What are the most significant cases or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

Technology is a constantly shifting landscape I am excited to participate in, and I am privileged to work with an amazing team. In 2023, Andela launched its Andela Talent Cloud, a unified platform to manage the complete global talent lifecycle. It enables our clients to source, assess, hire, manage, and pay global technical talent on one integrated platform.

At the core of the Andela Talent Cloud is the Talent Decision Engine™ (TDE) which is powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and data-driven matching algorithms to pair the ideal talent to client-specific roles and skill requirements. In addition to our human matching system, TDE leverages AI for the identification of technologists and verification of documents before onboarding them onto an engagement to prevent fraud and misrepresentation.

With the introduction of this AI-powered technology, it was vital for the team to update agreements, policies around privacy, data sharing and set out consent language to protect data access, transfers, and deletions. Within the Talent Cloud is Andela Pay, which manages all aspects of global payouts, currency exchange, and compliance in over 100 countries to ensure that technologists receive funds in a low-cost and timely manner. The legal team provided legal guidance, setting out risk and compliance metrics for the Pay feature.

Earlier in the year, the legal team facilitated the acquisition of Qualified.io, the leading technical skills assessment platform to identify, qualify, and certify top engineers. With the acquisition, it was important for the team to set out the privacy parameters in compliance with the regulations of the countries we conduct business. Additionally, the team supported the affiliate partnerships with companies like Google, Microsoft, and Meta under the Andela Learning Community (ALC), a program that provides members of the Andela community with the skills and experience they need to succeed in the tech industry.

As a general counsel, how do you anticipate and prepare for potential legal and regulatory challenges that may arise, particularly in light of emerging technologies and evolving business landscapes?

It is imperative to understand the business landscape your company operates in, its expansion plans, the regulators and players in these sectors, and to have open lines of communication with the external lawyers who support you. This means collaborating closely with various stakeholders (external legal and regulators), being a part of their email updates, mailing list, and setting up one-on-ones to keep abreast of any changes.

How have you attempted to bring the legal department closer to your business colleagues?

Every legal department should be accessible to the internal stakeholders and be their strategic partner. Our team participates in all critical business projects from the onset and plays a crucial role in understanding the projects or products and mapping out legal guidelines to support them. We set up meetings with team leads and ‘Lunch and Learn with Legal’ sessions.

The legal team’s operating processes are summarised in our internal operating guidelines and accessible on our platforms to all stakeholders. We schedule drop-in sessions with other teams to understand and address their pain points; strive to simplify our legal processes; and create channels for feedback.

How do you see the general counsel role evolving in Nigeria over the next five-ten years?

Over the years, we have seen the general counsel role in Nigeria evolve from a rigid and traditional position to a more business-oriented place. This shift will continue with the general counsel becoming more business and operations focused.

The focus will move from support to strategy, with general counsel becoming more involved in driving top-of-funnel, creating stickiness for products and services, and ensuring companies’ long-term sustainability is mapped out. As more Nigerian companies expand to other jurisdictions, AI will also impact the general counsel’s operations. The legal teams will still maintain their subject matter expertise and lean more on automation and AI tools.