Mary-Ann Momoh-Ige did not set out to become a public policy manager. Like most young lawyers, she began where the profession expects you to begin: in a courtroom.
“It hasn’t really been a linear one,” she says of her career, now in its twelfth year. She qualified as a lawyer in 2014 and spent her first year in litigation, the traditional entry point for the profession in Nigeria. But she knew early on that arguing cases in court was not where she intended to stay. “I never really saw myself in public policy,” she admits, “but I knew that litigation wasn’t my final destination.”
What followed was a deliberate pivot towards corporate and commercial law. She completed a master’s degree in international business law, then moved in-house, working across regulatory agencies, non-profits and commercial entities. It was from a legal manager role at a non-profit that she stepped into her current position as Public Policy Manager at inDrive, the ride-hailing platform now operating across dozens of countries, including several in Africa.
It is a role, she says, that draws on legal training most people wouldn’t associate with public policy work. “There are several people in my department who are not lawyers, but it’s a very interesting perspective for someone who is a lawyer, because I’ve worked on the other side of the divide.” Her time drafting legislative bills, she says, gives her insight into how regulators think, and how to balance a company’s push for innovation against a government’s broader policy objectives.
That legal grounding, she argues, translates directly into the lobbying work at the centre of her job. “Legal advocacy, which we’ve practised in litigation, becomes policy advocacy when you come to public policy,” she says. Arguing confidently before a judge, she found, is not so different from arguing confidently before a regulator. Ride-hailing disrupted a transport sector long dominated by traditional taxi operators, and it fell to advocates like her to help regulators understand a business model built on peer-to-peer bargaining rather than fixed routes and fares.
“You have to show them what is the differentiating factor in your business,” she says. “That is part of what advocacy is about.” She credits stakeholder mapping as much as legal argument for the company’s growth in the region: identifying who holds influence in each market and ensuring the right people hear the case for sensible regulation. It is a process she says has helped inDrive move “from becoming an underdog to becoming even market leader in some countries.”
That regulatory work has taken on a sharper edge amid South Africa’s recent tightening of enforcement against undocumented migrants, an issue Momoh-Ige says the company cannot afford to ignore. “What’s going on in South Africa has been at the forefront of our minds,” she says, pointing to closer scrutiny of driver documentation during onboarding to confirm legal status, alongside media campaigns aimed at drivers that push back against xenophobia.
On the South African side, she says compliance extends beyond driver documentation to the country’s broader transformation objectives, including employing and giving directorship stakes to local staff as part of the requirements for the country’s e-hailing operating licence.
Momoh-Ige is equally candid about where the industry still falls short, particularly on gender. Women, she argues, face a steeper climb into gig work generally, not just ride-hailing specifically, which is why inDrive has built in incentives for female drivers, including some passengers’ preference for being matched with one. On the corporate side, she points to her own seat at the table as part of a slow but real shift.
The clearest expression of that commitment is the Aurora Tech Awards, an inDrive-backed grant programme exclusively for female founders. Its most recent round drew more than 3,000 applications worldwide, narrowed through several judging panels down to a top ten who receive grants and investor access. “The past two editions, the winners were from Africa. It was inspiring to see that African ideas are being validated worldwide in a pool of thousands of applicants.” For Momoh-Ige, the programme is proof the company is not simply making the right noises. “We can’t just be giving motivational speeches, so to speak,” she says. “We have to walk the talk.”
Asked what sits at the top of her agenda for the months ahead, her answer returns to where she started: the regulators. Securing licences in new markets, deepening relationships with stakeholders across the continent, and shaping how emerging rules will govern the sector, she says, remain the foundation everything else is built on.
