Founder
Chess in Slums Africa (CISA)
Tunde Onakoya (born 6 October 1994) is a Nigerian chess player and coach, who holds the Guinness World Record for the longest marathon chess game. As the founder and convener of Chess in Slums Africa, he has organised a number of interventions for children across slums in Lagos state including Majidun (Ikorodu), Makoko and recently, Oshodi. Onakoya learned to play chess at a barber's shop in a slum in Ikorodu, Lagos, where he grew. Being unable to pay for his secondary school, his mother offered to work for a school as a cleaner in exchange for his school fees. He would later be ranked as the number 13 chess player in Nigeria. Onakoya got a diploma in computer science at Yaba College of Technology where he was a gold medalist representing the school in Nigeria Polytechnic Games and also at the RCCG Chess Championship. He has also won the National Friends of Chess and the Chevron Chess Open. To Tunde, Chess is more than a game, it gives him his constant identity: “Finding chess gave me something. It gave me an identity, an intellectual one, and it made me believe that I could also be intellectually inclined, and it made me believe that I could also be a thinker. That through just this game, I could find my place in the world again,” said Onakoya on his discovery of Chess during a speaking event in Germany. In September 2018, Chess in Slums Africa started as a volunteer driven non-profit organization that aims to empower young ones in impoverished communities through chess. Chess in Slums Africa partnered with Chess.com in September 2020 as an educational tool for classrooms, chess clubs, and parents. As of June 2021, Chess in Slums Africa had trained over 200 children and got lifelong scholarships for 20 of them. In May 2021, Ferdinand, a 10-year-old boy with cerebral palsy won the chess tournament in Makoko. He later met and competed with Babajide Sanwo-Olu, the governor of Lagos State. Onakoya is a board member of the New York City-based non-profit The Gift of Chess. On 20 April 2024, Onakoya broke the world chess marathon record in New York, United States. He played for over 60 consecutive hours. Onakoya has also been featured in CNN African Voices.
