From Cyriacus Nnaji, Lagos
TIME, a leading global news magazine, has named Felix Ike, Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Nigerian fintech company, Moniepoint, to its inaugural TIME Executives of the Year: Tech and Data list, making him the only executive representing an African company on the 50-person list.
In a press release by Moniepoint, the list, officially titled TIME Executives of the Year: Tech and Data, was unveiled on Tuesday, September 22, 2026 and celebrates Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, Chief Data Officers and Chief Product Officers whose decisions shape how the world’s largest organisations adopt and deploy technology and data.
Felix Ike is named alongside executives from Netflix, CrowdStrike, Dell, Duolingo, AT&T, OpenAI, Anthropic, Shopify and Reddit, among other global technology and data leaders.
The release further stated that Moniepoint, the company he co-founded in 2015 with Tosin Eniolorunda, is likewise the only African company represented on the list. In recognising Ike’s contribution, TIME noted that he “has helped to establish the business as one of Africa’s leading financial platforms.”
It said that the recognition follows Moniepoint’s inclusion on TIME’s 2025 list of the 100 Most Influential Companies, marking a second consecutive year in which the Lagos-founded firm has earned distinction from the American magazine, this time through the individual leadership of its co-founder rather than the company at large.
Mr Ike, a first-class graduate in Computer Science from the University of Lagos, has overseen the architecture of the infrastructure that powers financial services for millions of businesses and individuals across Africa since Moniepoint’s founding.
The company in the release further disclosed that under Ike”s watch, the company has grown from a back-end payments provider for banks into a full business banking platform that attained unicorn status in 2024, and now powers about 8 in 10 in-person digital payment transactions in Nigeria, according to the company.
TIME’s Executive Editor and Chief Strategy Officer, Dan Macsai, said the new franchise is intended to spotlight the executives responsible for how companies adopt emerging technology, secure their systems and put their data to productive use, describing Executives of the Year as a new platform through which the magazine will convene such leaders, with plans to extend the recognition into further fields in the year ahead.
Reacting to the recognition, Felix Ike said he was deeply grateful for the honour, and saw it as a marker of what African-built technology is now capable of. “This is a deeply significant honour, and one I do not take lightly. But beyond what it means personally, it says something bigger. For a long time, recognition of this kind went to a handful of markets. This shows that Nigerian engineering, built for Nigerian and Africa, can stand on the same stage as Silicon Valley and Wall Street. That shift matters as much as the recognition itself.”
He added that the company remained committed to building systems that serve, with integrity and resilience, the millions of businesses and individuals who place their trust in it daily.
Moniepoint Founder and Group Chief Executive Officer, Tosin Eniolorunda, described Ike’s recognition as a proud moment for the company and Nigeria. “When we started Moniepoint, our ambition was never small, but recognition like this still humbles us.
“Eniolorunda said, “Felix has contributed significantly to building infrastructure that now carries the weight of millions of livelihoods, and to see that acknowledged on a global stage is a proud moment, not just for our company, but for what Nigerian technology can now claim to be.”
He described the TIME recognition as a fitting acknowledgement of that legacy, and one that reflects well not only on Moniepoint, but on Nigeria and the wider African technology community.
The recognition adds to a growing roll of distinctions for Moniepoint, which has featured for three consecutive years on the Financial Times’ list of Africa’s Fastest-Growing Companies and on CNBC’s World’s Top Fintech Companies list. The company presently serves over ten million businesses and individuals across Nigeria and beyond.
