Pressing on 🌍

Babatunde Esanju is a Senior Software Engineer, open-source contributor, and technology entrepreneur with nearly a decade of experience building products across LegalTech, FinTech, Insurance, Remittance, EdTech, CareTech, and Ticketing. 

Today, Babatunde leads engineering initiatives at TixTrack and Caresyntra in the UK, building enterprise systems that power accessibility, compliance, and care innovation. He also founded TechNaija FM, a podcast amplifying African tech voices, and created PayBridge.SDK, an open-source .NET toolkit that simplifies global payment integration.

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

I build invisible bridges that help people and computers understand each other. You know when your mum sends money to a friend, or someone buys a concert ticket online, or a nurse gets a message to check on a patient? My job is to ensure all those things happen safely and instantly, even though you can’t see what’s happening underneath. 

• What’s the wildest tech issue you’ve ever had to fix under pressure?

One of the most intense moments in my career happened during the rollout of Advanced Reporting at TixTrack, a feature designed to give clients real-time insights into ticket sales and event performance. Minutes before a major scheduled data export, our reporting API began timing out, threatening analytics delivery for a live venue with thousands of active users. 

While leading part of the engineering response, I traced the failure to a bottleneck in the report-generation pipeline and worked on a quick optimization that stabilized the data flow without losing historical context. That experience later inspired me to build an open-source Tableau SDK for .NET, enabling other developers to integrate reporting features more easily in their own systems. 

At the same time, I contributed to other high-impact systems like Nimbus Accessibility, which provides ticketing promotions for people with disabilities, and Ticket Transfer, which lets users securely transfer tickets between accounts. Each of these projects tested our ability to build reliable, inclusive, and high-performance software under pressure, but when everything finally worked seamlessly, it felt like magic. 

• You’ve built in fintech, agritech, and caretech. Which one surprised you the most?

CareTech surprised me the most, not just for its complexity, but for how deeply it connects technology to humanity. Coming from FinTech, where success is often measured in transaction speed and reliability, CareTech forced me to rethink innovation through the lens of compassion and trust. 

When I started building Caresyntra, an AI-powered care management platform for care homes, I saw firsthand how technology could restore dignity to caregivers and patients. We automated rostering, compliance checks, and patient records, but the real magic was watching how digital empathy could make care delivery more personal and predictable. 

It’s the one space that constantly reminds me that innovation isn’t just about efficiency or scale, it’s about creating systems that understand human needs and respond with empathy. That perspective changed how I now approach every product I build, whether in finance, accessibility, or healthcare. 

• What's your hot take about vibe coding and what an inexperienced developer can truly automate and build today without knowing a lot about coding?

No-code and vibe-coding tools are amazing for lowering the barrier to entry; they’ve helped thousands of people turn ideas into products without needing deep technical knowledge. But I believe the real magic happens when people go beyond assembling tools and start thinking like engineers, focusing on problem-solving, system design, and user empathy. 

With today’s AI copilots and automation frameworks, even beginners can build dashboards, chatbots, and basic automation pipelines. But the future belongs to those who combine creativity with engineering thinking, people who ask “Why should this exist?” before asking “How do I build it?”. 

That’s the mindset I encourage through my open-source projects and TechNaija FM conversations, helping upcoming developers see that technology isn’t just about code; it’s about impact, trust, and understanding the people you’re building for.

Read the full Quick Fire interview with Babatunde Esanju here.

Day 2 at Moonshot felt different. The morning air inside the Eko Convention Centre was warm and heavy, but the place was already buzzing by 9 a.m. You could hear overlapping conversations before you even stepped into the main hall, founders talking about funding, someone arguing about regulation, a panel mic crackling in the distance.

Everywhere you looked, something was happening. Someone was filming a reel by the “Moonshot” backdrop. A group of startup guys huddled around a laptop, trying to fix a slide before their demo. Investors floated through the space, scanning badges. The crowd was a mix of excitement and exhaustion, like people who knew this was the one place to be seen.

The big stage lights gave the place a kind of futuristic glow. You’d catch snippets from different sessions, talk of APIs, open banking, climate tech, and regulation, but what stood out was how ordinary people made the room come alive. The ushers helping people move around, giving directions, and the volunteers running registration and manning the booths still smiled even after hours on their feet.

At one point, I stood by the main entrance looking out at Lagos traffic crawling below, and it hit me that all this talk about “building the future” was happening in a city that’s already living it every day—messy, noisy, and full of contradictions.

By late afternoon, the energy shifted. The panels were winding down, but no one seemed in a hurry to leave. Groups lingered in corners, swapping stories, promising to meet again. Someone joked that Moonshot should be a week, not two days. No one disagreed.

If Day 1 was about ideas, Day 2 was about people. The ones actually doing the work, chasing partnerships, building quietly in the background. It didn’t feel like a conference. It felt like Lagos— crowded, ambitious, hopeful.

Catch up on all Moonshot conversations you missed here.

After attending countless tech events across different countries, Moonshot 2025 easily stands out as the best I’ve experienced. Tech events serve many purposes: building networks, learning, and having fun; over the two days of Moonshot, it was clear that this one checked every box. 

From the diversity of attendees (Shoday, a Nigerian popstar, was my favourite) to the quality of conversations at panels, the event created a perfect mix of insights, connections, and excitement that Africa’s tech events often promise but rarely deliver in my experience. 

It’s a testament to the incredible work my colleagues put in that over 5,300 people showed up for our event, even after we doubled ticket prices from last year. I promise this isn’t a brag. I’m just genuinely proud of my Big Cabal colleagues. Heck, yesterday the car park at Eko Hotel was filled to the brim. You could barely find a spot. 

Today’s sessions were so cool, from the ISWIS podcast superstars breaking the stage rules in a way only they could do, and the audience loving it, to Salem King’s (a content creator) session, requiring bouncers to stop people from entering the conference room. 

My colleagues from outside Nigeria swear that this city and the Moonshot audience are the most vibrant and interesting they’ve seen in Africa, and seeing through their eyes reminded me just how much energy and ambition pulse through the continent’s ecosystem.