The awards ceremony organized by Beta Media Group, held on December 6, 2025, at the VirginRose Resort, Victoria Island, Lagos, brought together top players in Nigeria’s tech ecosystem to celebrate excellence, creativity, and industry growth.

This recognition highlights the SUPER 26 Ultra’s groundbreaking curved display design and its next-generation AI capabilities, which elevate the smartphone experience across photography, performance, personalization, and security.

As consumer expectations continue to rise, the SUPER 26 Ultra stands out for delivering premium, flagship-level features at an accessible price point, strengthening itel’s position as a trusted technology empowerment brand.

Winning at NiTA perfectly aligns with itel’s strategic ambition to sustain consumer interest, increase brand visibility, and enhance credibility in the market. It also reinforces the brand’s commitment to designing high-quality devices that suit the lifestyle and aspirations of young, dynamic, and value-driven consumers.

Speaking about the achievement, Dolapo Olorun-nimbe, ATL marketing manager at itel Mobile Nigeria, expressed excitement and appreciation:

“This award is a testament to itel’s dedication to making cutting-edge technology available to everyone. The SUPER 26 Ultra, with its stunning curved display and intelligent features, reflects our commitment to blending style, innovation, and affordability. We are grateful to consumers who believe in our vision, and this recognition motivates us to keep raising the bar in design and user experience.”

Also reflecting on the milestone, Terngu Simeon Shagba, PR Supervisor at itel Mobile Nigeria, emphasized the significance of the recognition on brand trust and market positioning:

“Winning at NiTA is not just an award for us, it is proof that our efforts to stay ahead in innovation and deliver value-driven smartphones are being acknowledged at the highest level. This achievement strengthens our credibility, energizes our brand presence, and reaffirms our promise to help consumers enjoy better life through technology.”

With this milestone, itel continues to push boundaries within Africa’s tech landscape. The SUPER 26 Ultra represents the brand’s continuous drive to enhance the digital experience for millions through devices that combine top-tier design, intelligent features, and reliability.

Recall that, on November 13, 2025, itel SUPER 26 Ultra received the prestigious award for “The Best Curved Display Phone Under ₦260,000 (Top 1 Recommended Curved Display Phone Under ₦260,000)” at the Africa Tech Alliance Excellence (ATAEx) Awards 2025.

As itel celebrates this major win, the brand remains focused on future-forward innovation and delivering products that empower individuals, connect communities, and accelerate technological advancement across emerging markets as a Tech Empowerment Brand.

For itel, the NiTA 2025 award is not just an accolade; it is a beacon for even greater breakthroughs ahead.

Aderohunmu is a Senior Product Manager with experience across HR technology, financial technology and health technology.

Her work centres on the design, development and scale of digital and AI-powered products that support hiring, payments, insurance and customer engagement.

She currently serves as AI Product Manager (Lead) at BorderlessHR, where she oversees product delivery for BorderlessHR.com and InterviewHQ.ai. In this role, she led the development of InterviewHQ, an AI-based interview simulation and evaluation platform.

The product uses generative AI, natural language processing and conversational systems to support hiring processes. According to the company, the platform has been adopted by users across multiple markets, improved recruiter workflow, and supported candidate preparation.

Before joining BorderlessHR, she served as Senior Product Manager at Fundall. There, she managed product direction for consumer and small business financial services, including cards, savings tools, credit features, budget tracking and cross-border payments.

Her work contributed to improvements in onboarding completion, card usage and user acquisition through product-led initiatives.

Aderohunmu holds a Bachelor of Technology degree in Microbiology and has completed professional certifications through Product School, Google and Coursera. Alongside her corporate roles, she mentors early-career product managers across Africa and supports access to product management knowledge and opportunities.

Speaking on the award, Aderohunmu said,

“This recognition affirms the work I’ve been doing to build AI products that people can trust.” She added, “For me, product management is about listening carefully, questioning assumptions, and designing systems that work fairly for everyone who uses them.”

NiTA, organised by Betamedia, marked its 10th anniversary this year.

Event Director and Advisory Board Member, Felix Nnuji, reflected on the journey of the awards platform, saying,

“As we celebrate this 10th anniversary, we look back at the innovators, startups, companies, and industry leaders who have left their mark on Nigeria’s tech landscape. NiTA has grown in both scope and prestige, providing a platform for recognising outstanding achievements.”

The 2024 edition featured participants from telecommunications, software engineering, academia, marketing, automotive, retail and commerce.

During the ceremony, organisers also unveiled the Nigeria Academic Excellence Awards (NAEA), an initiative focused on recognising achievement in education and research.

“Through NAEA, we aim to spotlight individuals, institutions, and projects driving academic excellence in Nigeria. It is a step towards encouraging innovation and fostering growth in education and research,” Nnuji said.

The NITDA Director General made this declaration at the corporate headquarters of the Agency in Abuja  during the day one of the 3 day working visit of the Ghanian National Information Technology Agency (NITA) delegation led by Mr. Richard Okyere Fosu, its Director General, to understudy Nigeria’s IT regulatory instruments, policy documents and seek possible areas of collaboration.

Describing the visit of the delegation from Ghana as a step in the right direction towards the development of Africa’s IT ecosystem, Inuwa stated that it was an imperative collaboration needed to achieve a common goal.

Stating that no one can succeed in isolation, he asserted that “if we really want to succeed as a continent, we need to collaborate, we need to work together. We need to learn from our experiences and share expertise so that we can work and grow together”.

He noted further that the Nigerian government has transcended from enforcing regulations on the ecosystem but has rather identified collaboration as critical, in creating an enabling environment for the ecosystem to thrive and flourish.

Stating that IT is borderless, the NITDA boss said that the agency had developed various regulatory instruments, policy documents and initiatives to create an enviable IT ecosystem in the country

which has been making huge impacts within the continent and globally.

While confidently stating that Africa has a competitive advantage of talent and population in the fourth industrial revolution, Inuwa opined that a symbiotic relationship between the two countries would engender disruptive innovations that will solve many challenges pervading the continent.

“This kind of visit will strengthen the relationship between our two agencies and build a stronger IT ecosystem in Africa. We are doing well in Nigeria but we want everybody to do well when it comes to technology”, he noted.

The NITDA Director General then proceeded to make a presentation on an overview of the Agency, its guiding strategies and strategic initiatives which have been instrumental in driving economic growth and prosperity with a focus on creating a knowledge-based economy that can compete with the best in the world.

In his presentation on the regulatory environment and various regulatory instruments, the Agency’s Head, Legal Unit, Barrister Emmanuel Edet made reference to the Startup Act and Code of Practice in which the agency uses intelligent frameworks to develop regulations towards a sustainable digital economy.

In his remark, Mr. Fosu of NITA appreciated the efforts being made by NITDA in fortifying and fostering the nation’s IT ecosystem toward a sustainable digital economy.

He disclosed that NITA ’s supervising ministry has similarly expanded its mandate to include digitalization and is now known as the Ministry of Communications and Digitalisation which in his opinion has brought out the importance of digitalisation.

While giving assurances of keying into NITDA’s regulatory instruments and implementation of policy documents, Fosu expressed his agency’s commitment to work closely with NITDA in bridging the gaps identified in Ghana and Africa as a whole.

“This is not a one-time visit but we will definitely come back. We have come to learn and hope that we can make the needed impact in Ghana”, he stated.

The NITDA DG then took the Ghanian delegates on a tour of the agency’s Computer emergency Readiness and Response Team (CERRT) unit.

We sat down with Olaitan Moses Ojo, lead digital channels & analytics architect at Micro-Save Consulting, who led the analytics redesign that repositioned Nigeria’s FirstMonie agent network. Ojo has also recognized by the Nigeria Technology Awards (NiTA) as “Most Outstanding Digital Channels & Analytics Architecture Professional of the Year.”

TE: What was the FirstMonie problem you were asked to solve?

Ojo: FirstMonie already had scale. The bank had recruited a large number of agents and the programme was visible across Nigeria. But when we analyzed the network in 2016, performance wasn’t matching the ambition. We saw heavy clustering in urban and already-banked locations, weak agent density in many rural and peri-urban LGAs, and a dormancy pattern where too many agents were registered but not meaningfully active.

FirstBank’s question was not “How do we add more agents?” It was “How do we make this network truly inclusive and sustainably active?” That is what MSC was engaged to support, and I led the analytics work that guided the repositioning.

TE: What did you build first?

Ojo: We built a geo-analytics engine that could show financial access in a way the bank could act on. We didn’t start with recruitment targets; we started with mapping need and access.

We integrated several data layers: the locations of branches, ATMs and existing FirstMonie agents, population and economic-activity indicators by LGA and community, and the actual transaction patterns coming through the network. The idea was to stop relying on gut feel and start using evidence to see where the real gaps were.

TE: So what exactly is the “Financial Access Gap” model?

Ojo: It’s a scoring framework that estimates where financial access is weakest relative to demand. In plain terms, the model asks: if you deploy one more well-supported agent here, will it materially increase access, or will it just add another outlet to an already-served area?

We combine four dimensions: need in that community, the current density of formal access points, usage patterns for financial services, and the depth of services available at existing outlets. When need is high, but access and usage are low, the gap score rises. Those are the communities where an agent can change the inclusion map, not just inflate a headcount dashboard.

TE: How did that change FirstMonie’s expansion strategy?

Ojo: It converted expansion into a ranked, phased rollout plan. For each region, FirstMonie could see a prioritized list of LGAs and micro-markets based on their access-gap scores. At the same time, overserved pockets were clearly visible, so the bank avoided adding agents where new sign-ups would only cannibalize existing outlets.

In practice, it shifted the network from opportunistic growth to deliberate coverage. FirstMonie began to recruit and activate agents in rural, peri-urban, and low-income clusters that were previously under-penetrated, while slowing recruitment in already saturated urban micro-markets.

TE: What about dormancy? Placement doesn’t automatically keep agents active.

Ojo: Exactly. Coverage and activity have to be solved together. So, alongside the gap model, we built agent-level scorecards for FirstMonie. The scorecards looked beyond simple transaction counts. They tracked stability of activity over time, service mix, liquidity patterns, and early warning signs that an agent was drifting toward dormancy.

This gave the programme a way to identify anchor agents worth deeper support, spot at-risk agents early, and tailor training or operational help before dormancy became irreversible. It made network management proactive instead of reactive.

TE: Data quality in Nigeria can be chaotic. How did you deal with that?

Ojo: We assumed imperfect data from day one. Step one was cleaning and geocoding, standardizing location records, validating coordinates, and reconciling inconsistencies across systems. Step two was iterative improvement. We launched a workable model and then refined it as new data came in and as field teams corrected anomalies.

Importantly, we built a feedback loop with regional and branch teams. They flagged local realities, security factors, seasonal market behaviour, or obvious mapping errors, and those insights fed into model updates. Over time, the process improved FirstMonie’s own data discipline as well.

TE: What outcomes did FirstMonie see after adopting the model?

Ojo: Internally, three shifts were clear. First, FirstMonie’s footprint expanded to cover nearly all LGAs in Nigeria with more balanced distribution. Second, the share of agents located in high-gap (previously underserved) communities rose significantly. Third, the active-agent ratio improved in multiple regions because the programme was no longer placing agents in weak locations or leaving viability to chance.

The point is not that analytics magically solved everything; it created a repeatable, evidence-based way to expand inclusion and sustain activity.

TE: NiTA recognised you in 2022. How does that tie into this work?

Ojo: For me, it was meaningful because agent banking is often discussed only in terms of physical footprint. The award recognized the hidden layer, the models and decision rules that determine where agents go, how they’re supported, and whether inclusion goals are actually achieved.

TE: What’s the one lesson other banks or fintechs should take from this?

Ojo: Don’t treat agent expansion as a volume race. Treat it as an access-gap and viability problem. If you can measure where the gaps are, prioritize them honestly, and manage agents with the same rigour you use for any other channel, you get a network that grows for impact, not for optics.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length. Published by Techeconomy as part of our coverage on digital finance infrastructure and financial inclusion in Nigeria.

The Technology service provider received the Best Fibre Optic Infrastructure Service Provider award at the Cyber Africa Awards.

This marks the Phase3 Telecom’s third award category win and fourth recognition by Cyber Africa across its platforms since 2011 for its continuing industry contributions within the telecommunications and technology spaces.

In the same period, Phase3 was awarded the Broadband Service Provider of The Year at the Nigeria Technology Awards (NiTA).

The Nigeria Technology Awards (NiTA) is an award ceremony organised to recognise, celebrate and reward Technology Entrepreneurs, Innovators, Academicians, Inventors and policymakers (Government) in Nigeria through online voting.

The Awards aims to build a large scale and internationally recognised Technology Awards in Nigeria.

The award ceremony is organised by Technology AVENUE, a leading Technology, Media, Events & Entertainment Management Company with an unparalleled and unique approach to service delivery.

Commenting on the high honours, Stanley Jegede, Phase3 Telecom Executive Chairman, called the awards an auspicious recognition in the wake of the company’s 18th year of business operations. “These awards reaffirm our team’s commitment to investing and innovating to foster digital transformation; engender top value for clients and strengthen our vision to firmly establish West Africa as a powerhouse in global technology and telecommunications play,” he said.

The awards reinforce the company’s mission to provide excellent services to connect people and businesses for the socio-economic development of Africa.

To achieve this, Phase3 Telecom has invested in state-of-the-art digital infrastructure to significantly improve connectivity in the ECOWAS region and other international markets. In doing so, Phase3 expanded its suite of managed services, products and solutions/innovations to bridge the digital divide in Africa.