Lorna Okeng, MPhil
Lorna Okeng, MPhil is the Creative Director, Immersive Technology Producer, and Research Lead at Keepers XR Studio and Research Lead in Creative Economy Practice at CdmHUB.
She is a Creative Technologist, researcher, immersive curator, foresight practitioner, and futures thinker with a deep interest in digital and creative economies, new frontiers of storytelling, cultural diplomacy, and technology experimentation; committed to a career in digital transformation for Africa’s collective futures.
With many years of experience working with emerging technology companies, including Google, Vodafone, and Electric South, her work sits at the intersection of art, culture, and society, disruptive and emerging technologies, such as Generative AI, VR, and AR, and societies utilizing systems and futures thinking approaches to push the boundaries of creative expression.
Since 2024, Lorna has been the Creative Director at Keepers XR Studio, working on Immersive Technology with Keepers XR films and participating in the Women in Animation (WIA) Stories Mentorship cohort.
In 2023, she joined CcHUB in Nigeria as the Research Lead. The research focused on Africa’s Creative Economy, such as landscape Analysis and Mapping to design a strategic framework to inform Mastercard Foundation’s Young Africa Works 2030 Strategy across Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, and Morocco. Her research focused on Storyteller Mapping for TV, Film, and Digital Economy in Nigeria and Kenya for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Since 2024, she has worked as a Virtual and Augmented Reality Technical Advisor and Consultant for the Uganda Institute of Information and Communications Technology. She helped enhance the delivery of social education training and XR deployment at scale for experiential learning, training, and performance for education institutions and industry.
She worked on implementing the rollout of enhanced learning in STEMI (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Innovation) subjects through Augmented and Virtual Reality (AVR) solutions.
Since 2022, she has also been a Curator and Art Advisor for the Great African Arts Banner. It is a 56km physical art collection representing the 55 African Nations and the African Diaspora, using art to visualize an Afro-optimist Africa and highlighting the central role of the cultural and creative industries in driving the social and economic development of nations while building an optimistic and more prosperous future for all Africans.
Lorna contributed to the Good Ancestors Exhibition at UN HQ as part of the Summit of the Future 2024 activities. She also curated Parallel AI + XR for the Art side event for the UN Summit of the Future.
Since 2022, she has been working as Creative Director and VR/XR Curator for WAL-E Visual, providing consultancy and technical and advisory support to Belgian Development Agency Enabel to help integrate emerging digital technologies for skills in line with current digital transformation trends in Uganda’s Technical and Vocational Education Training (TVET).
She implemented the Enabel VET Toolbox, a pilot Virtual Reality (VR) solution in soft and hard skills training/workshops in Uganda. She trained 35 technical trainers from 7 TVET institutions across Uganda using Virtual Reality (VR) for soft and hard skills training. Watch Virtual Reality Training of Trainers.
Between 2021 and 2022, Lorna was a Creatives Industrial Advisor and Technical Specialist for the United Nations Development Programme, where she provided technical and advisory support to the Government of Uganda and the UNDP Country Office program in developing strategies for the Cultural and Creative industries. She supported the implementation of UNDP’s Digital Strategy 2021–2025 in the context of inclusive digital creator ecosystems in Uganda.
Previously, she was the Extended Reality (XR) Research and Engagement Lead for ÃŒmÃsà 3D in Nigeria in 2022. She led this diverse research team across Nigeria, Tunisia, South Africa, and Senegal in an independent pan-African research project with the support of Meta to map and analyze the African extended reality ecosystem and draw attention to ongoing efforts to develop XR technologies in Africa, including policy and regulatory recommendations. She also published and was the lead research contributor to the Africa Extended Reality Report 2022.
Lorna earned her Master’s Degree in Philosophy in Inclusive Innovation from the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business. Her research work and thesis title was Virtual Worlds in a Digital Age: Exploring Extended Reality Technologies for the Future of Africa’s Creative and Cultural Spaces. She earned her Bachelor’s Degree of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering in 2014 at the University of Cape Town, with her thesis on Network Input/Output Virtualisation (IOV) for Cloud Computing.
She began her career as a Business Associate Intern at Google in Kampala, Uganda, in 2014. She executed product research for Project Link, a shared access Wi-Fi internet fiber network infrastructure for Kampala and Accra.
Between 2015 and 2017, Lorna worked as the Network Operations Engineer at Vodafone in Kampala, Uganda. There, she worked on 4G long-term evolution (LTE) radio and core network optimization and planning.
Between 2017 and 2019, she continued as a Research and Project Coordinator for Electric South. She curated and executed the New Dimensions Augmented and Virtual Reality Lab, which focused on new frontiers of storytelling using emerging digital technologies. Read Storytelling Through Augmented Reality.
In 2019 and until 2020, she was an Innovation Fellow on Digital Creative Economy at Co-Creation Hub Nigeria, and in 2021, a Country Programme Manager on the Future Females – South Africa program for the UK International Tech Hub Network. Read Co-creation Hub (CcHUB) Welcomes Lorna Okeng Atim as Innovation Fellow.
Lorna is a Next Generation Foresight Practitioner Fellow 2024 at the School of International Futures and a member of the World Metaverse Council. She was also Africa Innovation Fellow, Yunus & Youth Global Fellow (2017), Tony Elumelu Fellow (2015), and ITU World Young Innovation Fellow (2014).
She was also awarded We Will Lead Africa Griot (2023), Innovation Fellow – CoCreation Hub (2019), Royal Academy of Engineers (2019), National Research Foundation Scholar (2019), Hivos African Crossroads Thinker (2018), Bertha Innovation Fund Recipient (2018), MTN Solutions Space Scholar (2017), Zawadi Africa Outstanding Service Award (2012), and Google Zawadi Africa Scholar (2010).
Read Lorna Okeng: Digitally Preserving African Heritage.
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