Divine Itu

Divine is a software engineer, product builder, and technology leader working at the intersection of Africa's data, media, and AI futures. He studies software engineering at the African Leadership University in Kigali, Rwanda. He has spent the last several years building a portfolio of interconnected ventures that each tackle a different piece of the same question: how does the next generation of African infrastructure get built, and who gets to build it?

He serves as Project Manager at the Pan-African Centre for Social Development and Accountability (PACSDA), where he leads the African Youth Observatory (AYO), a continental intelligence platform consolidating youth development data across all 54 African countries and 9 thematic areas, from education and employment to health, governance, and digital access. Under his leadership, AYO has grown into a full-stack data product with a live World Bank data pipeline, a proprietary Youth Index engine, and an AI-powered insights layer built on top of 60+ endpoints, turning raw continental datasets into actionable intelligence for policymakers, researchers, development partners, and young Africans themselves.

Alongside PACSDA, he serves as Chief Marketing Officer of AfriZoneMart Distribution, a pan-African commerce platform operating under the banner Made in Africa, delivered worldwide. At AfriZoneMart he authored the company's full CMO operations playbook and brand identity system, bridging the rare gap between marketing strategy and technical execution. Divine is also Co-Founder of ZeroUp Initiative, Head of Technology and Innovations at ZeroUp Next, and Co-Founder of BridgeAI.

He is also building Lasante Foods, where he developed, branded, and brought to market the company's debut product, a crayfish seasoning, handling everything from formulation to packaging to distribution. That same instinct for end-to-end ownership powers It's Made In Africa, his documentary series profiling African producers and the processes behind the goods the continent makes but rarely celebrates.

Divine leads media technology for SLICNations, the digital media arm of Spirit Life International Church, where he is building an ambitious ecosystem of AI-powered broadcast and production tools.

His work is defined by three things:

shipping — turning strategy documents into working systems

integration — designing every project to eventually speak to every other.

African agency — the conviction that the continent's most important platforms should be built by, for, and from within it.

He lives and works between Lagos, Nigeria and Kigali, Rwanda.