In a ceremony that brought together Africa’s most prominent technology leaders, policymakers, and innovators, Olushola Babalola was honored with the Product Innovation Excellence Award at the 2019 Tech Trailblazer Visionary Prize. The award recognises Babalola’s groundbreaking work in infrastructure-level innovation that is powering Nigeria’s digital future and influencing product architecture across the African continent.

Held at the Landmark Event Centre in Lagos, the annual Tech Trailblazer Visionary Prize spotlights individuals whose solutions have radically transformed how industries operate. Babalola’s award comes as no surprise to industry observers familiar with his work—particularly his development of LIVEMatrix, a system that has quietly redefined how public and financial institutions detect, resolve, and prevent service failures in real time.

Introduced in late 2016 and widely adopted through 2017–2019, LIVEMatrix is a predictive engine that powers smart automation across payment systems, fraud management networks, and public sector workflows. Unlike traditional backend systems, Babalola’s solution was engineered for adaptability across both high-frequency financial environments and complex public infrastructure—making it one of the first African-born platforms to be referenced in both private and public-sector digital strategy plans.

“Olushola Babalola is not just building systems—he is building confidence into the backbone of African digital transformation,” said Dr. Aisha Komolafe, a leading technology strategist and keynote speaker at the event. “His innovation doesn’t just scale; it stabilises, safeguards, and empowers.”

Beyond his work on payment resilience and system orchestration, Babalola has also played a critical role in reshaping enterprise-wide digital operations in Nigeria. As a Senior Product Manager at PwC Nigeria, he led the nationwide adoption of enterprise automation through ServiceNow, elevating digital standards across financial services and public sector institutions. His implementation models were not only replicated across several banks and government agencies but were also adopted in national IT modernisation frameworks—making him a recognised catalyst for Nigeria’s shift toward digital governance and operational efficiency at scale.

LIVEMatrix has been credited with reducing transaction resolution times by up to 76 per cent across major Nigerian banks and helped streamline over ₦1.2 billion in wrongly flagged subsidy disbursements across state-led public initiatives. Beyond Nigeria, elements of the system have already been piloted in Ghana and Rwanda, where agencies are using it to accelerate reconciliation of cross-border payment disputes.

According to the event organisers, Babalola was selected from a pool of nominees across the nation. The selection committee cited his multi-sector impact, the technical depth of his product, and the long-term sustainability of his infrastructure model as defining characteristics that set him apart. “He’s one of the few engineers in Africa whose work is actively shaping how financial systems and government infrastructure talk to each other,” said Joseph Mugisha, one of the selection panelists and an advisor to the East African Digital Integration Council.

This recognition marks a major milestone in Babalola’s career. Throughout 2018 and 2019, he held closed-door consultations with the Central Bank of Nigeria, the Ministry of Digital Economy, and several ECOWAS policy arms working on intergovernmental fintech standards. His contributions were instrumental in the development of cross-border automation frameworks under the West African Payment Ecosystem Modernisation Plan, earning him commendations from regional tech diplomats.

“There are product leaders who build apps, and then there are those who build the rails the apps depend on,” said Bola Oyetunde, CIO of a Tier 1 Nigerian bank. “Shola is the latter—and without his work, we wouldn’t be where we are today.”

The award ceremony also featured high-level panel discussions on product leadership in Africa, where Babalola’s name was cited multiple times as a reference point for infrastructure-driven innovation. Several industry speakers urged product teams to think beyond consumer experience and consider long-term ecosystem reliability—a principle Babalola has championed consistently in his private talks and engineering forums.

In his brief acceptance remarks, Babalola remained humble. “This is not a solo journey. My work has always been about serving teams, institutions, and most of all, users. Product innovation isn’t just about features. It’s about trust—trust in the systems people use to live, work, and grow.”

With this award, Olushola Babalola has not only been recognised for technical brilliance, but for redefining what product innovation means in the African context. His work bridges the gap between software and sovereignty, speed and stability—and it’s inspiring a new generation of engineers to think structurally, regionally, and long-term.

As Africa’s digital economy grows bolder, one thing is clear: innovators like Babalola are not just participating in the ecosystem—they are building it from the ground up.