Obiageli (Obii) Okafor, a Nigerian-born Senior Product Manager at 8×8 and CEO of PMHelp, has been named the ‘Women in Telecoms’ champion at the ‘Comms Council UK Awards 2026’, becoming the first African to receive the honour.
The award recognises women making an outstanding contribution to the UK telecommunications industry.
Beyond leading strategic product initiatives at 8×8, Obiageli founded PMHelp, a nonprofit that has supported over 52,000 professionals across over 70 countries through mentoring, education and career development initiatives.
The recognition follows a string of national honours, including: TechWomen100 Winner; She Inspires Awards Winner (Women in Digital Innovation & Communication); She Inspires 100 Female Impact Leaders UK; Brummell 30 Rising Stars of London; and 50 Women Tech Titans Nigeria.
As an immigrant who moved to the UK and rebuilt her career from scratch, Obiageli hopes the award encourages more African women to pursue leadership careers in technology and telecommunications. She gave details in an interview with IGNATIUS CHUKWU.
How did you find out you won, and what was your first reaction?
I found out during the awards ceremony. I was genuinely shocked. I knew I had been nominated by my colleagues, and this meant a lot to me.
My first thought was gratitude. I thought about everyone who had believed in me, from my family, my close friends, my colleagues at 8×8 to my PMHelp community. Then I thought about the younger version of myself in Nigeria who could never have imagined standing on a stage in London receiving recognition from an entire industry.
Has anyone told you directly what it means that no African has held this title before?
No one has said it to me directly. In fact, I didn’t know till a friend called. I realised and I just felt deeply humbled.
Awards are never just about one person. Being the first African to receive this recognition means our people now know that there are no barriers stopping us from achieving what we want. I hope it sends a message that talent has no borders and that African women belong in every room where technology is being built and decisions are being made.
Do you know of any African women who’ve been shortlisted before but did not win?
Not that I’m aware of.
What was your career before the UK, and what did you have to start over from when you arrived?
Before moving to the UK, I had dabbled into a few things, I was a poet then a shoemaker, and finally an experienced product manager leading products and partnerships in the technology sector in Dubai and Nigeria. Moving countries meant my experience didn’t automatically carry the same weight. I had to learn a new market, understand different industries, build a professional network from scratch, and prove myself all over again.
There were moments where it felt so hard and almost like pressing the reset button, but I made a decision that I wouldn’t let moving countries define the ceiling of my career. I knew I could replicate past successes.
Was there a specific low point, a job rejection, or a moment of doubt?
Absolutely.
When I first moved to the UK, I applied for role after role and kept getting rejected. I was working three odd jobs to survive and I remember thinking I may have made a mistake by leaving home. One of the hardest parts wasn’t being rejected. It was watching my confidence slowly disappear.
I realised I had to stop asking employers to imagine my potential and start showing them evidence they couldn’t ignore. I refined my CV, practised interviews relentlessly, learned how the UK market evaluated product managers, expanded my network and kept improving my craft.
Eventually, one opportunity became another, and each role built the credibility that led me to where I am today. That’s why I built PMHelp, a free non-profit platform to help people break into the tech sector with all the help they require.
What’s one thing about breaking into UK telecoms as a Nigerian-born professional that people don’t expect?
People assume the biggest challenge is technical knowledge. It isn’t.
The biggest challenge is learning the culture and nuance of the industry because you can know all the technicality, but it is the people skills and the unspoken rules that get you far in the industry.
What does the UK telecoms industry still get wrong about women in leadership?
I think we’re getting better at inviting women into leadership conversations, but we still need to get better at trusting women with the biggest commercial and strategic decisions.
Representation isn’t just about having women in the room. It’s about ensuring they’re leading products, influencing revenue, shaping strategy and making decisions that define the future of the business.
Is there a specific policy, statistic, or industry gap you would point to as the reason this award category exists?
Women make up less than one-fifth of the UK’s telecoms workforce, according to figures cited by the industry body techUK, and the gap is sharpest exactly where it matters most, at management and director level. So it isn’t just that fewer women come in, it’s that even fewer reach the rooms where decisions get made.
Alongside that, Ofcom (The regulatory body for telcos) and the biggest players in the UK sector have signed a pledge to attract, retain and promote women in tech roles, and even committed to showcasing women in the sector each year. To me, that’s why a category like this exists. The industry has formally said it wants to change these numbers and awards like this matter because they make excellence visible and reward the people who give back and open doors for women in the sector.
If you had one sentence to say to a young African woman thinking about a career in tech or telecoms, what would it be?
Don’t wait for permission to belong. Build your skills, own your voice and walk into every room knowing you deserve to be there.
Is there a phrase you keep repeating in interviews or on stage?
Yes. ‘Action breeds confidence, so Act.’
I say this often because people think some people were born with confidence and others were not, but that is not the case. We do it scared, we do it regardless of the imposter syndrome. It is by doing that the confidence arrives; so like Nike said, “Just do it.”
