When engineer Schalk Nolte was deployed to Nigeria to oversee the operational expansion of South Africa's largest telco in the country, Vodacom, he battled to decide whether he had been sent or sentenced. At the time there were about 100000 fixed telephone lines in the country. With a population exceeding 100 million, it took about a year for someone to get a new line. But the advent of mobile phones changed the way people conducted their lives. At the end of last year, Nigeria had 144-million active mobile lines, according to the Nigerian Communications Commission. Nolte witnessed the revolution firsthand. "This is a powerful device because it's a personal device," he said. He returned to South Africa in 2008 to join his engineering student brother, Dewald, and three of his University of Stellenbosch classmates to find a way to leverage the power of the mobile device to offer banks sound security and authentication measures. Entersekt, the security software company founded by the f...
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