Rasheed Akhigbe has been named one of the recipients of the Dratech Leadership Transformation Award 2024, following the conclusion of the Dratech International Conference 2024. He was selected from a pool of ten nominees and emerged as one of the top three recognised winners, having met all judging criteria for the 2024 award cycle.
The Leadership Transformation Award recognises leaders who deliver measurable organisational transformation through people leadership, culture, and execution. In a year where organisations across Africa are contending with rapid growth, restructuring pressures, and rising expectations around workforce accountability, the award committee focused on leaders whose work translated intent into outcomes. Rasheed Akhigbe’s selection reflects a consistent pattern of leadership grounded in execution, influence, and durable organisational impact.
This recognition positions him among a small group of professionals whose work has helped redefine how leadership is practiced within complex organisations, particularly in the area of human resources. His career offers a clear example of how people’s leadership, when treated as a core executive function, can strengthen performance, stability, and long-term resilience.
A Professional Trajectory Built Around Execution
Rasheed Akhigbe is a seasoned human resources leader with deep experience shaping people strategy in complex and fast-moving environments. Over the course of his career, he has established a reputation as a trusted partner to senior leadership, working closely with executives to align workforce decisions with business priorities while maintaining a strong focus on people, performance, and accountability.
His work spans strategic human resources leadership, talent management, organisational design, and change leadership. Across these areas, a defining characteristic of his approach has been discipline in execution. Rather than treating human resources as a support function operating at the margins of decision-making, he has consistently positioned it as an integrated leadership capability tied directly to organisational outcomes.
He has led large and diverse teams and supported workforces numbering in the hundreds, overseeing initiatives that strengthened performance management, improved retention, elevated leadership capability, and clarified role expectations across multiple functions. These efforts were not isolated programs but part of broader systems designed to bring structure and coherence to how organisations manage talent and performance.
Leading Large-Scale Workforce Transformation
One of the core pillars underpinning the Leadership Transformation Award is proven leadership in large-scale workforce transformation. Rasheed Akhigbe’s work reflects this criterion in practice, not in theory.
He has guided organisations through periods of structural change that required careful workforce planning, role redefinition, and leadership alignment. In these contexts, his focus has been on ensuring that organisational design supports strategy, rather than reacting to change in a fragmented or reactive manner. This has included clarifying reporting lines, redefining competencies, and aligning performance expectations across functions.
His leadership in workforce transformation has been marked by an emphasis on transparency and structure. During periods of change, he has helped leaders communicate clearly with employees, reduce uncertainty through defined processes, and maintain trust while navigating complexity. These efforts have contributed to organisational stability at moments when disruption could have undermined performance.
By treating transformation as a managed process rather than a one-time intervention, he has enabled organisations to absorb change without losing momentum or clarity of purpose.
Delivering Measurable People Outcomes
Another defining element of Rasheed Akhigbe’s leadership is his consistent delivery of measurable people outcomes. His work is grounded in data, metrics, and clear evaluation frameworks that allow leaders to assess progress and make informed decisions.
He has played a central role in strengthening performance management systems, ensuring that expectations are clearly defined and outcomes are tracked with consistency. This has supported improved quality of hire, stronger retention, and more effective leadership evaluation. Rather than relying on anecdotal feedback, he has promoted the use of evidence to guide talent decisions and workforce planning.
His approach to employee development reflects the same discipline. He has helped build development frameworks that connect learning initiatives to organisational needs, ensuring that investments in training translate into improved capability and performance. These frameworks have supported fair leadership practices, career growth, accountability, and engagement across different levels of the organisation.
The cumulative effect of these efforts has been a more intentional and measurable approach to people management, one that aligns workforce outcomes with broader business goals.
Executive Partnership and Influence
Strong executive partnership is a critical factor in leadership transformation, and it is an area where Rasheed Akhigbe’s influence has been particularly evident. Throughout his career, he has worked closely with senior leadership teams, contributing to decisions that extend beyond traditional human resources boundaries.
As a trusted advisor, he has helped executives understand the people implications of strategic choices, from growth initiatives to restructuring efforts. His ability to translate workforce data into actionable insights has allowed leadership teams to anticipate risks, plan effectively, and execute with confidence.
This partnership has not been limited to consultation. He has been actively involved in shaping leadership alignment, supporting executives in clarifying expectations, strengthening accountability, and reinforcing organisational values through consistent systems and behaviours.
By operating at the intersection of people strategy and business execution, he has demonstrated how human resources leadership can enhance decision quality and organisational coherence at the highest levels.
Leading Through Change and Complexity
Periods of organisational change often test leadership capability, particularly in environments characterised by scale, diversity, and competing priorities. Rasheed Akhigbe’s work during such periods has been a defining aspect of his career and a key reason for his recognition.
He has led integration and transformation efforts that required balancing speed with stability, and ambition with realism. In these contexts, his approach has combined structure, transparency, and empathy. He has helped teams navigate uncertainty by establishing clear processes, maintaining open communication, and reinforcing fairness in decision-making.
His leadership during change has focused on maintaining performance while protecting trust. By addressing concerns directly and aligning leaders around shared objectives, he has reduced friction and enabled organisations to move forward with clarity.
This capacity to lead effectively through complexity has strengthened organisational resilience and reinforced the role of leadership as a stabilising force during transition.
Redefining Human Resources as Strategic Leadership
At the heart of Rasheed Akhigbe’s professional impact is his role in redefining human resources as a strategic leadership function. His work challenges outdated perceptions of the discipline as primarily administrative or transactional.
Through his leadership, human resources has been positioned as a driver of long-term performance, organisational stability, and sustainable growth. This shift has been achieved by embedding people strategy into core business planning, linking workforce initiatives to measurable outcomes, and ensuring that leadership behaviours align with stated values.
He has contributed to the design of reward and recognition programs that reinforce performance and accountability, as well as succession pipelines that support continuity and leadership development. These systems have helped organisations move beyond short-term fixes toward more durable capability building.
By consistently demonstrating the strategic value of people leadership, he has influenced how organisations think about talent, culture, and execution.
Award Significance and Judging Context
The Dratech Leadership Transformation Award is awarded following a rigorous evaluation process that assesses leadership impact across defined criteria. For the 2024 award cycle, nominees were evaluated on their ability to deliver transformation through people leadership, culture, and execution, with a focus on measurable outcomes and sustained influence.
Rasheed Akhigbe was selected from ten nominees and emerged as one of the top three recognised winners. His work met all judging criteria, reflecting both depth and consistency of impact. The award committee cited his proven leadership in workforce transformation, delivery of measurable people outcomes, strong executive partnership, effectiveness during organisational change, and contribution to redefining human resources as a strategic function.
This recognition places him among a group of leaders whose work exemplifies the evolving standards of leadership within Africa’s innovation and corporate ecosystem.
Relevance to the Pan-African Leadership Landscape
The recognition of Rasheed Akhigbe comes at a time when organisations across Africa are re-evaluating leadership models in response to growth, global competition, and changing workforce expectations. His career offers insights that are particularly relevant to executives, founders, and policymakers seeking to build resilient and high-performing organisations.
His emphasis on systems, data, and accountability aligns with the needs of organisations operating at scale. At the same time, his focus on trust, equity, and open communication reflects an understanding of the human dimensions of leadership that are critical in diverse environments.
By demonstrating how leadership can drive execution and stability, his work contributes to a broader conversation about leadership transformation across the continent.
As organisations continue to navigate uncertainty and change, the principles reflected in Rasheed Akhigbe’s work are likely to remain central to effective leadership. Transformation that endures is built on clear systems, aligned leadership, and a disciplined approach to people management.
The Dratech Leadership Transformation Award 2024 recognises not only past achievements but also a leadership model that offers guidance for the future. Rasheed Akhigbe’s career illustrates how leaders can combine strategic intent with practical execution, ensuring that people leadership remains a source of strength rather than a constraint.
In recognising his contributions, Dratech highlights the importance of leadership that is grounded, accountable, and oriented toward long-term organisational health. It is a recognition that speaks to the evolving role of leadership in Africa’s innovation and corporate landscape, and to the enduring value of transformation delivered through people.
