👨🏿‍🚀 Daily – Paystack suspends Ezra Olubi |

TGIF!

Paystack, the Stripe-owned Nigerian fintech, has suspended Ezra Olubi, its co-founder and CTO, after a sexual misconduct allegation involving a subordinate became public. 

The suspension came just as dozens of decade-old tweets resurfaced, including sexualised comments about “touching a coworker… inappropriately” and minors. Olubi has not commented on the tweets and has deactivated his X account.

Paystack told it has launched a formal investigation into the allegations but declined to comment further on the matter.

The case is already testing shifting expectations around workplace misconduct involving senior leaders in Africa’s technology ecosystem. Read the full breakdown on our website here.

Blessed Onuoha is a product designer at Interswitch and the founder of IBS Systems, a design platform that helps young professionals move from visual craft to product thinking. At Interswitch, she currently leads Tier 2 Mobile Finance Services (MFS) design projects, shaping digital banking experiences across Africa. Her portfolio includes leading major redesigns and new design initiatives for banks and fintech institutions across Africa. Through IBS Systems, she’s building frameworks and resources that empower young designers to think beyond visuals and create scalable, meaningful products.

• Explain your job to a 5-year-old.

Picture this: You really love watching cartoons. A lot. One day, you try to watch one for the first time and, a few minutes into the show, you realize you don’t like it. Now, as a product designer, my work is to pay attention to the cartoons you enjoy and understand why you do. I also find ways to make more cartoons you love, so you don’t have to sit through the pain of watching a show you don’t like. Using what I know of you—the kinds of shows you enjoy—I make these new cartoons you will truly love and tell your friends about.

That’s not all. You know, cartoon companies make money through those cartoons you love? That’s my job in a nutshell. I make cartoons you love watching. In turn, the shows you love make money for the producers. I’m like the middleman between you and the owners of the show.

• With a background in microbiology, how did you get into design, and what gave you the conviction to stick with it?

I grew up in a part of Nigeria where education is highly encouraged. But there’s a strong inclination to train the girl child in handicrafts, as that is seen as a craft that will come in truly handy for them.

As a young girl in this space, I wasn’t good at any of the handicrafts. I wasn’t good at sewing, hairdressing, or even baking—all those practical skills everyone around me seemed to have. I spent five months in a salon after secondary school, and still, I couldn’t get the hang of it. People teased me, and though I tried to laugh it off, it hurt. So I turned my focus to what I knew I could do well: studying.

In my 2nd year in university, I joined ENACTUS. The people and the projects at ENACTUS—where I saw people do mind-blowing work with their digital skills—propelled me towards brand identity design. That was my starting point, and the rest, they say, is history.

• What singular achievement are you most proud of in your design career so far?

Leading tier 2 MFS design project at Africa’s biggest unicorn, Interswitch. Sitting in and being a voice of relevance in rooms filled with some of the biggest players within the African tech space, and working with the most amazing & talented teammates, that is truly an honour. When I was younger, I didn’t envision it on this scale; it’s a big reminder of what is possible.

• You have extensive experience working in the payments sector with banks and fintech companies. How do you approach design thinking in that industry?

Design is subjective and always changing. Every brand is different, even when they serve similar markets, so I treat each one as an individual entity. My work does not start with tools; it starts with pen and paper. From ideas to BRDs, research, and PRDs, I write down anything that feels important. If it is not written down, it did not happen.

Asking questions is another key part of my process. I question stakeholders and users because I want to understand what success looks like for both. It is better to ask too many questions than to design something that misses the real expectations.

Once each PRD is clear, I begin iterating. Sometimes I sketch first, and other times I go straight to Figma, depending on the project and timeline. I also sit in on usability tests to hear users’ real-time reactions. It is always a bittersweet moment.

Every design is unique and should bring a solution. To achieve that, I keep people at the centre and build from the outside in.

• With AI embedding itself deeply into our lives, how do you see the technology disrupting the design process?

I remember watching Gilmore Girls, which aired in the early 2000s, and how their parents and Luke were so against new technologies like mobile phones. They said it was just a phase that would soon fade away. But it didn’t.

AI is not about to disrupt the design process; it has already done that. But in this process of disruption, it’s making the process better. It’s not building from scratch; it’s leveraging what exists, and it’s making it better. An example can be seen in this: after research and precise user-journey mapping, you can integrate design systems into Figma Make, the Figma AI tool, and have it generate designs from a given prompt. Designers, through careful thought, created that design system. Designers also pick up the work from Figma Make and iterate on it. It might not look like a lot, but it saves us time, and that is progress.

My only concern is for teams or designers who choose to hand over their thinking phase to AI and simply copy and paste AI-finished work. That will affect the user experience of products and limit the team’s ability to reach its full potential.

• Having a lot of fintech and banking design experience, does it come easily to you to switch up when you wear a designer hat for other fields? How do you make that happen?

Oh, it comes really easily. Just the thought gets me excited. I believe that happens because the bedrock of the work I do is people. I think of the amazing apps or websites I use or stumble on, and I go, wowwww… that experience was beautiful. That is how I want everyone to feel when they use a product I design. This influences my thinking, my iterations, and even the way I research. My end goal is to see that the experience is easy and out of this world. I want the visuals to radiate beauty and give the audience a sense of comfort and familiarity, like being at home, across all the products.

IHS Towers, a multinational telecommunications infrastructure company, and 9mobile, a Nigerian telecom operator now known as T2, have agreed to end leases on 2,576 tower sites from Q3 2025. Not quite the breakup story you were looking for, huh? This agreement also mandates that T2, IHS’s smallest key customer, will also settle parts of its long-standing debt through 2027. The cost of the debt remains unknown.

Oh, 9mobile T2 (pitifully): This is the latest chapter in the slow unravelling of what used to be Nigeria’s scrappy fourth network that had over 15 million subscribers in 2015. The telco had about 740,000 active internet users as of September 2025, according to the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) data. Its debt restructuring and rebrand to T2 were meant to signal a fresh start, but losing thousands of towers exposes how fragile that comeback really is.

T2’s next move? The operator has to lean harder on its roaming deal with MTN, or scramble for space from rivals like American Tower Corporation. Either way, losing towers means losing ground.

This is business: There’s no hard feelings from IHS Towers with its 39,000 towers and $455 million revenue in Q3 2025. The infrastructure provider relies on reducing credit risk, holding on to bigger clients like MTN and Airtel, and keeping liquidity tight.

Zoom out: If the telecom operator’s subscribers keep dropping, and with fewer towers to call its own, T2’s signal, relevance, and resilience may fade, and another name change might not save it.

Kenya is literally taking out the trash with this one. 

The country’s environment authority, the National Environment Management Authority (NEMA), has proposed new rules that make electronics makers, importers, and retailers financially and operationally responsible for what happens when their gadgets die. Under the draft Electrical and Electronic Waste Management Regulations of 2025, companies will have to register and report the number of devices they put on the market, and prove those devices are safely recycled or treated at the end of their lives.

Why is it needed? According to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS), electronic waste in the country surged to 53,559 metric tonnes in 2024. With informal recyclers overwhelmed and unsafe dumping on the rise, the government is shifting the cost and disposal back to the producers. The more electronic devices you sell, the more waste you must manage.

Bad market? Kenyan startups like WEEE Centre and East African Compliant Recycling (EACR) that built their business on collecting and treating e-waste directly from users may now face stiffer competition. If companies start handling their own recycling, these smaller players could lose their edge unless they reposition as licensed partners or certified treatment hubs.

Zoom out: Although the rules are still in draft form, their approval would mark a major shift in how Kenya manages its digital leftovers.

Paystack introduces Pay with Pesalink in Kenya!

With Pesalink and Paystack, businesses in Kenya can now get paid directly from customer bank accounts. Learn more here

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