The recognition of Felix Ike, co-founder and chief technology officer of Moniepoint, by TIME is putting the engineering behind one of Africa’s largest fintech platforms on the global technology map.
TIME named Ike the only African executive on its inaugural ‘Executives of the Year: Tech and Data’ list, unveiled on September 22. He joins 49 technology and data leaders from companies including Netflix, OpenAI, Anthropic, Shopify, Reddit and CrowdStrike.
The recognition is significant because it shifts attention beyond Moniepoint’s growth to the technology infrastructure that has supported that expansion.
Ike co-founded Moniepoint with Tosin Eniolorunda in 2015 and has overseen the architecture of the systems powering the company’s financial services. Moniepoint has evolved from a back-end payments provider for banks into a business banking platform and attained unicorn status in 2024.
The company says it now serves more than 10 million businesses and individuals across Nigeria and beyond, while its infrastructure powers about eight in 10 in-person digital payment transactions in Nigeria.
For Africa’s technology industry, the recognition comes at a time when locally built platforms are increasingly serving large domestic markets rather than operating primarily as extensions of foreign technology systems.
Ike said the honour demonstrated that Nigerian engineering could compete on the global stage.
‘This shows that Nigerian engineering, built for Nigerian and Africa, can stand on the same stage as Silicon Valley and Wall Street,’ he said.
The recognition follows Moniepoint’s inclusion on TIME’s 2025 list of the 100 Most Influential Companies. While last year’s recognition focused on the company, the latest distinction puts one of the executives responsible for its technology architecture in the spotlight.
That distinction is important for an African technology sector where international attention has often centred on funding, valuations and user growth. The ability to build infrastructure capable of supporting millions of users and high transaction volumes is a different measure of technological maturity.
Fintech makes that test particularly demanding because reliability and security are integral to the movement of money and the operations of businesses.
Moniepoint’s expansion therefore provides a practical measure of the infrastructure challenge. Its systems have had to evolve alongside a platform serving millions of customers and a digital payments market growing rapidly across Nigeria.
Tosin Eniolorunda said Ike had contributed significantly to building infrastructure that carries the weight of millions of livelihoods.
The TIME recognition adds to Moniepoint’s international profile. The company has appeared for three consecutive years on the Financial Times’ list of Africa’s Fastest-Growing Companies and has also featured on CNBC’s World’s Top Fintech Companies list.
For African technology, however, global recognition is only one part of the story. The bigger test is whether locally built systems can remain secure, resilient and scalable as demand grows.
Ike’s inclusion on TIME’s inaugural list provides a prominent acknowledgement of the engineering capability emerging from Nigeria. Its longer-term significance will depend on whether that capability continues to produce technology capable of supporting Africa’s expanding digital economy.