Biography & Perspective
About Olayiwola “Layi” Kola-Seriki
Olayiwola Kola-Seriki is a writer, essayist, and cultural thinker exploring the unresolved tensions between religious faith, inherited colonial scripts, and generational ambition in contemporary Africa.
Olayiwola Kola-Seriki
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The Intellectual Premise
When he was four years old in Western Nigeria, his family called him “Doctor Layi.” Like millions of ambitious young Africans, he understood the unspoken code early: follow the syllabus, master the foreign grammar, outrun the immediate chaos, and secure a life that would be legible to institutions ten thousand kilometers away.
Three decades later, Layi had followed that inherited syllabus to impressive effect: an accounting degree, an MBA, Fellowship with the Chartered Institute of Taxation of Nigeria (CITN), professional qualifications with the Association of National Accountants of Nigeria (ANAN), and an active executive seat as Chief Financial Officer in Nigeria’s indigenous fintech sector.
Yet standing under the cold scrutiny of European border police at Charles de Gaulle Airport Terminal 2E in Paris, an inescapable question presented itself: had he built a life of his own, or simply become very good at following a map someone else had drawn?
The Distinctive Perspective: The Active Insider
Layi’s authority does not come from a detached ivory tower or academic theorizing. It comes from being an active, senior participant in the very economic systems he examines. Day to day, he operates in the boardroom as an active Chief Financial Officer in indigenous Nigerian fintech—evaluating fiscal architecture, auditing capital flows, managing risk, and interrogating institutional performance.
His thinking has been forged across real, contrasting landscapes: between the high-pressure boardrooms of Lagos and the tech corridors of Nairobi; between the imperial stone arches of the Roman Colosseum and the fluorescent gates of European transit hubs; and grounded by the ancient granite silence of Olumo Rock in Abeokuta and the cascading waters of Erin Ijesha.
He brings a forensic, financial discipline to questions usually treated as purely cultural or theological. He writes not as an alienated outsider attacking the system, but as an active corporate insider auditing the very machinery that produced his success: “I am not looking at modern African ambition from a safe distance. I live inside the systems I am questioning.”
His debut trade non-fiction volume, The Borrowed Map: Navigating Faith, Ambition, and the Foreign Scripts of Modern Africa (39,387 words), forms the flagship diagnostic of this ongoing body of thought.
Author Bios for Publication
Olayiwola “Layi” Kola-Seriki is an active Chief Financial Officer in indigenous Nigerian fintech, CITN Fellow, and cultural essayist examining modern African ambition, faith, and post-colonial conditioning. He is the author of the forthcoming debut book The Borrowed Map: Navigating Faith, Ambition, and the Foreign Scripts of Modern Africa. Find his work at olayiwolakolaseriki.com.
Olayiwola “Layi” Kola-Seriki is a Nigerian corporate executive, essayist, and thinker writing at the intersection of faith, ambition, and modern African identity. Currently serving as Chief Financial Officer in indigenous Nigerian fintech, a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Taxation of Nigeria (CITN), and an ANAN accountant, Layi brings a forensic, boardroom-tested discipline to cultural critique. His forthcoming debut trade non-fiction book, The Borrowed Map, interrogates inherited templates of success and charts an authentic pathway toward African intellectual and spiritual sovereignty.