5 Amazing Nigerians doing great in Tech

In Africa, Nigeria’s tech system is the most talked about. Nigeria is Africa’s largest economy and most populous nation. And its tech system is considered by many to be the continent’s star. It is a well-known fact that when it comes to brains Nigerians got it all. We have a good number of them dwelling in the Tech space both in Nigeria and in the Diaspora. Nigeria always called; ‘Africa’s Silicon Valley’ is making a title for itself. Meet these Nigerians who are not just brainy but also talented on the continent and the diaspora who have carved a niche for themselves by leading top tech companies, conceiving multi-million and even billion-dollar businesses, capitalizing on their community, and carrying their skills globally with their shoulders high.

We will be looking at 5 amazing Nigerians doing great in Tech

1. Maya Hogan Famodu is a Nigerian-born venture capitalist who is also thriving well in the tech space. She has set an impressive record for herself and her country. Maya is the youngest black woman who launched a tech fund in sub-Saharan African. Famodu is so enthusiastic about bringing VC to Africa and broadening the continent’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. When she first moved into Lagos with little investment experience, she built her path by launching Ingressive Advisory, which delivered market entry assistance and tech research for corporates and investors. To her credit, she happens to be the first woman in Nigeria to raise a tech fund that enables people to invest directly in tech start-ups across Africa.

2. Mitchelle Elegbe is the founder of Interswitch which is Nigeria’s biggest and most prominent payment company. Inter switch was founded in 2002 before the high rise of Tech systems in the country. Inter switch was founded and continued to grow at a time where no technology or infrastructure supported electronic forms of payment in the country. However, over the past 16 years, inter-switch has rooted itself into Nigeria’s financial industry handling payments and enabling transactions using the electronic medium allowing them to pay bills, transfer money, and pay for subscriptions. More than his role in Interswitch is his significance and status as one of Nigeria’s most recognized businessmen who has carved a niche for himself. He has mentored several other company originators and helped create several other thriving businesses.

3. Iyin Ayodeji is the founder of flutter wave another most integral payment company in Nigeria. Iyin resigned from his paid job to focus on his project and take care of his family and also play a prominent role in implementing policies to shape Nigeria’s tech ecosystem.

Before he co-founded Flutterwave, Iyin assisted in building Andela another tech company into one of the largest talent companies for software innovators in Africa. In less than 10 years, in Flutterwave and Andela, Iyin helped build two of the most influential companies in the Nigerian ecosystem. Flutterwave is an African-based fintech company. It provides a payment infrastructure for multinational vendors and payment service givers across the continent.

4. Shola Akinlade is a Nigerian Entrepreneur and IT Expert. He is the co-founder of paystack, one of the leading online payment platforms in Nigeria. Paystack allows businesses in Africa to accept and make payments made by anyone, anywhere in the world through the use of credit or debit cards, direct money transfers, and mobile money on their websites or mobile apps. It dwells in the fields of financial benefits, the internet, and payments. Shola was born in Nigeria. He started a software, development, and consulting company known as Klein Devort in 2009. He got the inspiration to build an online mobile payment app after creating several apps for Nigerian banks. Over the years, Paystack grew to process over 15% of online transactions in Nigeria. Paystack was acquired by Stripe for over $200 million.

5. Tope Awotona is the brain and founder of Rarity, a black-acquired unicorn the scheduling powerhouse known as the Calendly. He started off by building his start-up in Ukraine at the time the country was fighting a civil war. Calendly a software program gives quick access to manage open spaces in the calendar in order to enable people to book appointments with you in those spaces, which then also books out the time in calendars like Google’s or Microsoft Outlook with a thriving number of tools to enhance that experience, it includes the ability to pay for a service in the incident that your appointment is not a business meeting but, take for instance yoga, catering or Martial art class. Apart from that Calendly can also be used to book sessions with therapists, have dinner dates, to mention a few.