Ademola Adelekan: The DevOps Leader Redefining Africa’s Fintech Future

The journey of Ademola Adelekan demonstrates that student entrepreneurs can build highly successful careers by remaining curious and persistent. His story began at the Federal University of Technology, Akure, where he was pursuing his Computer Science studies. In his third year, his passion grew stronger, and he developed a navigation system for his final-year project. In his project, he used routing algorithms to map short routes across the university, teaching him much more about solving real-life problems.

Upon graduation, he did an internship at the INTECU department of the Obafemi Awolowo University, where he co-managed the school’s e-portal. During that period, he also supported JAMB integrations across university portals, giving him early exposure to system-level engineering.

Building Skills and Confidence at Wema Bank

Ademola Adelekan joined Wema Bank through a graduate trainee program in 2016. He joined the team that built ALAT by Wema, one of Nigeria’s first digital banks. The experience pushed him into Agile practices and exposed him to complex automation work.

Although he faced difficulties in choosing the right tools because of strict banking regulations, he continued experimenting. He learned frameworks like Cucumber and picked up Ruby to improve testing performance. During these early years, he also battled imposter syndrome, yet mentorship and curiosity helped him grow stronger.

Scaling Impact at Interswitch

In 2019, Ademola moved to Interswitch as a QA Automation Engineer; two years later, he became a full-time DevOps engineer. This shift faced him with a new level of scale because Interswitch processes payments for millions of users. He quickly adapted and began working across teams to ensure reliable and secure services.

Leading a six-engineer team today, he is tasked with building hybrid infrastructures. His team balances cloud scalability with on-premise compliance to make sure every card swipe and transfer goes through seamlessly across Africa.

Fighting Fraud and Strengthening Systems

Ademola Adelekan believes that automation and real-time monitoring hold the key to fighting digital fraud. His team may not build fraud models, but they make sure the systems behind those models stay updated, scalable, and reliable. More so, he calls for increased collaboration between financial institutions to position themselves in response to fraud.

Lessons for Students and Young Engineers Ademola’s journey underscores important lessons: automation drives innovation, collaboration fortifies solutions, and continuous learning fuels growth. He now mentors young engineers and helps them build confidence through hands-on experience. Outside of work, he enjoys riding long distances on his motorbike, a hobby that brings him clarity and freedom.