Mitchell Elegbe

Mitchell Elegbe is the MD/CEO of Interswitch, an integrated payment and transaction company in Nigeria. He is a graduate of Electrical Engineering from the University of Benin. He was formerly with Schlumberger Wireline and Testing, and Telnet, an ICT engineering and consulting company until 2002, when he started Interswitch Group where he is currently the Group Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer. In 2012, he was awarded the West Africa Business Leader Award at the All African Business Leaders Awards (AABLA) organized by CNBC Africa. He is an Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award recipient and he won the Harvard Business School Association (Nigeria) Leadership Award in the General Management Category in 2015. He is a Bishop Desmond Tutu fellow of the African Leadership Institute.

Mitchell Elegbe is a graduate of Electrical and Electronics Engineering from the University of Benin. He is also an alumnus of the IESE/Wharton/CEIBS Global CEO Program.

He was formerly with Schlumberger Wireline and Testing, and Telnet, an ICT engineering and consulting company until 2002, when he started Interswitch Group where he is currently the Group Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Interswitch was founded four years after his NYSC Service Year. He was employed by Telnet, a telecommunications company in Nigeria. His first encounter with an ATM was in Scotland (then no ATM existed in Nigeria) where the machine seized his card. He developed an idea to create a system infrastructure that would enable electronic payments in Nigeria while working on a project to implement SWIFT. On his return to Nigeria, he was reemployed by Telnet. He pitched the idea of the transaction switch to his boss successfully and was authorized to execute it, but the process did not go according to plan. He started off by selling the software for switching but most players he sold to were not interested and this led him to creating Interswitch so as to meet his targets. With the assistance of Accenture, Mitchell and his team were able to establish the company but faced the challenge of finding a CEO to run the company because of finance. He was left with no choice than to become the CEO of the company, four years after his NYSC Service Year.

Mitchell has won several awards including the CNBC/Forbes All African Business Leader (AABLA) for West Africa, Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award and the Harvard Business School Association (Nigeria) Leadership Award in the General Management Category. He is also a Bishop Desmond Tutu fellow of the African Leadership Institute.