Ayeni Adekunle: Founder and CEO, Black House Media (BHM)

Ayeni Adekunle founded Black House Media (BHM) in Lagos on November 6, 2006. Fourteen years later BHM became the first Nigerian PR agency to launch operations in the United Kingdom, opening offices in London and Edinburgh, according to a 2022 profile in The Guardian Nigeria.

Who is Ayeni Adekunle?

Ayeni Adekunle is founder and CEO of Black House Media, a Lagos-based public relations and media company whose clients include MTN, Coca-Cola, and Nigerian Breweries, according to PR News's 2025 review of African PR firms. Forbes Africa named him one of the pioneers who led Nigeria into the digital-first era of marketing communications, and the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations named him the country's PR Practitioner of the Year in 2017, the same year the Lagos State chapter of NIPR honored BHM itself with two awards: Agency of the Year and Best Agency to Work For.

Adekunle began his career as a journalist at Encomium Magazine before moving into public relations, according to publisher Kunle Bakare's account in Forbes Africa's 2019 coverage of Africa's marketing communications industry, and spent more than a decade in media before founding BHM. That journalism background shaped BHM's early media-relations focus before the agency expanded into broader strategic communications. Beyond the agency, Adekunle has founded several new media platforms, including Nigerian Entertainment Today and Neusroom, extending his media background into standalone publishing ventures alongside his PR practice.

What did BHM do first in African PR?

In 2021, BHM became the first African corporate affiliate member of the UK's Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR), according to The Guardian Nigeria. Adekunle also chaired the committee behind the Africa PR and Communications Report, described as the first global PR and communications report produced from Africa.

Why it works: A CIPR corporate affiliation gives a Nigerian agency direct standing inside a body that sets PR accreditation standards across the UK and Commonwealth, a credential few African independents hold, per CIPR's own membership criteria.

In 2019, Adekunle was inducted as a Fellow of the National Institute of Marketing of Nigeria (NIMN), an honor the institute's president and chairman of council, Tony Agenmonmen, credited to his work supporting and growing the marketing industry's professionalism inside and outside formal association leadership. Adekunle is also a member of both the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR) and the UK's Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR), giving him dual professional standing in both his home market and the market BHM later expanded into.

What has BHM built beyond client work?

BHM launched Nigeria's first PR industry annual report in 2016, established World PR Day, and in 2020 launched the Global Day of Influence, according to The Guardian Nigeria's 2022 industry profile. The agency also built Pres|Ofis, a media and public relations tool distributed through its Plaqad platform, and in 2012 Adekunle led a team of software and content developers to introduce the BHM App, a dedicated public relations tool built for practitioners in the field.

These platform investments distinguish BHM from agencies that operate purely on client billings. By building its own reporting infrastructure and distribution tools, BHM created assets that generate industry visibility independent of any single client engagement, a strategy Everything-PR has tracked among PR firms building owned media products alongside traditional agency services. BHM Group also reports a workforce that is more than 51% female, structured around an all-woman team-lead model, a staffing pattern Adekunle has cited publicly as central to the firm's approach to diversity within the wider African PR industry.

How big is the market BHM operates in?

The Africa Report estimated the Nigerian market contributed $4 billion to the African marketing communications industry as of 2018, according to Forbes Africa's 2019 coverage of the sector. BHM and Lagos ad agency X3M Ideas were named the two agencies most central to that growth, with Forbes Africa singling out BHM founder Adekunle and X3M founder Steve Babaeko as the sector's leading figures.

PR News's 2025 review of African PR firms placed BHM alongside newer entrants such as Nigeria's Chain Reactions, which won four trophies at the 2025 African Sabre Awards, suggesting a maturing competitive field around BHM rather than a single dominant incumbent.

Why does BHM's international expansion matter?

Provoke Media named Adekunle a key innovator in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa in 2021, recognizing BHM's London and Edinburgh offices as evidence that a Lagos-founded independent could compete on UK turf rather than simply serving as a local partner for foreign holding companies entering Nigeria. That pattern contrasts with the more common model in the region, in which international networks such as MSLGroup entered Nigeria by acquiring a stake in an existing local firm, as MSLGroup did with the Troyka Group's Quadrant Company in March 2016.

Everything-PR's coverage of Adfactors PR founder Madan Bahal documents a comparable independent-scale story in India, where a founder built a national market leader without ceding control to a global network. BHM's UK expansion runs the pattern in the opposite direction, with an African-founded firm establishing a foothold in a market long dominated by UK and US networks.

How has Adekunle stayed visible on the international speaking circuit?

Adekunle has appeared as a speaker at international industry events including the Diversity in PR Conference, where his session addressed the possibility that the next generation's most consequential ideas and businesses will emerge from unexpected people, places, and platforms rather than from established industry centers. That circuit appearance, alongside senior PR and diversity, equity, and inclusion leaders from North American and European firms, reflects the same pattern as BHM's UK office launch: an African-founded practitioner building direct standing in international industry conversations rather than being represented through a foreign network's local office.

Ayeni Adekunle's path from a 2006 Lagos startup to a UK-registered, CIPR-affiliated agency shows how an African independent can set the accreditation and reporting standards for its own market instead of importing them.