His parents returned to Nigeria when he was 2 years old. After attending Baptist Primary Schools at Ara, Oke-Ila Orangun (in Osun State), Ibadan and Ogbomoso (in Oyo State), he thereafter attended Olivet Baptist High School Oyo, graduating in 1970 with a Grade I (highest classification) in the West African School Certificate Examination.

In the Fall of 1971, Femi Babalola entered the University of Ife, Nigeria (now known as Obafemi Awolowo University, after one of Nigeria’s foremost founding fathers who led the Western Region of Nigeria to self-government from Britain in 1952 – eight full years before the Federation of Nigeria obtained her independence). While at the university, Femi's extra-curricular activities earned him a University Press Club Citation Award for Journalism and Service, 1976, a Citation Award for Journalism and Service, 1976 from The X-Ray Club, of which he was a founding member, and a Citation Award for Journalism and Service, 1973 from the Students Union. After serving as a Member of the Students' Representative Council, 1973/74, Femi also served as Speaker of the SRC, 1974/75. In Spring 1976, as a member of the university's premier class of 12 graduates in Applied Geophysics, Femi earned a Bachelor of Science (with Honors) in Applied Geophysics (also earning second major credits in Geology). He completed an Honor's Thesis on Field Geophysical Exploration & Mapping involving Data Acquisition, Analysis, Interpretation & Multi-method Geophysical Integration.

Femi worked with the Geophysics Section of the Geological Survey of Nigeria (in Kaduna) as an Exploration Geophysicist and later as a Research Geophysicist, until the Fall of 1981, when he emigrated to Texas. While at the Geological Survey of Nigeria, he led several field geophysical exploration surveys in various parts of northern, north-central, eastern and southeastern Nigeria. He received the commendation of the Geological Survey Directorate for single-handedly executing the nation's only geophysical contribution (of 1981) to the International Geological Correlation Program (Project 108/144), mapping and correlating the sub-cropping and outcropping structure of Southern Nigeria and that of Northeastern Brazil from his interpretation and analysis of geophysical and geological data that he assembled from the Geological Survey, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, as well as from Petrobras (the Brazilian National Petroleum Corporation in Rio de Janeiro); the DNPM (the Brazilian National Department of Mineral Exploration in Brasilia) and UFPE (the Brazilian National University of Pernambuco in Recife).

In the U.S., Femi obtained his M.A. in Geophysical Engineering (Petroleum/Reservoir Geophysics) from The University of Texas at Austin, Department of Geological Sciences in August 1984, completing a Thesis titled: Seismic Stratigraphic Analysis and Tectono-Depositional Evolution of the Unimbricated Ellesmerian Sequence (Mississippian to Lower Cretaceous), National Petroleum Reserve, Alaska.

He obtained his Ph.D. in Geophysical Engineering (Petroleum/Reservoir Geophysics) from The University of South Carolina, Department of Geological Sciences in December 1990. He completed a Dissertation titled: Integrated Geophysical and Geological Interpretation of Gulf of Guinea Margin Evolution, and Hydrocarbon Evaluation of the Cotonou (Dahomey/Benin) Basin.

The prestigious "Sigma Xi: The Scientific Research Society" headquartered in the United States, elected Dr. Babalola in 1991 to  Full Membership on the basis of his research and publications record considered to be "noteworthy achievement as an original investigator in a field of pure or applied science". Apart from civic volunteering and leadership roles in American, African and Nigerian organizations (public and private), Femi is also a member of several professional Geoscience and Engineering societies. In addition to several proprietary or unpublished reports and research papers, he has over 40 publications in international, American and African technical journals, most of which were professional conference presentations in the United States, Europe and Africa.

Dr. Babalola's publication record began with his 1983 study published and presented at the International Convention (in Dallas, Texas), of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG). From his analysis of the available Seismic and Geological data, Dr. Babalola predicted the existence of significant petroleum potential in Nigeria's Niger Delta deepwater, about a decade before the area was even open to exploration. Dr. Babalola presented a further improvement to his research at the Annual Conference (in Lagos), of the Nigerian Association of Petroleum Explorationists (NAPE) in 1987, when he became a member. Dr. Babalola's research-based predictions have been confirmed by several major "elephant" discoveries in the deepwater Niger Delta (from the mid-1990's to the present) by the major multi-national oil companies, as well as Famfa Oil (a Nigerian independent petroleum company). Dr. Babalola's other significant resaerch papers report his discovery of two riple junctions beneath the Niger Delta basin, his novel tectonic model for the evolution of the per-Niger Delta basins and the Gulf of Guinea, his dermacation of oceanic crust beneath the Niger Delta basin and his new model for the breakup of the Africa-South American region of the Gondwanaland super-continent.

In addition to consulting for the major Petroleum Exploration/Production companies as a Geoscience Applications Systems Analyst (involving Project Leadership, Training, Mentoring, Workflow & Dataflow) on a wide range of multi-vendor applications and databases (running on UNIX Client-Server systems and Windows-NT/Windows-XP client-server platforms), Dr. Babalola's interests, as he leads the consulting effort of Afram-Tech International, Inc. of Houston, Texas, include the integration of technical results from the exploration and production applications software by interfacing the systems (or porting their data) into managerial/financial (ERP) and marketing/sales (CRM) applications (such as those of Oracle, SAP, PeopleSoft, JDEdwards, and Baan) for the availability of these knowledge-based technical results in the upstream petroleum industry's information systems so as to facilitate the managerial use of exploration, reservoir and production information across the enterprise.

Dr. Babalola's other professional interests are in Engineering Management, Systems Analysis, Project Management and Optimization.