Engr Lanre Ajayi, Executive Chairman
DigiServe Network Services (the Convener)

Engr. Lanre Ajayi had his Bachelor and Master degree in Electrical Engineering at the University of Lagos, Nigeria. He was trained on Data communications at GPT, Coventry, UK, as a British Council scholar. He was further trained on Internet technologies and networking in Canada and Switzerland on the scholarships of the Internet Society (ISOC).

He worked for the Nigeria Telecommunications Ltd (NITEL) for 11 years. While at NITEL R&D department, he had a number of designs to his credit, one of which became the first patent held by NITEL. He was in the team that developed one of the world’s first Digital Telephone Exchange (the Eagle project) at a lab in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States of America in 1990. He has won several awards for his Research and Development activities.

As a consultant to a Rockefeller foundation funded organization in Nigeria, FEDEN, he set up the first Internet host in Nigeria in February 1992 whereby privileged to herald the Internet into Nigeria. He established Pinet Informatics in May 1995 to become the first Internet Service Provider in Nigeria.

Lanre Ajayi, former President of Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON), is a co-founder and a former President of the Nigeria Internet Group (NIG), a Non-Profit organization that pioneered the promotion of the Internet in Nigeria. Engr Ajayi has served as the Vice-President of the ISP Association of Nigeria (ISPAN) and as the Vice-Chairman of African ISP Association (AfrISPA). He has served on the council of the Nigeria Computer Society (NCS) as the Chairman of Research and Statistics committee. He was the Chairman of ISPAN committee on Internet Exchange Point which led to the establishment of the Internet Exchange Point of Nigeria (IXPN).

Engr Ajayi has served the nation in several capacities. He served as a member of National Cybercrime Council, National Broadband Council, National University Network (NUNet) Implementation Committee. He represented Nigeria at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) on the National Information and Communication Infrastructure (NICI) Initiative. He was appointed as a member of the Presidential task force for the restructuring of the Information Technology and Communication sector of the economy.

On the global stage, he served as a council member at the Los Angeles based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the international body managing the Internet critical resources and also served as a member of the Expert Working Group (EWG) in ICANN. He is a foundation member of AfriNIC.

Engr Ajayi was listed as one of the icons of Information and Communication Technology in Nigeria in a compendium compiled by ICT publications Limited in the year 2004. He was also listed as one of the top Drivers of ICT in Nigeria by Financial Standard newspaper, Champion newspaper and Punch newspaper. Engr Ajayi was named the Nigeria ICT personality of the year in the year 2007.