About us

Mike Ogbalu III is an Electrical/Electronic Engineer and a Fellow of The International Academy of Cards and Payments with an MBA from the prestigious Lagos Business School. He has more than eight years of sound IT industry experience in planning, deployment and management of enterprise-wide infrastructure, as well as more than 15 years’ banking experience in Retail Banking, Commercial Banking and E-Business. He spent the last six years in Payments and Technology. His roles ranged from team membership to group leadership to Chief Executive.

Mike managed the E-Business Group of Afribank (now Polaris Bank) and represented Afribank on the boards of Valucard Nigeria (now UPSL) and ATMC. Mike was recognised with the award of Card Personality of Year 2012 for his work at Ecobank.

Mike joined Interswitch Group initially as Divisional CEO – Interswitch Financial Inclusion Services where he was responsible for driving a mandate to create the largest agent network and thereby becoming a prime facilitator of financial inclusion in Nigeria. Later, as Chief Executive Officer of Verve International, he was responsible for making Africa’s most successful card scheme truly pan-African and expanding its footprint globally.

Today, as CEO of PAPSS, he is overseeing the building of a continent-wide payment infrastructure that will help to accelerate trade on the continent. He is currently a board member of the CBN mobile payments scheme board, an advisory board member of the Bridge International Academies and a Grand Patron of IAMCP-WIT Nigeria (International Association of Microsoft Channel Partners – Women In Technology).

John Bosco Sebabi is the Deputy Chief Executive of the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS).

John Bosco holds a MSc in International Economics, Banking and Finance from Cardiff University, Cardiff, Wales (UK), a BSc in Economics and an Associate degree in Economics, both completed with distinctions from the University of Rwanda (formerly the National University of Rwanda) and a certificate in Financial Programming and Policy from the IMF. John Bosco is also a fellow of the Fletcher Leadership Program for Financial Inclusion of the Fletcher School, Tufts University. He also holds an executive education certificate of the Advanced Management Program (AMP), a sandwich programme from three prestigious universities: Strathmore, Lagos and IESE business schools.

John Bosco comes with more than 20 years’ experience in the financial sector and was, until joining Afreximbank, a consultant with the World Bank on the establishment of the Africa Wide Payment Platform. John Bosco is the former chairman of the Rwanda Airports Company, the Eastern and Southern African Trade and Development Bank (formerly the PTA Bank), vice-chairman of Cogebanque and, to date, serves on the Board of Bralirwa and BancABC Botswana.

From July 2014 to October 2018 John Bosco served as the Deputy Director General of the Rwanda Social Security Board, in charge of funds management, managing assets over $1 billion in value.

Between March 2013 and April 2014, he was the CEO for the East Africa Commodity Exchange, which is mandated to uplift national and regional economies by eliminating market barriers to trading, providing access to financing for farmers and traders in return for commodities, and more broadly engaging in regional capital market development.

Prior to this, John Bosco was the Director General of the Operations Directorate at the National Bank of Rwanda, where he had a successful career spanning 13 years. He joined the bank as a Foreign Exchange Analyst and rapidly progressed to Director, Payment Systems, and to Director General, Operations. In this position, he was charged with the responsibility of providing executive leadership over three functions: currency and banking operations management, payment systems and financial markets. He oversaw the implementation of monetary policy decisions, managing the country’s reserves, overseeing sale of government debt, providing banking services to the government and other public entities, guiding the development of the payments and securities settlement systems, and currency management. One of his notable achievements was spearheading the bank’s payment systems modernisation programme, notably, the implementation of the Rwanda Integrated Payments Processing System (RIPPS), the Central Securities Depository, mobile payments, and remittances.

As a seasoned banker, John Bosco has served as a key resource person on several boards, committees and task forces. He was a member of the G25 Panel of experts that was constituted by the World Bank to set guidelines for successful regional integration of financial infrastructures. Outside work, he is an ardent squash player, swimmer and golfer. He is married with two daughters.

Monica has over 12 years’ experience in managing the transformation and enhanced usage of payment systems at a global, regional and national level. Prior to joining PAPSS, she worked at the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) where she was responsible for developing and implementing national and regional payment system policies and systems to improve market access and ease of trade in Kenya, East Africa and the COMESA regions.

Her achievements include building SWIFT Governance for the Central Bank of Kenya and the Kenyan financial industry; being nominated to the ‘African Emerging Leaders Programme’ at the Egyptian Banking Institute; creating a regulatory framework for National Payment Systems in Kenya; managing integration of securities and retail payments to Kenya’s Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) system; and being appointed to CBK’s Financial Innovation and Inclusion Team as policy recommendation lead.

Monica holds an MSc in Computer Science from University College London and Bachelor of Science (Hons) in Pharmacology from the University of Edinburgh.

Ositadimma is a Senior Technology Executive and Transformational IT leader with over 18 years of experience in Technology Deployment, Strategy and Management of Technology Operations. He has led major technology initiatives while working for multinationals including IBM and Dell, supporting the top-100 organisations in the FSI & Telecoms sector across Africa and the Middle East.

With over a decade of banking experience, Ositadimma has led multinational teams deploying cutting-edge technology and supporting operations for First Bank of Nigeria, Standard Bank, Ecobank and Union Bank of Nigeria. Before his current role as Head of Technology and Operations for PAPSS, he led the IT Infrastructure & Business Applications/Operations of First Bank of Nigeria with responsibility for numerous digital technology initiatives and business application support across the Bank and its subsidiaries.

Ositadimma holds an MSc in Information Technology from the University of Liverpool in the United Kingdom, an MBA from the University of Lagos and a B.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Nigeria.

Papa Samba, a digital marketing and communications expert, began his career 11 years ago as Digital Project Manager at Geoxia Group in France.

Most of his experience then followed at PI Group, a leading consortium of agencies (People Input, Voice Africa, Dentsu) in Sub Saharan Francophone Africa, where he held several positions: Digital Consultant (2013), Digital Product Manager (2014), Country Development Director (2016), Digital Director (2018) and Director, Digital & Strategy (2020). He also managed and developed the activities of the Abidjan and Douala branches.

He has built, designed and launched multiple communications campaigns that added real value to sales and branding across a range of sectors including telecoms, FMCG, banking, insurance, fintech and NGOs.

Papa Samba holds a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Institut Supérieur de Management (ISM) in Senegal, a Master’s degree in Marketing & Sales from Ecole Supérieure de Gestion (Paris) and a Master’s degree in Digital Innovation from PPA Business School in France.

ISHIMWE Jean d’Amour, is a technology and cybersecurity enthusiast with an experience of 10 years’ experience in cybersecurity and risk management within the financial sector. He holds a master’s degree in computer science and information technology from the University of Madras, India and has occupied several responsibilities ranging from Information security officer, Information security manager and Cybersecurity Director.
Amongst his significant achievements, Jean d’Amour, managed several initiatives that transformed the Central bank of Rwanda (BNR) and impacted lives of the Rwandan financial community. This includes the implementation of an Information security management system and an IT governance framework against which BNR was certified in 2017. He also managed and innovated around BNR and Financial security operations centers (SOC) to establish a center of financial services information sharing and threat analysis towards a cyber resilient Rwandan financial sector.

Jean d’Amour was recognized by the central bank of Rwanda (BNR) as the best employee of the year 2018 and is a member of different cybersecurity networks and professional forums through his professional achievements such GCFE|CGEIT|CISM|CRISC to name few.

Dina is the personal Assistant of PAPSS Chief Executive Officer/Mr. Mike Ogbalu. She is an experienced and technically skilled business professional with over twenty-four years progressive hands-on experience in office management and business support for senior executives.

Prior to joining PAPSS, Dina worked at the Fund for Export Development in Africa (FEDA) – a subsidiary of Afreximbank – as Personal Assistante to FEDA CEO.

Dina had worked at Cargill as an executive Assistant to Egypt Leadership Team, managing diaries and commitments, regional events, complex travel arrangements, exercising intuitive judgments on the fly with clear strategic management and leadership responsibility and accountability. Dina also coordinated activities of both internal stakeholders across department and offshore teams, as well as external stakeholders (service providers and clients) to ensure statutory and contractual requirements were met.
Dina has a Bachelor of Arts from Ain Shams University of Cairo.

For more than three years Noel Adja worked for Standard Chartered Bank, where he held various position. He started his journey with Standard chartered Bank as client onboarding and account maintenance specialist for corporate and institutional clients. He also worked as Analyst client delivery (Integrated Middle Office) and Associate, Client delivery (Integrated Middle Office) in corporate and institutional banking. During his career at Standard Chartered bank, Noel Adja has spent 8 months completing a short-term assignment as credit analyst in corporate and institutional banking.  Prior to that, he worked as Banking Consultant for Halifax and as a Customer Service Assistant for Lloyds Bank. He is currently working for the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) as Assistant Manager Participants & Membership Management.

Noel holds Master’s degree in International Business Law (LLM) and Master’s degree in International Business and Management (MSc) from the University of Bedfordshire in the UK. He also holds a BA in Law from the Catholic University of West Africa.

Ms. Gloria Atanga is a Business Development Associate for the Pan-African Payment Settlement System (PAPSS) where she has worked for the past two years. In the context of her role, she is at the forefront of engagements with participants of the PAPSS ecosystem such as central banks, commercial banks, and fintechs. She also manages a portfolio of over 30 FinTechs and is responsible for coordinating the implementation of PAPSS Memorandums of Understanding with strategic partners. Passionate about advocacy, Gloria has represented PAPSS as a speaker at events such as AfCFTA Workshops for East African SMEs and the AfCFTA webinar on the Empowerment of Women and Youth. She is a graduate from the prestigious CASS Business School (now Bayes Business School) where she holds an MSc in International Business, in addition to a BSc in International Finance from the American University of Paris.

Joyce Ampaire is a payments and financial inclusion expert. She has been in the banking industry for over 7 years. She previously worked with Equity bank where she was the Customer Experience Manager and handled Payments and channels. Before that she worked at Centenary Bank Uganda in different capacities: Financial Inclusion Supervisor and Sales Supervisor. She also worked with Equity Bank as a Relationship Officer Payments and Channels.

Joyce has been very impactful on the payment and digitalization journey of Uganda. She was a crucial member of the team that introduced and pushed the usage of agent banking in Uganda which is currently the most used channel for transactions.

Joyce holds a Bachelor’s degree in quantitative economics from Makerere University and a Master’s in business administration from Makerere University Business School.

Omar Tawfik is diligent banker, acquired good work experience in the banking sector in Egypt, experience of how institutions work at the ground-level in developing countries, Working for five years in several financial intuitions from trade finance to corresponding banking, Omar started as an international trade finance officer at Banque du Caire third largest  governmental bank in Egypt handling all trade finance products (letters of credits, letters of guarantees, trade remittance and documentary collections), after that he held the position of Relationship manager correspondent banking relations covering the regions Europe & Sub-Saharan Africa maintaining the relationship with foreign FIs constructing agreements and  setting up loan deals  later he joined HSBC GTRF Operations associate  handling Import Documentary credits  In UK,

Omar combined skills and expertise in the banking sector varies form trade operations, credit analysis and relationship management, this resulted in a strong based knowledge in international trade operation and in relationship management in dealing with correspondent banks inside and outside the continent

Omar Tawfik holds Masters of Business Administration (Banking and Finance Diploma) and Bachelor of Business Administration from Arab Academy for Science and Technology.