Interswitch Celebrates Two Decades of Infrastructure Innovation at ‘Invest Lagos’ Summit

Interswitch Group, Africa’s pioneering technology unicorn and leading provider of digital payments infrastructure on the continent, distinguished itself at the 3rd ‘Invest Lagos’ Summit, held at Eko Hotels & Suites, Victoria Island, Lagos, from June 8–9, 2026. The company’s participation as co-chair of the AI and Innovation Pavilion and as a key thought leader underscored its commitment to driving technological progress and infrastructural development in Africa.

This prestigious summit, organised by the Lagos State Government under the theme ‘Lagos: Business Gateway to Africa’, convened a distinguished assembly of public and private sector leaders from across Africa and the global investment community. Among the notable attendees were His Excellency Senator Kashim Shettima, Vice-President of Nigeria; His Excellency Mr Babajide Sanwo-Olu, Governor of Lagos State; and several other Nigerian state governors, alongside members of the Federal Executive Council. Their presence highlighted the summit’s strategic significance in shaping Africa’s investment and innovation landscape.

Representing Interswitch Group on the summit’s flagship technology panel during the first day’s discussion, titled “The Future of Technology and Innovation”, was Babafemi Ogungbamila, Executive Vice-President for Operations and Technology. Addressing an audience comprising investors, policymakers, entrepreneurs, and global business leaders, Ogungbamila shared insights rooted in Interswitch’s foundational journey, delivering a compelling narrative on what it truly takes to establish technology infrastructure in Africa — not in theory, but from the ground up, against considerable odds, and prior to market readiness.

“Without the right rails, even the best products will stall before reaching scale,” Ogungbamila declared. “We built Nigeria’s first successful digital interbank transaction infrastructure in 2002. Nobody was asking us to build it. There was no guaranteed return. But we understood that the companies that build the foundational layer of an ecosystem don’t just compete in that ecosystem; they shape it. That principle holds as powerfully today as it did then.”

His contribution drew from a narrative that remains as instructive now as it was in 2002. When Interswitch was founded in Lagos by Group CEO Mitchell Elegbe, the digital ecosystem was virtually non-existent. There was no interoperability between financial institutions, no established blueprint for digital payments, and no guarantee of market success. Instead, Lagos presented a potent opportunity: a rapidly expanding economy whose digital infrastructure lagged behind its economic ambitions — a gap that became Interswitch’s founding mandate.

“In 2002, there was no ecosystem,” Ogungbamila recalled. “No blueprint. No guarantee that what we were building would find a market. Just a sprawling, complex, commercially ferocious city whose economy was moving faster than its digital infrastructure could carry. That gap was our invitation.”

This vision resulted in Nigeria’s first interoperable digital payments switching infrastructure, an invisible backbone that now processes the majority of Nigeria’s electronic transactions and connects banks, merchants, fintechs, and consumers across the financial ecosystem at scale.

Addressing broader questions about scaling African technology enterprises into globally competitive entities, Ogungbamila emphasised that infrastructure depth, coupled with the institutional courage to invest ahead of market demands, remains the key differentiator between sustainable companies and those that plateau.

“The companies that build the foundational layer of an ecosystem don’t just compete in that ecosystem, they shape it,” he reiterated. “Twenty-three years on, that principle is not nostalgia. It is our operating philosophy, and it is more relevant now than ever, as Lagos cements its position as one of Africa’s foremost hubs of technology and innovation, and as the next generation of African builders constructs what comes next.”

Further highlighting Lagos’s forward-thinking approach, Ogungbamila referenced the Lagos Smart Health Information Platform, known as Lagos SHIP or LAGSHIP. Developed through a collaboration between Digital Health Platform Limited — a joint venture between the Lagos State Ministry of Health and Interswitch eClat — LAGSHIP aims to digitise and integrate health records across Lagos into a single, comprehensive platform. This initiative enhances healthcare delivery by providing real-time access to patient information, empowering healthcare providers with timely data, and giving patients unprecedented control over their personal health records.

Beyond improving individual patient care, LAGSHIP eliminates the inefficiencies of manual data management, safeguards data confidentiality, and provides the Lagos State Government with vital data intelligence to better plan and coordinate healthcare services across all levels — from primary health centres to tertiary hospitals. This transformative project exemplifies how Lagos is leveraging technology to revolutionise public health, mirroring Interswitch’s own infrastructural successes in digital payments.

Ogungbamila concluded by emphasising the importance of creating an enabling environment for inclusive economic growth through technology. He called for connectivity to be recognised as a constitutional infrastructure, public-private partnerships rooted in community needs, and regulatory frameworks designed to foster innovation rather than merely govern it. He also urged African governments to prioritise regulatory capacity building in artificial intelligence, advocating that understanding must precede legislation to fully harness AI’s economic potential.

A central theme of Interswitch’s participation was Lagos’s unique role not merely as a commercial hub but as the crucible of infrastructure and innovation that has enabled local success stories like Interswitch itself. The company’s journey from a startup operating amid infrastructural challenges in 2002 to Africa’s first homegrown technology unicorn demonstrates how Lagos’s complexities have acted as catalysts for growth.

This narrative resonates profoundly at a time when Lagos positions itself as the prime investment destination for global capital flowing into African digital infrastructure, financial services, and technology sectors. Interswitch’s evolution — from a modest start-up to a multibillion-dollar pan-African enterprise operating in over 23 countries — is a testament to the city’s resilience and potential, embodying the philosophy that it was built because of its infrastructural challenges, not despite them.