The Nigerian fintech, which provides access to dollar-denominated assets, obtained the licence through its subsidiary, RV Fund Management Limited. With this approval, the company now operates fully within Nigeria’s capital market framework.

“This approval reflects months of rigorous review and engagement,” Eke Urum, Risevest’s co-founder, wrote in a message to users on Wednesday.

“We’re grateful to the Securities and Exchange Commission for the critical work they do in safeguarding Nigeria’s financial system and maintaining standards that protect investors. Strong regulation builds strong markets and strong markets build lasting wealth.”

The development follows a difficult period for the firm. In January 2025, the SEC warned Nigerians against investing through Risevest, saying the company did not hold the required licence to operate in the capital market. That warning triggered concerns among users and industry watchers.

At the time, Risevest said its Nigerian investment activities were protected through a trusteeship arrangement with Meristem Trustees Limited, an SEC-licensed trustee. It also relied on partnerships to provide services legally.

In September 2023, the company acquired Chaka, a licensed digital trading startup. That deal allowed Risevest to use Chaka’s regulatory status to offer Nigerians access to global securities.

However, the new SEC licence gives Risevest its own standing under Nigerian law, rather than operating through cover arrangements.

The Fund and Portfolio Manager licence is one of the strictest categories under SEC rules. Firms must show strong corporate governance, sufficient capital and effective compliance systems before approval.

The licence also comes after the Investments and Securities Act 2025, signed into law by President Bola Tinubu, which updated the country’s capital market laws and tightened oversight of investment service providers, including fintechs.

Risevest now joins other digital investment platforms that have secured regulatory backing. These include Bamboo and Trove, which earlier acquired an SEC-licensed broker-dealer as part of its compliance process.

The transition reveals a move towards formal regulation of fintech platforms that once operated in grey areas.

Retail participation in Nigeria’s capital market has also increased sharply. In July 2025, trades by retail investors rose by 88.07% month-on-month to ₦516.50 billion, equivalent to $384 million.

That growth reveals the growing demand for structured and regulated digital investment platforms.

Founded in 2019 by Eke Urum, Bosun Olanrewaju and Tony Odiba, Risevest builds curated portfolios of US stocks and global fixed-income assets. Users decide how much to invest, with returns tied to foreign markets.

In 2024, the company expanded beyond Nigeria by acquiring Hisa, a Kenyan investment startup, marking its entry into East Africa.

With the new licence in place, Risevest can now manage funds directly under Nigeria’s capital market law, ending months of suspense over its regulatory position.

According to Risevest’s newly released 2025 Cost of Living Report, 73% of Nigerians earn below ₦500,000 monthly, while similar income pressures persist across Ghana, Kenya, and Uganda.

The survey, which gathered over 19,800 responses across 12 countries, paints a picture of a continent no longer reacting to crisis, but actively redesigning financial behaviour.

From cutting non-essential spending to prioritising dollar-denominated investments, Africans are choosing discipline over panic.

“In every percentage, there is a real person making sense of change,” said Eneyi Obi, chief marketing officer at Risevest. “This year’s report shows Africans are not just reacting to the cost of living; they are redefining what financial resilience looks like.”

While headline inflation numbers have improved in key markets, everyday expenses, food, rent, transport, education, continue to absorb a large share of household income.

The report finds that income inequality remains deeply entrenched, with median earnings significantly lower than averages across all surveyed countries.

Yet, optimism is not absent. The report highlights a rise in intentional money habits, increased interest in alternative income streams, and a growing appetite for long-term investments that protect against inflation.

“The story is not just how much life costs,” Obi added, “but how people are adapting with creativity and quiet strength.”

68% of Young Africans Cut Non-Essentials

For Gen Zs and millennials across Africa, the cost of living crisis has become a crash course in financial discipline.

The Risevest’s 2025 report indicates that a majority of young earners now prioritise essentials, track expenses more closely, and delay lifestyle upgrades.

In Nigeria alone, over 25% of respondents earn between ₦200,000 and ₦499,999, a group described as the “planning class”, freelancers, tech workers, and young professionals who budget carefully and increasingly save in foreign currencies.

Across Kenya and Ghana, similar patterns emerge. 68.88% of Kenyan respondents earn below KES 50,000, while 83.65% of Ghanaians earn below GHS 50,000, pushing young people to explore side hustles, remote work, and digital investments.

“This generation is more intentional than ever,” said Eneyi Obi. “They’re not just trying to survive inflation; they’re learning how to build stability with the tools available to them.”

The report notes that for many young Africans, wealth creation is no longer about luxury, it’s about security, flexibility, and future-proofing income.

“We’re not just training coders. We’re preparing young Africans to compete at the highest level anywhere in the world.”

To execute this vision, Senior Program Manager Jerry Uke designed a rigorous, transformative 52-week experience. He focused on creating a complete learning journey where real-world discipline was paramount.

“We wanted a one-year program where ambition meets discipline, mentorship meets community, and talent grows through real projects,” Uke explained.

The initial screening was intense: out of over 4,000 applications, only 30 fellows were selected for Cohort 1. Over the course of the year, they navigated 400+ live sessions and completed over 50 projects, internalizing the principle that engineering is a rigorous craft dedicated to solving real problems.

The Mentor and the Methods

At the core of the backend track, instructor Rufai Mustapha, gobal talent builder, was the central force helping to turn raw global talent into capable engineers.

“Many junior engineers start with gaps in the basics,” Rufai noted. “Our goal was to give them a strong foundation, guide them through real projects, and help them gain the confidence to deliver value anywhere in the world.”

Rufai worked closely with 12 fellows, immersing them in the realities of production engineering: weekly one-on-one sessions on architecture and debugging, regular standups, and project-based learning focused on critical sectors like fintech, AI, and cloud systems.

The Evidence: Backend Track Fellow Spotlights

The true measure of the program lies in the hands of these individuals, the first wave of talent ready to define the future. Their stories are a testament to transformation and mastery in areas like Microservices Architecture, Security, and CI/CD.

Wemi Moyela: Making The Internet Fun Again

Wemi grew up exploring the world through the internet and was inspired by the possibilities it created for creativity and play.

As a Rise fellow, he strengthened his engineering foundations, learned to reason from first principles, and developed core competencies in distributed systems, observability, and production reliability. 

His final project, Moonfly, is a competitive fantasy investment game where players trade assets like stocks, crypto, and currencies against each other to experiment with markets without financial risk. He thinks the internet needs more things that are both genuinely useful and genuinely fun.

Adedamola Toye: The Social Impact Engineer

Adedamola rose from a foundational level of preparedness to architect AnonAlert, an anonymous crime-reporting platform with deep security implications. This project required mastering NestJS, Docker, and Kafka, proving he can engineer solutions with profound social impact.

Chukwuebuka Obiora: The Architect of Scale

Chukwuebuka speaks the language of high-performance systems. His capstone was a hotel booking platform with Microservices from the ground up. He engineered high-availability APIs and successfully integrated the Paystack API, showcasing his ability to manage complex, revenue-driven systems.

Tiffany Ugwunebo: The Leader & Builder

Tiffany transformed into a proven leader, securing a role at Applai Grants and building Pixel Hive, a sophisticated asynchronous multimedia processing service. 

She develops applications that integrate a wide range of external APIs, including GPT-4.1, the Hugging Face API, Stripe API, RapidAPI, and others.

Her work leverages queue-based architectures, Docker-powered deployments, microservices, and real-time communication using GraphQL. 

She is also highly proficient with JavaScript frameworks such as Hono, Express, NestJS, and React. Recognizing her “knack for sprint planning, division of labour and leadership,” she’s already set her sights on a future CTO role.  

Oluwafemi Ojuri: The Pragmatic Problem-Solver

Oluwafemi is an enthusiastic engineer who enjoys building software to solve problems, with careful focus on optimization. He started the cohort highly prepared and is exceptionally resourceful. 

His capstone project, Next-Fit, is a tool he built to scrape career pages, turning a personal need into a powerful application.  With techniques learnt during the program, he also built an AI-powered CBT system capable of assessing open-ended/theory questions for his final-year project.

Festus Idowu: The Prolific Shipper

Festus joined as a frontend dev seeking to master backend engineering and evolved as a systems-focused engineer building solutions across the stack. 

During the program, he launched AlgoX, a simplified data structures and algorithms learning platform currently serving 40 users, he developed Medisphere, a healthcare platform connecting patients with providers giving patients access and control over their data, and dp2png – a peer-to-peer payment platform for Nigerians to deposit and withdraw their Deriv funds. 

Through these projects, Festus learned system design, advanced data structures and algorithms, site reliability engineering practices, progressing from basic backend concepts to building systems.

Olalekan Ogundele: The Visionary Craftsman

Olalekan began with the goal of building for millions. His project, an “intelligent sales and customer engagement platform,” demonstrates his application of “system thinking, scalability principles and clean architecture.”

The Legacy of Growth and The Road Ahead

The program’s impact was swift and undeniable. One student, for example, secured a Meta internship before even finishing the program.

“Before Rise, I worked alone,” one student reflected. “Now I collaborate, get feedback, and build confidence. I did not think I could do this project, but I did.”

The academy proved that top-tier talent is here. As Cohort 2 expands to 100 fellows, adding design and cybersecurity tracks, the foundational goal holds fast.

“People do not have to work for Rise,” says Eke Urum. “They go anywhere, earn more, and deliver value. Rufai makes sure they are ready.”

Speaking on the spirit of developing global talent, Rufai Mustapha explained:

“I have had the privilege of mentoring this incredible cohort, and I am constantly amazed by their brilliance. Each one has a unique spark and the ability to build things that will change the world. I cannot wait for the world to see all the amazing things they can do.”

The SEC in a circular issued in Abuja disclosed that neither entity is registered or authorised to operate in the capital market.

The Commission stated: “The attention of the Securities and Exchange Commission has been drawn to the activities of Risevest (Victoria Island) Cooperative Multipurpose Society Limited, which is engaging in capital market activities by inviting the public to invest in its various investment schemes.

“Similarly, our attention has been drawn to Stecs (Alausa) Multipurpose Cooperative Society (popularly known as Stecs), which is engaging in capital market activities by inviting the public to invest in its Stecs Commodity Mudarabah Investment Series I.

“The Commission hereby notifies the public that Risevest (Victoria Island) Cooperative Multipurpose Society Limited and Stecs (Alausa) Multipurpose Cooperative Society are not registered to operate in any capacity in the Nigerian capital market. Similarly, the investment schemes promoted by them have not been authorized by the Commission.

“Accordingly, the SEC advised the public to refrain from engaging with Risevest (Victoria Island) Cooperative Multipurpose Society Limited and Stecs (Alausa) Multipurpose Cooperative Society in respect of any business pertaining or relating to the Nigerian capital market”.

According to SEC, transacting in the Nigerian capital market with unregistered and unregulated entities exposes investors to the risk of fraud and potential loss of investment.

AI is a trending technology that enables computers and machines to simulate human intelligence and problem-solving capabilities. The applications of AI continue to grow across diverse fields.

The Instig Labs AI in Finance meet-up had stakeholders at the intersection of technology and finance, charting up pathways to leverage this novel technology in improving the efficiency of the financial sector.

Participants at the event include tech and finance experts from OpenBB, Risevest, and UBA amongst others.

AI in finance transforms the way people interact with money, helping the financial industry streamline and optimize processes.

It helps drive insights for data analytics, performance measurement, predictions and forecasting, real-time calculations, customer servicing, intelligent data retrieval, and more.

Large financial organizations across the world are also adopting the use of AI with accompanying benefits.

According to its website, J.P. Morgan has been using the underlying AI-powered large language models for payment validation screening for more than two years. It also speeds up processing in other ways by reducing false positives and enabling better queue management.

According to Deloitte, AI offers a chance to address some of the challenges in today’s financial systems by automating data collection and other processes.

Instig Labs has been at the forefront of driving AI adoption for increased efficiency across diverse fields. In November 2023, the outfit teamed up with leading open-source investment research software platform, OpenBB, and quantitative asset management firm, Pav Finance, to provide free eight-week investment research training for intending financial analysts.

Earlier in July 2023, Instig Labs collaborated with technology outfit, S.L.O.T Africa, to host Nigeria’s first conference on music and data. The conference brings together experts and stakeholders to explore the intersection of these two fields in advancing the production, promotion and accessibility of music in Africa.

More about Instig Labs

• Instig Labs is a business incubation platform that provides a watering bed for pre-seed startups in the tech space through various support systems.
• Pan-African, sector agnostic, and technology-focused, Instig Labs aims to facilitate over $150,000 investment funds for 10 startups and create over 200 jobs by the end of 2024.