Precious Akpan, winner of the Intrapreneurship Award at The Future Awards Africa 2023, photographed in the official winners’ portrait session during the 17th edition of the awards ceremony.
As African digital platforms mature across fintech, marketplaces, and innovation ecosystems, attention is increasingly shifting toward intrapreneurs professionals whose work inside established organizations delivers scalable, measurable market impact. One such leader is Precious Akpan, whose career spans digital marketplaces, alternative finance, and entrepreneurship programs across Africa.
Precious was recognized in October 2023 as Winner of the Intrapreneurship Category at the Future Awards Africa, an award honoring professionals whose internal leadership has driven meaningful innovation and growth. Her work has focused on execution designing systems, partnerships, and digital programs that scale beyond individual roles and deliver outcomes across regulated and fast-growing markets.
In this interview, Akpan reflects on intrapreneurship, program-as-product thinking, and why partnerships, not personalities, are increasingly shaping digital growth across Africa.
Interviewer: The Future Awards Africa recognized you for intrapreneurship rather than entrepreneurship. How do you define the difference?
Akpan: Entrepreneurship is about starting something new from the outside. Intrapreneurship is about building something transformative from within existing systems. The challenge is different, you’re working with regulation, legacy processes, and multiple stakeholders. Impact comes from execution, not personality. You have to design systems that can scale beyond you.
Interviewer: What kind of impact did the award recognize across your work?
Akpan: The recognition was anchored in internal impact how digital products and programs were designed, scaled, and adopted across platforms. My work cut across digital marketplaces, fintech products, and innovation programs, but the common thread was building structures that turned strategy into measurable outcomes.
Interviewer: You’ve worked across fintech, marketplaces, and innovation programs. What connects these seemingly different areas?
Akpan: I approach them all using program-as-product thinking. Whether it’s a fintech rollout, a marketplace expansion, or an entrepreneurship initiative, I treat the program itself as a product with users, distribution channels, feedback loops, and performance metrics. That mindset helps move initiatives from pilots to scale.
Interviewer: Much of your work emphasizes partnerships over individual visibility. Why is that important?
Akpan: Platforms scale through ecosystems, not individuals. Partnerships outperform personality because they create repeatable growth. In my experience whether across digital marketplaces, alternative banking platforms, or Coca-Cola–supported entrepreneurship initiatives partnerships enable reach, trust, and sustainability in ways standalone efforts can’t.
Interviewer: How does intrapreneurship function in regulated or structured environments like banking and large platforms?
Akpan: In regulated environments, innovation has tocoexist with governance. That’s where intrapreneurship becomes critical. You’re translating innovation into formats that regulators, engineers, partners, and end users can all align around. It’s less about speed and more about precision.
Interviewer: Your work has also focused on women, access to capital, and digital skills. How does that fit into platform growth?
Akpan: Inclusion isn’t a side project it’s a growth strategy. Through programs focused on women entrepreneurs, access to capital, mentorship, and digital skills, we saw stronger adoption and more resilient ecosystems. When platforms are designed to include underserved users, growth becomes more sustainable.
Interviewer: What does this recognition signal about the future of digital growth in Africa?
Akpan: It signals that Africa’s digital future won’t be built only by founders. It will also be shaped by intrapreneurs who understand systems, execution, and scale. As platforms grow more complex, the ability to build from within will matter more than ever.
Interviewer: Finally, what advice would you give to professionals building impact inside organizations?
Akpan: Focus on outcomes, not titles. Design systems that work without you in the room. And remember that real scale comes from partnerships, process, and persistence not visibility.
