How SeaBaaS Is Powering Africa’s Indigenous Banking Infrastructure

By Ayo Ake

For many years, financial institutions across Africa relied heavily on imported core banking technologies to power critical banking operations. While these platforms delivered functionality at scale, they often came with high licensing costs, implementation complexity, and limitations in adapting to local regulatory and business realities. As customer expectations increasingly shift toward faster, more connected, and personalised digital experiences, financial institutions are rethinking the technology foundations that support their operations.

Across the continent, a broader transition is underway. Banks are gradually moving away from traditional monolithic environments toward more flexible technology ecosystems capable of supporting rapid innovation, high transaction volumes, regulatory requirements, and seamless integration with digital channels and emerging financial services.
Nigeria remains one of the markets driving this evolution. Financial institutions continue making significant investments in technology modernisation, recognising that future growth increasingly depends on platforms capable of delivering both scalability and agility.

Among the organisations driving this shift is Sterling Financial Holdings, which has continued strengthening its digital capabilities through investments in customer experience, technology platforms, and operational efficiency. Recent improvements in financial performance and digital customer growth further highlight the increasing role technology now plays in shaping competitive advantage across the banking sector.

At the centre of one such transformation effort is SeaBaaS (Secure, Efficient, Agile Banking as a Service) — a locally engineered core banking platform developed to support a new generation of banking operations.

Built around cloud-native principles, microservices architecture, open APIs, and modern integration frameworks, SeaBaaS was designed to address many of the structural limitations associated with traditional banking systems. Rather than operating simply as a transaction engine, the platform was designed as a broader digital ecosystem capable of supporting customer onboarding, lending operations, transaction processing, accounting services, digital channels, and enterprise integrations through a modular architecture.

Speaking publicly on the initiative, Abubakar Suleiman, Chief Executive Officer of Sterling Bank, noted that migration to the platform had generated substantial cost savings and positioned the institution for long-term technology independence. He also highlighted increasing customer acquisition and transaction growth following implementation.
“Transaction volumes are soaring while our acquisition – the number of new customers choosing Sterling – has broken records for eight months in a row,” he said, describing the initiative as part of a broader movement toward strengthening indigenous technology capability across the continent.

Beyond being a technology migration exercise, the programme represented a wider strategic effort to create a resilient and adaptable banking environment capable of supporting future business needs while improving operational efficiency and customer experience.

Within the broader engineering programme, Olufemi Olofinlua, working through Bazara Tech, led the engineering track and contributed significantly to several critical aspects of technical implementation and platform delivery.
His responsibilities extended beyond programme coordination into active engineering leadership involving architectural alignment, systems integration, scalability planning, and technical implementation oversight. Working across multiple engineering workstreams, he played a key role in ensuring that independently developed modules functioned cohesively within a unified enterprise ecosystem.

As development progressed, maintaining consistency across engineering standards, integration patterns, and transaction processing workflows became increasingly important due to the scale and complexity of the platform.
This became particularly evident across highly sensitive areas involving customer account management, transaction processing engines, account lifecycle management, and General Ledger (GL) impact frameworks. Within banking environments, these systems carry significant importance because every customer transaction ultimately influences downstream accounting processes, reconciliation activities, and financial reporting obligations.

Sources familiar with the initiative indicate that Olufemi remained actively involved throughout the implementation lifecycle. In addition to coordinating engineering teams, he worked directly with developers on solution design activities, reviewed critical implementation logic, and led the resolution of complex systems integration challenges.
Beyond platform engineering, another critical phase of the initiative involved migrating operational services and banking data from existing legacy environments into the new ecosystem. Large-scale banking migrations remain among the most complex technology programmes within financial services due to the sensitivity of customer information and the need to maintain uninterrupted banking operations.

The migration process required detailed planning around validation procedures, risk controls, rollback mechanisms, reconciliation activities, and continuity strategies designed to minimise disruption while ensuring operational stability.
Results following implementation suggest meaningful operational and commercial impact. Publicly available information indicates that the bank processed more than two billion transactions within its first year on the platform. Digital customer adoption reportedly increased significantly, while processing times reduced by approximately 60 percent. Leadership within the organisation also indicated that the migration generated substantial savings associated with legacy infrastructure and software licensing costs.

For industry observers, the significance of initiatives such as SeaBaaS extends well beyond implementation metrics alone.

As financial ecosystems continue to evolve, platforms such as SeaBaaS may ultimately represent an important shift in how banking technology is designed and deployed: built locally, engineered for scale, and developed with regional realities in mind.