Samuel is passionate about knowledge transfer. As he rises to the top, he is keen to uplift younger software engineers to help solve Africa’s challenges.
He established Meliora in 2015, a firm that develops IT solutions, such as converging messaging platforms to enable corporates –that are its clients– to interact more conveniently with customers.
In the case of a commercial bank, for instance, the system connects all internal applications such as ATM system, core banking system, Internet banking, and mobile banking to various mobile network operators and/aggregators in various countries.
Before starting his firm, Samuel worked at Safaricom where he was the youngest among technical leads tasked with the “bring M-Pesa back home” project that involved transferring the mobile payment platform servers from Germany.
"Being an entrepreneur is not easy as it requires a lot of optimisation when other people’s lives become your responsibility"
He also worked as a software engineer at ComzAfrica’s research and development department and later was tasked to lead the technical operations team in over 20 markets across Africa and Asia. “This was preparing me to run operations in Meliora in the years to come,” he says.
One of the leadership challenges he faced was letting go, even after delegating. Now he has learned to allow the team to make mistakes and learn from them.
Being an entrepreneur, he admits is not easy as it requires a lot of optimisation when other people’s lives become your responsibility. When not at work or imparting knowledge, he walks and jogs or watches religious, history-based and technology documentaries.
Lynet Igadwah