Bujeti Taps Premia Business Network Chief Bola Lawal to Drive Corporate Finance Efficiency

When Bola Lawal surveys the 900-plus founders in his Premia Business Network, he sees brilliant companies hobbled by financial chaos. Payments scattered across platforms. Approval workflows measured in days. Expense visibility that arrives too late to matter.

“Many businesses generating millions still use WhatsApp to approve vendor payments,” says Lawal, whose referral-only network has become Nigeria’s de facto C-suite clubhouse. “The operational drag is extraordinary.”

It’s this pain point that drove Lawal to join Y Combinator-backed Bujeti as a strategic partner this month, lending his network effects to a fintech that believes it has cracked Africa’s financial operations puzzle.

The partnership with Bujeti, which strongly anchors as the Finance Control Centre for businesses, reveals how African fintechs are evolving beyond consumer payments into enterprise infrastructure, embedding themselves within elite business networks rather than fighting for attention in crowded digital channels.

The fragmentation tax

Nigeria’s SMEs contribute 46% of GDP and employ 84% of the workforce, yet most operate without coherent financial management systems. The result is what insiders call the “fragmentation tax”—inefficiencies that compound as companies scale.

Consider the typical trajectory: A startup begins with mobile money for vendor payments, adds a separate corporate card provider as it grows, bolts on standalone payroll software, then discovers these systems don’t communicate. Each transaction requires manual reconciliation. Every approval creates a bottleneck. Financial visibility exists only in retrospect.

“African businesses aren’t failing for lack of talent or market opportunity,” observes Cossi Achille Arouko, Bujeti’s founder and CEO. “They’re failing because their financial infrastructure can’t support the growth they’re achieving.”

Founded in 2022 with $2M in seed funding from Y Combinator, Bujeti has positioned itself as the antidote: an all-in-one platform that unifies corporate cards, expense management, multi-currency payments, vendor management, payroll, tax management and financial controls in a single dashboard.

The architecture matters. Where competitors offer point solutions, Bujeti’s “Finance Control Centre” approach embeds governance directly into workflows. Budget owners set pre-approval limits by team or project. Corporate cards come with granular spend controls. Bulk payments process across NGN and USD. Everything reconciles automatically, feeding into integrations with QuickBooks, Google Sheets, and Slack—exactly where employees work.

“Complete visibility, faster decisions, total control,” is how Bujeti frames the value proposition—a pitch that resonates particularly as Nigerian businesses navigate recent tax reforms and increasingly complex compliance requirements.

Network effects, literally

Lawal’s involvement represents a bet on influencer-led adoption within high-trust ecosystems. As founding convener of PBN—which counts Google Launchpad alumni and executives from Nigeria’s fastest-growing startups—he offers something advertising can’t buy: credibility among builders of EdTech platforms, asset managers, and pan-African enterprises.

The model has precedent. Bujeti has partnered with Nigeria’s Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency to digitize thousands of SMEs, demonstrating an appetite for ecosystem plays that bypass traditional B2B sales.

Companies like Selar and Autogirl have adopted Bujeti’s spend controls, with Autogirl’s CEO crediting the platform with “transforming operations.” The roster now supports over 5,000 finance professionals across Nigeria and Kenya.

PBN members gain early access through exclusive demos and tailored onboarding. It’s growth hacking meets enterprise sales—a hybrid suited to markets where institutional trust travels through personal networks rather than brand campaigns.

A super-app ambition?

Bujeti’s roadmap reveals broader ambitions. At December’s Coin & Connect summit—a 200-person gathering of CFOs and finance directors at Lagos’s Club House—the company unveiled four enterprise products sketching the contours of a financial super-app.

Bujeti Taxes tackles Nigeria’s compliance regime with automated e-invoicing and full-scope tax management. An affiliate program enlists accounting professionals as distribution partners. CFO Connect creates a peer network for finance executives. A redesigned mobile app promises complete financial management for remote operations.

“When Nigerian businesses demonstrate financial control and operational structure, it transforms their market positioning,” explains Samy Chiba, Bujeti’s co-founder and COO. “From money management to stakeholder engagement and investment readiness.”

The subtext is clear: In markets where access to credit remains constrained by opacity, financial visibility becomes competitive advantage. Bujeti isn’t just selling software—it’s selling bankability.

The fragmentation play

Industry analysts see the Lawal partnership as validation of a broader thesis: African fintechs that solve fragmentation at the enterprise layer can build defensible moats precisely because integration complexity creates switching costs.

“Partnerships like this aren’t just announcements—they’re force multipliers,” notes Caleb Nnamani, Chief Storyteller at pan-African storytelling firm, Blacktrigger, which was tapped to produce the partnership’s announcement video.”With Bola’s reach and Bujeti’s tech, we’re seeing the blueprint for how African fintechs conquer fragmentation at scale.”

Whether that blueprint proves sustainable depends on execution. The prize, however, is substantial: millions of African businesses that need the financial infrastructure to match their ambition—and a growing network of elite founders willing to champion the platform that delivers it.

For now, Bujeti is betting that in markets where personal networks drive enterprise decisions, the fastest path to scale runs directly through the gatekeepers who’ve already earned their trust.

Use BOLA20 to onboard on Bujeti and get discount up to 20% off. 

Bujeti’s platform is available at bujeti.com. PBN members may receive preferential onboarding terms.