By Aina Do Bang & Amanda Uwase.
Meet some of the nominees for the 2025 African Professional Network of Ireland’s Awards & Gala Night.
“You don’t have to cower in the corner out of fear of the future,” Nifemi Ogunbiyi shares as she expresses her feelings on her recent nomination for the African Professional Network of Ireland (APNI) Awards. Nominees for the APNI Awards & Gala Night 2025, set to take place at Radisson Blu Royal Hotel on 13 December, have just been shortlisted and open for voting.
These awards have been established to formally celebrate the professional excellence and entrepreneurship among various career sectors of Black-Irish people in Ireland.
“You don’t need to be this amazing billionaire, trillionaire to make an impact,” Nifemi adds.
She herself, a biochemist student turned financial accountant for Fenergo, comes from a modest, middle-class background in Drogheda, Co. Louth, and is now one of the 5 nominees in the APNI Awards’ Young Professional of the Year category.
“It’s moments like this that make you realize that” your work is “actually being seen and it’s being recognized,” she contemplates.
To her, the nomination is a sign that her hard work has paid off, “but not just paying off but also a sign to keep going, and also an encouragement to expand” her horizons.
Aghogho Okpara, nominee in three categories – Young Professional of the Year, Professional Excellence: Academia, and Professional Excellence: Health & Life Sciences – a medical student at UCD, and founder of Achieve with Aghogho (AWA), also expresses her gratitude. “Recognition for my work is always a great encouragement to keep going in my mission, i.e., to help young people believe in themselves.”
And that’s the mission the APNI is focused on – to, according to their website’s story page, “build a vibrant community that fosters connection, collaboration and empowerment between professionals of African descent.”
Speaking to RTE last year, APNI President Edima Inyan affirmed how “a key part of APNI’s role is to help change attitudes and show the positive path forward in terms of helping people from every background to realise their full career potential.”
This has been the goal for the last 9 years. APNI is aware how Black-Irish workers can be discriminated against or suffer misconceptions when entering the career sector, and it is their hope that “the awards inspire and motivate, encouraging individuals to keep striving, keep creating, and keep leading,” as an APNI spokesperson said when asked about the event.
GORM is an intercultural consultancy organisation and nominee of Company of the Year.
As well as having their founder Mamobo Ogoro nominated for 2 other categories, they shared on their LinkedIn page that they are “genuinely honoured to stand alongside so many incredible Black/Afro-Irish leaders whose work is shaping communities, industries and culture.”
To them, APNI’s list is a reminder of the “talent, courage and creativity rising across the country,” and with these awards, they have become “part of that story” this year.
To all Black-Irish innovators and professionals simply trying to build a career as another ordinary professional in Ireland, the APNI Awards is an opportunity to celebrate the community at large along with the nominees.
“I hope my journey continually reminds people that failure is truly not the end,” Aghogho exhorts in the conclusion to her message. Whether you are recognized or not for the work you do, Nifemi reminds us, “if you are impacting people” – and any work has impact – “then you are an achiever.”
Public voting for the awards closes on December 8th, with “more information about the nominees” coming to APNI’s social media pages soon. Nifemi encourages everyone, regardless of background or ethnicity, who wants to participate to vote.
“You don’t need to be black to clap,” she says.
“I definitely feel people of all races should definitely participate because, if anything, it helps […] make other people in the community feel like they’re not alone and they’re not just trying to huddle together to push each other.”
Representation, she feels, is not the work of people of colour alone, but rather that anyone can “foster representation.”
Image Credits: APNI
Image Credits: Nifemi LinkedIn
Image Credits: Aghogho LinkedIn
Image Credits: GORM