Young Nigerians all over the world are symbols of excellence, creativity, ingenuity, and resilience. The global media is filled with stories of young Nigerians breaking boundaries to thrive in their chosen endeavours, be it business, sports, entertainment, governance etc. Even then every once in a while, there is a shooting star that stands out from the league of champions. Case in point is Tope Ogunsemo.
Tope Ogunsemo is a 33-year old Nigerian entrepreneur and founder of Krystal Digital, one of the leading IT Companies in Nigeria with annual revenues of more than N1 billion. Tope Ogunsemo is an alumnus of Kings College, Lagos. He attended the prestigious University of Ibadan and also went ahead to obtain a Master of Science degree in Information Management Systems from the University of Salford, United Kingdom.
Tope Ogunsemo answered his lifelong call of entrepreneurship in 2010 when he and a group of consultants founded the company Krystal Digital, a fast-growing educational technology company that specializes in the creation, development and deployment of customized and service-oriented software applications for educational institutions in Nigeria. Today the company has over 150 employees and posts annual revenue in excess of $3 million.
One of such applications developed by Tope Ogunsemo’s company, MySkool Portal, is a School Information Management System that has been adopted by more than 50 government-owned high schools in Nigeria and has more than 65,000 active student users. The idea behind MySkool was inspired by the difficulties and frustration Tope experienced in his attempts to secure his academic transcript.
That encapsulates the man that Tope Ogunsemo is, a young Nigerian who sees beyond the problems and creates solutions that will in turn benefit thousands and millions of people. Recently Tope Ogunsemo through his company invested up to $1 million in building digital IT academies across various secondary schools across Nigeria, and working in partnership with Microsoft to teach Nigerian students Microsoft Professional Program courses.
Tope Ogunsemo’s feats in entrepreneurship and technology have not gone unnoticed by the international professional bodies and the global media. He has won several awards for his contributions to the development of education and ICT in Nigeria. Last week he was featured in Forbes magazine as one of Nigeria’s most successful young entrepreneurs.
Last year the ECOWAS Youth Council presented Tope Ogunsemo with the Thomas Sankara Leadership Award as the 2017 West African Personality of the Year. At the 2017 Nigeria Technology Awards, Tope Ogunsemo’s Krystal Digital won the award for the School Management Portal Developer of the Year while the company’s flagship software solution, MySkool Portal, was awarded the School Management Software of the Year. The company also won the 2018 African Corporate Leadership Excellence Prize and well as the ICT Leadership Excellence Prize.
