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By Chinenye Anuforo
Raimot Owolabi never planned to work in technology. Growing up in Lagos, she followed the path many Nigerian families encourage: study accounting, get professional qualifications, build a stable career in finance. She earned her degree from the University of Lagos, began her ICAN certification, and took a job in internal audit at Matrix Energy, one of Nigeria’s downstream oil and gas companies.
Today, she leads data strategy for Sprint Africa, a logistics technology platform that has processed over two million deliveries across all 36 Nigerian states. She designs pricing algorithms, builds AI performance measurement systems, and creates the analytics frameworks that helped the company achieve 285 percent revenue growth in a single year.
Her journey from spreadsheets and compliance reports to the forefront of Nigerian tech reflects a broader shift in who is building the country’s digital infrastructure, and challenges assumptions about what it takes to succeed in the technology sector.
The Unexpected Foundation
Owolabi spent nearly three years at Matrix Energy as an Internal Audit, Control and Compliance Officer. It was not glamorous work. She reviewed transactions for irregularities, built reconciliation frameworks, and produced reports for senior management. But she was learning something that would prove unexpectedly valuable.
“My accounting and audit background gave me something many data professionals lack,” she explains. “Rigorous attention to accuracy and the ability to trace numbers back to their source. When you spend years hunting for discrepancies in financial records, you develop instincts about data that are hard to teach.”
During her time at Matrix Energy, Owolabi began using data analysis tools to make her audit work more efficient. She built compliance dashboards in Power BI. She used Excel in ways that went far beyond basic spreadsheets. She started seeing patterns in data that told stories beyond what the numbers initially revealed.
“I realised I was more interested in the questions the data could answer than in the compliance boxes I was ticking,” she recalls. “That was when I started thinking about a different path.”
Taking the Leap
In September 2023, Owolabi made a decision that surprised her family: she left her stable job and moved to the United Kingdom to pursue a Master’s degree in Business Analytics at Manchester Metropolitan University.
“People thought I was taking a huge risk,” she says. “I had a good job, I was almost done with my ICAN qualification, and I was walking away to study something completely different. But I knew that if I did not make the move then, I never would.”
The Master’s programme gave her formal training in data visualisation, analytical model design, and business intelligence. But it was what happened three months into her studies that changed everything.
Sprint Africa, a Lagos-based logistics technology startup, was looking for someone to lead their data function. They needed a person who understood both numbers and business operations. Owolabi’s unusual background, combining accounting rigour with analytics training, made her exactly what they were looking for.
“They did not care that I did not have a computer science degree,” she says. “They cared that I could look at their operations and immediately see where the data gaps were, where they were losing money, and what questions they should be asking.”
Building the Machine
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Owolabi joined Sprint Africa in January 2024, working remotely from the UK while the company scaled rapidly across Nigeria. Her mandate was broad: build the data infrastructure that would allow the company to make smarter decisions about everything from pricing to route planning to cash management.
One of her first projects tackled a problem familiar to any Nigerian logistics company: how to price deliveries accurately. The industry standard was to check competitor rates and apply uniform markups. Owolabi saw immediately that this approach was costing the company money.
“Different routes have completely different economics,” she explains. “Traffic patterns, fuel costs, delivery success rates, courier availability. We were underpricing some routes by up to 40 percent and overpricing others. Nobody knew which was which.”
She built a pricing intelligence framework that analyses margins at the route level. The results: a 23 percent improvement in overall margins and the identification of 78 million naira in potential annual revenue that was being lost to underpriced routes.
Another major project addressed the cash-on-delivery challenge that plagues Nigerian e-commerce. Over 60 percent of deliveries involve cash collection, and reconciling that cash traditionally took seven days or more. Owolabi designed an automated system that reduced settlement time to near real-time.
“That one came directly from my audit background,” she says with a smile. “I spent years tracking where money went and finding discrepancies. Designing a system to track cash-on-delivery in real time felt natural. I think like an auditor, even when I am building tech products.”
The Results Speak
Since Owolabi joined, Sprint Africa has grown from a Lagos-focused operation to a nationwide platform covering all 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory. The company has processed over two million deliveries, achieved gross transaction value of 15.2 billion naira, and grown revenue by 285 percent year-on-year.
Her analytics frameworks have contributed to measurable operational improvements: 27 percent better route efficiency, 32 percent reduction in empty vehicle miles, and 22 percent lower fuel consumption. The AI performance measurement systems she designed allowed the company to deploy machine learning in production with confidence that it was actually working.
“I am proud of the numbers,” Owolabi says. “But I am more proud of building systems that will keep working after I have moved on to other things. That is what good data infrastructure does. It makes the organisation smarter permanently.”
Opening Doors
Owolabi is aware that her story challenges assumptions about who belongs in technology. She did not study computer science. She cannot write production code. She came from a field, accounting, that many would consider the opposite of innovative.
“I want other women to see that you do not need a computer science degree to lead in tech,” she says. “You need curiosity, analytical thinking, and the willingness to learn. If you can ask the right questions and understand what the answers mean, you can build a career in this industry.”
She points to her non-traditional background as an advantage rather than a limitation. Understanding financial operations gave her insights that pure technologists often lack. Her audit experience taught her to be sceptical of data, to always ask where numbers come from and whether they can be trusted.
“The tech industry needs people who think differently,” she argues. “If everyone has the same background and the same training, you get the same ideas. Some of my best work has come from applying accounting principles to technology problems. That perspective is valuable precisely because it is unusual.”
Looking Ahead
Sprint Africa is now preparing to expand into the United Kingdom, targeting the Nigerian diaspora community. Owolabi, already based in the UK, will lead the data strategy for that market entry.
“There are over 250,000 Nigerians in the UK who send packages home regularly,” she explains. “The current options are terrible. We are going to change that.”
Beyond her work at Sprint Africa, Owolabi plans to mentor other women considering transitions into technology careers. She believes her story, precisely because it is unconventional, can help others see possibilities they might otherwise miss.
“Five years ago, I was reconciling invoices and reviewing expense reports,” she reflects. “Today, I am building the data systems for a platform that serves hundreds of thousands of Nigerians. If I can make that journey, others can too. The door is more open than people think. Sometimes you just have to walk through it.”
