Lasbery Oludimu never planned to build a career in digital assets.
She started in a Nigerian law firm, rose to become head of chambers and then deliberately plotted a move into corporate practice, arming herself with extra qualifications that most trial lawyers never bother with.
She completed the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (CIArb) programme, then the Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators of Nigeria (ICSAN), a course designed for in-house counsel that forces lawyers to learn finance, bookkeeping, board meetings, corporate governance and even human resources (HR). It was preparation for a life inside companies, not in front of judges.
In 2018, when Broron, an oil and gas services firm, came calling with a head of legal role, it felt like a natural next step, not a leap into the unknown.
She managed the legal department, ran corporate and commercial transactions and did the work she had trained herself to do. Digital assets, at that point, felt like background noise.
Her first contact with Yellow Card, the stablecoin infrastructure company operating in over 20 African countries, was not some grand conviction about crypto. It started when she first received a brief. In 2018, while still in private practice, she handled what she describes as the first registration of Yellow Card in Africa, incorporating Yellow Card Nigeria at the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC).
She saw it as a client file, another set of documents to shepherd through the country’s bureaucracy, not the beginning of her next career.
The conviction came later and slowly. It started with a conversation with the founder and CEO, Chris Maurice, who walked her through the idea he had in mind, his dreams for the next five to ten years, and where he believed the industry was going.
It sounded fun enough for her to start consulting for the company, then familiar enough for her to jump fully in 2021, leaving oil and gas to join Yellow Card as an in-house counsel.
As Yellow Card expanded, she handled the company’s registrations and regulatory filings across new African markets, then moved up to assistant general counsel.
Oludimu drafted product terms and conditions, including for Yellow Pay, the company’s payment gateway product, and discovered that to write a fit-for-purpose document, she first needed to understand how the product actually worked. That curiosity dragged her into operations before the title did.
In 2024, she crossed the aisle formally, leaving pure legal work to become Yellow Card’s Vice President of Operations, supervising the company’s product and regulatory operations in several African markets and leading expansion into others.
Beneath the titles and markets, there is a throughline: a teenager in boarding school who learned prudence and responsibility by accounting for every allowance to a housemaster, and a last-born in a family of seven who watched everyone leave home and understood early that you do not dodge responsibility when things go wrong.
I spoke with Oludimu about money, responsibility, regulation, and why she believes Africa’s digital asset future depends as much on collaboration and digital identity (ID) systems as it does on infrastructure.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
What did money mean to you as a teenager, and how does that show up in how you work today?
At 16, I was already very prudent with money. I was in boarding school, and our pocket money was kept with the house master. You collected money weekly and had to explain how you spent the previous allowance before getting more.
That experience, plus coming from a modest family and then attending a private university with many rich kids, made me very disciplined. I always had enough to take care of myself, but I never spent more than I was meant to spend.
I tell people that if I have to spend ₦20,000 ($15) on something, it means I have about ₦35,000 ($25) in my account. I do not spend more than I can make, and I do not spend all I make. I do not believe in get-rich-quick; I believe in working for my resources.
There was an instance growing up where I misquoted my school fees to my parents and got more than I needed. I paid the actual fees and took the leftover home.
I explained what happened to my parents. My father kept the money and, when I was returning to school the next semester, he gave me everything I needed and then returned the exact cash I had brought back. He told me I could spend it however I wanted. That reinforced my sincerity around money.
In terms of responsibility, I am the last of seven children. I watched my siblings grow, leave home, go to university, get married, and start their own families. Eventually, it was just my parents at home and me. That taught me responsibility early. When something goes wrong, I am comfortable saying this is my role, I made this mistake, and this is what I need to do to fix it.
In my work at Yellow Card, managing a multinational team, I emphasise the same thing. You need to understand your responsibilities and your function.
If there is a mistake, you accept it instead of pushing blame. I learned responsibility early, and it means I am someone you can trust to execute a function or project end-to-end. If it goes well, fine. If it does not, I learn from it and improve.
You started in litigation and later, corporate law in oil and gas. What made you take digital assets seriously enough to build a career in it?
I grew from a junior lawyer to head of chambers in a law firm, which meant I was responsible for running the office.
Before 2018, I had already decided I wanted to leave courtroom practice and move into corporate work as an in-house lawyer. That was why I did the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (CIArb) and the Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators of Nigeria (ICSAN).
When an oil and gas services company offered me the role of head of legal, I took it because it matched that plan. I handled corporate governance and commercial transactions, not just litigation. About three years in, I heard about digital assets through a conversation. At that point, I thought the space was overhyped, and I did not see substance or a career path there.
That changed after a conversation with my current chief executive officer [Chris Maurice]. He shared his vision for the next five to ten years and where the space could go. It sounded interesting enough for me to start consulting. In 2018, while I was still in a law firm, I handled the first Yellow Card registration in Africa, Yellow Card Nigeria, at the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC). At the time, I saw it as providing legal services to a client, not as the start of a career in the industry.
I continued consulting until 2021, by which time I was head of legal in an oil servicing company. In 2021, I decided to join Yellow Card full-time. I did not have big career expectations because the industry was still very young and uncertain. I joined as in-house counsel, doing what I was already doing: contracts, corporate services, and corporate governance. The only difference was that one company was in oil and gas and the other in digital assets.
As Yellow Card expanded, I worked with external counsel to register companies and secure the approvals needed to enter different markets. That is how I became deeply involved in expansion. I later became assistant general counsel. By then, I had learned the business and operations, and I wanted more than just the legal side.
I was already drafting terms and conditions for products like Yellow Pay. To do that properly, you must understand how the product works, which pulled me into operations without me realising it. When the opportunity came to move formally into operations, I took it. Now I supervise operations in 20 African markets and lead expansion into others. A space I once saw as hype has become a place where I am building a career.
You have seen Yellow Card evolve from an exchange into a stablecoin infrastructure provider. What tells you that Africa has moved beyond the hype phase of digital assets?
Yellow Card started as a digital asset exchange. We have since shut down that side of the business and now focus on B2B. Today, we are a stablecoin infrastructure provider. That in itself shows a move from hype to infrastructure.
For the wider space, I see three main indicators. The first is regulatory maturity. When I came into the space, peer-to-peer (P2P) trading was everywhere. People mostly traded directly with one another: I give you my bank account, you pay, and I send you the assets. Then exchanges came, but P2P did not disappear. There were no clear regulations, so there were few serious platforms.
If you compare the number of platforms in 2021 to now, they have doubled, and many now describe themselves as infrastructure-led. That growth has been helped by regulators moving from outright bans to structured frameworks.
In Nigeria, for example, we have the Accelerated Regulatory Incubation Programme (ARIP). Yellow Card also participated in the Zambia sandbox for a year. Other markets are launching sandbox programmes. You cannot sandbox a peer-to-peer model; you sandbox products. That shows the market is now building real products and services under regulatory oversight.
The second indicator is institutional participation. In the last year, global financial institutions like JPMorgan, Citibank, Absa, and others have moved into the space, building their own infrastructure or stablecoin projects and partnering with companies like Yellow Card.
MasterCard acquired BVNK. That level of participation suggests the hype season is over and the industry is maturing. We now have fewer pure exchanges and more firms building around stablecoins and other infrastructure.
The third is the utility of stablecoins. Africa has one of the highest stablecoin adoption rates in the world. The market has moved beyond P2P trading, hedging, and speculation. People are now building products and services on top of this technology. With regulatory maturity, institutional participation and clear utility, we are no longer in the hype stage. We are in a phase where those who control infrastructure will lead.
When you look across the continent, what convinces you that some African markets are genuinely ready for serious digital asset players?
Licence passporting is a big one. If regions can implement it properly, it will unlock a lot of growth.
Recently, I was in Kigali, Rwanda, for a regulatory roundtable with central bank governors, CEOs, and capital markets directors. The session was led by the governor of the Reserve Bank of Rwanda. Later that same day, Zambia issued a notice inviting digital asset service providers to register. I am not saying it was decided in the room, but it showed how quickly things can move when regulators are actively engaging.
For me, readiness starts with a clear regulatory framework. That is what encourages investors and serious CEOs to enter a market. Many cannot justify operating in an unregulated environment. Where you see countries signing agreements on passport licences between them, you know they are serious. It means a licence obtained in one jurisdiction can be recognised in another, instead of applying afresh in every market.
Markets that stand out have either rolled out frameworks, are in the process of doing so or have sandbox programmes running.
South Africa is an example. They did not introduce a standalone crypto law; they integrated crypto assets into an existing financial law. I actually think that is fine. As long as the framework is clear, it works. Today, hundreds of virtual asset service providers have licences there.
Kenya is another example. It is the hub for East Africa when it comes to digital assets. Unlike most markets that are working with policies or integrating into existing laws, Kenya has a substantive Virtual Assets Service Provider Act. That is why so many companies are looking at Kenya.
Nigeria is also key. Despite regulatory challenges, adoption keeps growing because of our population, youthful demographics, and economic context. Programmes like ARIP and the easing of some restrictions in 2025 are important signals.
So when I rate markets, I place those with clear regulations and sandbox mechanisms above others. Regulation is what matures a market, builds confidence, and protects consumers.
Inside those regulator and bank boardrooms, what do you listen for that tells you a country “gets it”?
I do not expect regulators or bank CEOs to understand the technology end-to-end. What I listen for is their attitude to innovation and collaboration.
If a regulator says they are open to innovation, want to be part of it and are willing to engage stakeholders, that is the key sign. The depth of their technical knowledge matters less at the beginning than their willingness to listen and work with the ecosystem. When I hear that, I usually tell myself that this market will be important in the industry.
Once that openness is there, the responsibility shifts to stakeholders to educate, share knowledge, and support capacity building. You then walk regulators through use cases, processes and risks, and they can use that to define rules of participation.
We are not looking for perfect understanding or encyclopaedic knowledge of every stablecoin use case. Even operators are still discovering new use cases. Regulators just need to encourage compliant innovation under a supervisory framework.
An open mind, a clear desire to support innovation, and readiness to engage deeply with stakeholders and then craft fit-for-purpose regulations—those are the signals I look for when I sit in those rooms.
What are the biggest misconceptions you still hear about Africa’s digital asset sector?
The first is that stablecoins or digital assets are only for the unbanked. You often hear people frame it purely as a financial inclusion tool. That is misleading.
If you look at who is actually using stablecoins in volume, it is not the unbanked. It is people and institutions that already have access to banks. If you are using stablecoins for treasury management, for example, that is a bank or corporate use case, not a village use case.
Even in remittances, stablecoins are not only for the unbanked. Many people who receive funds this way still liquidate through bank accounts or mobile money. Once you are in that system, you are not unbanked. So digital assets are not “for the unbanked only.”
The second misconception is treating Africa as a single market. Africa is a continent, not one market. We have different financial realities, different infrastructure levels, and fragmented regulation.
What is true in one market may be similar in a few, but not across all 54 countries. When people design products or risk frameworks as if Africa is one market, they miss important differences.
A third misconception relates to risk. Many external observers focus only on political risk and ignore cultural nuances, operational realities, and other local factors. That leads to a narrow and sometimes inaccurate picture of the actual risk profile.
If you had to describe a healthy partnership between operators and regulators, what should each side bring to the table?
A healthy partnership starts with collaboration and information sharing.
On the operator side, we have a deeper understanding of innovation, technology, and how products are structured. We need to translate that into data and insight that regulators can use: what the use cases are, where the risks lie, and what is happening in other markets.
For regulators, their main contribution is creating a conducive environment for innovation, which comes through clear rules and supervision. Operators feed regulators with real-world information, and regulators process it into policies and frameworks that allow businesses to operate responsibly.
Stakeholders bring knowledge and transparency. Regulators bring structure, oversight, and legal certainty. The combination is what will give us a clean and decent marketplace.
Beyond power and connectivity, what is the deepest infrastructure gap that still worries you in Africa’s digital asset sector?
Digital ID is the one I keep coming back to.
We need an official digital ID that goes beyond uploading a picture of a card. I am talking about an ID you can scan, with a barcode that triggers an application programming interface (API) call to a central database, and returns verified details. That kind of system is critical for serious know-your-customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) work.
When you investigate suspicious transactions, your real interest is the person behind the transaction. If a user is flagged for suspicious activity on one platform, that information should sit in a secure data centre and be tied to their ID. If they go to another provider in another country and present that same ID, a scan should bring up their history, including past flags.
Ideally, such a system would work across regions, if not the whole continent. Investing in that kind of digital ID infrastructure would protect consumers, operators, regulators, and even law enforcement. It would help us catch bad actors in real time, not after damage has been done.
When you think about the next decade, what kind of industry do you want to leave behind for the young generation building today?
I want to see a fully regulated industry, the way traditional financial systems are regulated. A regulated environment builds trust, attracts serious investment, and encourages collaboration. In that kind of setting, stablecoins and digital assets can play a central role in financial services across the continent.
I also want to see improved ID systems across regions and the continent, for the reasons I mentioned earlier: fraud detection and verification.
Finally, I expect deeper collaboration between financial institutions and service providers. Banks should have stablecoin strategies and direct integrations with infrastructure providers. I want an ecosystem where digital assets are a normal, well-governed part of Africa’s financial infrastructure, not something sitting on the fringes.
