Kunle Afolayan is of Igbomina-Yoruba descent, from Kwara State. He is the son of the famous theater and film director and producer Ade Love. He majored in economics and started out working in a bank while doing some casual acting, before deciding to move into full-time filmmaking and taking a course at the New York Film Academy. Since 2005 he has been active in the Nigerian film industry. He has made several extremely popular titles including: The Figurine: Araromire which was in the Yoruba and English languages and Phone Swap which featured Wale Ojo, Joke Silva, Nse Ikpe Etim and the legendary Chika Okpala. The Figurine won five major awards in the African Film Academy and experienced tremendous success in the Nigerian movie theaters.

Kunle Afolayan appeared at the Subversive Film Festival in 2011 where he represented the second largest film industry in the world, the Nigerian film industry, with his colleague Zeb Ejiro. In May 2013, Phone Swap premiered in France at the first edition of NollywoodWeek Paris and won the Public Choice Award. Afolayan's father Adeyemi Josiah Afolayan (Ade-Love) was a renowned Nigerian artist of the second half of the 20th century. He worked in traveling theater and turned to the film making industry. Afolayan's father felt strongly about education and therefore Afolayan completed his studies in accounting.