Wale Ayeni , a former investor with EchoVC, has joined IFC. According to a news brief, he will be focusing on investments into African companies on behalf of IFC.

Wale Ayeni has over a decade of global technology experience spanning several roles including Venture Capital, Investment Banking, Corporate Development, and Microprocessor & ASIC chip design. Wale currently leads venture capital early-stage investments in disruptive startups across various technology sectors for Orange in North America. Orange is a $50B global telecoms company with over 260MM subscribers in Europe, Middle East and Africa and actively invests $500K – $3MM early-stage companies – recent investments in the US includes Veniam(Mesh Networks), Chain (Blockchain), WEVR (Virtual Reality).

Prior to this Wale was with J.P. Morgan’s Technology Investment Banking group in San Francisco where he successfully executed over $12B worth of closed transactions spanning mergers & acquisitions to IPOs for large-cap technology clients including Facebook, Electronic Arts, Activision Blizzard, Intel Corp., AMD, Shutterfly, etc. Wale started his career as an Engineer, and in his previous technology career Wale was a microprocessor design Engineer with Intel Corp. where he led critical aspects of Intel’s “CSI” chip architecture – the biggest micro-architecture change in Intel’s history. He also led aspects of the very first “Snapdragon” chipsets working at Qualcomm Inc.’s chip design center enabling the initial smartphone designs.

Wale has an MBA from Dartmouth College, and his Bachelor’s degree with distinguished “Red diploma” from Moscow University. He is a Kauffman Venture Capital Fellow, he is a recipient of the top global 100 Rising Stars award in Corporate Venture, and is extremely passionate around frontier market VC investments.

The Central Bank of Nigeria has made it clear that Nigerian banks are being hacked . These institutions lost $450 million in 2015 through cyber-related crimes.

SEC Nigeria must take action and lead. It needs to learn from what U.S. regulators are doing. After a steady series of hacking debacles, regulators are stepping in and ordering companies to tighten up. Soon companies in the financial sector — banks, brokerages, and insurance firms — will have to comply with cybersecurity rules that include encrypting sensitive information and appointing a security chief.

The rules come from New York’s Department of Financial Services, and are scheduled to go into effect in 2018. While they apply only to New York, they will have an outsize impact given the state’s central role in the financial sector. We can expect other state and federal government entities to follow suit.

SEC Nigeria must act and lead in this area.

The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) has pledged to support the “Change Begins with Me’’ campaign with corruption-eliminating Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tools.

The pledge was made by NITDA’s Acting Director-General, Dr Vincent Olatunji, at a two-day sensitisation workshop for management staff of the agency.

A statement issued by Mrs Hadiza Umar, NITDA’s Head of Corporate Affairs Department, quoted Olatunji as saying that “NITDA as an Information Technology (IT) agency will look inward for ICT tools that can be used to help prevent or better still eliminate corrupt practices in the country.’

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) recalls that President Muhammadu Buhari recently launched the “Change Begins with Me’’ campaign in Abuja.

The campaign seeks the support of every Nigerian in eliminating indiscipline in every sphere of life.

In developing nations,  two billion people don’t have access to basic financial services such as savings accounts and credit. That’s almost half of the developing world’s adult population. Giving most of these people access to those services using mobile phones and the internet would increase the GDP of emerging economies by $3.7 trillion by 2025, according to a study by the McKinsey Global Institute. That’s a 6% boost.

The report by McKinsey argues that the benefits of digital finance go beyond unlocking another market for the financial industry. Access to these basic services would reduce inequality, poverty and even government corruption. It would also create 95 million new jobs.

Digital finance can provide access to financial services for 1.6 billion people—880 million of them women—in emerging economies for the first time, McKinsey said. This is within reach because the infrastructure already exists. In 2014, 80% of adults in developing nations had mobile subscriptions. By 2020, 90% of these adults will own a mobile phone.

Nigeria needs a clear strategy to improve its digital finance sector to help improve people’s lives.