Dr. Godswill Agbagwa
Godswill Agbagwa is an accomplished priest, ethicist and development professional. His triple career was inspired by his experience with underdevelopment in Nigeria. With a master’s degree in legal ethics from the University of Baltimore, a licentiate in theology from Sacred Heart Detroit and doctorate in Catholic social ethics from the Catholic University of America, Washington D.C, Dr. Godswill combines academic
work and ministry with hands-on integral development work.
Dr. Agbagwa is the Founder of CSAAE, a multinational integral development nonprofit that equips young people with the skills, resources and ethics necessary to facilitate development, transform communities and build better societies where all can find support and encouragement to work hard, live in dignity and feel proud to belong.
A key part of his development work is in IT, digital skilling and connecting the unconnected in underserved communities. Recently, Dr. Godswill and his team at CSAAE trained over 130,000 young people in underserved African communities in over 21 core digital skills, linked many of them to global digital jobs gave them access to laptops and connected them to the internet, thanks to generous funding from the Coca Cola Foundation. Dr. Agbagwa and his team at CSAAE are also pursuing ambitious SMART Primary Healthcare and Education projects aimed at connecting primary healthcare centers and schools in underserved communities to the internet for quality primary education and healthcare delivery, a mission they launched after a two-year study of the quality of primary education and healthcare delivery
in Nigeria funded by the Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA).
His integral development work has earned him and his organization international recognition including serving as the representative of African CSOs at the World Bank and IMF Civil Society Working Group, speaking engagements at Harvard University’s African Development Conference, special consultative status at the United Nation’s ECOSOC and board membership of international development organizations including the Catholic Charities of Southern Mississippi. In Nigeria, Dr. Agbagwa has been engaged by state and federal governments to support IT and digital skilling. He was approached by Imo state government to develop a proposal for the training of Imo youths
in digital skills and connecting them to the internet. The proposal was approved by the state executive council and was implemented as SkillUpImo project by the ministry of digital economy. Recently, Dr. Agbagwa and his team at CSAAE were engaged by the Nigerian National Assembly to train a delegation of Federal Lawmakers including the deputy senate president and the deputy speaker of the house in
Cybersecurity, Data Privacy and Best Practices in Financial Lawmaking.
Dr. Agbagwa has appeared on several local and international mainstream media and was recently interviewed as a person of interest by IDEA TV. He is the author and editor of several books including: “Career Path: Capacities, Competencies and Character; “A Handbook on Media Ethics”; “A Handbook onMedical Ethics”; etc.