Darlington Okorie

APIs every Nigerian fintech developer should know exists: - NIBSS instant payment API (real-time interbank transfers) - Paystack Transfer API (bulk disbursements) - Flutterwave BVN verification - Mono for bank account data and statements - Okra for transaction history and identity - Smile Identity for KYC and document verification - Remita for government payment collections - VFD for virtual account issuance Most devs building fintech products in Nigeria are reinventing wheels that already exist. Save this.

The real job isn't just collecting data; it's interpreting the "noise." Are your engagement numbers high cos the product is "sticky" or because the workflow is inefficient? Are users sticking with a feature because they love it or cos they haven't been shown a better alternative?

If you only optimize for what your users are doing right now, you’re not building a roadmap, you’re building a cage. Current users can tell you how to make your current product 10% better, but they’ll almost never tell you when it’s time to pivot.

@BacLeodiv Thinking of getting someone to handle the marketing side of things.

I’m struggling to balance building and marketing right now. How are you guys handling it?

@kritikakodes Cos I can and will build what you actually want me to. That's good enough for any serious minded organization.

The Best answer for: "Why should we hire you?"

I have been in a lot of conversations with US VCs and LPs lately who used to be active in African tech. Most of them have gone quiet on the continent. Not because they lost conviction. Because they ran out of bandwidth. The honest answer I keep hearing is some version of the same thing: AI is taking all the oxygen right now. The energy is local. The deals are in their backyard. There is nothing left for anywhere else. I understand it. But I also think it is worth zooming out. Here is what the data actually shows about the state of the market: In 2025, global VC funding hit $425 billion. Up 30% on paper. The headline looks like a recovery. But strip out five companies and the broader market is flat at 2023 levels. The industry did not grow. It concentrated. The top 30 funds captured 75% of all capital raised. Just nine funds took nearly half. More than half of all VC dollars deployed globally went into one category: AI. This is not a healthy market. This is a market in tunnel vision. And here is the thing about tunnel vision. It is always temporary. Every major platform shift in the last 30 years did exactly this. The PC era consumed everything. Then it settled. The internet did the same. Then it settled. Mobile. SaaS. Each cycle convinced the market that nothing else mattered. And each time, when the dust cleared, capital started looking for the next real opportunity. We are in that moment right now. Not at the end of it. But inside it. The investors I respect most are the ones who have lived through enough cycles to know that the conversation always shifts. That the markets and sectors being ignored today are exactly where the interesting returns get built. That the window between "we will revisit" and actually moving is where early conviction lives. Africa is in that window. The builders on the continent did not pause. They kept compounding. And the investors who stayed focused, stayed patient, and did the work are going to look very right when this cycle settles. It's a great day to invest in Africa.

@Akintola_steve Security is essential for fintechs unless you want to have to deal with paying back massive financial thefts or inconsistent data( which is a security issue as much to as a consistency one)

You’re designing an API for a fintech product. What matters more: A. Speed B. Consistency C. Security You can only pick one, then back it up with reasons

A Nigerian fintech founder raised $2M, built a slick app, onboarded 40,000 users. Then CBN, NDPC, and FCCPC came knocking at the same time. He had no licence. no DPO. no KYC tier structure. no breach policy. The company didn’t survive 2024. Here’s every rule you must know before you build:

I never did an internship. I never held a junior dev role. My first official dev job was a mid-level role and I'm going to tell you exactly how. SWE has a traditional ladder: Intern - Junior - Mid - Senior Most people climb it step by step. I skipped the first two rungs entirely. But here's why this matters MORE right now: AI is quietly killing junior roles. So if you're waiting to "start from the bottom," the bottom might not exist by the time you get there. 5 years before my first official role, I was freelancing. Not just taking small gigs. I was attempting to build and scale a startup. What that meant in practice: > I built real products under real pressure > Deployed production-grade apps with actual users > Worked with a team and owned outcomes > Developed grit that no internship could teach When I finally sat in an interview room, I didn't show up as a candidate. I showed up as someone who had already been doing the job. Interviewers saw ownership. They saw someone who could ship without being managed. That got me in at mid-level. Here's the good news: you can replicate this faster today than I ever could. With AI, you can: > Build an MVP in a week > Ship to real users (even beta) > Experience the full SDLC > Break things in production and fix them > Make real mistakes and learn from them That's not a side project. That's a career. You don't need a junior role to become mid-level. You need real reps. You’re welcome.

Let's connect so you see more from me.

Developers, founders, and everyday users all store important information on their devices. Giving the wrong app too much access is a risk you don’t always see immediately.

Most apps request permissions, and that’s completely normal. What matters is whether those permissions actually make sense for what the app is supposed to do.

What do they care about? That it feels INSTANT.

When you start fetching data on the server instead of inside useEffect, your app gets faster without “performance hacks.” Less client work. Less loading states. Better UX. For founders, this matters more than you think. Because users don’t care about your stack.

Most people use Next.js like it’s just React with routing. Then they ship a dashboard that feels fine locally but slow in real use. The issue is usually simple. They fetch everything on the client because it’s easier. But Next.js was built to let you move work to the server.

A Nigerian software engineer and a German software engineer push the same code to production tonight. Same stack. Same PR review. Same 2am. One of them earns €7,000/month with free healthcare, job protection laws, and a pension that kicks in at 30. The other earns ₦600,000 and just spent ₦47,000 on generator fuel this month alone. We need to talk about this.

@AayushSainii 😁 Just followed you @AayushSainii. Looking forward to connecting and starting some conversations!

@AayushSainii Definitely 😁

How do you validate and test that an idea would really work before getting into the market? Let's get into that.