There, Kagho developed her interest in resilient cities – urban spaces that can withstand crises without losing their ability to function. As a natural problem-solver who had always wanted to make the world a better place, she was intrigued by the question of what makes a city work – and more specifically, how Lagos could ensure its buses arrived on time. Her idea was simple: might digitalisation and visualisation be the answer to optimising the transport network?
An exchange programme at ETH Zurich brought her a step closer to that vision. For the first time, she was able to simulate traffic in Lagos on a computer using agent-based modelling. In 2019, she completed her Master’s degree in Tokyo and returned to ETH as a doctoral candidate. It was then that she began to flesh out her idea of an urban digital twin.
At the same time, Kagho was increasingly preoccupied by thoughts of how she could put her research into practice. That was when a fellow student told her about the ETH Social Impact Pioneer Fellowship – a funding programme designed to foster the creation of companies that benefit people in low- and middle-income countries. The prospect of turning her research findings into a company and making a lasting difference thrilled her. As a Pioneer Fellow, she drew on the extensive development know-how of her ETH coach Fritz Brugger, learned to think like an entrepreneur, and used her interaction and exchange with other Fellows to help shape her entrepreneurial journey.
The moment of truth came in February 2025, when Kagho founded UrbanEcho, an ETH spin-off that develops digital twins of cities. By combining population, demographic and behavioural data, the company creates a synthetic population that can be used to simulate and test various mobility scenarios. These simulations help local decision-makers devise sustainable strategies and improve urban transport systems. Alongside her burgeoning career as an entrepreneur, Kagho is also determined to continue her research. In tandem with her work at UrbanEcho, she is currently a researcher at the Sustainable Urban Transitions Lab led by ETH professor Bryan Adey. “My goal is to make data-driven solutions accessible worldwide so that we can tackle the challenges facing urban environments,” she says.