Mitchell Elegbe is a Nigerian electrical engineer and the undisputed godfather of the African digital payments industry. In 2002, decades before "fintech" became a global buzzword, Elegbe founded Interswitch to solve the catastrophic inefficiency of the Nigerian banking sector, where citizens literally carried bags of physical cash to execute simple transactions. He built the very first electronic transaction switching and payment processing infrastructure in the country. In 2026, Elegbe remains the Group Managing Director of Interswitch, a massive, highly resilient African unicorn. While younger, flashier startups (like Paystack and Flutterwave) dominate the modern venture capital narrative, Interswitch remains the absolute foundational plumbing of the Nigerian economy. His 'Verve' card network aggressively competes with Visa and Mastercard across the continent. Elegbe operates as a highly revered, elder statesman of African tech, proving that indigenous, homegrown infrastructure can successfully outlast decades of extreme macroeconomic volatility.