There is a particular kind of person who, upon receiving one of the most prestigious youth awards in Europe for the first time as an African, chooses to spend their acceptance moment telling a story about a hummingbird.
That is Tunde Onakoya. And if you have been paying attention to what he has been building, that choice makes perfect sense.
On 13 April 2026, the chess master and social entrepreneur was honoured in Barcelona, Spain, as the first African to receive the Lideramos Youth Award for Social Impact; a recognition that celebrates young leaders using creativity, purpose, and innovation to drive meaningful change in their communities.
Onakoya shared the news on X alongside a video of the award presentation, writing: ‘Deeply honoured to be recognised in Barcelona, Spain, as the first African to receive the Lideramos Youth Award for Social Impact. I used the moment to share one of my favourite stories of the little hummingbird against the great forest fire.’
The hummingbird parable, for those unfamiliar, tells the story of a tiny bird that carries water in its beak to fight a raging forest fire, one drop at a time, while all the other animals watch from a distance. When asked why it bothers, the hummingbird replies: ‘I am doing what I can.’ It is a story about refusing to be paralysed by the scale of a problem. It is also, in many ways, the entire story of Tunde Onakoya’s life.
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From Ikorodu to the World Stage
Onakoya grew up in Ikorodu, one of Lagos’ most densely populated and underserved areas. He discovered chess early, recognised a talent for it, and then made a decision that has since shaped thousands of lives.
In 2019, he founded Chess in Slums Africa, a non-profit organisation that uses chess as a vehicle for education, mentorship, and access to opportunity for children from disadvantaged communities across Nigeria. What began as a young man teaching children in his neighbourhood has since grown into a movement that has reached thousands of young people, helped many secure scholarships, and opened doors that would otherwise have remained firmly shut.
In his acceptance speech, Onakoya spoke about his background with characteristic openness. ‘I’m a dreamer,’ he said. ‘I had a gift to be able to play chess really well, but I thought this gift didn’t mean anything.’ The decision to prove that assumption wrong, and to extend that proof to children who had been told similar things about their own potential, is precisely what the Lideramos Award was designed to recognise.
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A Growing List of Firsts
The Barcelona honour is the latest in a series of significant milestones for Onakoya, each one building on the last.
In 2025, he captured global attention by playing chess for 60 hours at Times Square in New York City, setting the record for the longest chess marathon and using the platform to raise funds for education programmes across Africa.
The Lideramos Youth Award now adds an international dimension to that recognition, one that places him specifically in the company of young social impact leaders from across Europe and beyond. He is the first African to receive it. That fact matters not just as a personal achievement but as a marker of where African-led social innovation stands in the global conversation.
Onakoya has been consistent in his message throughout all of it: that small, deliberate acts of impact compound over time. That a chessboard can be a gateway to a different kind of life. That doing what you can, with what you have, in the place where you are, is enough to change a world.
In Barcelona, standing in front of an audience that had just made him a first in African history, he told the story of a hummingbird. It landed exactly the way it was meant to.
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