Samuel Oladipupo is a senior software engineer at the Craneware Group with about a decade of experience architecting solutions across healthcare technology, fintech, and blockchain ecosystems. Driving healthcare innovation, he is passionate about clean code, agile methodologies, and mentoring the next generation of developers. In this interview by KINGSLEY ALUMONA, he speaks about his work, technology challenges in Nigeria, and other issues.
You obtained your bachelor’s degree in 2017 and your master’s degree in 2022, yet you claim you have a decade of experience architecting transformative solutions across healthcare technology, fintech, and blockchain ecosystems. How do you reconcile or clarify these claims?
That is a great question. I can definitely see why it looks that way on paper. For me, my experience did not start the day I got my degree; it started the day I wrote my first line of code to solve a real problem.
My journey in tech began around 2013 when I started my bachelor’s degree. I was not just in class; I was actively building. I had an internship, I was working on projects, and I took on my first professional software engineering role at Olabisi Onabanjo University back in 2018. So, when I say “about a decade,” I am talking about that entire journey of hands-on, practical problem-solving, not just the time since I formally graduated.
Your LinkedIn bio says you are a senior software engineer, a healthcare technology innovator, an artificial intelligence (AI) solutions architect, and a blockchain pioneer. Did you develop these skills and portfolios just by studying computer science?
It is true. My career has taken me through all these amazing fields. But if I had to pick one thing that ties them all together, it is my core identity as a senior software engineer. Being an engineer is the foundation. It is the “how”. Healthcare, AI, and blockchain are the “what”. They are the problems I get to solve. My real passion is architecting complex, scalable systems. Right now, that passion is focused on healthcare technology, using AI to build smarter systems for hospitals. That is my forte today because it is where I feel I am making the most tangible impact on people’s lives.
Your bio says you are “driving healthcare innovation through technology excellence.” How and where do you do this?
I am doing that every day in my current role at The Craneware Group. And the impact is very real, even if it is not always visible to the general public. We build mission-critical software that hospitals use to manage their pharmaceutical operations.
I work on products like Sentinel and Central Pharmacy Distribution (CPD). Think about it: We help hospitals ensure they are compliant with very complex (340B) regulations and optimise their multi-million-dollar drug spending. This saves them millions, which can then be reinvested directly into patient care. So, while I am not at the bedside, my code helps the entire hospital run better and more efficiently.
Blockchain technology is becoming interesting and resourceful every day, and you said you have leveraged it to work on a payment system that has processed over $100 million in transactions across Africa. Could you shed more light on this regarding your work?
Yes, that is an incredible strategic collaboration project between PAPSS and Interstellar: the PAPSS African Currency Marketplace. The problem we were solving was “trapped cash.” Businesses in Africa really struggle to make payments to each other in local currencies. They often have to go through US dollars, which adds cost and risk.
I architected and led the front-end development for this platform, which allows companies to exchange African currencies directly. It gives them near real-time liquidity.
My “stake” was as the lead front-end engineer and architect, building the system that enabled those transactions to happen securely and transparently as the project expanded across the continent, eventually reaching the entire continent.
Everybody in Nigeria is talking about AI, blockchain, social media, and cloud technologies, yet we are only consumers of these technologies and not the designers and developers, at least of the major ones. How does this make you feel as a computer scientist and software engineer?
It is a feeling of impatience, but also incredible optimism. I see it as a massive opportunity. We have the talent. I have worked with brilliant Nigerian developers. The gap is not in talent; it is in infrastructure and the ecosystem.
To get on par, we need two things. First, we need to move from focusing on using tech to owning the infrastructure. That means seriously investing in local data centres and cloud platforms. Second, we must create a stronger, more formal bridge between academia and industry. We need our universities to produce graduates who are ready to build the next amazing solutions, not just use the next social media app.
If you were to develop a tech/app/software solution that would be universally known like ChatGPT and Facebook, what problem would you want the solution to solve?
That is a big question. If I had those kinds of resources, I would not build another social network. I would build a universally accessible, AI-powered healthcare diagnostics tool. In many parts of Nigeria and Africa, access to a specialist is a luxury. Imagine an app that could use AI, like the kind I am working with now, to provide a reliable, initial diagnosis based on symptoms or simple images. It could tell someone if they really need to travel 100km to the nearest hospital. It is about democratising access to life-saving expertise, just like we did with financial tools.
Looking at the various sectors of the Nigerian economy, which do you think needs technology the most and why? What role do you think the government can play in making this a reality within a reasonable time frame?
So many sectors are hungry for it, but for me, the two most critical are healthcare and agriculture. I will focus on healthcare, as it is my current field. The potential for impact is just staggering. We need technology to solve logistics. My work at Craneware deals with managing pharmaceutical supply chains. Imagine applying that in Nigeria to ensure essential medicines get from the factory to the rural clinic without expiring.
The government’s role is not to build the apps. It is to provide the rails: stable power, widespread internet, and clear, modern regulations that encourage innovation, not stifle it.
Nigerian tertiary education institutions produce thousands of computer science and software engineers every year, yet we can hardly manage and solve our unique problems that require technological solutions without involving expatriates and their projects. What are we not getting right in this regard?
This is something I am very passionate about. We are not getting the “practical” part right. There is a huge gap between theoretical computer science and what it takes to be a professional software engineer. In my own experience, I had to seek out a lot of that practical knowledge myself.
We need to change the curriculum. It should be mandatory to build and deploy a real application. I organised boot camps and hackathons at Olabisi Onabanjo University for this very reason: to teach skills like data science and machine learning that are not in the standard textbook. We need more “in-house” projects, like the AI-powered exam proctoring system we built for 18,000 candidates, to give students a live-fire experience.
Africa is a huge consumer of many technologies. If you were to lead a team of African technology innovators hoping to develop solutions unique to Africa’s realities, which kind of leadership and ideation would you offer to see that the mission of the team is achieved?
My leadership style would be all about empowerment and focus. It is not about finding a solution for Africa. It is about finding a solution for a specific, tangible African problem.
I would tell my team, “Do not build a blockchain solution. Build a tool that stops a farmer’s produce from rotting before it gets to market.” My ideation process is simple: find the friction. We did this with PAPSS. The friction was “trapped cash”.
I would foster an agile, fail-fast culture, where we build a prototype in two weeks and get it in front of real users, not spend a year writing papers.
In ten years, with the current rate the Nigerian technology sector and its innovators are going, do you see the possibility of us competing well with the likes of the US, China, and the like? What role would you like to play in this future?
Competing? Absolutely. But I think we will compete on our own terms. We would not be the next Silicon Valley. We will be something uniquely Nigerian. Our strength is in solving high-friction problems. We are already world-class in fintech because we had to be. The next ten years will see us do the same for healthcare, logistics, and agritech.
My role? I want to be one of the architects. I am gaining world-class experience in healthcare tech, AI, and scalable systems. I want to bring that expertise back, mentor the next generation, and help build the core infrastructure that will power this future.
What are the challenges you face in your line of work, and how do you manage them? And where do you see yourself and your career in five years?
The biggest challenge, honestly, is always complexity. In healthcare tech, you are not just writing code. You are dealing with complex regulations, sensitive patient data, and sometimes decades-old legacy systems. You manage it with teamwork and clear processes, like the agile methodology we use at Craneware.
In five years, I see myself as a principal engineer or solutions architect, leading larger, more complex projects. I want to be the go-to person for architecting next-generation AI solutions in the healthcare space, whether that is in the UK or bringing that knowledge home.
What is your advice to young Nigerians hoping to build a career in computer and software engineering?
My advice is simple: Build things. A degree gets you an interview, but a portfolio of projects gets you the job. Do not wait for the perfect internship. Find a problem in your community, whether it’s a local shop that needs an inventory system or a community organisation that needs a website to coordinate events, and build the solution. Put it on GitHub. Contribute to open source projects. Start small, fix documentation, report bugs, or add minor features. Open source contributions teach you how professional software is built, how to collaborate with global teams, and how to read other people’s code. It also builds your reputation. Many employers look at your GitHub contributions when hiring. This hands-on experience is more valuable than any grade. It proves you are not just a student, but also a problem-solver.
Never stop learning. Technology moves fast. What’s relevant today may be outdated in two years. Stay curious, follow industry trends, and understand the fundamentals: data structures, algorithms, system design, because those never go out of style. Network intentionally. Connect with other developers, join tech communities, attend meetups, and participate in hackathons. Some of the best opportunities come through people who know your work. Don’t let limited resources limit your ambition. The internet has made world-class education accessible through free resources like freeCodeCamp, Coursera, and YouTube. What matters is not where you learned, but what you can build and how well you solve problems. Be patient but persistent. Building a career takes time. You will face rejection and setbacks, but keep building, keep learning, and keep showing up. Your consistency will compound into opportunity.