Tunde Onakoya is a Nigerian National Chess master and coach. He is the
Convener of Chess in Slums Africa. He is a passionate chess player and coach who strongly believes that the game of chess can be wielded as a powerful developmental tool to transform young lives and raise a new generation of intellectuals even from marginalized communities.
Tunde Onakoya founded Chess in Slums Africa in 2017. They are a non-profit organization which utilizes the game of chess as a framework to give children in impoverished communities access to tuition-free education, learning resources and mentorship opportunities. The vision of the project is to rewrite a new narrative and build a future that is inclusive for every African child.
The Chess in Slums project has garnered a lot of international media attention and the success stories of some of the children from their chess academy in the slums of Ikorodu, Makoko and Oshodi Under bridge Lagos, have been featured on BBC, Al-Jazeera, Deutche Welle, AFP, MSN. They have impacted the lives of over 500 children, and have successfully got fully funded educational scholarships to over 100 of the children to local and international institutions.
Tunde Onakoya has been a speaker at TedX. He won The Future Awards Africa Prize for Community Action in 2021. He also won the Business Insider award—Social Entrepreneur of the year in 2022.
