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Wema Bank Unveils Hackaholic 2.0 Bootcamp Winners

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L-R: Ademola Adebise, Chief Executive Officer/Managing Director, Wema Bank PLC; Oladayo Awotokunbo, Hackaholics 2.0 Bootcamp Fintech category winner, of Plumter, and Moruf Oseni, Deputy Managing Director, Wema Bank PLC, during the prize presentation ceremony of Wema Bank’s Hackaholics 2.0 Bootcamp at the Wema Bank Towers, Lagos.
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Wema Bank’s Hackaholics 2.0, an acceleration aimed at helping startups scale and gain entrance into the market, came to an exciting end as the finalists were unveiled on Wednesday, May 5, 2021, at the Bank’s corporate head office in Marina, Lagos.

Themed, “Connecting Worlds” the Acceleration Program was a two-day virtual pitch which ran from October 30 – 31, 2020, for 20 participants across five industry pillars – Fintech, Agritech, Edutech, Gaming, and Healthtech, who qualified from a pool of over 100 entries received.

The Bank presented four startups comprising two people each with N2,187,500.00 startup fund. The winners emerged across each industry after a four-week Bootcamp under the supervision of a best-in-class acceleration curriculum delivered by seasoned faculty and tech specialists from GreenHouse Capital, official partners of the event.

Ademola Adebise, the Managing Director/CEO, Wema Bank, congratulated the winners and expressed satisfaction with the quality of competition and the entire process.

“We are happy to see the winners emerge and are positive that you guys will be the unicorns of tech solutions in the next couple of years,” he said.

“For us at Wema Bank, we will continue to support innovations and innovative ideas, support our youths, and support our women to thrive. We believe that is the way to go and significantly grow and support the economy,” Adebise said.

The winning start-ups are:

  • Fintech Category: Oladayo Awotukunbo of Plumpter, a Fintech brand that created a marketplace for secure payments to foreign parties and quick banking.
  • Gaming/Betting Category: Ernest Akinlola and Obayemi Okubajo of My Lotto Hub, a digital startup pioneering the aggregation of lottery operators and enabling lottery punters to manage all their operations in a single platform
  • Agritech Category: Aderinola Amole and Olamide Oyinlola of FarmSquare, a brand that focuses on using the e-commerce model to simplify the demand and supply of Agricultural inputs in Nigeria.
  • Healthtech Category: Uche Udekwe and Joy Chioma of Natal Cares, a startup with a product that optimizes the healthcare value chain to reduce the high mortality rate for pregnant women and children.

Speaking at the event, Tunde Mabawonku, Chief Financial Officer, Wema Bank, reinforced the internal and external growth integration stance of the bank saying: “We realized very early that financial service delivery has moved beyond bricks and mortar physical interactions, hence, at Wema Bank we repositioned internally, invested strategically and heavily in technology to drive Digital Optimization of our services”.

“Second, we realized we can’t innovate all from within, we need to drive innovation from outside. We then created “Hackaholics” the Wema Bank Hackathon.

“The idea is to bring fresh minds, fresh ideas, fresh insights, into solving day-to-day societal problems leveraging technology. We are also working with third-party resource providers we can invest in to grow the solutions for societal impact”. Mabawonku added.

Segun Adeniyi, Chief Digital Officer, Wema Bank, emphasized the importance of the Bank’s sustainability footprints. “We aim this initiative at deepening the impact of innovation in the ecosystem and create an opportunity to drive that ecosystem. There is a plethora of start-ups and innovators out there who don’t have the right environment to upscale those ideas into commercial value”.

“What we have done is giving some seed to them in funding, and more importantly, we have given them advisory.

“We have helped them to look at the ideas they have, flesh them into commercial value, help them articulate the problem, identify unique areas where and how they can solve those problems, and identify their target market.”

The winning startups all expressed gratitude to Wema Bank for the seed fund and commended the bank for the initiative.

They said the Hackathon Bootcamp has broadened their horizon. They expressed that the seed funding from Wema Bank will help to upscale their businesses to the desired place.

“For us at Wema Bank, this is not just CSR. It is creative self-disruption. We are attuned to what is going on in the ecosystem, we are keen to be part of it, we are enthusiastic about sharing our own experiences with the start-ups. It is part of why we stay vibrant and relevant as an organization,” Adeniyi concludes.


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E-Business

Galaxy Backbone Celebrates the Federal Government’s Paperless Civil Service Milestone

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Galaxy Backbone (GBB) aligns with and celebrates the successful announcement by the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation on the achievement of a Paperless Civil Service, a significant milestone in Nigeria’s public sector reform and digital transformation agenda.

The milestone was formally highlighted at a press briefing led by the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Mrs. Didi Esther Walson-Jack, who commended Galaxy Backbone for its sustained support and contribution throughout the implementation of the programme.

GBB has played a critical role in enabling this transition by providing secure, scalable, and shared digital infrastructure that supports the digitisation of government processes across Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs). Through the 1Government Cloud, MDAs have been empowered to migrate from paper-based workflows to digital platforms, improving efficiency, collaboration, data security, and service delivery across the Federal Civil Service.

In addition, GovMail, GBB’s secure government email platform, has strengthened official communication, enhanced records management, and reinforced cybersecurity standards—key pillars in sustaining a paperless operating environment.

Galaxy Backbone acknowledges the collective efforts of the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Permanent Secretaries, Directors of ICT, consultants, partners, and dedicated public servants whose commitment and collaboration ensured the smooth delivery of this initiative.

The Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of Galaxy Backbone, Prof. Ibrahim Adeyanju, was represented at the press briefing by Akintayo Bamisaye, Acting Group Head, Research, Digital Innovation and Skills Department (RDIS).

GBB describes the achievement as a strong close to 2025 and reaffirms its commitment to supporting the Federal Government in building a modern, efficient, and digitally enabled public service.


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Jumia CEO says Black Friday Signals Nigeria’s E-Commerce Maturity

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At the close of 2025, Temidayo Ojo, the CEO of Jumia Nigeria, reflected on a year-end shopping season that points to the growing maturity of the country’s e-commerce market. “Black Friday is no longer a single, short-lived spike in activity,” he said.

“It has become a familiar, anticipated moment in the retail calendar, where consumers shop deliberately and with confidence.”

Preliminary KPIs for the two months ended November 30, 2025, show strong year-on-year growth in both orders and Gross Merchandise Value (GMV), with GMV growth outpacing order growth. This indicates that customers are placing fuller, more considered baskets rather than shopping in fragmented transactions. Nigeria ranked among Jumia Group’s better-performing markets, with engagement remaining steady throughout the Black Friday period rather than spiking briefly and tapering off.

A key factor behind this performance is the growing familiarity of consumers with online shopping. Customers are increasingly leveraging platform features such as saved carts, brand stores, and price comparison tools to plan purchases in advance. This trend suggests that digital commerce is becoming embedded in everyday habits rather than being viewed as a one-off event.

Ojo also highlighted the role of Jumia’s JForce network in connecting digital commerce to local communities. “Our agents are critical to ensuring that customers across Nigeria, including secondary cities and smaller communities, have access to variety, consistent pricing, and reliable delivery,” he said. “During peak periods like Black Friday, JForce agents can respond faster, serve more customers efficiently, and build stronger local relationships. This isn’t just a distribution channel—it’s a pathway to sustainable income and inclusion.”

Reflecting on the overall performance, the CEO concluded: “What we’re seeing this year-end is steady engagement across categories, stronger consumer confidence, and partners like our JForce agents benefiting from increased activity.

“It confirms that Nigeria’s e-commerce ecosystem is maturing, growing in a more structured and resilient way. As the December Holiday Sale continues, we expect these patterns of familiarity, trust, and participation to sustain momentum and drive both commerce and community impact across the country.”


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Galaxy Backbone Tops FG’s Website Performance Ranking

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Galaxy Backbone Limited (GBB) has been ranked first overall in the 2025 Federal Government Website Performance Scorecard.

Galaxy Backbone Tops FG's Website Performance Ranking

This is a landmark achievement for Nigeria’s digital economy.

The ranking, conducted by the Bureau of Public Service Reforms (BPSR), is the definitive benchmark for digital excellence and transparency across all Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs).

Professor Ibrahim Adepoju Adeyanju, managing director and CEO of Galaxy Backbone, received the award during a ceremony in Abuja.

He described the feat as a validation of the agency’s“Nigeria First”data sovereignty strategy and its relentless pursuit of service excellence.

This recognition comes as the Federal Government intensifies its push to achieve a fully paperless civil service by December 31, 2025.

GBB has been the primary architect of this transition through its 1Gov Enterprise Content Management (ECM) platform, which now hosts the operations of almost all federal MDAs.

The award adds to a growing list of accolades for Galaxy Backbone in 2025, following its recent win of the “International Standard Excellence Award for Best IT Service Provider.”

As the central hub for government shared services, GBB’s performance serves as a blueprint for other agencies currently undergoing digital transformation.

With its expanded fiber-optic backbone now covering over 13 states and its secure cloud solutions, Galaxy Backbone remains the cornerstone of Nigeria’s vision to become a leading digital nation by the end of the decade.

 


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