Adebayo Okeowo

Adebayo Okeowo is a human rights lawyer with over a decade’s experience working around issues of socio-economic rights, environmental justice, and international criminal accountability. His current focus is on exploring, through research and practice, the intersection between human rights and technology.

Adebayo is the Africa Program Manager at WITNESS and leads their organization’s efforts in Africa. Prior to joining WITNESS, he worked as the Advocacy Coordinator for the Centre for Human Rights based in South Africa, during which time he led continent-wide campaigns that addressed human rights abuses against marginalized and vulnerable groups, especially women, children, migrants and persons with albinism.

He also served as the Lab Manager at the University of Pretoria hub of the Digital Verification Corps project – a collaborative initiative between Amnesty International and six universities around the world which uses digital tools to verify citizen media with the aim of advancing accountability for human rights violations.

In the course of his career, Adebayo has worked for Global Rights Nigeria, Global Integrity, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative and is currently a Fellow of the Center for Human Rights Science at Carnegie Mellon University.

He has spoken at TEDx Pretoria on the Visual Disruption of Injustice and has trained human rights activists in Abuja, Accra, Cape Town and Harare. Though a self-taught photographer and filmmaker, he has won two human rights photography awards and had his work exhibited in Italy, Mauritius and South Africa.

Adebayo holds an LLB from the University of Ilorin, Nigeria and an LLM from the University of Pretoria, South Africa.