Do you like ATM cards? I know I do. Saves me from long queues in banking halls. I remember the old days, when long queues in banks was the norm. To withdraw as little as N5,000 (Five Thousand Naira), one will be forced to spend up to two hours waiting on a long queue in the bank. In retrospect, I cannot even begin to imagine how I coped with such harrowing experiences in Nigerian banks. Those days are long gone, never to return. I am one of those so thankful for the invention of smartcards, which retired the old ways of making payments.
Unless you are told, one would be hard-pressed to believe that majority of the telecom SIM cards and bank’s ATM cards, used today by millions of Nigerians was actually produced in Nigeria. It would be even much more difficult to believe that the owner of such a company is a woman! Indeed, Nigerian women are breaking boundaries and innovating ingenious business enterprises, in the 21st century. One will in fact be awestruck to discover the amazing visionary gift of Kofo Akinkugbe, the woman behind SecureID Nigeria Ltd.
Kofo Akinkugbe, is globally recognized for her entrepreneurial foresight and success story. A one-time employee of a commercial bank, Kofo’s entrepreneurial journey did not happen overnight. After her compulsory National Service, she started her career with International Merchant Bank Plc, and later with Chartered Bank Limited. She put in 12 years of service in the banking sector until 1997, when she left her banking career to start Interface Technologies, a security management and biometrics technological company. She successfully ran the company for 9 solid years, before establishing SecureID Nigeria Ltd in 2005. The company is an independent, privately owned company based in Lagos, with specialty in providing innovative and smart solutions for the banking, telecoms sectors and organizations. Its sister company, SecureCard Manufacturing, specialize in the manufacture of plastic cards with mag stripe, and chip encoding.
When Kofo established SecureCard Manufacturing plant in 2012, it was the first of its kind in Africa, to produce high security identity cards and documents for banks, telecoms and Public Service sectors. SecureID is certified by Mastercard, VISA and Verve respectively. This visionary company established its presence in the nick of time, the period the Nigerian government was making efforts to move its cash-based economy towards non-cash payments. SecureID thus, offered a solution that helped the government to easily accomplish this. The company serves not only Nigeria’s huge population with an alternative modern technological payment system and telecom needs, its manufacturing plant actually saved Nigeria billions of naira, spent on importation of smart cards from China and other countries.
SecureCard Manufacturing plant, is not only the first smart card manufacturing plant in West Africa, it is also one of only six of such plants in the entire continent. The company is currently serving 21 other African countries, making it a clear market leader in this sector. According to Mrs. Kofo, SecureCard Manufacturing plant has the capacity to manufacture 200 million smart cards per annum.
SecureID also offer customized solutions for companies and organizations, for various uses. In 2015, SecureID’s SIDios was deployed as proprietary solution for online data capture, to aid the seamless enrolment of NBA members using Access Bank prepaid card, following the launch of “Stamp of Lawyer” by the Nigerian bar Association (NBA), in Abuja. The solution was specifically customized and deployed for easy capturing of members’ biometric data. Using such a solution, members of the bar association can easily complete registration form, and pay membership fee via their computers. As at the time, such an innovative technology was actually not common in the country. SecureID, also took the lead in 2008 to backward integrate into milling and embedding, which is a core aspect of personalization. According to Kofo Akinkugbe, the vision of SecureID from inception, was “to set up a full-scale local content, end-to-end high security smartcard manufacturing plant, from raw materials stage to finished personalized smartcards…”
The company’s suite of services includes manufacturing of EMV, Smartcards, GSM SIM Cards, Magnetic-stripe debit cards, Loyalty cards, Contactless dual interface chip cards, multipurpose secure identity cards, and Mifare cards. This exceptional Nigerian woman entrepreneur, is a prize- winning graduate of Mathematics from University of Lagos. She received the British Government’s Chevening Scholarship, to study for an MBA at the Strathclyde Graduate Business School, Scotland, UK. Kofo has also attended several Executive Programmes at the Lagos Business School, INSEAD, London Business School and Owner/President Management course, at Harvard Business School, Boston, USA.
On Sunday, January 8th 2020, Kofo Akinkugbe was inducted into the ‘Under 40 CEOs Hall of Fame’. This came as a result of her contribution towards building a new generation of business leaders and a revered role model for young African Entrepreneurs. ‘Under 40 CEOs Hall of Fame’ is a platform established to recognize business leaders, who have demonstrated their capacity to building successful and sustainable businesses, and who continue to break personal and corporate records, as well as leveraging their platforms to raising next generation of African business leaders. Kofo has also received many awards and accolades for her innovation and ingenuity in the technological sphere. She constantly speaks at conferences, and has been very vocal in building up young entrepreneurs from Nigeria and across Africa.
