40 million people have a government ID and no bank account. Olu Akanmu’s fix: lock the regulators, the banks and the fintechs in one room and give them 3 months to go and find them.

During the cashless crunch, a bank that needed more server capacity had to write a board paper, get approval, source dollars, import the server, clear it through customs and install it. 3 to 4 months. OPay could look at capacity at 9pm, see 70%, and add 40% by morning. Traders in Balogun started telling customers to get OPay so they could be paid.

Olu was President and Co-CEO of OPay Nigeria from 2021 to 2023. Before that he was the third Nigerian hired for MTN’s commercial launch, ran retail banking at Bank PHB and FCMB, and was CMO at Airtel. He started out as a pharmacist at Glaxo. Today he’s academic director of the Lagos Business School Tech-Leap Initiative.

In this episode we get into the POS machine that costs 5% of a bank branch, why MTN sent its South African team home one month after launch, Airtel’s 3G towers in places with no smartphones, the ₦10 million he’d put in a dollar bond at 30, and why digital payments grew from 22% to 56% while access to credit went from 2% to 6%.

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WHERE TO FIND OLU AKANMU
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/olu-akanmu-88280a/
X/Twitter: https://x.com/OluAkanmu
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oluakanmu/

LAGOS BUSINESS SCHOOL TECH-LEAP INITIATIVE
Website: https://www.lbs.edu.ng/initiatives/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lbs_techleap/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LBSTech-LeapInitiative

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TIMESTAMPS
0:00 40 million people with an ID and no bank account
2:50 The biggest myth about scaling in Africa
3:48 The managers behind the famous founders
6:44 Two founders in: who do you hire next?
8:45 The 21,000 agent ceiling OPay blew past
10:12 How business school teaches you to exclude half the market
12:03 A POS machine is 5% of the cost of a branch
13:44 Selling mobile to a country with 0.4 lines per 100 people
16:48 When 4 out of 5 Nigerians wanted to be on MTN
19:43 Influencer marketing is mercenary marketing
21:33 The Room on Patreon
23:04 Sponsor: Zobo Money
23:49 Sponsor: Hisa
24:58 What winners in telecoms, banking and fintech all do
27:35 Big Brother influencers and the wrong customer
28:38 “We’re in the era of Indomie marketing”
30:48 From Glaxo pharmacist to banker
32:25 The evening Bank PHB came for a telco guy
35:00 “Give me two weeks”: Googling retail banking
37:10 What foreign companies get wrong about Nigeria
38:05 Airtel’s 3G towers in places with no smartphones
40:34 MTN sent the South Africans home a month after launch
42:32 Why Chinese managers show up in Balogun market
44:09 The cashless policy and OPay’s 6x growth
46:05 Board papers, customs and a 4 month wait for a server
47:46 Adding 40% capacity overnight
49:42 Eche’s two-minute OPay account test
52:46 Redesigning Nigeria’s payments stack from scratch
57:28 The banking lobby vs the telco route
59:24 Lock them in a room for 3 months
1:01:29 Is Nigeria hard, or does it punish ignorance?
1:04:25 3 things to know before building wealth in Nigeria
1:06:23 30 years old with ₦10 million: what he’d do
1:08:05 Omoluwabi and the price of a good name
1:11:49 Compounding, excellence and peace of mind
1:14:21 The maths teacher who became a professor
1:16:03 Nigerian tech and the printing press
1:18:48 Rapid fire: beans, telecoms and “too late”
1:22:59 What the second seat learns that founders miss
1:25:01 Why big banks can’t build fintechs
1:29:22 Payments grew. Credit didn’t.
1:31:08 What credit does for a trader in the market
1:32:56 Who should be in this chair next
1:34:51 Would he go into politics?