Category: General

Whenever I hear people talk about crypto as the answer to Africa’s international remittances and payments problems, I usually laugh, and that reaction comes from familiarity rather than dismissal. I have spent enough time around payments, banking, and cross-border flows to know that enthusiasm often grows fastest where the real problem has not been fully understood. 

Stablecoins and crypto works, and many of the people building in that space are smart and well-intentioned, but what they are addressing sits adjacent to the issue Africa keeps running into, not at the center of it. Yet the conversation keeps circling back to crypto as though speed and new tooling automatically translate into economic relief, and that assumption is where things start to fall apart.

I will explain why I see it this way, but I need to begin from a place that is personal, uncomfortable, and grounded in lived experience, because abstract arguments about systems and markets tend to miss the human context that shapes how I think about these things.

This is not cynicism but experience

Over the past few years, I have watched too many people I know battle cancer, including people I loved deeply and people who deserved far better endings than they got.Anyone who has been close to that kind of sickness understands one thing very quickly. Pain management and healing are not the same thing. Pain can be managed, sometimes so effectively that it almost disappears, while the illness itself continues its work beneath the surface. You can give someone morphine which will bring genuine relief, even dramatic relief, but it does nothing to remove the cancer. The comfort is real, and so is the damage still happening quietly in the background.

That is exactly how I listen to most conversations about crypto and stablecoins in cross border payments across Africa. There is relief in speed, convenience, and temporary workarounds, and that relief should not be dismissed or mocked. At the same time, the structural problem that created the pain in the first place remains firmly in place, and no amount of faster movement changes the fact that it has not been addressed. 

International remittance problems are not only a technology problem

Countries trade with each other, and trade runs on currencies, which is the part most people already understand at a surface level. What tends to get glossed over is which currencies actually matter once you move beyond theory and into volume. The global system still runs primarily on the dollar, with the euro playing a strong supporting role in certain regions and corridors. China has spent years trying to position the Yuan as a global settlement currency, and despite the size of its economy and its growing influence, that effort remains ongoing and far from fully realised.

When a country exports goods or services, foreign currency flows in. When it imports, that currency flows out. At the national level, the country ends up acting as a single economic body representing the combined activity of its citizens, companies, and institutions in that exchange. This is why the balance of trade matters so much in practice. It is not an abstract economic concept reserved for textbooks or policy papers. Balance of trade determines whether an economy has room to breathe or is constantly operating under pressure.

When imports consistently outpace exports, especially over extended periods, foreign currency inevitably becomes scarce. That scarcity shows up everywhere, from restrictions and delays to volatility and policy interventions. No amount of clever routing, faster settlement, or new payment technology changes that underlying problem, because the constraint sits in how much value the country earns relative to how much it spends.

Why some currencies are locked down and others are allowed to roam

This is where many African and LATAM countries find themselves today. When export earnings remain weak and economies lean heavily on imports, governments tend to respond in the few ways available to them. Currency controls begin to appear in different forms, whether through pegs, spending limits, approval processes, or outright restrictions. These measures rarely come from malice or ignorance. They emerge because foreign exchange is limited, demand keeps rising, and policymakers are trying to ration what little is available across competing needs.

More productive economies tend to operate under very different conditions. When individuals and businesses are consistently selling goods and services to international customers at scale, governments have far less reason to intervene aggressively in currency flows. Oversight still exists, usually centred on KYC, AML, and compliance standards, but there is less anxiety about money moving in and out of the system. The underlying economic activity provides enough buffer for inflows and outflows to happen without triggering instability.

That gap between these two realities has very little to do with the technology used to move money around. It is shaped by how much value an economy creates, how much of that value is sold beyond its borders, and how reliably those earnings replenish the pool of foreign exchange over time.

Nigeria is a perfect, uncomfortable example

Nigeria illustrates this dynamic better than any theory ever could. For years, the country spent staggering amounts of foreign exchange importing refined petroleum, a dependency that quietly hollowed out reserves and distorted almost every part of the financial system. That pressure showed up in familiar ways, from tight dollar limits and card restrictions to an endless stream of circulars attempting to manage scarcity through policy. The strain was constant, and everyone in the system felt it.

When Dangote’s refinery finally came onstream, that single development began to shift the equation. The country stopped bleeding foreign exchange at the same scale, and the immediate pressure on dollar supply started to ease. Almost overnight, banks that had been vocal about controls found room to relax some of them. Monthly international spending limits moved from painfully zero to figures running into thousands of dollars, reflecting a change in underlying conditions rather than any sudden improvement in banking infrastructure.

The dollars did not appear out of thin air, and nothing magical happened behind the scenes. The difference came from reducing a massive and recurring drain on foreign exchange, which created space in the system and reminded everyone how closely currency stability is tied to what a country produces and pays for.

Where the dollars actually sit, and why that matters

Another detail that rarely gets said plainly is where international money actually lives in practice. When countries engage in global trade through imports and exports, the foreign currency earned does not sit in some abstract national vault. It sits as external reserves held with correspondent banks, usually large international institutions such as JP Morgan, CitiBank, and others operating at that level. These accounts form the practical storage of a country’s foreign exchange and are the same pools of money used to settle international payments, support trade finance, and meet cross border obligations. When exports are consistent and meaningful, those reserves are replenished and remain stable. When exports slow or fall short, the balances thin out, and every outward payment begins to carry more weight and scrutiny.

This is why external reserves matter far beyond headline numbers. They determine how much real liquidity a country has access to when settling international obligations. You can build the fastest payment application in the world and design systems that move value in milliseconds, but speed alone does not refill those correspondent accounts where reserves are held. If the balances underneath are running low, scale becomes impossible regardless of how efficient the front end looks. This is the part of the conversation that stablecoin advocates tend to skip past too quickly, even though it sits at the heart of how international money actually works.

Stablecoins are a bypass, not a cure

Stablecoins can bypass parts of the traditional financial system, and that bypass can be genuinely useful in the right context. At a basic level, a stablecoin is a digital token designed to maintain a one to one value with a fiat currency, most commonly the US dollar. Issuers claim this stability is achieved by holding reserves that mirror the value of the tokens in circulation. 

In theory, every dollar-denominated stablecoin should be backed by actual dollar assets held somewhere in custody. This structure allows stablecoins to move quickly across borders while maintaining a familiar unit of account, which explains why they reduce friction, move faster than many legacy processes, and feel modern to users who have grown tired of delays and paperwork. At small to medium volumes, especially for freelancers, startups, and specific cross border use cases, they can solve real problems and deliver tangible value.

Once you look closely at how this backing is supposed to work, the picture becomes less comforting. Stablecoins are expected to be backed one hundred percent by real dollar assets, whether cash, short term treasuries, or similar instruments. Whether that backing exists in full, in real time, and under stress remains an open question. 

The system only truly gets tested when something breaks, because redemption pressure is the moment when backing either proves itself or collapses. Until a major liquidity event forces large scale redemptions, confidence rests largely on disclosures, attestations, and trust in the issuer rather than direct verification.

Money also has to move into and out of stablecoins through ramps, and those ramps matter more than most people admit. To mint a stablecoin, someone has to deposit actual dollars through a bank or payment provider. To exit, the process reverses, with the issuer paying out dollars from its reserves. These on and off ramps remain tightly coupled to the traditional banking system, correspondent accounts, and regulatory oversight.

At a national level, adoption runs into the same constraint almost immediately. If a country does not earn enough foreign exchange and a large share of participants begin moving value outward through stablecoins, the imbalance becomes visible very quickly. Money leaves faster than it comes in, and the question that surfaces is unavoidable. Where are the dollars backing this activity supposed to originate from? Technology offers no answer to that problem, because it sits firmly in the domain of economics.

Speed is impressive but settlement is everything

I am not dismissing technology or innovation. I have benefited directly from how efficient modern payment systems can be when the foundations are in place. I remember being in Portugal and trying to pay for garri and egusi when my card refused to work and the ATM was uncooperative. 

I had to transfer money from my UK account to the seller’s Portuguese account, and the funds arrived instantly, without drama or delay. Who knows, if the transaction hadn’t gone through as quickly as it did, I’d have had to compensate by washing as many dishes as my meal had cost.  

That experience felt seamless because settlement already existed behind the scenes. The liquidity was present, the correspondent relationships were intact, and the systems trusted each other. Speed came at the end of the chain, not at the beginning. This is where people often confuse switches with substance. Moving money quickly looks impressive, but having money available to move remains the harder and more consequential problem.

Why crypto breaks under real volume

There is another uncomfortable reality that rarely gets enough attention. The largest importers in most African countries operate in heavily regulated environments. Car importers, manufacturers, and large distributors sit squarely within formal systems that are monitored closely by regulators. They cannot simply decide to reroute billions in settlements through crypto without running straight into legal and compliance barriers. In many jurisdictions, the law around crypto remains unclear or openly restrictive, which limits how far these guys can go.

If those same actors attempted to push their full transaction volumes through crypto without strong underlying trade inflows to support them, the system would come under stress almost immediately. The liquidity required to sustain that level of activity is not there, and the backing needed to absorb those flows simply does not exist. The model holds together at the margins, but once real volume enters the picture, the limits become impossible to ignore.

Wishing people well, without confusing the problem

I genuinely wish crypto builders well, just as I wish policymakers well and hope that every country working to improve its economic situation succeeds. None of what I am saying comes from bitterness, fear of change, or a desire to hold on to old systems for their own sake. Innovation matters, experimentation matters, and progress almost always comes from people trying new things in imperfect conditions.

At the same time, we have to be honest with ourselves about what we are actually fixing. There is a difference between easing discomfort and addressing the source of the pain, and that distinction matters when the stakes involve entire economies rather than individual transactions. Faster movement, cleaner interfaces, and clever workarounds can offer relief, sometimes meaningful relief, but they do not alter the fundamentals that created the pressure in the first place.

Crypto can move money faster, reduce friction, and make life easier for certain users operating at specific scales. What it does not change is a broken balance of trade, weak export capacity, or decades of structural economic decisions that continue to shape currency availability. Until those deeper issues shift, every new solution, no matter how elegant it appears, will eventually run into the same limits. And when that happens, we should not pretend to be surprised.

Over the last nine months, and very much in line with what I predicted at the start of the year, the Central Bank of Nigeria has been engaged in a sustained and deliberate effort to confront fraud across the financial system. It has not been loud, it has not been performative, and it has not relied on dramatic announcements designed to impress headlines. 

What has happened instead feels intentional and steady, driven by new leadership at the top of the bank and reinforced by renewed seriousness across several departments that matter deeply to payments, banking supervision, and financial stability.

If you have spent enough time building or operating financial products in Nigeria, you quickly learn that this country has never lacked rules. Our regulatory frameworks around KYC and CDD are solid. 

They are detailed, well documented, and in many respects comparable to what you find in markets people like to call more advanced. The challenge has always lived elsewhere. It lives in what happens after those rules exist, in how consistently they are applied, and in whether anyone feels genuine pressure to enforce them when enforcement becomes inconvenient.

For a long time, the gap between regulation and enforcement created a permissive environment. People learned what they could get away with. Fraudsters, in particular, understood the system extremely well. They observed patterns, tested boundaries, and refined their methods based on the absence of consequences. 

Over time, fraud became easier to execute and harder to reverse. Banks lost money. Customers lost money. Ordinary Nigerians received messages and emails from people pretending to be trusted contacts. Funds moved quickly across institutions, and by the time anyone reacted, the trail had usually gone cold.

When fraud happened and urgency was optional

One of the most revealing aspects of the system during that era was how banks responded or failed to respond once fraud occurred. Reporting a stolen fund often felt like shouting into a void, and there was rarely a sense of urgency, accountability, or even recognition that the problem mattered beyond the immediate customer. The processes were slow, the communication was minimal, and the expectation was that you would wait indefinitely while your money effectively disappeared.

We experienced this first-hand on September 1, 2023. Lendsqr was hit by a fraud attack. The amount lost was small, nothing that could have threatened the business, but the experience was enough to show how broken the response system was. We immediately escalated the incident via email to one of the largest banks in Nigeria, fully expecting a structured investigation to kick off. The response we received was silence. Days passed. Nothing happened. It was only when I called on the personal intervention of an executive director at the bank that the situation started moving. The layers of bureaucracy that normally slow everything down were suddenly cut through, and we got resolution.

That incident leaves a lasting impression because it forces a sobering question. If it takes access to someone at the very top to resolve a fraud case within a reasonable timeframe, how do ordinary Nigerians ever recover their funds or even get proper attention? Most people have no idea who an executive director is. They don’t have informal channels to escalate issues. They submit complaints, receive reference numbers, and are left waiting while funds vanish. Confidence erodes, frustration sets in, and resignation becomes the default response.

This environment created a culture where fraud felt low risk to those committing it. The system’s slow pace and lack of coordination made it almost predictable. Criminals learned that moving money quickly and quietly often guaranteed they could escape before anyone cared enough to intervene. Experiencing that personally, as someone deeply embedded in the ecosystem, reinforces how critical consistent enforcement is, and why the changes the CBN has implemented over the past months are not just welcome but are essential for the survival of trust in Nigerian payments.

The moment enforcement became real for everyone

The mechanics of fraud exploitation were predictable. Funds would be taken from one account and moved rapidly across multiple banks. Sometimes recipient banks would attempt intervention, assuming the right teams were engaged early enough. In many cases, the funds would pass through fintech platforms as well, adding another layer of complexity and finger-pointing. Responsibility became fragmented. Each institution focused narrowly on its own exposure, while the broader flow continued unchecked.

This fragmentation allowed fraud to scale. Speed worked in favour of bad actors. By the time investigations began, money had already changed hands multiple times. Recovery became unlikely, and lessons rarely translated into systemic fixes.

The tone changed when the CBN decided to enforce existing rules in a way that affected everyone involved. There was a notable case involving one of Nigeria’s oldest and largest banks, where fraudulent funds moved through multiple institutions. Instead of allowing the usual back-and-forth, the CBN debited every bank that had received the funds and reversed the transaction chain.

That single action landed heavily across the industry. It demonstrated that tracing and reversing fraud was possible when the regulator chose to act decisively. It also made it clear that participation in the chain carried consequences, regardless of where the fraud originated.

At the same time, it was obvious that isolated interventions would not be enough. Fraud at scale requires systemic responses, and what followed was far more important than any one enforcement action.

Moving from reactions to structure and consistency

Over the months that followed, the CBN introduced and enforced a series of coordinated measures aimed at the most common fraud pathways. These changes did not arrive all at once. They were layered gradually, touching different parts of the ecosystem.

POS operations received increased scrutiny, which forced banks to become far more serious about merchant onboarding and monitoring. This focus makes practical sense, because cash conversion remains a critical exit point for fraudulent funds. When those exits narrow, the economics of fraud begin to change.

Banks were also given explicit responsibilities and timelines when fraud is reported, even in scenarios where customers were misled through impersonation or social engineering. Investigations now operate within defined windows, with a maximum of 14 days, and immediate containment actions expected within 48 hours. This clarity matters because it removes ambiguity around accountability.

Banks hold people’s money under license. That responsibility carries obligations that extend beyond processing transactions. KYC requirements exist to ensure institutions understand who their customers are and how they behave financially. When a customer profile suggests low income activity and sudden, large transaction volumes appear, that discrepancy should trigger action long before fraud becomes a headline.

Excuses such as being unable to locate a customer after the act reflect deeper failures in compliance and monitoring. Fraudulent activities are not edge cases, they are precisely the scenarios these institutions are designed to expect and address.

Why this fight mattered for the entire ecosystem

Over the past few months, fraud volumes have declined noticeably. This shift has little to do with goodwill and everything to do with friction. When funny money becomes harder to move, harder to convert to cash, and harder to hide across institutions, fraudulent activity loses momentum.

Limits on cash withdrawals, tighter controls around fund movement, and closer monitoring have all contributed to this outcome. Some measures, like proposed GPS requirements on merchant POS, proved difficult to implement at scale and remain unresolved. 

That experimentation is part of the regulatory process, and not every idea will translate cleanly into practice. What matters is that enforcement has become consistent enough to influence behaviour.

This consistency matters because Nigeria’s payments infrastructure is one of the few areas where the country consistently punches above its weight. It supports commerce, enables innovation, and underpins everyday economic activity. Allowing fraud to spiral unchecked would have undermined trust at a foundational level. Once trust erodes, recovery takes years.

By intervening when it did, the CBN protected something bigger than individual transactions. It preserved confidence in digital payments and gave builders room to focus on long-term value creation rather than constant damage control.

Credit where it is due

It is important to acknowledge the work being done within the CBN. Directors across payments supervision, payment policy, banking supervision, and related departments have taken on the hard task of enforcement, not just policy drafting. Rules were backed by action, and action produced results. 

As fraud pressure continues to ease, the ecosystem gains breathing room. Founders, banks, and fintech operators can invest energy into building safer, more sustainable solutions that serve real needs. Nigeria already has users and attention. With stronger enforcement backing the system, there is a real opportunity to channel that scale into durable progress.

That, more than anything, is why this fight against fraud matters.

I have carried a very simple rule throughout my career, and it has served me without fail: I don’t employ anyone with a second class lower or anything below that line. A lot of people have strong feelings about this rule, although most people in leadership circles follow the same principle quietly and hope no one calls them out on it.

Whenever the topic comes up, the reactions usually come with accusations that people like me are looking down on others or deliberately shutting doors that should be open. I have heard those arguments, and I understand how emotional the subject can be, but I prefer to speak from the life I have lived rather than from the opinions people try to impose on me.

The best advice I ever got from my brother

I learned the importance of grades early, and no I did not arrive at it by reading motivational books or listening to career coaches. I arrived at it the way many Nigerians do. I had an older sibling who understood how the world worked long before I did. 

One day in university, my brother sat me down and told me without blinking that anything below a 2:1 would make my chances of securing a good job close to nonexistent. It did not sound encouraging. It sounded like a harsh verdict. He was not trying to scare me for entertainment. He had seen what was happening in the job market, and he wanted me to move through life with both eyes open.

Sure enough I heeded his advice and took his word as gospel, so I stayed on track untilI discovered one particular Igbo babe who occupied more mental space than my textbooks. That little detour cost me my 2:1, and before I could fully understand the danger I had walked into, my CGPA had started to sink. 

No one needed to repeat my brother’s warning because the fear entered my bones on its own. I had to drag myself back through three very difficult semesters in order to climb above that line again. It was not a heroic act at all, rather it was pure survival because I had seen what the alternative looked like.

By the time I found myself in Taraba State for NYSC, the warning had hardened into reality. Standard Trust Bank, which was not UBAGroup at the time, had a clear requirement and was only accepting graduates who had at least a 2:1. That tiny piece of information saved me from ending up as a village teacher somewhere in the middle of nowhere. A small difference in CGPA became the reason I was sitting in a bank instead of standing in front of a chalkboard in a dusty classroom, waiting for salary alerts that never arrived on time.

When I completed NYSC, the banks and Big4 firms had all aligned around the same threshold. If you did not have a 2:1, you simply were not considered. That was how I got into Access Bank Plc. Looking back, the fear my brother handed me was one of the most useful gifts anyone has ever given me. I’m still thinking of what I to get him for Christmas, because how do you repay someone for advice that shifts the entire direction of your life.

Grades influence the opportunities life makes available

I have been in the workplace long enough to know that grades don’t always predict brilliance. I have seen people with first class degrees who could not handle basic tasks, and I have worked under leaders with third class degrees who were capable of solving problems in ways textbooks cannot teach. But when you look beyond individual stories and study outcomes across many careers, patterns start to appear. People with 2:1 and above tend to perform better, learn faster, adapt more easily, and grow more consistently. The advantage might be small at the beginning, but it becomes meaningful over time because the world keeps rewarding the people who show they can maintain discipline and push through pressure.

I don’t rely on wishful thinking when it comes to hiring. I rely on patterns that have repeated themselves so often that ignoring them would be irresponsible. Whenever someone tells me to take chances on people with lower grades, I remember the number of times I have tried exactly that. The outcome usually left me wondering why I ignored the data in front of me. 

At some point you learn that running a company is not an emotional hobby. The hiring decisions you make determine whether the organisation moves forward or gets dragged into a cycle of avoidable setbacks. Lendsqr cannot afford those experiments, especially when we operate in a highly technical environment where execution must be precise.

That is why the rule exists. We’re not trying to claim any special status or feed an ego; this approach just keeps our talent pipeline stable and predictable in a way that nothing else has managed to do.

A second class lower is not the end of a career

Even though I have my standard, I am not one of those people who believes that a 2:2 or third class is the end of the world. I know too many people who used those grades as fuel rather than punishment. The issue has never truly been the grade; it comes down to whether the person chooses to stay stuck in disappointment or accept what has happened and begin putting in the kind of sustained effort that builds a new path.

Life has never rewarded people who rely on sympathy. Life responds to hunger, effort, discipline and the willingness to endure discomfort for long stretches of time. If your results are not great, you can still turn things around. That journey, however, requires sacrifices that feel almost surgical. I sometimes say it takes a kidney, but the point is simple. Big transformations demand a level of commitment that is uncomfortable but necessary.

Young people today have advantages that my own generation did not enjoy. You have the internet, unlimited tutorials, free textbooks, open communities, online mentors and an entire world of knowledge that someone like me could never access at your age. The path to a first class or a strong 2:1 is easier now because you do not need to wait for lecturers to decide whether they feel like teaching. If you want it, you can get it, as long as you are willing to put in the hours.

If you choose to dismiss what I am saying, that is your choice. Some people prefer to defend mediocrity rather than confront it. The truth, however, remains the same. Life rewards people who stack advantages wherever they can find them.

The evidence is everywhere if you look closely

There are many examples across Nigeria and Africa that show how academic effort can rearrange an entire future. Zacch Adedeji is one of the clearest examples. He was raised in Iwo Ate in Oyo State in a household that had little access to privilege or networks. Nothing in his early environment suggested he would grow into a national figure. He began with a National Diploma in Accountancy and graduated with distinction. That achievement opened the first door. 

He proceeded to Obafemi Awolowo University and graduated with a first class in Management and Accounting. He continued with a Masters degree and later earned a PhD after many years of sustained intellectual effort. That path eventually carried him into national service where he became the head of the Federal Inland Revenue Service. The opportunities he received did not appear out of nowhere. They came because he treated education with seriousness and used it as leverage in rooms that reward excellence.

Another example is Taiwo Oyedele, who is widely regarded as Africa’s most distinguished authority in taxation. He began at Yaba College of Technology, studying for a Higher National Diploma. He graduated with exceptional results and used that foundation to build a career defined by consistency and deep technical commitment. His journey through the world of tax policy did not rely on luck. It relied on the kind of preparation that positions someone for national relevance. 

Today he leads the presidential tax and fiscal reform committee and continues to influence policy conversations across the continent. His background did not limit him because he approached his education with the seriousness of someone who understood what was at stake.

These examples show that academic performance matters because it creates an entry point into places where talent can be developed. It does not mean those without strong grades cannot succeed, but it does show that good grades can reduce the number of battles you need to fight.

What I want young people to take away from all this

If you are still in school, the simplest advice I can give you is to take your grades seriously. They will not determine your entire life, but they will determine the ease with which you enter into opportunities. A 2:1 or first class shows discipline and reliability. That is what employers see long before they meet you. It does not mean your entire identity should be shaped by grades. It simply means you should collect every advantage you can find because the world is already difficult on its own.

If you have graduated with grades that fall below that line, do not shrink. Accept what has happened and begin the slow process of building new leverage. Read widely. Learn aggressively. Build portfolios. Find mentors. Volunteer. Work twice as hard as the next person. You can reinvent yourself if you want it badly enough, and we have seen many people do it. No one rises simply because life is fair. People rise because they take responsibility for the story they want to tell in ten years.In the end, my hiring principle at Lendsqr is simple. I want people who understand the cost of excellence. I want people who have shown discipline during difficult seasons, who have demonstrated the ability to push themselves, who understand the real price of opportunity. If you carry those qualities, education becomes only the beginning of your story rather than the limit.

Somewhere between building a company, convincing adults to behave like adults, and trying to run an institution that doesn’t collapse on my head, I now find myself speaking to parents of interns before HR can send out their offers.

If you told me four years ago that I would spend my mornings explaining credit infrastructure to somebody’s mum who still shouts “off the light,” I would have laughed in your face. Yet here we are, and not only am I doing it, I am now the person defending it as innovation.

Even ChatGPT, that digital errand boy that claims it’s here to help, had the audacity to tell me that it wasn’t professional. I told it “gbe enu soun.” A man must draw the line somewhere.

But there’s a story behind all this, and before you assume I’ve lost the plot, come closer and let me run the full gist from the beginning.

One year, several disappearing acts, and an HR team that aged ten years

Over the last one year, I noticed a very strange pattern. It was mostly the girls, though not exclusively, and it always happened the same way. A bright, high-performing new hire would do well, collect praise, get on everyone’s good side, show promise, and then out of nowhere, vanish over a weekend. No warning. No conversation. Nothing.

A resignation letter would drop like a bad network, phones would go off like NEPA took light, and the entire HR team would turn to Sherlock trying to track them or the guarantor. And when someone finally surfaced, usually the parent, the explanations would start flying. The child was sick. The workload was too much. The job was stressing them. The sun was too hot. The moon was misaligned. Pick any excuse; I’ve heard them all.

But nothing prepared me for Jane Doe. Jane was the kind of intern you don’t forget. She came in the first time, did an incredible job, and left everyone impressed at how fast she picked things up. She wasn’t a pity hire. She earned every bit of the respect she got, and when she asked to come back for a second internship, we were genuinely happy to have her. She was one of those interns you imagine eventually hiring full-time with no hesitation.

So imagine our surprise when, less than a week into her reemployment, a short, vague email landed in my inbox. She was resigning with immediate effect. No clear reason. Something about “undisclosed health issues.” She didn’t tell her team lead. She didn’t inform HR. She didn’t say anything to her colleagues. She simply vanished.

We spent 24 hours trying to reach her. Nothing. Calls went nowhere, messages were ignored, and the entire thing felt like a ghost story. When we eventually got through, she had no coherent explanation. No clarity. Nothing that matched her initial eagerness or the brilliance she had shown in her first internship.

It was confusing, painful, and downright frustrating. And it wasn’t just her. She was simply the incident that snapped everything into focus.

At first I was furious. Actually, scratch that, I was livid. I kept asking myself how someone could come into a serious workplace, learn, get paid, grow, and then exit the building like a thief in broad daylight with no courtesy of a conversation. But when anger doesn’t solve the problem, wisdom must step forward. So, as usual, I went to lease some sense.

The ‘leave that job now’ parenting era is wreaking havoc

When we finally made it easier for people leaving to open up without fear of consequences (nobody dies on this job, so there’s no point holding anyone hostage), things became clearer. A pattern emerged across the stories, and it was almost too obvious once I saw it.

Parents, particularly those who grew up with traditional workplaces where people wore ties, carried files, and lived inside offices, were seeing their children work hard in a remote setting and deciding that it was slavery.

Many of these young hires still lived at home. So the parent was watching them glued to a laptop, joining meetings, taking feedback, working long hours, dealing with the normal chaos of tech, and they couldn’t process it. Their reaction was simple:

“This job is stressing my child. Leave immediately.” And when your parent gives that instruction in a home where you aren’t paying rent, feeding yourself, or contributing significantly, what power do you have to argue? Your father has spoken. Your mother has spoken. You pack your bag and run.

Even the children themselves weren’t saying the work was too much. They were complaining like normal adults do. Only psychopaths don’t complain about their jobs. But to the parents, the grumbling meant their child was suffering spiritual torment in a workplace run by sadists.

Remote work fooled us all

I knew deep down that if we weren’t a remote company, this whole parental intervention problem wouldn’t exist. If these kids were leaving the house every morning, catching crowded buses, dealing with Lagos traffic, getting shoved around by conductors, occasionally having money or items stolen, their parents wouldn’t see any of it. They would only meet a child who left home early and returned tired, and that would be the story they would take home. They wouldn’t see the work itself, the deadlines, the meetings, or the mental load, so they wouldn’t panic.

Instead, parents see their kids at home, glued to screens (an age-long beef still exists between parents and screens), typing away, attending back-to-back calls, and solving problems they don’t understand. When a young hire complains about a tough day, which any normal person would, they interpret it as suffering or exploitation. Because the kids live at home, the parents feel entitled to intervene. And most of the time, there’s nothing the child can do about it.

Remote work has turned parents into accidental supervisors in their children’s careers. They see everything, but they don’t have the context or experience to understand what’s actually happening. And without that context, even normal complaints or adjustments get blown out of proportion, which ends up creating a whole new HR headache we never signed up for.

The idea that sounded ridiculous until it made perfect sense

So one day, I asked myself a genuinely mad question: “What if I talk to the parents?”

What if I picked up my phone like the responsible adult that I am and explained the job to them man-to-man or man-to-woman? Tell them what the internship involves, the six-month structure, the pay progression, the job rotation system, the technical skills the children will pick up, the growth they can expect, and the general madness of early-career tech work.

If someone called me regarding my daughter, wanting to explain her opportunities and what the journey would look like, I would appreciate it. So why wouldn’t I extend the same courtesy to other parents?

That’s how this experiment started. It wasn’t a grand strategic initiative. It wasn’t something I wrote on a whiteboard and presented to the team. It was simply me deciding to try something different instead of sitting down complaining about a problem that kept repeating itself.

Talking to parents is now a full-blown pastime I didn’t know I needed

Let me confess: I don’t even know if this will work in the long run, but I’m enjoying the process more than I expected.

When I call these parents, the first thing I hear is pride. Genuine pride. They talk about how well their children did in school, how they graduated at the top of their class, how they have always been hardworking and responsible. 

We take mostly first-class candidates, so you can imagine the warmth of these conversations. Nobody raises a child to be mediocre, and hearing it from the parents reminded me that these young people are more than their weekend disappearances.

I also explain everything we do at Lendsqr. Not the usual corporate website talk, but real explanations of how digital lending works, how we serve lenders, the engineering that goes into the product, the skills their children will learn, and why the early stages of a tech career can feel heavy before it becomes rewarding.

It has become unexpectedly fulfilling, in a very odd way.

Will all this reduce attrition? Even I don’t know yet

I wish I could stand here and tell you confidently that this initiative is going to fix attrition once and for all. The truth is, I don’t know. We’re still collecting data, watching patterns, and seeing how it plays out over time. Some of these things can’t be rushed or predicted.

If it does work, I’ll be the first to come back and brag about my brilliance in figuring it out. Don’t take that as a promise though, I’ll probably exaggerate anyway. Innovation is rarely neat. Most of the time it’s just frustration meeting desperation, refusing to give up, and then hoping it sticks.

In the meantime, I’ll keep doing what I started. I’ll keep picking up the phone, talking to parents, listening to their concerns, reassuring them that their children are learning, growing, and not being worked like field labourers. I’ll explain what we do, what they gain, and why the early struggles are part of the process. And I’ll do it gladly, because these conversations are worth it, until the company grows so big that I can’t possibly make the calls myself.

When that day comes and I’m sure it will, we’ll figure out a new way. That’s what we do. We adapt, we experiment, and we keep moving forward.

If there are a few things that everybody agrees on, it’s that Africans need a helping hand. That also includes financial inclusion. Globally, we’ve seen DFIs and other government and non-governmental organizations pouring billions of dollars to help Africans. From the Gates Foundation to the Germans at KfW and DEG. Everybody’s trying to help build a world where being born African doesn’t mean you’re automatically shut out of finance.

In fact, the M-Pesa that we all love was actually created and funded by the British government. And that’s good. You’d think that with all this effort and money, everybody would agree on one thing: you don’t profit off the vulnerable, at least not in a direct and blatant way. But guess what? You’d be wrong. I didn’t realize just how bad Africans, especially the poor ones, were being taken advantage of until I started growing Lendsqr across the continent.

The moment it hit me

Of course, before Lendsqr went continental, I already had a fair share of exposure to different African markets. I’d seen the good, the bad, and the bureaucratic. Payments systems were mostly similar. The card networks were familiar, the central banks often looked to one another for regulatory cues, and we all complained about the same things — settlement delays, interchange fees, and poor infrastructure.

But as we began expanding Lendsqr into other countries, the numbers started telling me a story that was too outrageous to ignore.

Let’s start with Nigeria;  a country that, for all its chaos, somehow manages to have one of the most efficient and affordable digital payment ecosystems in Africa. Moving money in Nigeria costs next to nothing. Transfer ₦10,000, and your fee is usually capped at ₦10. Transfer ₦100,000, and it might rise to ₦25. Even for big business payments moving billions, it rarely crosses ₦50  and that’s barely $0.03.

Platforms like Paystack, Flutterwave, Monnify, and Quickteller all hover around 1.5%, and even that is capped at ₦2,000 (around $1.33). In fact, for micro-transactions, some banks and fintechs absorb the fees entirely. The Central Bank, for all its overreach, has at least tried to protect the little guy by mandating free ATM withdrawals for the poor, capping transfer fees, and pushing interoperability so you can send money without burning your pocket.

So naturally, I assumed this was the norm across Africa. How very wrong I was.

When 2.5% (uncapped) feels like a victory

The first shock came when one of our customers in East Africa called to share “good news.” They had just secured a disbursement deal capped at 2.5% per transaction. I remember them sounding so happy, as if they had just won a grant.

I was confused. I asked them to repeat it. Two point five percent? They confirmed it proudly. That means if you move $100,000 through a system like that, you lose $2,500 instantly to transaction fees. That’s money that creates no value. It doesn’t make systems faster or safer. It just disappears into someone’s pocket.

I could not believe it. I even joked that at this rate, they might as well throw a street party and call in King Sunny Ade to celebrate being robbed.

I remember spending days thinking, what kind of daylight robbery is this? But it didn’t stop there. I dug deeper and the numbers got uglier.

The more I looked, the worse it got

Across Africa, fintechs and payment providers are quietly making the poor pay some of the highest transaction costs in the world. The more I dug, the more absurd it became. I even got my team to scour the web: pricing pages, documentation, and payment terms across 54 African countries, just to be sure I wasn’t overreacting. Every single number we found was public information, sitting in plain sight. And we’ll be releasing all that data soon. For now, let me give you a few examples.

In Rwanda, KPay charges 5% for collecting money whether by card or mobile money. Five percent. That’s $25 in fees for every $500 transaction. In a country where average monthly income barely crosses $150, that’s criminal.

In Benin Republic, PayPlus also charges 5% on card collections. Flutterwave, which charges around 2% in Nigeria, charges 4.8% in countries like Malawi and Rwanda, and the same 4.8% in South Africa. PesaPal charges 3.5% in Rwanda.

Now compare that with Stripe or Square in the US or UK, both of which charge 2.9%, and that’s in countries with far better infrastructure, faster reconciliation, and clearer consumer protection. Even PayPal, notorious for its greed, caps its domestic fees around 2 to 4%.

So why should a small business in Kigali or Cotonou pay almost double what a startup in California pays just to move money from one account to another?

The same Africa, different rules

It gets even crazier  when you realize that these fintechs are often the same companies operating across multiple African countries. Flutterwave, Paystack, PawaPay, and others have the same brand, same technology stack, same continent, yet wildly different fees.

For instance, Flutterwave in Nigeria charges 2% capped at ₦1,500 ($10). The same company in Rwanda charges 3.5%, and in Malawi it goes up to 4.8%. KPay in Rwanda sits comfortably at 5%. Meanwhile, Wave, which operates in Senegal and Burkina Faso, charges just 1%, which may or may not be proof that fair pricing is absolutely possible on this continent.

In some cases, moving $100,000 through certain fintechs in West Africa could cost $3,000 in fees, while the same transaction through Stripe in the US would barely touch $1,000. And remember, most of these African countries are poorer, less industrialized, and more dependent on small-scale entrepreneurs, traders, and hustlers trying to survive.

When you factor in how many of these payments happen daily; school fees, remittances, salaries, small business transactions, you start to see the scale of the bleed. We’re talking billions of dollars lost every year to “financial inclusion” intermediaries that promise to help the poor, but instead charge them for breathing.

We can’t keep blaming “the West”

What makes this even more painful is that we’ve built a culture of blaming the West for our exploitation while turning a blind eye to the predators among us. It’s fashionable to say “colonialism” or “IMF” whenever Africans are suffering, but at some point, we have to admit that a lot of the exploitation today is homegrown. 

It’s Africans charging Africans outrageous rates to send money within Africa. It’s African fintechs, armed with DFI grants meant to “empower inclusion,” who’ve decided the best way to grow is to tax the poor until they collapse.

I’ve seen fintechs brag about “connecting Africa” while charging 3 to 6% on every mobile money transaction. That’s not inclusion. That’s extortion smartly coiffed and dressed up as innovation.

And don’t get me wrong, I know infrastructure costs a whole lot of money. Integrations, agent networks, regulatory licenses, none of it is free. But there’s a difference between sustainable pricing and sheer greed. The reality is, we’ve normalized gouging because the victims don’t have a voice.

The hypocrisy of “financial inclusion”

The biggest irony is that fintech was supposed to fix this. We came to make finance fairer, cheaper, and faster. Yet, here we are, with local fintechs charging fees that would get Western CEOs crucified in the press.

In the US, if Stripe decided to raise its fees from 2.9% to 5%, it would make headlines on TechCrunch, analysts would shred them in opinion pieces, and regulators would swarm. Customers would revolt immediately. But in Africa, we quietly call it “market dynamics” and move on, as though poverty itself justifies exploitation.

When you see fintechs like KPay in Rwanda taking 5% per transaction, you start to realize this may likely be exploitation disguised as “financial inclusion”. At that rate, the poor can’t save, can’t scale, can’t breathe. 

Take a moment to think about this; If you were to move $100,000 through a 5% network, you would lose $5,000. Do it ten times a month, and that is $50,000 gone just for moving money that already belongs to you. Imagine a small business trying to pay its staff or suppliers under such conditions.

And the worst part? These same fintechs often use the language of inclusion and empowerment to raise money from global investors and DFIs. They pitch themselves as saviors of Africa’s unbanked population while quietly charging the unbanked three to four times what a London café owner pays on Square.

Where do we go from here?

Moving money around Africa shouldn’t cost an arm, a leg, and your firstborn. If M-Pesa can process transactions for 0.5% in Kenya and Wave can charge 1% in Senegal, then the excuse of “infrastructure cost” doesn’t hold water.

It is time for fintech founders and investors to take a hard look at their pricing models and ask if this is the Africa they claim to be building for. Regulators must begin to link licensing approvals to transparent, fair pricing.

If we are truly building for Africa, then let’s prove it by pricing fairly. Let’s stop pretending that charging 5% fees in a continent still struggling with poverty is acceptable. We’ve got to stop pretending this is okay. African fintechs can’t keep shouting “financial inclusion” while fucking robbing the poor blind.