I went to Davos undercover as an ‘important person’ and left with a clearer view of power, AI, and what actually works

I am on the train leaving Davos, watching the Alps disappear behind a curtain of snow, my body finally catching up with the week. Blood drawn just days before. X-rays on my knees. Flights are delayed, rerouted, and cancelled. Airline chaos layered on top of altitude sickness. And waiting for me back home is a winter storm.

And yet, God is good.

This was the final checkbox in a long and demanding year of global convenings. After the UN General Assembly, the UN Commission on the Status of Women, COP30, CES, and countless policy rooms across continents, I wanted to experience the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting firsthand. Not as a spectator, but embedded enough to observe how power, access, and execution actually work.

So, I went undercover as an “important person.”

Not important enough to command a motorcade. Not invisible enough to be dismissed. Just important enough to move through rooms, navigate badges, time shuttles, and listen carefully. That position, somewhere between access and anonymity, revealed more than any panel ever could.

Davos is not a conspiracy. It is compression.

Once a year, a small Swiss mountain town becomes the densest concentration of decision makers in the world. Heads of state, CEOs, founders, artists, civil society leaders, and journalists gather not to decide the future in secret, but to compare notes at extraordinary speed. Ten conversations in one day can replace a year of emails and formal meetings.

Power in Davos is revealed through proximity. Who moves easily between rooms. Who is introduced without asking? Who is carried from one conversation to the next by trust rather than title.

Altitude sickness humbles everyone equally. Davos has a way of doing that.

Early in the week, I lost my bag. In a place where badges determine access and logistics determine survival, it could have derailed everything. Instead, it revealed the human infrastructure no one talks about.

Jennifer de Broglie did not hesitate. She offered me a bunk bed so I could rest and reset. Housemates I had just met celebrated my birthday on the very first night I arrived. In a village built around power, it was kindness that grounded me.

Food became its own form of diplomacy. From working dinners to late-night receptions, nothing matched the comfort of jollof rice at the Nigerian House or the energy of the Nigerian House Party itself. Culture travelled faster than policy ever could.

Access flowed through the community. A hotel badge, courtesy of Alexa Karpova’s Davos FinTech and AI Salon, opened rooms where finance, artificial intelligence, and governance collided. Anna of Astra Group extended an invitation to the inDrive and Global Creative Economy Institute Gala. Conversations deepened at Semafor Davos, where capital flows, emerging markets, and technology were discussed with unusual candour.

One of the most meaningful gatherings of the week was the Accra Reset at Davos. I caught up with Chido Munyati, member of the Executive Committee and Head of Africa at the World Economic Forum, in the company of Ghana’s President, His Excellency John Dramani Mahama, former President of Nigeria Olusegun Obasanjo, World Health Organisation Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, and former Vice President of Nigeria, Professor Yemi Osinbajo.

The Accra Reset opened with a call for a New Bandung Spirit. The idea is that progress happens when countries act together at the right scale, at the right moment, and with the right balance of incentives.

That emphasis on execution echoed throughout Davos.

At the Nigerian House Party, I raised a glass with Joanna Liantsoa from the Forum of Young Global Leaders, Wyclef Jean who shared insights on his upcoming docuseries with TIME Studios and Circle titled The Culture of Currency, Temitope Atiba, Special Adviser on Policy at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and a remarkable mix of Global Shapers, Young Global Leaders, social development experts, and Nigerians working across the diaspora, including within Swiss financial institutions.

AI was everywhere, though rarely announced. It is no longer a topic. It is the operating layer.

That reality crystallised during my time with the Mindero Foundation, where I had the opportunity to engage directly with its founder, Andrew Forrest. He once observed that the challenges in front of us do not need more resolutions. They need action. In Davos, that insight felt less philosophical and more operational.

As we move from pledges to performance on the Amazon and global forest protection, the opportunity before us is to institutionalise agentic AI as infrastructure for catalytic capital. Not as an experiment, but as a system. By anchoring the Mindero Foundation and the Tropical Forests Forever Facility as core outcomes of COP30, we can move beyond static commitments toward continuous, auditable implementation that aligns public finance, private capital, and sovereign accountability.

The question is no longer whether capital exists. It is how it is deployed, governed, and measured in real time.

As the snow melted and the WhatsApp groups finally quieted, five lessons became impossible to ignore. Urgency has replaced rhetoric. Unlikely alliances now drive progress. Youth voices must hold real power, not symbolic seats. Business is ready if frameworks are clear. And hope, when grounded in pragmatism, remains a renewable resource.

The real divide in AI is not technical. It is relational.

I am heading home with more than business cards and sore knees. I am heading home with clarity.

Progress is not built in one room, one summit, or one week. It is built one executed connection at a time.

Back to work. With purpose.

… Inegbedion is head of Happiness ConcordeApp