According to YNaija, in 2021, Nwaogu is one of the “100 Most Powerful Young Nigerians.” He has also been described by Legit.ng, in 2022, as one of the “8 most outstanding business personalities in Nigeria in the Startup sector”. Nonetheless, Chidi Nwaogu is an experienced entrepreneur, entrepreneurial ecosystem builder, and software engineer. He started his entrepreneurial journey at 16 as an indie video game developer.
In 2020, Nwaogu co-founded Savvy, a global business incubation and acceleration company for aspiring and early-stage entrepreneurs passionate about solving some of the world’s most pressing problems. In 2022, HundrED.org recognized Savvy as one of the “100 most impactful and scalable innovations in education”. In 2017, he co-founded Publiseer, a digital distribution company for independent African content creators, which was, in 2023, recognized by Ernst & Young as one of the “100 most meaningful businesses in the world”.
Since Nwaogu was 19, he has co-founded, grown, and sold two successful tech companies. One of them is LAGbook, a social network that garnered over 1 million registered users within 3 years and was acquired in 2013. To give back, Nwaogu mentors and supports entrepreneurs through organizations like Seedstars, the Tony Elumelu Foundation, the Founder Institute, and the United Nations’ Investment Readiness Program.
Apart from being an entrepreneur, Nwaogu has worked with TagWorld social network, as a Software Engineer, with Startupbootcamp, as an Entrepreneur in Residence for Product and Engineering, with TheNeoHub Innovation Lab, as a Software Engineer, and with Zarttech, as a Programs and Strategy Manager, where he led EdTech programs like Zarttalent and 15Wins.
Nwaogu is an Acumen Fellow (West Africa, 2020), Alibaba eFounders Fellow (Hangzhou, 2020), French-African Foundation Young Leader (Paris, 2021), Dalai Lama Fellow (Virginia, 2022), THINC Fellow (Beijing, 2023), Westerwelle Foundation Young Founder (Berlin, 2019), One Young World Ambassador (Munich, 2021), and Queen’s Commonwealth Trust Young Leader (London, 2022).
He is a winner of the $1.5M Africa’s Business Heroes Prize (2021) by the Jack Ma Foundation, the Migration Entrepreneurship Prize (2020) by the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA), the $15K Catalyst Fund (2021) by the Roddenberry Foundation, and the $25K Global South COVID-19 Digital Innovation Challenge (2021) by the International Telecommunication Union and the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation.
Nwaogu is the author of a 586-page book, titled “Dear Entrepreneur”.