Nigerian shoemaker trained in Italy builds West Africa's safety footwear leader

Yinka Atunde, a computer science graduate, abandoned his tech career and travelled to Italy for shoemaking training before returning to Nigeria to establish what Business Insider Africa describes as West Africa's largest safety footwear company. The founder has raised $1.5 million in funding and now produces shoes at scale after beginning with just 20 pairs.

Atunde's trajectory—from tech to factory apprenticeship in Italy, then manufacturing in Nigeria—reflects a pattern the Marche region knows well. Italy's shoe and leather districts have long drawn foreign entrepreneurs seeking hands-on training in production, design, and supply-chain management. Marche's own shoe cluster, centred on the Pesaro-Urbino area and the Macerata province, remains a destination for this kind of knowledge transfer, even as the global footwear market fragments and competition from low-cost producers intensifies.