By Adedapo Adesanya
President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday conferred National Honours Award to 437 Nigerians at the International Conference Centre, Abuja, and for the booming tech sector, six major heavyweights were recognised.
The tech entrepreneurs who are among the awardees included Paystack’s co-founders, Messrs Ezra Olubi and Shola Akinlade; co-founder at Flutterwave and Andela, Mr Iyin Aboyeji; Dr Ola Brown of Flying Doctors Healthcare Investment; Mrs Funke Opeke, founder and CEO of MainOne; and Mr Olugbenga Agboola, co-founder and CEO of Flutterwave.
Paystack’s Shola Akinlade (CEO) and Ezra Olubi (CTO) were both conferred with the Officer of the Order of the Niger (OON) awards. In 2015, the duo co-founded Paystack to unblock the Nigerian digital economy by offering businesses and individuals new ways to transact online and in the same year, it became the first Nigerian startup to participate in the Y Combinator accelerator program, helping to propel it on its journey toward becoming one of Africa’s most prominent tech companies.
In 2020, US fintech giant Stripe acquired Paystack for $200 million, which conferred a unicorn status on it.
Mr Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, popularly known as ‘E’, was also conferred with an OON. He is the son of the General Overseer of the Foursquare Gospel Church, Reverend Sam Aboyeji. However, he is mainly known for co-founding Andela in 2014 to train and provide job placement for tech talents in Africa, starting with Nigeria.
He later co-founded a payments company, Flutterwave, where he served as the CEO; both companies are unicorns valued at billions of dollars. He has now exited both companies.
He founded Future Africa, a venture capital fund focused on early-stage tech startups in Africa—the fund is backed by the founders of Andela, Paystack, Jumpbike, and investors at LocalGlobe. He also founded Talent City, a futuristic charter city for tech professionals.
Dr Ola Brown, the founder of Flying Doctors Healthcare Investment (FDHIC), was conferred with the Member of the Order of the Federal Republic (MFR). Her company makes venture capital and private investments in healthcare and invests in and operates larger healthcare infrastructure projects.
Dr Ola also co-founded an early-stage venture capital firm, Greentree investment company which provides growth capital to African startups.
Mrs Funke Opeke got a Member of the Order of the Niger (MON). She is the founder and CEO of MainOne, formerly Main One Cable Company. Equinix earlier this year completed the acquisition of MainOne in a $320 million deal as part of its African expansion strategy.
MainOne is West Africa’s leading communications services and network solutions provider that built West Africa’s first privately owned, open access 7,000-kilometre undersea high capacity cable submarine, a $240-million-dollar project that was completed in time and on a budget in 2010.
Also getting an OON is Mr Olugbenga Agboola, the co-founder and CEO of Flutterwave. He led the unicorn through a Series B funding round, which injected $35 million into the company with investments from MasterCard, CRE Ventures, Fintech Collective, 4DX Ventures, and Raba Capital in 2020. Early this year, the African fintech company raised $250 million in a Series D round that tripled the organisation’s valuation to over $3 billion in just 12 months.
