities. Learners will complete their foundational diploma at AltSchool and then seamlessly transfer their credits to partner local and international universities to earn full bachelor's degrees.

Crucially, the partnerships are structured around localized tuition pricing, removing the prohibitive financial barriers and relocation costs typically associated with studying abroad, while giving African students access to global curricula and faculty from their home countries.

"We've already onboarded two universities, and we are moving towards becoming like the edX of Africa," Akintunde, the new CEO, shared during the interview. "Students can come to AltSchool first, finish their diploma, and then transfer to any of our partner universities to continue their degree. Schools that are ordinarily out of reach will be attainable at affordable prices because our partnerships allow for local pricing. Instead of moving to the UK and paying £20,000 for a degree, imagine paying only around £8,000 while you're still in Nigeria, getting the same degree and the same lecturers."

The degree pathway extends a credential-building arc that began with AltSchool's full international accreditation from the UK's Accreditation Service for International Schools, Colleges, and Universities (ASIC) in February 2024 and ran through the December 2024 launch of AltSchool Europe.

Five years at the helm: Yusuf's AltSchool legacy

Yusuf steps aside from daily operations after transforming AltSchool from an experimental coding bootcamp — born out of TalentQL's realization that competing for a small pool of senior African engineers was unsustainable without training entry-level talent — into an accredited, multi-disciplinary digital institution.

Under his tenure, AltSchool scaled from its initial 2021 cohort to training over 100,000 learners across more than 75 countries, establishing strong operational footprints in Nigeria, Kenya, Rwanda, and Ghana.

To fuel that expansion, Yusuf led the startup to raise over $4 million in venture and community backing, beginning with a $1 million pre-seed round in February 2022 backed by Voltron Capital, Nestcoin, Pledges, and Odunayo Eweniyi, followed by a $3 million seed round in April 2023 involving Techstars and Angaza Investment Management.

In February 2024, AltSchool addressed a major cultural hurdle for African parents who demand formal credentials by securing full international accreditation from the UK's Accreditation Service for International Schools, Colleges, and Universities (ASIC), alongside local university partnerships.

Under Yusuf, the startup also broadened its curriculum beyond software engineering into data, product, business, and the creative economy — enlisting industry figures such as Falz, Mr Macaroni, and Joey Akan in late 2023 — before launching AltSchool Europe in December 2024 to offer AI-focused hybrid programmes across more than 12 European markets.

His tenure was equally defined by B2B infrastructure plays and rapid product agility. Alongside launching an education API in 2023 for institutional partners across West Africa and striking a December 2025 partnership with crypto exchange Luno to train 15,000 Nigerians in blockchain and digital assets, Yusuf steered a decisive product pivot in September 2025 by launching self-paced $30 "Nano-Diplomas" and localizing coursework into Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo, Swahili, and French.

Yusuf's exit from day-to-day management of AltSchool Africa mirrors his founder playbook. In November 2020, after spending nearly six years building Techpoint Africa into one of the continent's most influential technology publications and event organizers, he stepped down as CEO to tackle Africa's tech talent deficit — a cycle he now repeats as he hands AltSchool's next institutional chapter over to Akintunde.

The near-term markers of Akintunde's tenure are already set by the company's own pipeline: how quickly the partner-university roster grows beyond the first two institutions, what materializes from the launches Yusuf said his co-founder has in hand, and how commitments already struck — including the Luno partnership to train 15,000 Nigerians in blockchain and digital assets — are executed under the new CEO.