LIONESS WEEKENDER COVER STORY
Secure ID, Africa’s market leader in smart card technology and digital security.
Kofo Akinkugbe is a Nigerian innovator and technology market leader. This remarkable woman entrepreneur founded a company that today is recognised globally as a market leader in Africa's smart card technology and digital security industry.
Graduating as a prize-winning student in Mathematics from the University of Lagos, followed by the mandatory year of National Service, Kofo started her career in the banking industry, working with International Merchant Bank and Chartered Bank. After 12 years in banking during which she took a short break to obtain an MBA from the Strathclyde Graduate Business School, she left in 1997 to start Interface Technologies, a security management and biometrics technologies company from a spare room at home! She managed this enterprise successfully for 9 years before establishing SecureID from within Interface, as a logical outcome of strategic thinking and an internal drive for innovative local solutions and has grown to become a globally recognised industry leader in the smart card and digital payments space.
"SecureID has been recognised as setting the standard for innovation and creativity in the SmartCard Sector in sub-Saharan Africa.”
Kofo is a business leader who recognizes the power of innovation as a vital ingredient for business success, underscoring its importance at every speaking opportunity at home and internationally. As chief executive of Secure ID, which is still a relatively young firm producing globally accepted products for clients in over 21 African countries, she is an excellent example of a chief executive that is building a successful company based on innovation.
Speaking at a forum recently on innovation and the CEO’s agenda, Kofo urged business owners to build internal capacity that will sustain individual and collaborative creativity. "Do not be afraid to test new things,” she said. Her company has succeeded by thinking ahead, developing products that were not yet in demand at the time they were being developed. She added, “We must be creative, ensuring we are a step ahead of competition,” also stressing the need to make it a company policy to encourage employees to be creative and to track returns on investment based on staff creativity. She asked, “How do you effectively measure and track the returns on your investment? Does the way you innovate reflect your vision and appetite for innovation. Encourage staff to be innovative, do things innovatively.”
Today, Kofo’s company, Secure ID, is Nigeria's leading Smart Card Manufacturing and Personalization organisation; providing comprehensive end-to-end payment, identity management and digital security solutions for the financial services sector, telecommunications, government, education, healthcare and private enterprises. Located in Lagos, the company is fully certified by all the relevant global payment system providers including VISA, Verve and MasterCard, and operates a world-class production plant employing global best practices and the most stringent international standards.
Beyond the financial services sector, SecureID has gone on to acquire the covetted GSMA certification and in the process, is now the leading manufacturer of SIM cards in Africa's largest mobile telephone market. The company is also an active player in the public sector and is involved in a number of high security e-identification projects for the government agencies.
The latest innovation project has taken SecureID fully into the digital solutions space through its newly registered subsidiary Transport Payment Solutions (TPS), that is the payment services concessionaire for the revamped Nigerian Railway Corporation.
To find out more about SecureID, visit the company’s website https://www.secureidltd.com