Emmanuel Ologun works at the centre of Africa’s fast-changing financial and technology space, drawing on over three decades of experience across Europe, Southern and West Africa, and the United States.
His career covers IT modernisation, capacity building for African technologists, and the development of cyber-governed banking systems. His work began in the Soviet Union and later expanded to technical leadership at Nigeria’s Central Bank, senior responsibilities in South Africa’s Nedbank, and policy support for ECOWAS.
Ologun’s contributions span code development, system deployment, and the creation of trust, resilience, and accountability within financial institutions. In this interview with Chisom Michael, Ologun discusses blockchain-based regulatory compliance, GRC automation, and the wider task of shaping Africa’s financial future.
Your résumé spans over three decades, three continents, and a career trajectory that evolved from engineering into cybersecurity governance. How did your journey begin?
My professional path began in Kharkov, in what was then the Soviet Union. I studied Computer Engineering at the National Technical University, Kharkov Polytechnic Institute, and the rigour of Soviet engineering education instilled in me not just technical depth, but discipline.
Systems had to be exact, reliable, and resilient, because lives could depend on them. Upon returning to Nigeria, I joined the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), where I worked across several mission-critical platforms, including the Foreign Exchange Management System (FEM), Government Securities System (GSS), and Refinancing and Rediscounting Facility.
I played a role in supporting SME financing platforms, worked on Oracle to-Wang system migration, and helped deploy LAN environments and relational database management for internal systems. This gave me a sovereign-level view of how technology underpins national financial operations. After relocating to South Africa in the early 2000s, I joined First National Bank and then moved into more strategic infrastructure roles at Logtek and Arivia.kom.
Eventually, I took on broader responsibilities at Nedbank, where my understanding of IT was transformed into an enterprise-level strategy mindset. By that time, I wasn’t just thinking about systems anymore; I was focused on building trust through infrastructure.
You spent over a decade at Nedbank leading its technology modernisation. What was your primary focus and impact there?
Nedbank gave me understanding and the opportunity to lead a full-scale transformation of how banking IT is done. I managed the delivery of a three-year enterprise roadmap, overhauling infrastructure across multiple domains, networking, storage, virtual environments, and disaster recovery.
We moved from fragmented platforms to a unified compliance-aware infrastructure with embedded controls, ISO/IEC 27001-aligned security measures, and real-time monitoring. I also oversaw the adoption of COBIT frameworks that redefined governance for incident response, data integrity, and system provisioning.
By integrating automated GRC dashboards and smart alert systems, we cut our average audit prep time in half and moved from reactive to preventive security compliance. This wasn’t just a technical upgrade; it was a cultural shift. Technology and governance had to speak the same language. We moved beyond uptime metrics to assurance metrics, compliance, auditability, and recoverability.
What motivated your shift from enterprise IT to blockchain and compliance automation?
By 2014, I noticed that traditional compliance systems were lagging behind the complexity of new regulatory mandates. AML, KYC, FATCA, these weren’t just checklists anymore; they required real-time enforcement. That’s when I began exploring blockchain as a compliance engine, not just a ledger. I envisioned smart contracts that could enforce policies at the point of transaction.
That’s when I took on a senior leadership role at Ariel Technologies, where I helped drive strategy and solution design for institutions aiming to automate compliance across diverse African jurisdictions. My team helped deploy a blockchain-based AML sandbox where suspicious activity thresholds were hard-coded into contract logic, effectively automating regulatory reporting.
This work allowed us to flag complex fraud patterns involving nested accounts and cross-institutional structuring that traditional systems missed. It opened my eyes to the transformational potential of programmable trust.
You were also a key figure in ECOWAS-led digital banking transformation efforts. What was your involvement and its impact?
ECOWAS engaged me as a consultant to advise on digital policy standardisation and cross-border compliance architecture for regional financial institutions.
My focus was on helping central banks and regional entities establish frameworks for shared identity verification, distributed AML risk scoring, and privacy-preserving data exchange. We proposed a decentralised KYC network where banks could verify customers across countries without duplicating onboarding or breaching data sovereignty.
One of our pilot networks processed over $1.2 billion in settlements, with fraud detection rates increasing by 40% over prior baselines. This work laid the groundwork for what may become West Africa’s first shared regulatory node system, where compliance events are logged immutably and monitored by regulators in near-real time. It’s a leap toward embedded regulation.
Ariel Technologies has become known for its GRC-first approach to digital finance. What specific tools or results stand out to you?
One of our most successful implementations was a smart compliance orchestration engine that cross-mapped internal controls with real-time logs from payment systems, treasury, and FX platforms.
It generated daily heatmaps of potential control breaches before they triggered audit flags. We also designed a decentralised identity framework for a multinational bank that reduced KYC duplication across regions by 65%, while maintaining full compliance with GDPR, NITDA, and other privacy laws.
Our solutions have cut regulatory reporting delays by 75% in some institutions. My proudest contribution was integrating machine learning models that predict audit risk exposures based on control fatigue and behavioural signals, something regulators are now exploring further.
What do your awards and recognitions signify to you professionally?
At Nedbank, I received the IT Leadership Award (2018) and the GRC Service Excellence Award (2019). But for me, the true recognition came when the systems we deployed became replicable templates across other business units. These awards were based not just on delivery, but impact:
We reduced fraud-related losses by over 37%, brought compliance alerting time down to under 10 seconds, and moved two divisions from audit “Needs Improvement” to “Fully Satisfactory” in a single cycle. These achievements were possible because we didn’t treat compliance as an obstacle; we treated it as an architectural principle.
You’re also a public speaker and researcher. Where have you shared your ideas, and what do you focus on?
I’ve presented at forums like the Global Digital Finance Forum (Ghana), SADC Resilience Roundtable, and African RegTech Innovation Summit. My 2022 keynote was titled: “Beyond Compliance: Building Predictive, Auditable Governance in Decentralised Finance.”
I also mentor some rising professionals and teach workshops on zero trust architecture, quantum-readiness planning, and AI for risk detection. One of my mentees now leads GRC strategy at a leading West African bank. That’s the multiplier effect I care about.
In every setting, my core message remains the same: we must move from passive reporting to active compliance, compliance that verifies itself in real time, governed by code and overseen by transparent governance models.
You’ve worked with regulators and policymakers. What role does policy play in technological evolution, and what reforms do you advocate for?
If the scaffolding is weak or missing, the whole system collapses. One of the reasons I’ve consistently engaged with regulators, whether through ECOWAS, central bank roundtables, or technology sandboxes, is to ensure that the rules evolve alongside the tools.
For instance, during our blockchain-based AML sandbox project, we realised early on that certain reporting thresholds and KYC standards were designed for legacy systems. They didn’t account for the automated, real-time verification models we were proposing.
So, I co-led a working group that proposed policy adaptations for distributed compliance enforcement, including allowing smart contract–generated audit trails to be accepted as regulatory evidence. That proposal is now under review in two central banks. Another area I’m passionate about is quantum-readiness policy. Most banks are still using traditional encryption and key management systems.
But within the next decade, quantum computing will render these obsolete. I’ve advocated for early-stage quantum-resilient cryptographic standards to be integrated into national digital banking policies, and Ariel Technologies has already piloted a hybrid model for one client using lattice-based encryption on a compliance blockchain. Finally, I’m a proponent of RegTech certification standards.
There’s a lot of innovation in the regulatory technology space, but little vetting. I’ve proposed a framework for certifying RegTech systems for scalability, auditability, and governance integrity. Such a framework would give confidence to banks, regulators, and investors alike.
You’re pursuing a PhD in Information Assurance. How does that align with your work?
My PhD at the University of Fairfax explores AI-fused smart contract platforms for dynamic compliance. We’re testing systems where regulatory triggers are updated in real time, using external policy oracles and event-driven machine learning. This research directly supports what I build in practice.
Our prototype logs policy changes to a blockchain, updates compliance logic across nodes, and flags misaligned contracts within seconds. It’s the future of self-auditing infrastructure, and I believe Africa can lead this field globally.
After all this, what drives you today, and what do you hope your legacy will be?
I am driven by the conviction that Africa can lead in cyber-governed finance—not merely adopt what others build. Our continent’s unique realities—cross-border commerce, multi-layered regulation, and infrastructure disparities—are not barriers; they are the very ingredients that demand innovation.
What motivates me is the belief that digital trust must be earned, engineered, and continuously reinforced. Every system I’ve helped build, every framework I’ve designed, and every team I’ve mentored has served that principle.
Africa’s digital banking future isn’t just about fintech apps or cloud platforms; it’s about constructing systems that work within our regulatory environments, respect our cultures, and protect our people. We have an opportunity to leapfrog broken global models and pioneer resilience-first architectures the world can learn from.
Trust is not a checkbox—it is an architecture. Compliance is not a constraint—it can be engineered as code.
I aspire to help drive a mindset shift from checklist compliance to embedded, automated, auditable governance. Ultimately, I hope my legacy will be clear: that I built systems that not only performed but also protected, adapted, and paved the way for others to lead.
