Meet Ademola Adelekan, one of the engineers behind the seamless payments millions rely on everyday 

After working on ALAT by Wema Bank, Ademola Adelekan has been helping keep African payments running smoothly at Interswitch.

When Ademola Adelekan began his career at Wema Bank in 2016, he never imagined it would one day lead to heading the DevOps team at one of Africa’s most consequential payment companies.

At the time, his curiosity and drive for learning made him part of the team that built ALAT by Wema bank, one of Nigeria’s first digital banking platform.

By 2019, that curiosity took him to Interswitch initially as a QA Automation Engineer. Two years later, he had fully transitioned into DevOps engineering, a move that positioned him at the intersection of automation, security, and Africa’s financial technology transformation.

Today, as Head of DevOps at Interswitch, he leads a team of six engineers building hybrid infrastructure that combines cloud and on-premise systems for resilience and scalability across the company’s payment services.

Foundations of a builder   

Ademola’s journey into technology began at the Federal University of Technology, Akure (FUTA), where he studied Computer Science. His passion for writing code and solving complex problems truly began in his third year at the university.

“For my final-year project, I built a navigation system that used a routing algorithm to map the shortest routes within the school environment, by car, by bicycle, and while walking. It was an intensive project, but I was able to do it successfully,” Adelekan says.

After graduation, he honed his skills during a post-graduate internship with the Information Technology and Communications Unit (INTECU) at Obafemi Awolowo University, where he co-managed the university’s e-portal while completing the national youth service programme.

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The role had him examining the source code, coming up with improvements and discussing with the Director of the ICT centre.

“That was around the time JAMB started its integration with university portals across Nigeria. I worked hand in hand with the staff at the ICT centr...