By Ayo Onikoyi

Temitayo Solomon Gbadebo (Formerly known as Temitayo Afeez Ogunfuwa) hails from Shagamu LGA, Ogun State Nigeria.

Temitayo grew up in the city of Lagos (Lagos state) Nigeria, where he started his academy journey and later found his flare in tech, specifically programming.

How it all began: He saw a computer (IBM) for the first time (early 1990s) at the primary school he attended when he was in primary 2. The Pacman screen and the dark command-line interface (CLI), never left his mind. He has since then made up his mind to be a computer engineer (the best he could think about at that time).

In 2007 he went to India to further his tech interest. While in India, he wrote his first program, a batch script (CLI, do you remember the IBM CLI ?) on Windows, after which he later wrote a few programs to enhance his PlayStation 2. In 2009, he decided to learn web technology and started the journey with PHP 5. He built various projects, amongst which is a dating platform called Asian2Mingle in 2010 (let’s say this was his first entrepreneurial journey). In 2013 he had a Bachelor of Science in Information technology. After which he immediately came back to Nigeria. In that same 2013, he met his first client:

Metropolexpress- a news media platform) as a freelancer. In 2016, he built the technology behind the Tracology platform (a patented process using barcodes/QR codes in verifying utility payment for public and private agencies), which brought them to be the top 3 startups at “Aso Demo Day at the presidential villa (popularly known as Aso Rock Villa) out of 30 startups in Nigeria the same year 2016, they also got the coverage of Voice of America (VOA).

With his outstanding performance and contributions in Tracology, the founder Emmanuel Okenna, made him a technical co-founder with equity, (never letting go). Temitayo continued his streak of wins in the tech space by revamping the accounting software for NUP (Nigeria Union of Pensioners in 2017). In 2020, he did it again, by building another successful platform for Cosmoremit (a fintech product used for sending money across borders from Australia, he’s currently retained as a contractor for the company till date, which he has helped in building and structuring their tech team). In 2021, he was awarded a scholarship to Founders Institute and out of 749 applicants, only 34 were chosen and 8 made it to graduation which he is among (, this earn him an alumni of founders institute, the same network with founders like of Udemy, Esusu etc. In 2022 he built yet another noteworthy platform called HXAfrica (A platform that tokenizes property, dropping the barrier in property investment), The same year 2022, he developed the RyzaPay fintech app all by himself as a full stack developer (Frontend, backend and mobile app), for Clymb technologies start-up and while he took up another task as a CTO and equity holder in another startup (WhiteAxix) to develop Axix app (all land logistics app features like ride-hailing, delivery and ambulance call). In 2023, led the team that built the Blucera platform (global banking, marketplace, bookkeeping, e-learning and e-vault).

While all that was going on in 2021, he founded JiffyPay Limited, (supposed to be a fintech product, but pivoted to other areas now with the trade name “Simpoo”). He launched the following services :

In the year 2021: SimpooCodes (a software development ).

Late 2023: Simpoobusiness (an inventory management software in the beta stage).

August 2023: SimpooCademy and SimpooPower (training young and inspiring start-ups, in the development of software (SimpooCademy) and incubation on how to run a successful start-up (SimpooPower)).

He is currently working on an API-based marketplace (SimpooMarket) suitable for the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).

He’s been keeping the company afloat through contract jobs both from the private and public sectors. He is able to manage costs by offering equity to his employees as well as running the company remotely. In years to come, he sees his start-up playing a major role in growing the African continent’s economy just as China Alibaba has done for the Chinese economy, through his marketplace vision. In contrast, the SimpooCademy and SimpooPower would play a critical role in empowering and mentoring young and upcoming youths to be tech entrepreneurs. At the same time, this will position JiffyPay as having stakes in these start-ups.

He’s presently a mentor to Dora Technologies, both in tech and business strategy and he’s a stakeholder in the start-up.[a]

In 2023, he was awarded the “Outstanding States Person of Africa For Humanitarian Service Award” and “Diploma of Honorary Member of The International Royal Academy of the UN”, by the International Royal Academy of the United Nations

He is skilled in the following programming languages and frameworks Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Javascript (jQuery, MooTools, AngularJs, Ionic, ReactJs, VueJs), Python, Golang, PHP, Tailwind, and Artificial Intelligence (AI).