Quick Fire 🔥 with Oluwatobi Busola

Oluwatobi Busola is the Human Resource Manager at Redtech, the technology company backed by Nigerian billionaire Tony Elumelu’s Heirs Holdings. Redtech helps businesses move money at scale through reliable systems that meet the compliance needs of enterprises and regulated sectors. Last financial year, the company processed $20.6 billion (₦30 trillion) in transactions, a 150% jump, making it one of the region’s highest-volume processors in under five years. As Redtech prepares to expand into 29 markets and targets a $100 million raise, Busola sits at the heart of that scale story, architecting the company’s talent engine.

With nearly a decade of experience across Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa, she has scaled HR systems to support rapid growth while embedding culture and performance frameworks that sustain momentum. In a sector obsessed with product and funding headlines, Busola’s work highlights the often invisible infrastructure of people, performance, and organisational design that makes fintech scale possible.

• Explain what you do to a 5-year-old.

I help grown-ups work well together so they can build really important things. It’s like when you and your friends are playing ‘Build a Tower’ with blocks: everyone needs to play a part (one person brings the blocks, one stacks, one keeps it steady). I am the one who helps you agree on the plan and keep it steady, so the tower doesn’t fall.

• You’ve worked across Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa. What’s one harsh truth about building and retaining talent in Africa that most companies don’t want to admit?

A lot of companies want high-performing talent, but not all of them want to invest in the systems, leadership, and development that make good people stay. You cannot build scale on passion alone. If people do not see growth, clarity, and capable leadership around them, they will leave, no matter how exciting the vision sounds.

• What are the HR systems or frameworks you swear by when building teams for companies scaling at billions in transactions?

Clear organisational design, disciplined performance management, and strong people infrastructure. When roles are clear, goals are measurable, and your employee experience is structured from onboarding to growth, you create the kind of environment where people can execute consistently at scale.

• What’s one invisible HR decision that actually makes or breaks scale in tech?

A company can have a great product and strong funding, but if the people leading teams do not know how to set expectations, make decisions, give feedback, and grow others, scale starts breaking quietly from the inside. Choosing and developing the right managers should be non-negotiable. 

• Looking back at the toughest moment in your career, what did it teach you about yourself as a leader?

Resilience. Certain moments in my career have taught me that I am far more resilient than I gave myself credit for. It showed me that leadership is not just about having answers; it is about staying steady even in uncertainty, making hard decisions with empathy, and still finding the strength to keep moving forward. 

• If you could go back to the start of your career, what’s one decision you would make differently knowing what you know now?

I would have started earlier in seeing myself as a business leader, not just an HR professional alone. The sooner you understand the language of the business, the faster you move from supporting growth to actively shaping it. 

• What’s one thing you’re interested in but not great at, and one thing you’re great at but not interested in?

I am interested in stock trading even though it is an area I am still improving on through practice, and I have excellent administrative experience, highly organised and efficient, but I am far more energised by work that involves strategy and problem-solving than day-to-day admin.