Most people hear the name Nissi Ogulu and instinctively reach for the familiar headline: Burna Boy’s sister. It’s easy. It’s clickable. But it’s also incomplete. What rarely makes the rounds is the fact that while the world was busy categorising her through proximity to fame, Nissi was quietly building a career rooted in engineering, innovation, and long-term impact.
Yes, she’s a musician and she’s creative, but long before she stepped on stages or into studios, she was in lecture halls, design labs, and manufacturing conversations that had nothing to do with celebrity. While many creatives explore one lane at a time, Nissi chose a harder route; one that allowed logic and imagination to coexist.
This isn’t a “did you know?” profile. It’s a reframing, because when you strip away the labels people are most comfortable with, what’s left is an engineer who designs systems, leads projects, and is actively shaping how Africa moves, creates, and builds for the future. And that part of her story deserves the spotlight.
She’s a Trained Mechanical Engineer; Not a Hobbyist, Not a Side Quest
Nissi Ogulu didn’t stumble into engineering out of curiosity or trend. She committed to it. She earned a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Warwick, one of the UK’s most respected institutions, grounding herself in the fundamentals of design, manufacturing, and systems thinking.
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She didn’t stop there. She went on to earn a postgraduate distinction in Sustainable Design and Innovation through a collaboration between Warwick and Loughborough University. That decision says a lot. Sustainability wasn’t an afterthought for her; it was central. She focused on how products are made, how long they last, and how they impact communities, especially in developing economies like those across Africa.
What stands out is that engineering wasn’t something she later “added” to her identity. It came first. Music didn’t replace it; creativity didn’t dilute it. Instead, everything she’s done since has been built on that technical mindset; the ability to think long-term, design for scale, and ask hard questions about usefulness and impact. And that mindset would soon earn her a seat in one of the most demanding automotive environments in the world.
From Intern to Project Lead at Jaguar Land Rover (While Still in Her 20s)
After university, Nissi joined Jaguar Land Rover as an intern ready to learn the ropes of a global automotive giant. And she did exactly that. She worked across innovation-focused roles, contributing to customer-centric design and complex engineering processes that required precision, collaboration, and accountability.
What followed wasn’t luck, it was trust earned through performance. Nissi rose quickly, becoming a project lead responsible for delivering three major vehicle projects across the UK and Austria. These weren’t internal experiments or side models. She worked on vehicles built for global markets, navigating cross-border teams, tight deadlines, and the immense pressure that comes with luxury automotive production.
Most notably, she was part of the engineering team behind the 2022/2023 Range Rover model. Let that land for a moment. While many people still spoke of her in relation to music or family, she was helping shape one of the world’s most recognizable luxury vehicles. She became one of the youngest project leads at Jaguar Land Rover, not because of visibility, but because she proved she could deliver.
At that point, the trajectory was clear. She could continue building cars for global markets or she could take everything she had learned and ask a more personal question: What would it look like to build for Africa?
Kemet Automotive: Building Electric Vehicles for Africa, Not Just About Africa
Kemet Automotive is where Nissi’s engineering training, leadership experience, and African focus fully converge. As co-founder and CEO, she isn’t just talking about sustainable mobility, she’s designing it, planning it, and pushing it toward reality.
Kemet’s mission is ambitious but deliberate: to design and manufacture electric vehicles in Africa, for African conditions, while reducing dependency on imports and creating local jobs. The company’s vehicle concepts, including the Gezo tricycle, the Nandi compact SUV, and the Mansa premium SUV, reflect a deep understanding of different mobility needs across the continent.
What makes this significant is not just the technology, but the systems thinking behind it. Building EVs in Africa means navigating weak infrastructure, policy gaps, capital challenges, and supply chain limitations. Nissi chose that complexity anyway. She left the comfort of a stable global role to build something slower, harder, and far more meaningful.
Kemet isn’t about aesthetics or buzzwords. It’s about ownership of production, of innovation, and of Africa’s mobility future. And yet, even this doesn’t fully capture the range of how Nissi builds.
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Engineering Meets Storytelling: Animation, Art, and Cultural Infrastructure
Beyond vehicles and factories, Nissi Ogulu also builds worlds. Through Creele Animation Studios, she channels the same structured thinking into storytelling, using 3D animation to tell African stories at a global standard. Projects like The Satchel and SOPO draw from African history and imagination, proving that cultural narratives can be technically excellent and globally competitive.
This isn’t a creative detour. It’s an extension of the same belief: that Africa needs infrastructure, not just physical, but cultural. For Nissi, technology and art are not opposing forces. They’re collaborators. One builds movement; the other builds meaning.
Seen this way, Nissi isn’t juggling multiple identities. She’s integrating them as an engineer, founder, creative and builder.
When Engineers Think Long-Term, Futures Change
Nissi Ogulu represents a kind of African excellence that refuses to be boxed in. She shows that you can lead engineering projects, build companies, and still create culture without shrinking yourself to fit expectations.
Her story matters because it expands what’s possible. It challenges the idea that creativity and logic must compete. And it reminds us that some of the most important builders are working quietly, laying foundations that will outlast headlines.
At RefinedNG, we spotlight Africans who are shaping the future across technology, culture, and innovation, and Nissi Ogulu is exactly that kind of story.