HomeWorksTechnology LeadershipDelivering a £5m mobile money platform to 530,000 unbanked users in Nigeria, remotely, in nine months

Delivering a £5m mobile money platform to 530,000 unbanked users in Nigeria, remotely, in nine months

Situation

A UK government department and the Nigerian Government wanted a secure mobile money platform to replace paper-token farm entitlements, which were open to large-scale fraud. Neither had fintech expertise, so a specialist payments consultancy was appointed as prime contractor, and it appointed me as Programme Director. When I arrived, the £5m budget was set but contracts were unsigned, there was no programme plan, and a month had already been lost.

The execution risks

The platform had to be built in the UK and run remotely in Nigeria, on a four-month build and five-month trial. Some field sites were two days from the nearest mobile mast. There was no electricity, a workforce with little technical experience, customs delays on hardware, and security requirements across the app, device, cloud and user.

What our Fractional Leader did

  • Got the plan, contracts, governance and KPIs signed off by both governments before committing spend.
  • Took the early architecture decisions: a kiosk model on NFC-enabled Android tablets for full control over security, with NFC cards plus photo and facial recognition for user validation.
  • Solved the connectivity gap with a “human mesh network”, where patrols carried data between stations via NFC and synced at 3G points.

  • Built the supply chain (600 tablets, 700,000 NFC cards, 800 solar kits) and recruited and tested 600 field staff.

  • Acquired users through radio adverts in Pidgin, town criers and meetings with tribal elders.

Results

Over 7 years of collaboration, we have successfully placed more than 150 senior executives across the client’s global footprint.
Our placements span the full spectrum of industry verticals, including:

  • Delivered on time, for £3.2m against the £5m budget, with the surplus redeployed to future development.

  •  530,000 users registered and 250+ merchants recruited.

  • 2.1 million entitlement vouchers distributed, saving the Nigerian Government about £7.8m, a figure validated by the UK  Government department and the programme team.
  • £64.8m (US$90m) in deposits processed, giving users access to financial services for the first time.

  • 600 field jobs and 600 merchant jobs created.

  • The platform was later scaled well beyond the pilot to 30 million users, building on the foundation delivered here.

Why it matters

This is the pattern our Fractional Leader brings to a fractional engagement: establish the real baseline, lock down commitments and governance first, then design around the constraints rather than the plan.