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EVA Professionals has appointed Olumide Akinpelumi as its managing partner, placing a tax and global trade specialist with more than a decade of experience across professional advisory, regulatory compliance and public-sector policy work at the helm of the firm. Akinpelumi’s career has taken him across areas that are becoming increasingly important to businesses operating in Nigeria, from indirect taxation and customs to trade policy and regulatory compliance.

Before joining EVA Professionals, he served as a director in the Indirect Tax and Global Trade sub-service line of a Big Four accounting firm in Nigeria. His work covered indirect tax compliance and advisory, global trade advisory, tax structuring and planning, and issues relating to customs and tariff management. His experience also extends into public-sector policy. Akinpelumi has supported the Federal Government on tax implementation initiatives, including work connected with the implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).

That combination of private-sector advisory and public-sector experience has given him exposure to both sides of the regulatory relationship: businesses seeking to manage their tax and trade obligations and government institutions implementing policy. For companies, the distinction is increasingly important as changes in tax, customs and trade rules can affect costs, investment decisions, supply chains and market access.

Akinpelumi has also spent more than a decade as a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN) Tax and Fiscal Policy Committee, giving him a long-running connection to discussions around Nigeria’s tax and fiscal framework. His professional work has covered several industries, including real estate, construction and property development, alongside engagements with public- and private-sector organisations on complex tax and regulatory matters.

His career has also included a strong education component. He has lectured for more than a decade through professional institutions, including ICAN and the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), contributing to the training and development of accounting and tax professionals. Akinpelumi holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in accounting and is a Fellow of ICAN. He also has interests in entrepreneurship across several sectors.

At EVA Professionals, his immediate role will involve providing strategic leadership as the firm develops its advisory business and responds to the changing requirements facing companies navigating Nigeria’s tax, regulatory and trade environment. The appointment therefore brings together three strands of his career, professional advisory, public policy and professional education, as EVA Professionals seeks to strengthen its capacity in areas where regulatory changes increasingly have direct commercial consequences for businesses.

Africa’s telecom boom did more than connect hundreds of millions of people. It created one of the continent’s most powerful wealth-building machines, rewarding entrepreneurs who were willing to spend heavily on licences, networks and distribution before the returns became visible.

From Nigeria’s Mike Adenuga and Egypt’s Naguib Sawiris to Zimbabwe’s Strive Masiyiwa and Sudanese-born Mo Ibrahim, some of Africa’s biggest technology fortunes were built by controlling infrastructure that millions of people had little choice but to use.

The lesson is becoming relevant again as the continent enters another infrastructure cycle, this time around fibre, data centres, cloud computing, artificial intelligence and digital payments.

The common thread is not simply technology. It is ownership of the underlying systems.

A recent analysis of African telecom fortunes found that Adenuga, Sawiris, Masiyiwa and Ibrahim built substantial wealth through telecom businesses that expanded across markets and, in some cases, were later sold or folded into larger international groups.

The model was relatively simple, although execution was anything but. Get a licence. Raise capital. Build the network. Acquire customers. Expand into other markets. Then use the scale of the network to create additional businesses.

That model worked because telecom had unusually high barriers to entry. A new operator needed regulatory approval, spectrum, towers, fibre, switching equipment, international capacity, retail distribution and enough capital to survive years of investment before the business reached scale.

Once those pieces were in place, however, the same infrastructure became a formidable competitive advantage.

Read also: Nigeria’s data boom drives fresh wave of telecom infrastructure investment

The licence was only the beginning

Mo Ibrahim saw the opportunity before many international investors did. In 1998, he founded Celtel after identifying African markets where telecommunications licences could be obtained at relatively low cost. Celtel subsequently expanded across several African countries and was sold to Kuwait’s Mobile Telecommunications Company in 2005 for more than $3 billion.

Ibrahim later recalled that when he proposed investing in African telecoms, some executives struggled to see the opportunity. ‘I thought you were smarter than that!’ was how he recalled one executive responding to his proposal to pursue an African licence.

Mike Adenuga took a similar infrastructure-heavy approach with Globacom.

Glo launched in 2003 and challenged the existing operators with aggressive pricing. But its longer-term strategy went beyond selling mobile calls and data. The company later built Glo-1, a submarine cable linking Nigeria with international capacity, giving the operator greater control over a critical part of its connectivity chain.

That distinction matters. The largest fortunes were not necessarily created by having the cleverest telecom application. They were created by owning pieces of infrastructure through which millions of transactions, calls, messages and data sessions had to pass.

Africa is now rebuilding the rails

The opportunity is changing, but the infrastructure logic remains. Africa is moving from a mobile-phone revolution into a broader digital infrastructure cycle involving fibre networks, cloud computing, data centres, AI computing, digital identity and payment systems.

In Nigeria, the government’s $2 billion Project BRIDGE is designed to deploy 90,000 kilometres of fibre and expand the national backbone. The government says the programme is intended to address structural connectivity gaps and support wider digital economic activity.

Bosun Tijani, Nigeria’s minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, has argued that infrastructure is the foundation on which the wider digital economy must be built.

‘Infrastructure is the bedrock for most of the things we want to achieve,’ Tijani said in an interview, adding that there is no strong economy without connectivity.

At a recent Semafor event, he made the argument more directly: ‘What we do not have is meaningful connectivity,’ referring to the ability of people to actually use digital services rather than simply live within network coverage.

That distinction could determine who captures the next wave of value.

Fintech is already sitting on the telecom rails

Africa’s fintech boom illustrates the point. Mobile money, digital banking, payment applications and other financial technology companies have been able to scale because telecom networks created a distribution layer reaching deep into markets that traditional financial institutions struggled to serve.

The new businesses therefore do not need to recreate the entire telecommunications system.

They can build on top of it. That has created a different type of technology entrepreneur: one that owns the application, payment platform or customer relationship, but not necessarily the underlying infrastructure.

The next stage could shift the balance again. African fintech investors are increasingly focusing on infrastructure such as payment settlement, identity, risk and treasury systems, rather than only consumer-facing applications.

In other words, the lesson from telecom is beginning to repeat itself inside fintech.

The valuable company may not always be the app that consumers see. It may be the infrastructure underneath the app that other companies cannot easily operate without.

The telecom billionaires are moving further down the stack

Strive Masiyiwa is already an example of that transition. The entrepreneur who built his fortune through mobile telecom has expanded into fibre, cloud and data centres. His businesses are now also investing in AI infrastructure.

In September, Cassava Technologies, founded by Masiyiwa, joined Vodafone and Elsewedy Electric to develop an AI data centre in Egypt, a project expected by the Egyptian government to attract $1 billion in foreign investment.

Masiyiwa has described the move as a continuation of his infrastructure strategy. In discussing his AI expansion, he said his company is moving from mobile and broadband infrastructure into computing infrastructure because African businesses need access to those capabilities locally.

Hassanein Hiridjee, founder of Axian Group, has made a similar argument. He describes telecom networks as part of the infrastructure required for Africa’s AI ambitions because data has to move from users to data centres and then to the applications that process it.

‘There is room for everyone,’ Hiridjee said, arguing that Africa’s infrastructure gap is large enough to require both local and international capital.

The next wealth cycle may be less visible

This is where the billionaire story becomes more interesting. The next African technology fortune may not come from another consumer app with millions of downloads.

It could come from fibre routes, data centres, cloud platforms, payment infrastructure, energy systems or other networks that businesses increasingly cannot operate without.

Tony Elumelu, chairman of United Bank for Africa, has made a similar case for infrastructure as a foundation of Africa’s digital economy.

‘You can’t talk about a digital economy in Africa without fixing critical infrastructure,’ Elumelu said, pointing specifically to digital connectivity and reliable electricity.

The argument is also consistent with his broader position that infrastructure investment is essential for economic development, particularly in digital connectivity, power and logistics.

That changes the question entrepreneurs should ask. Instead of asking only what digital product Africa needs, the bigger question is what infrastructure millions of businesses will eventually depend on.

Telecom entrepreneurs answered that question two decades ago. They did not merely build businesses around the mobile revolution. They built the network through which the revolution had to pass. That created scale, recurring revenue and strategic control.

Africa’s current technology boom is creating another opportunity to build such infrastructure. The difference is that the next rails may not be visible to consumers.

They could sit underground as fibre, inside data centres as computing capacity, behind payment transactions or inside the cloud.

But if the telecom era taught Africa anything about technology wealth, it is that owning the rails can sometimes be more valuable than building the vehicle that runs on them.

The growth of social media platforms is creating new opportunities for young Africans to participate in the digital economy, with content creation becoming an emerging pathway for entrepreneurship, skills development and commercial engagement.

Platforms such as TikTok are increasingly moving beyond entertainment, allowing young users to build audiences, develop digital skills and connect with businesses through creator-led opportunities.

The experience of Ivorian digital creator Awa Fanny, popularly known online as Fanny Roki Awa, reflects the changing relationship between social media and entrepreneurship. Fanny joined TikTok in 2021 mainly for entertainment but began approaching content creation more professionally after seeing stronger audience engagement between 2022 and 2023.

‘I started by sharing content because I enjoyed the platform and the creativity it allowed me to express,’ Fanny said, explaining her early experience with social media. ‘Over time, I realised that content creation could become more than entertainment; it could create opportunities and connect me with people and businesses.’

Fanny began her professional content-creation journey in 2022 and has since participated in collaborations with businesses, showing how digital audiences are becoming valuable assets in modern marketing and communication.

‘The most important thing is consistency,’ she said. ‘Building an audience takes time. You have to continue learning, improving your content and understanding the people who follow you.’

Her journey also highlights how social media is opening alternative career pathways for young people who may not follow traditional professional routes. Fanny received a Franco-Arabic education up to Grade 5 (CM2) and is now considering further education while developing her career as a creator and entrepreneur.

‘I believe learning never stops,’ Fanny said. ‘Education and digital skills can work together to help young people build something sustainable.’

The creator economy is also creating demand for skills beyond content production, including photography, videography, video editing, digital marketing, public relations, graphic design and online commerce.

Across Africa, young creators are increasingly using digital platforms to build communities, promote products and test business ideas. This is contributing to a wider digital-services ecosystem connecting creators, brands, technology companies and consumers.

However, industry observers say the long-term growth of the creator economy will depend on stronger investment in digital literacy, professional training and education systems that help young people convert online visibility into sustainable businesses.

For Fanny, social media represents more than a platform for sharing content.

‘Social media gives young people the chance to create, learn and show what they can do,’ she said. ‘The opportunity is there, but young creators need to treat it seriously and continue developing their skills.’

As Africa’s youthful population continues to embrace digital platforms, the creator economy is expected to play a growing role in youth entrepreneurship, employment creation and participation in the continent’s expanding digital economy.

Leadway Assurance has called for stronger and more affordable climate risk solutions to protect Africa’s food systems as climate change increasingly threatens agricultural production, farmer incomes and investments across the continent.

The insurer made the call at the ninth edition of Agriculture Summit Africa (ASA) 2026, convened by Sterling Bank, where industry stakeholders examined ways to improve food production, financing, processing, technology, trade and policy to build stronger agricultural value chains across Africa.

Speaking during a panel session titled ‘Climate Risk Management for Sustainability: Future-Proofing Africa’s Food System,’ Ayoola Fatona, global head, Agricultural Risk Solutions, Leadway Assurance, identified affordability and the trust deficit as major barriers limiting insurance adoption among smallholder farmers.

Fatona said addressing these barriers would require stronger partnerships capable of making insurance more accessible to farmers, particularly those most exposed to climate-related risks.

‘At Leadway, we have sought to address these challenges by building partnerships with organisations that share our commitment to advancing the livelihoods of smallholder farmers and strengthening their resilience to climate-related risks,’ he said.

‘Through these collaborations, we have been able to mobilise funding to pre-finance insurance premiums, ensuring that farmers have the protection they need in place from the outset of the planting season, when their risk exposure is at its highest.’

According to Fatona, the approach has enabled the insurer to significantly expand agricultural insurance coverage.

‘In the 2025 wet season alone, our partnerships enabled us to mobilise over US$1.2 million to provide insurance coverage for more than 400,000 farmers, and we are continuing to build on that progress,’ he said.

He said affordability, however, would not be enough to drive sustained adoption if farmers lacked confidence that insurers would pay claims when losses occur.

‘Beyond affordability, we recognise that trust must be earned through action. That is why we remain committed to ensuring constant and rapid payouts, no matter how large, whenever insured events occur,’ Fatona said.

The challenge is particularly acute for smallholder farmers who often operate with limited financial buffers and are vulnerable to weather shocks, including drought, excessive rainfall and other climate-related events.

For insurers, expanding coverage to this segment also presents operational challenges, particularly in reaching farmers in remote communities and areas affected by insecurity.

Leadway said it is responding by deploying remote sensing and other technology-enabled solutions to assess farms virtually, understand their structures and farming practices, and maintain engagement with farmers where physical access is difficult.

The use of technology is expected to help insurers improve risk assessment and expand coverage while reducing some of the costs associated with traditional farm-level assessments.

The insurer’s participation at the Agriculture Summit Africa 2026 reflects its broader focus on using insurance to protect agricultural investments and strengthen resilience across the food value chain.

As African countries seek to increase food production, improve food security and develop stronger intra-African trade, industry stakeholders say managing climate-related risks will remain critical to protecting farmers, agribusinesses and the investments required to expand the sector.

Idris Miliki Abdul, executive director, Conscience for Human Rights and Conflict Resolution (CHRCR), has called on the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) in Kogi State to put every machinery in place in the forthcoming election to enhance a peaceful atmosphere that can guarantee peaceful elections and, by extension, a peaceful country.

In his chat with BusinessDay on Friday, he equally called on all security agencies, particularly the Nigerian Police, to conduct mapping to identify flash points and trigger zones for effective collaboration among all the stakeholders.

‘We call on International development partners to support the original Civil Society Organisation (CSO) to continue to engage the citizens for peaceful elections in Nigeria, saying as the 2027 elections in Nigeria take shape, we must all know and understand that it must be ballots and not bullets,’ he said.

Also speaking on the International Day of Peace that is celebrated every 21st of September, he said, as the world celebrates the International Day of Peace, let there be peace in our country. As campaigning toward the Kogi State local government election slated for October 17, 2026, is fast approaching, the presidential and National Assembly schedule for January 16, 2027, and the governor and the state Assembly put on February 6, 2027. Let there be peace.

‘Elections are a process and not a one-day event; we, political parties, their candidates, their supporters, the voters across the country should understand that elections are a contest and not do-or-die affairs. We call on the Nigerian youth in particular not to allow them to be used as agents of destruction, as the youth can also be leaders of today and tomorrow’.

With Nigeria’s GDP growth at 4.43 percent in the second quarter (Q2) 2026, securities dealers under the aegis of the Chartered Institute of Stockbrokers (CIS) will use its 30th Annual Conference in Lagos to examine how record capital mobilisation can translate into faster growth, productive investment and shared prosperity.

The conference is expected to push for a stronger link between capital raised through Nigeria’s capital market and measurable economic outcomes, including job creation, industrial growth, infrastructure development and increased household wealth.

The conference, themed ‘From Capital Mobilised to Prosperity Realised: Financing Nigeria’s Next Era of Growth and Global Competitiveness,’ from November 4-5 will bring together policymakers, regulators, market operators, investors and international stakeholders to examine how the capital market can become a more effective engine of long-term economic development.

Saheed Bashir, chairman of the conference committee said the theme was inspired by the need to move the national conversation beyond the size and performance of the capital market to what mobilised capital ultimately delivers to the real economy.

According to him, the value of listed companies has risen to about N160 trillion from roughly N30 trillion in May 2023, while the market is currently hosting the country’s largest capital raise through the Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals IPO, involving 4.1 billion shares at N525 per share.

‘Still, a rising index is not the same as a rising standard of living,’ Bashir said, stressing that capital mobilisation must translate into productive investment and broader economic benefits.

He said Nigeria needs a deliberate ‘transmission mechanism’ linking funds raised in the capital market to manufacturing, agriculture, infrastructure and small and medium-sized enterprises, supported by transparent reporting on the utilisation of proceeds.

Bashir also identified deeper institutional investment, macroeconomic stability and a shift from measuring market performance solely by market capitalisation to tracking jobs, output and household wealth as critical to achieving the desired impact.

He said the capital market should increasingly serve as the economy’s principal source of long-term finance, particularly for infrastructure and productive assets that require patient capital.

The Dangote Refinery IPO, he noted, provides an example of how public capital can be deployed to support productive capacity, with the primary offer designed to channel funds into the company and support its expansion plans.

The conference will also examine measures required to attract greater domestic and foreign participation, including improved market access, efficient repatriation of investment proceeds, transparent foreign exchange arrangements, investor protection, digital onboarding and a stronger pipeline of quality listings.

Bashir said stockbrokers would remain central to this process, describing them as ‘the market’s front door and its ambassadors.’ He identified professionalism, research, technology, investor access and efficient execution of large transactions as key areas where the profession must continue to raise standards.

The conference is expected to produce a policy communiqué containing recommendations to government and key financial-market regulators, as well as an outcome framework for measuring the impact of capital mobilisation on the wider economy.

It will also consider product innovation, retail participation, market infrastructure, technology, ethics and capacity building as part of efforts to position Nigeria’s capital market for its next phase of development.

The event comes as the Institute marks three decades of its annual conference and follows the historic emergence of Fiona Nyako Ahmed Ahimie as the Institute’s 14th President and first female President.

Africa’s credit market presents a paradox that policymakers and financial institutions can no longer afford to ignore. Banks have capital and liquidity to lend, yet millions of individuals and businesses that need credit remain excluded from formal financing. The experience of South Africa provides a striking illustration. There, consumers submitted 18.5 million credit applications in the second quarter of 2025, but 67 percent were declined.

The message is that Africa does not necessarily have a shortage of money to lend but a shortage of reliable information with which lenders can confidently determine who should receive it.

This distinction is important because the consequences extend well beyond banking. The International Finance Corporation estimates that $331 billion in yearly SME financing demand goes unmet in sub-Saharan Africa. That financing gap represents businesses unable to purchase inventory, acquire equipment, employ more workers or expand production. It represents households unable to build homes or acquire productive assets at a reasonable pace.

For too many Africans, economic progress has consequently become an exercise in saving first and building later. A family builds a house one room at a time because mortgage finance is unavailable. A small trader expands only after accumulating enough cash to purchase additional stock. A manufacturer delays acquiring equipment until retained earnings can finance it.

While this may appear prudent, it has a substantial economic cost. When productive investment depends almost entirely on accumulated savings, economic growth becomes slower than it needs to be. Businesses cannot respond quickly to opportunities, employment creation is constrained, and assets take years to build.

The problem is particularly serious because much of Africa’s economic activity takes place outside the formal financial system. Informal businesses may have customers, turnover and reliable suppliers but lack the payslips, audited accounts, extensive banking histories or conventional credit records demanded by traditional lenders.

The consequence is a damaging mismatch, as people can be economically active without being financially visible.

This is where the continent’s financial institutions need to rethink how creditworthiness is assessed. The answer is not for banks to lower their lending standards or abandon risk management. That would merely create another problem through rising defaults and weakened financial institutions. The objective should instead be to widen the evidence upon which responsible lending decisions are based.

Regular rent payments, utility bills, mobile-money transactions, school-fee savings, supplier payments and other consistent financial behaviours can reveal valuable information about an individual’s or business’s capacity to repay. The challenge is converting these scattered signals into reliable, transparent and usable credit intelligence.

This is increasingly possible through alternative-data analytics and modern credit-scoring systems. Evidence from emerging lending models suggests that expanding the pool of information available to lenders can bring previously excluded borrowers into the formal credit system without necessarily producing a corresponding explosion in bad loans.

That should encourage African banks to move beyond the traditional definition of a bankable customer.

The ideal situation is an African credit market in which credit decisions are based on demonstrated economic behaviour rather than simply on formal documentation. A trader should not be automatically considered a poor credit risk because she lacks a conventional payslip if her transaction history demonstrates consistent income and repayment behaviour. A small business should not be excluded simply because it has no lengthy audited history when alternative data can provide credible evidence of its cash flow and obligations.

Banks, however, must also confront an internal problem. Innovation can become trapped within layers of product, risk, technology, compliance and management approval. While these safeguards are necessary, excessive institutional caution can prevent financial institutions from responding quickly to an enormous market opportunity.

The way forward therefore requires collaboration among banks, fintech companies, credit bureaus, telecoms operators, payment platforms, regulators and data providers. Regulators should establish clear rules governing responsible use, privacy, consent and accuracy of alternative data, while financial institutions should invest in the technology and skills required to interpret it.

Governments also have a role in accelerating financial formalisation by improving digital identity, business registration, address systems and data-sharing frameworks. These are not merely administrative reforms but foundations for expanding access to productive credit.

Eventually, Africa’s credit challenge is an economic development challenge. Every viable business denied financing represents potentially lost jobs, production and tax revenue. Every household unable to finance productive assets loses years of economic opportunity.

The continent does not need to manufacture capital that already exists within its financial system. It needs to build the infrastructure and confidence required to deploy that capital more intelligently.