In the early 2000s, the world had just dodged the Y2K bullet. In Nigeria, the internet was still a novelty, accessed mostly through cybercafés. Storage meant floppy discs with a laughable 1.44MB of space. Against that backdrop, a young Seyi Akamo earned his first Cisco certification.

The CCNA was more than a credential. It was a gateway into a future Lagos hadn’t fully met yet.

Installing software back then was an endurance sport. Seyi remembers making countless trips between his computer and the nearest cybercafé just to install a single program. Download one dependency, go home, realise another was needed, and repeat the process. Sometimes a dozen trips in one night.

There was no DHL for software, he recalls, now seated in Turog’s Lagos office more than two decades later. But Ubuntu did something wild. They shipped CDs globally. I ordered ten in 2004. That wasn’t easy at the time.

Ubuntu’s founder had already made his fortune building Thawte, the company that pioneered SSL certificates, the same technology behind the padlock icons that signal secure websites today. He gave the operating system away for free. At the time, he was the richest African alive.

That generosity stuck with Seyi, but what truly shaped his path came much later, in the mid-2010s, when PayPal officially entered Nigeria.

The only thing PayPal allowed was money leaving your pocket, Seyi says. You couldn’t really earn through it. That’s when it hit me how far behind we were at the infrastructure level.

That frustration would eventually become Turog Technologies. But before that, there were years of preparation.

Becoming a Builder

Technology appealed to Seyi because it didn’t require anyone else. If you want to play football, you need people, he says. With computing, you could disappear into it on your own.

After studying computer engineering for five years and immersing himself in the Nigerian Linux Users Group, he made a move that surprised many. He joined a Big Four firm, not as a developer, but as a management consultant.

Technical skills were assumed, he explains. The bigger question was understanding real-world problems and positioning yourself where those problems are being discussed.

What was meant to be a one-year detour stretched into over a decade. During that time, Seyi learnt how large organisations define problems, scope solutions, and execute at scale.

His final project was transformative. It involved rolling out systems across more than a dozen African countries, each with its own tax rules, regulators, banking structures, and technical maturity.

That’s when you start asking yourself what comes next, he says.

The answer wasn’t another consumer app or flashy fintech product. It was infrastructure. The unglamorous systems beneath the surface that allow banks and fintechs to operate, integrate, and scale without breaking everything they already rely on.

At the time, infrastructure wasn’t trendy. Startup culture was obsessed with growth hacks and unicorn valuations.

I naturally gravitate towards spaces with very little attention, Seyi says. Behind-the-scenes work.

In 2016, he founded Turog Technologies with a clear mission: build the digital infrastructure African financial institutions desperately needed but often couldn’t articulate. If fintechs were the trains, Turog would be the tracks.

Starting Turog

By 2017, the timing felt right. Seyi had deep technical expertise, years of consulting experience, and firsthand exposure to financial systems across Africa. Digital banking was no longer theoretical. Banks were launching products, and fintechs were scaling quickly.

What was missing was the connective tissue.

It felt like a perfect storm, he says. If anyone was positioned to do this, I felt I was one of them.

The early days were chaotic. Seyi wore multiple hats, switching between writing code and pitching to executives. The tension between technical depth and business clarity became obvious fast.

There are rooms where they want proof of deep technical capacity, he explains. And there are rooms where if you go too technical, you lose them instantly.

That duality became Turog’s edge. Most vendors either understood business problems but couldn’t build solutions or could build systems without understanding the actual problem. Turog did both.

Credibility, however, was hard-earned. Financial institutions don’t take risks on unknown vendors.

In the beginning, you lean heavily on personal experience, Seyi says. What you’ve done, where you’ve worked.

Then came small projects. Deliver well. Build trust. Earn the next opportunity. Reputation compounds slowly in finance.

With limited capital, Turog leaned into young engineers and interns eager to learn.

What we could afford were people who wanted exposure, Seyi says. The decision was to invest in them, even if it meant less money short-term.

It was a long-term bet on capacity.

Choosing the Market

Around 2019, Turog made a critical decision to focus exclusively on financial services. Earlier projects had spanned multiple industries, but the regulatory complexity of banking made surface-level engagement unsustainable.

Keeping up with regulation alone is a full-time job, Seyi says. You either go deep or you stay average.

They chose depth.

Africa’s fintech market is projected to reach $65 billion by 2030, yet much of the infrastructure supporting this growth is outdated. Across the continent, banks still rely on core systems installed decades ago. These systems are mission-critical but painfully inflexible.

Replacing them outright is risky. Not upgrading them is equally dangerous.

Meanwhile, regulators are moving fast. Nigeria’s Payments System Vision 2025, open banking frameworks, and CBDC initiatives are forcing institutions to modernise. Systems that can’t integrate or scale are quickly becoming liabilities.

Global vendors dominate the market with expensive, rigid solutions built for foreign contexts. Turog chose a different path.

Our products work with what you already have, says Noah Honawon, who leads growth and sales. We’re not here to rip and replace. We build bridges.

The Technical Bet

Turog’s flagship product, ADIBA, is often misunderstood.

It’s not a core banking system, Noah clarifies.

ADIBA sits above existing core banking applications, acting as a digital and open banking layer. It unifies customer data, identity verification, KYC, loan management, reporting, and integrations into a single platform.

Instead of juggling multiple dashboards and vendors, banks plug into ADIBA and immediately gain modern capabilities without disrupting their existing systems.

We adapt to your infrastructure, Seyi explains. We help you become compliant, scalable, and future-ready.

While others chase consumer attention, Turog focuses on the invisible layer that powers everything else.

The People Building It

By 2024, Turog had grown into a structured company with a multidisciplinary team. There was Dickson Adams Ugbaraese, the Dev Factory Manager with over a decade in fintech, and Noah Honawon, who transitioned from real estate into enterprise software sales.

Engineering culture at Turog prioritises collaboration and context. Developers aren’t handed problems blindly. They’re involved in understanding the client’s environment and constraints.

Junior engineers are encouraged to speak up, Dickson says. Ideas aren’t ranked by seniority.

Selling infrastructure posed a different challenge. It requires educating decision-makers who may not even realise what’s broken.

I had to learn how to translate technical complexity into business value, Noah says. And fast.

That ability became a competitive advantage.

Competing Globally from Lagos

Building a world-class team from Nigeria comes with realities.

Talent migration is real, Seyi says. You’re competing with global salaries.

That forced Turog to operate like a global company early. Standards, onboarding, performance metrics, and delivery timelines were all aligned with international expectations.

If you want global talent, you need global revenue, Seyi says. There’s no shortcut.

Today, Turog works across multiple African markets and has experience implementing systems beyond the continent. That exposure has positioned the company ahead of regulatory shifts still unfolding in Nigeria.

Read More: Wema Bank sets ₦120m prize pool as 35 teams advance to Hackaholics 6.0 grand finale

What Comes Next

Looking ahead, Seyi doesn’t romanticise the present.

If I were starting today, he says, I’d be thinking deeply about decentralised finance. Not crypto hype, but real DeFi infrastructure.

For now, the focus is open banking. Turog is expanding beyond institutions to developers, offering SDKs and tools that enable a new wave of innovation.

It’s a shift toward a B2B2C model, empowering builders who will define the next phase of financial services.

Through every evolution, the philosophy remains unchanged. Infrastructure first. Foundations over flash. Enable others to win.

More than twenty-five years after earning his first Cisco certification, Seyi Akamo now leads a company quietly shaping how money moves across Africa.

Someone has to do the unglamorous work. Lay the pipes. Build the rails. Make innovation possible.

That’s the job Turog chose.