OPay COO Dotun Adekunle: Build for Nigeria's Worst Day

Nigeria's most durable tech companies are the ones built to survive its worst days, according to Dotun Daniel Adekunle, OPay's chief operating officer and chief technology officer. He made the case in a keynote titled "Markets That Refuse to Break" at Moonshot by TechCabal on 28 October.

"Stubbornness is a business model in Africa," Adekunle said, arguing that a market this hard rewards companies that keep adapting to local conditions.

A listing and a stress test

The remarks come weeks after OPay filed on 9 October to list on the New York Stock Exchange. The filing shows revenue of $467.1 million in the first half of 2026, up from $197.5 million a year earlier, with lending overtaking payments as its largest business. Nigeria contributed 89.5% of that revenue, and the filing names credit risk and regulation among the main threats.

Adekunle cited the 2023 cash crunch as an example. When the naira redesign left Nigerians short of cash, transfers surged and many bank apps buckled. Payments on the NIBSS Instant Payment system rose 45.5% in February 2023, while their total value fell 5.12%, as people moved small everyday spending onto transfers. OPay held up, he said, thanks to its nationwide agent network.

A more recent test came on 30 August, when a fake notice claimed OPay would shut down on 1 September and urged customers to withdraw their money. Some did. OPay denied the claim, the Central Bank of Nigeria called it false, and police arrested a woman on 4 September over the post. "Resilience cannot be achieved alone," Adekunle said, explaining why the company brought the market together.

Three assumptions to drop

"Fragile markets don't break businesses, fragile assumptions do," he said. He urged builders to drop three beliefs: that they can design for an average day, that technology can replace people, and that regulators are opponents. Regulation, he said, should be treated as a design input.

He closed by telling builders to treat the world as their operating system. "If you can survive Nigeria, you can survive the world," he said.