Top 30 Tech Minds in Africa

Publisher’s Note

The world is closely watching the continent of Africa as the next economic frontier. The optimism of many has been dampened due to political and leadership issues that has consistently and constantly plagued the continent. Despite all the upheavals against the continent’s economic prospects, many tech minds in the country are pushing the dominance of Africa in the emerging digital ecosystem.

Despite global sobering statistics of Africa’s future economic outlook, the premise that Africa will lead the global economic frontier in few decades remains.

For the cynics wondering whether Africa possesses the true economic acceleration potential to lead the digital economy; stay tuned!

The mental fortitude of the African genius has never ceased to amaze the world. The entire continent is known and

celebrated for her resilience and dogged ascendance through slavery, tribal wars, foreign economic subjugation; internal political conflicts and low industrial growth epidemic.

In this current edition of Business Elites Africa, we present to you young entrepreneurs and tech visionaries driving Africa forward. Technocrats like – Babs Ogundeyi of Nigeria’s Challenger Bank Kuda, Fara Ashiru Jituboh - the tech whiz behind Africa’s first fintech API, Tope Awotana – founder Calendly, Deepankar Rustagi of Omnibiz who’s digitising the retail chain, and a lot more.

In this edition, we also x-rayed hot topics and insights like: global cyber threats and investment opportunities in Africa; How to tap into opportunities in Africa’s $200B energy industry; Digital transformation: where will Africa be in 2032; and many more.

Happy reading!

How IT Expert Lare Ayoola is Spearheading Internet of Things Revolution in Nigeria

Tranter IT, has been in existence for more than 17 years. We provide IT support services, IT automation, and IT infrastructure. But we needed to add something that would be more of a mass appeal. We were wondering how we could be part of everybody’s life and part of everybody’s business.

We saw that every home needs to be a smart home in one manner or another. Take, for example, an IoT smoke sensor, which will communicate whether there is a fire or not through our network to the internet and your device. Wherever you are, and even if your house is empty, if a fire starts, for whatever reason, you get alerted. In France, for example, There’s a law that every home must have a smoke detector.

So very soon, such a law will be passed in Nigeria, and then there’ll be a 40 million device markets created just by one law, which will create hundreds of thousands of jobs and factories because there’s no way we can import 40 million devices. It doesn’t make any sense at all. We might as well produce our own, and much of it is plastic.

With the acceleration of digital transformation in Africa, the continent is ripe for adopting the Internet of Things (IoT), and Nigerian-born Information Technology guru Lare Ayoola is laying the foundation with IoT Africa Network Limited, a subsidiary of Tranter IT.

After 17 years of building a successful IT company and servicing top-tier businesses across multiple industries in Nigeria, Ayoola is now democratising IoT technology, creating and deploying devices that would make daily living better and easier for all.

In this interview with Business Elites Africa, he reveals how IoT could solve Nigeria’s chronic Power, Water and Agricultural problems and set the country on the path to prosperity.

Why did you start IoT Africa?

IoT Africa was inspired by the need to find the technology that would be the most useful to humankind over the next 20 years. So we went around to various exhibitions, Tech Weeks, etc., looking for that technology, and settled on the Internet of Things (IoT).

It touches every facet of life and industry, and it has a lifespan that we cannot see the end in the foreseeable future. So it fits the criteria. Our parent company,

Plastic is something that any country can manufacture, especially Nigeria. So, because of the nature of IoT, because of the mass appeal, because of the mass markets, and because of the longevity of the business, we felt IoT was the best industry to invest in.

Well, I understand massmarket economics, but Africa is usually behind in adopting new technology. Do you see a drawback in the adoption rate of IoT?

The adoption rate is really as fast as we were expecting because whenever you introduce new technology or a new

product into the Nigerian market, it takes four years for it to mature and for the market to accept it.

It doesn’t matter whether it is a restaurant or cinema or anything. Many years ago, in the nineties, we tried to introduce email to the banking sector. They rejected it on the grounds that their staff would spend too much time communicating with their friends and not working. Today, email is standard.

It took four years before Microsoft gained certain momentum in the markets; even though it was an essential thing, an important product and service, it took four years. A restaurant I opened took four years, and it will take another four years to become very profitable. So to go from startup to cash cow is an eightyear journey.

IoT is only about two and a half years in Nigeria. Within the next year and a half, we’ll see exponential growth. The oil and gas industry has already adopted our technology, an industrial IoT device that is secure, intrinsically safe and suitable for the oil and gas industry. It has all the certifications to operate in a very hostile, volatile and flammable environment. The Nigerian Petroleum Development Company Ltd (NPDC) and other oil companies are adopting our technology within two and a half years. It’s not a bad move and not bad progress, but within the next one and a half years, virtually the entire oil industry will adopt our technology.

The safety and security industry will adopt our technology. When you know that within one hour, I can install all the devices you need to have in your house, and from your phone, you will know which door is opened, who’s in what room, and whether the environment is fine.

Some people say, why would I want to know that? Well, some people want to know who is in their bedroom. Some people want to know if their documents at home are secure. Or the documents at the office are secure.

Some people want to know if their warehouse is dry because we have devices that can sense moisture and flooding. Some people want to know whether the refrigerator temperature in their restaurant or their supermarket is the right temperature because they don’t want their food to spoil.

Some people want to know if their customers are happy because we have devices where you can press a smiley, sad face or average face. Some people want to turn on their air conditions 30 minutes before they get home and so on.

However, how can IoT solve a national security problem on a larger scale?

If I want to answer that question, I would rather go to the agricultural sector. If there’s food insecurity, that’s a national security issue. So we provide smart agriculture solutions where we can deploy devices across the farm areas for arable farming to measure the soil’s moisture, the nitrate level, and whether there are too many insects on the farm.

We have weather stations that can tell you what’s happening on the farm because the wind speed and the temperature can dramatically impact the crop production in that season. So for arable farming, we can measure every parameter that should be measured to make informed decisions that would ensure the production for that year is high.

In the case of livestock farming, we have devices you put on the cow’s neck or on the ear that will measure the cow’s temperature. It will tell you where the cow is located and the behavioural patterns of the cow using Artificial Intelligence (AI).

We can determine whether the cow is due for ovulation or not, so you can make sure that you mate your cow at every ovulation point so you don’t miss ovulation and therefore you maximise the production of cows.

We can tell when the cow is sick, so you can get a vet to attend to it. You can tell the eating patterns of the cow. You can know whether the cow is eating right or not, and that can be fixed to ensure the cow grows appropriately. You can tell everything you need to know about a cow just using IoT, and we have devices from a company called Digi Animal. We are their distributors in Nigeria. We can deploy those solutions in livestock farming.

And on another scale, for national security, there are certain things like flooding that can have a serious impact on millions of people, and it’s also good to know when the flooding is coming. We can put devices along the river banks to measure when the rivers are rising above a certain level. You are notified in advance, so that you can inform the people in that area to evacuate.

From a security point of view, we have devices you can put on your fence, and it doesn’t have to be a fence that’s like a brick wall. It could be a fence made of a wire, and you put the device on the wires. If anybody touches the wire, you know there’s been an intrusion.

For national security, oil is a major source of revenue for us in Nigeria. We have many solutions that can work in the oil and gas industry that would guarantee the optimisation and maximisation of oil production simply by monitoring pressure, temperature, and flow.

So by maximising the oil production, we help the country derive the maximum revenue; therefore, national security is protected because the government has the money to run the country.

How can IoT proffer solutions in Nigeria’s unreliable power sector?

We have two problems in the country; power is one of them. Water is the other problem. We always talk about power and almost disregard water. We

cannot survive without water. We have solutions for power that can help protect all the transformers. So whenever the transformers are being vandalised, we can attend to them. We can stop them from being vandalised.

We have devices that can help to prevent energy theft by putting our devices on the cable that goes into compounds, to monitor how much power is being taken from the grid compared to how much power is being metered because they often divert the power away from the meters to steal it. We can help with that energy solution. Smart electricity meters are obviously the way to go because you have information on consumption in different areas. You can know how to balance the load, how much is being consumed, what revenue you expect, and so on.

We also have tamper-proof solutions. With smart meters, you can apply complex tariff structures so that you can adjust the tariff in any way and manner you want, to optimise the overall benefit to society and optimise your revenue. The two have to go hand in hand so you can have sensible tariff structures for the poor and appropriate tariff structures for the rich. And you can adjust that according to policy decisions.

If you don’t have smart metering, you have much work to do every time you want to adjust this metering situation. Smart metering for electricity is the way to go, and smart metering for water is absolutely 100% essential.

Are you collaborating with the electricity distribution companies (DISCOs) for the metering system?

We’re collaborating with the DISCOs and the Water Corporations as well. But water production is even a bigger problem. Water distribution is a problem and water metering is a problem. In all three areas, smart technology comes into play. You are treating the water and

monitoring the quality of water being treated and produced.

You’re monitoring your pipeline by putting bulk water meters at key positions within your water pipe network so you can understand when the water is being stolen, when the pipes are leaking, and how much water you’re delivering to each sector to make sure you can account for all the water that you produce and distribute.

In Nigeria today, it’s impossible to do that. I heard that in one particular state, only 40% of the water that’s produced and pumped into the network arrives at its destination. They don’t know where the leakages are because they don’t have the technology to identify them.

With our smart water technology, we can put meters in key positions and tell them within a kilometer where the leakage occurred and block it.

On every street, you can put the bulk water meter, so they know how much water they’re supplying to the street. If the revenue does not match the water supplied, they know that somebody is stealing water on that street.

Smart water metering ensures that every litre of water is accounted and paid for. And by so doing, we guarantee the sustained delivery of service. If revenue is coming in, more water can be produced, and the whole network can be maintained.

With smart water metering, we guarantee the success of the water industry going forward. We’re very excited about it. We’re talking to several states, and the response has been fantastic.

We encourage every single state to talk to us. We’ve even gone as far as securing the funding to take care of it. So we’re not asking for contracts. We’re asking for the opportunity to deliver the service to the states, using our money and going into a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) arrangement.

That makes no sense whatsoever. And I’ll tell you why. If the government creates a law that says every home in Nigeria should have a smoke alarm. That’s 40 million homes. Imagine how many factories would have to be built to produce the required smoke detectors. Then after hundreds of people have produced the smoke detectors, thousands of staff will need to be used to install them in 40 million homes, and they have to change the batteries every four years.

That’s just smoke detectors. What about smart water meters in 40 million homes? What about smart electricity meters in 40 million homes? What about millions of detectors in all our agricultural lands? What about the software programmers who will write the software to produce the dashboards so that intelligent information can be seen by the person who needs to have it?

A farmer doesn’t want to know the temperature. He wants to know if his crops are okay. He doesn’t want to know the moisture content. He wants to know how much water he needs to add to his farm to irrigate it until the moisture is correct. Somebody has to write that program.

So it will create hundreds and hundreds of thousands of new jobs. And in fact, the only way IoT can have a negative impact on staff is, for example, when an oil company used to send individuals into the field to go and measure the temperature and the pressure on the wellhead gauge. Now with IoT, that guy has to sit down and get it right on his phone. He may become redundant, but you can always go and reskill and become a software programmer who will write the programs that the oil companies can use.

There’s the argument that if IoT reaches it’s full potential, it will put people out of jobs. How true is this?

So, yes, very few jobs will go, but hundreds of thousands of jobs will be created.

Today, how much is the government making from the water industry? Almost zero. If that industry is activated and 40 million homes start buying N10,000 worth of water in a month, imagine the impact that will have on the GDP.

Imagine setting up factories that produce smart devices—smoke detectors, water meters, electricity meters, sensors, transmitters, gateways and many other things. The industrial revolution in Nigeria can start if we take the smart industry seriously. IoT allows you to avoid waste, minimise cost, maximise production and profit.

When there’s more money in the system or when an entrepreneur has more money, what does he do? Typically he goes to open up a new business or expands his business, which means more people get employed.

You have been doing business in Nigeria for 17 years. But people say the country is a hash environment for entrepreneurs. What’s your staying power?

Certainly, in Nigeria, you have to remain on your toes. You can’t be complacent.

You have to plan very well and be proactive. You have to be prepared to reinvest continuously. You need to have faith in the Nigerian people. You must invest heavily in training and always have a pipeline of people to delegate power to. Succession planning is very critical in Nigeria.

If you have an effective succession planning policy and plan to implement it, you minimise the impact of certain things in Nigeria.

For example, many of our technology people are leaving Nigeria in droves, which is highly detrimental to the growth of Nigeria. So what’s the solution? We set up an academy where we train

thousands of people. We want to train 5,000 technologists every year as a start.

We shouldn’t worry about the brain drain. That’s why people say it’s a harsh economic environment, because you train somebody and he goes to Canada, America or Australia. Everybody wants to get out. That’s not a problem. It’s only a problem if you’re short of people.

It’s only a problem if you don’t implement the right succession planning. Succession is to ensure that we prepare for the fact that Nigerians are adventurous. They’re so intelligent. The entire world wants us. That’s okay. We have plenty, so we just get a new batch, train these guys, pump knowledge into them, and let them go. Guess what? They’ll bring the money back. There will be a huge foreign exchange inflow in Nigeria from these same people that go abroad.

What’s your background?

I was born in Anthony Village, Lagos. My father is from Ilesha, and my mom is from Syria. I grew up in Nigeria and went to school in the UK for a while. I got two degrees - in Engineering and Applied Sciences. I majored in Electronic Engineering and did my Master’s in Operations Research.

I returned and started working in the financial services industry, mainly providing consultancy services to companies on how to run their businesses better.

I spent two years in the fishing industry. And then I’ve been in the oil industry. We provided technical services to them on construction, renovation, furniture, interior design, and industrial design.

Then I moved on to core IT. We became the first Microsoft gold-certified partner in Sub-Saharan Africa. We had about 85 Microsoft-certified professionals and 46 Microsoft-certified systems engineers. We had more Microsoft-certified systems engineers in Tranter IT than existed in the rest of Africa. We did that for a while with Microsoft, and then we expanded.

How Moses Umoru is Driving Change in Nigeria’s Startup Ecosystem Through the France-Nigeria Chamber of Commerce

Moses Umoru is the Director-General of the FrancoNigeria Chamber of Commerce, a position he occupied in 2017 when he was just 27. It was the first time a young person would run that office, so, understandably, there were doubts about his capacity to deliver.

Fast forward to 2022, Moses has proven the naysayers wrong and surpassed his employer’s expectations with the innovative strategies he has deployed. The Chamber is now adjudged the most active bilateral Chamber of Commerce in Nigeria.

In this interview with Business Elites Africa, Moses talks in-depth about how the Chamber equips thousands of Nigerian entrepreneurs with financing, knowledge and the right skills to scale

their startups. He also shares how his team forges mutually beneficial relationships between the startups and fortune 500 companies in the Chambers’ ecosystem.

SMEs are the lifeblood of any economy, how is the FrancoNigeria chamber of commerce helping Nigerian startups succeed?

As you have mentioned already, startups are very essential to the economic growth

of developing economies. From our research, we discovered that over 80% of businesses in Nigeria belong to this category. And in terms of employment, if you look at the GDP figures, over 48% of the contribution to the GDP comes from the startups alone.

The French government has an agenda to support the growth of startups in the country. And then, we have a membership structure within the CCI France-Nigeria. In 2020, we opened a free membership category for startups in line with the French government agenda. No financial commitment is required from them.

Over the years, we’ve had big companies like Total, Schneider, UBA, Union Bank and the rest as our (paid) members. We believe that if we put startups into our ecosystem and give them the necessary support, they will become the future fortune 500 companies.

We have organised trade exhibitions strictly for startups. We’ve organised a series of technical training for them. I discovered that when some of these SMEs came on board, they were not even registered businesses. So we told them that the incentive to join this ecosystem is to go back and register their business.

Through this, we brought many startups into the corporate structure as most startups in Nigeria fall into the informal category. They just do business with no corporate structure and no regulatory requirements. They don’t even pay taxes to the government. And we are saying, yes, if you really want to contribute to economic growth, you have to pay taxes. If you’re going to get those contracts within our member structure, you have to register your business and all. This is because we link the startups to other membership categories. I’ll come back to that.

Also, we work in collaboration with Business France and the French Development Agency (AFD). The AFD has the funding system for these startups through the Digital Africa Initiative. Once they come

here and we have discovered that they have registered their business and met the regulatory requirements, we refer them to AFD to help them with funding so they can scale up their brand.

Now that’s one side of it. The other side is that they (startups) benefit from the ecosystem. Currently, we have three startups working with CFAO Motors, taking parts of some of their used cars and converting them into other forms of energy.

We also have other startups collaborating with big brands like Total. Currently, Schneider is working with a few members of the startup category. So we have created that bridge between these young businesses and the existing chamber members, and they’re doing business together. That’s exactly what we call real impact.

What are the requirements for startups to join the category?

Be a registered company. And, of course, we cannot open it to every sector of the economy. We’re looking at the critical sectors of the Nigerian economy. For example, we’re looking at tech, agricultural lifestyle and culture. The tech falls into agritech and every level of tech, as long as you integrate technology into your business, which is the future of trade.

Agriculture is from production to creating value from the agricultural produce. That’s the whole value chain.

Since we opened the startup category, we’ve received over 500 applications. However, we are still working on it to ensure that these are the right types of businesses coming to join the ecosystem.

Many startup founders also complain about the bottlenecks in accessing some of the business funds. How do you make this easy for them?

That is why, before we send them in for financing, we do technical training for them with our partners, - KPMG and PWC. They train them on how to structure their business and to ensure they dot all the I’s and cross all the T’s. For example, we just had the last training in early June, and we talked about how to structure their financial record even if they are not making a profit yet. Most startups will complain about the banks rejecting their applications because their books are incorrect. That’s exactly what we’re correcting, so that they can scale through when we put them up for funding. The funding is available, but your business must look valuable on paper. That is very important.

Do the startups have to be profitable before they can access the funding?

Not at all. It’s just the business prospect, but we need to see viability in the business. Your short-term, medium-term and long-term plans must be clear. And, of course, the fact that you are providing solutions in critical sectors of the Nigerian economy is important.

In 2021, we were on the panel for the selection of startups that went to France for the African France Summit. We took 15 Nigerian startups to France for that event. These startups are providing services when it comes to clean energy and waste to wealth. They are converting waste to energy. They’re creating value for agricultural produce and exporting to other countries. So those companies were not profitable on paper, but they have prospects, and we must be able to showcase them. Access to funding is very important, but it is even more critical to give them visibility, so the partners can provide them with better funding and grant.

Many say Nigeria is a harsh place to do business. In your experience, what are the real issues?

Infrastructure! Power, for example, takes 55% cost based on our research. So, imagine if the power issue is dealt with irrespective of the cost of grid power. We discovered that it can go as low as 20% of the business cost, giving businesses a chance to employ more people and expand.

The Nigerian government needs to allow full privatisation in that sector. You cannot privatise the Distribution Companies (DISCOs) and say the government will still hold the transmission companies. No, let there be full privatisation. Let the sector be private-sector driven. In the same way the whole value chain in the communications sector is fully privatised, we need to do the same for power, and you’ll see that things will be better.

The next one is road - access to moving products and services around the country. It’s a fundamental problem. We understand that the Lagos State rail project is coming up soon, we commend the state government for doing that, but more can be done. Even the existing roads should be fixed. Beyond Lagos, look at other states, are there good access roads? Is there a rail system? These things need to be looked into.

Lastly, insecurity is a significant problem. I said on another platform that the government is running the economy as though it’s a portfolio management system where you think that if an item is doing well, other items will do well. That’s not how government works. Everything has to work in tandem.

For example, a state of insecurity, even when there is proper infrastructure, can spoil every other thing. And that is where Nigeria is now. It’s not just in the Northeast; it’s coming to the South. We hear the issue of IPOB (Indigenous People of Biafra) and other pockets of violent agitations. And it’s even coming to the west. Let me just give you straight up. The real fear from international investors, not just from France, but the whole of Europe, is the state of insecurity in Nigeria. They’re like, yes, the market is big, a 200 million market and a very

strong young population, but the thing is, are we safe? They say, ‘we can’t just invest and walk away. We need to be on the ground. Are we safe when we come?

Thank God for what the French ambassador to Nigeria, Her Excellency Emmanuelle Blatmann, is doing. She’s moving from one state to another to have a feel of what is actually happening. And the last time we discussed, she told me that what they hear in France is totally different from what is on the ground in Nigeria.

They are saying that the whole of Nigeria is practically a red zone. But she has gone to a few Northern states; she has been to Kano, Kaduna, Abuja and other southwest and south-south states. And she has seen things for herself that, yes, we know that insecurity is there, but it’s not as bad as it is being projected outside Nigeria.

We are working on changing the perception and at the same time, advocating that government looks into these things and nip it in the board as soon as possible.

So are you saying potential investors have nothing to be afraid of in Nigeria regarding security?

There is a lot to be afraid of. That is why we’re advocating that the government looks into the insecurity issue. Lagos is not the only place to do business. 80% to 85% of French companies are domiciled in Lagos and a few in Abuja, Port Harcourt and some northern states. The opportunities in Nigeria are very wide. Other states have potentials in terms of minerals and agriculture. If the government can deal with the issue of insecurity in Nigeria, and there is confidence that this has been dealt with, trust me, the level of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflow in Nigeria would definitely double over the next two to four years.

From what you know, in terms of foreign investment, especially with French business, should Nigeria be worried?

Of course, Nigeria has to be worried. Nigeria has to be worried because the perception of Nigeria in the international business community is very bad. For example, we’re hearing of the issue of Nnamdi Kanu, the killings in the north, and the latest one with the Christian girl who was killed for insulting Prophet Mohammed.

These things tend to make the news out there while the Chamber of Commerce is trying to project Nigeria as a viable place to do business. These kinds of information frustrate this PR effort.

But the beauty is that French businesses remain in Nigeria. None has left. The people are shouting that Total is leaving, which is not true. If you’re divesting some aspect of your downstream and pushing more investment in the midstream and upstream, that’s a better investment in Nigeria. So Total is investing more in Nigeria.

Let’s come back to startups. In your experience, what do you think Nigerian startups need to do to maximise the opportunities we’ve talked about?

Startups should be ready to do business for the long haul. In my experience with most startups, they come and just want money. They don’t have proper business articulation. They need to understand the business solutions they are providing, and articulating them is key.

Most of the time, you hear them say I need money. I need money.’’ And then you ask them, what do you want the money for? And they don’t even know what they want the money for.

And also, they come with unregistered businesses. Thank God for the ease of being business agenda from the Federal Government, making business registration a bit cheaper than before.

You can also register your business online and get a certificate in a few weeks.So these startups should be business-ready

and have a long-term perspective as far as their business is concerned.

Do you have any special programs for tech startups?

Beyond the funding, which goes through AFD, there is what we call La French Tech. It’s a global tech exhibition that holds in France every year. It is designed for young tech entrepreneurs (30 years old and below). They go to France annually to showcase what they have, and President Emmanuel Macron is always in attendance. So right now, we are trying to push a few Nigerian companies to be at that exhibition yearly. That would open doors of opportunities for them.

So beyond money, we give you that kind of platform, and maybe you get Venture Capitalists there and they could inject millions of Euros into your business. And that’s where the real impact is.

President Macron recently approved $30 million for African startups; what part of that money comes to Nigeria?

Based on the information I have with AFD, over N3.3 billion of that money has already been disbursed to Nigerian startups.They can access that fund through the Digital Africa Initiative.

They come here, and we refer them to that initiative. And of course, before we refer them, we must ensure that the business is standardised.

What prepared you for this role?

My background is in finance, at BSC and MBA level. I started my career from the Nigeria Stock Exchange. So I’ve been talking about the financial market a lot and have written many articles about it.

I have seen the Nigerian market from the portfolio investment side of things, and coming to the Chamber of Commerce gave me a broader insight into the Foreign Direct Investment side of it, the real investment side of it, knowing the companies that are setting up shops in Nigeria and International businesses and diplomacy, and how it works.So my finance background made it a smooth ride but not without challenges.

Tell us about the challenges.

Of course, having a young person sitting in this position is unconventional. I started sitting here at 27. I was in an Acting capacity from 2017 to 2019. Being the first time having a young person in this position has actually changed the perception. For example, if you want to research the Franco-Nigeria Chamber of Commerce, you’ll begin to see things from 2017. The Chamber has done a lot

before then, but nobody knows what has been done.

So bringing a young person with innovative strategies and having a young team is very good, especially if you know what you’re doing. To line this up, I think the Nigerian government should begin to advocate for young people in critical positions because they’re innovative. They are agile, and agility in management means that you eliminate bureaucratic bottlenecks in getting things done. You’re getting it done faster and more efficiently.

Young people don’t like to hear things like ‘this is how we do things here’. Efficiency is our watchword as long as you’re not breaching corporate governance and regulations. If you’re working around the rules and making things better, that’s fine. This is definitely what we have done so far, which is why we have been rated the most active bilateral Chamber of Commerce.

Do you think your being young influenced the Chamber’s focus on young entrepreneurs?

Yes, of course. Even in my youth service, I had a project for young people. I’ve always had this passion for developing young entrepreneurs in Nigeria. Bringing that same passion down here was very easy for me to defend in front of the board. The Chamber is even considering setting up the CCI France Nigeria foundation. We want to do more for startups outside the umbrella of the Chamber of Commerce. We want to make it a special purpose vehicle.

For example, we are looking at getting a business hub, where these young startups can, without having to pay for rent or access to internet facility, be able to talk to each other and have hope to run their businesses for maybe a period of two years before they go out. So these are things we’re looking at. As far as the foundation is concerned, it’s still in discussion with the board. We hope that it scales through.

Nigeria’s Challenger Kuda Bank in the Face of ATM Errors

Babs Ogundeyi is the founder of Nigeria’s leading digitalonly bank, Kuda. He saw an opportunity in the banking system of Africa’s largest economy at a time when exclusively digital banks were anything but mainstream.

Ogundeyi believed that the country was ready for a bank that had no physical building but offered premium and human-centred services to the people. And in 2018, Ogundeyi launched Kuda.

Africa’s Seed Round Rockstar

In 2020, Kuda raised the largest seed round in Africa’s startup ecosystem. It was a $10 million round led by European venture capital firm Target Global, the highest ever in Africa.From that point, the growth of the digital bank has been exponential.

While in a session with Arise News, Ogundeyi spoke of the potential for this level of funding to come from local investors.“The money is there locally,

it’s just how local investors choose to deploy capital. It’s not an asset class that is as popular as real estate, for instance, in Nigeria. But as more startups show success, the more we will get local investors to see it as a viable asset class.

The money is available, we just need to convince people to invest in us. And I believe that the Kuda story and other startups are starting to show this. In the future, we hope that huge seed rounds are commonplace and not a historical event”.

Ogundeyi also talked about getting funding, stating that there was no specific stage at which a startup is entitled to external funding.

“It’s just how confident you are in telling your story, how confident you are in demonstrating the opportunity in your business or in the region that you’re trying to execute in. It all boils down to the story and the resilience that you have in terms of convincing investors and financiers to back you. It doesn’t mean that when you have a great story you just get money all of a sudden. It’s a long process, you have to understand how investors think and what they are looking for”.

Kuda: Navigating the Nigerian Banking Ecosystem

From the onset, many Nigerians couldn’t wrap their heads around how this kind of bank would work. But Kuda had a few tricks up its’ sleeve. The digital bank made it very easy for anyone to open a bank account. It was pretty much registering for Facebook.

Then it brought in juicy offers like free transfers, overdrafts and a nifty budgeting feature. Today, Kuda has received total funding of $91.5 million at a $500 million valuation. With a fast-growing customer base, the digital bank is taking root in Nigeria’s pop culture.

Driving Financial Inclusion in Nigeria

The Nigerian government set its financial inclusion objective at 80% by 2020, however, according to Enhancing Financial Innovation and Access (EFInA) data, just 64% of people in the country were financially included by the end of the year. This indicates that 36 percent of Nigerian adults, or 38 million people, are financially excluded.

“One of the biggest impediments is pricing and accessibility, and that’s what Kuda is looking to do. We can offer banking at a price point that is affordable and free. This entices people and makes sense for people that don’t have a lot of money because they don’t have to pay a heavy sum for making a transfer or whatnot,” said Ogundeyi.

The Kuda ATM Error

Kuda’s slogan says “Bank of the Free,” and this holds true for the ease built into every customer-facing system by

the digital bank. Kuda has made digital and physical debit cards available on its platform. On a digital level, Kuda seems to be doing great. But when it comes to ATM cards, a lot is left to be desired. Customers have reported several challenges when it comes to using it on ATM machines like you would with those of traditional banks. It could be one of those intricacies that will take some time to streamline.

Issues with the Kuda debit card issues include being unable to withdraw cash, or debiting a customer without actual cash withdrawal. A certain businessman, Oguniyi Adewale Daniel, accused Kuda on the Foundation for Investigative Journalism website. According to Oguniyi, he tried to withdraw N14, 000 using a Kuda debit card at a Union Bank ATM. The sum was debited from his account, but the cash withdrawal failed.

However, Kuda hasn’t been all silent on the issues arising from its debit card usage. The digital bank has provided updates on the challenge. One of it’s tweets on the 5th of April, 2021 read.

By Dimeji Akinloye

How Deepankar Rustagi’s Startup is Enriching the Lives of FMCGs Retailers

Incurable entrepreneur Deepankar Rustagi is the founder and CEO of Omnibiz, a B2B marketplace that eliminates the bottlenecks of traditional trade by digitising the retail chain.

Rustagi is an Indian by blood but a Nigerian by birth and form, having spent about twenty-five years in the country. Equipped with invaluable lessons from his first failed tech startup, VConnect, he gave entrepreneurship another shot with the launch of Omnibiz in 2019, and the platform is gaining massive traction.

In 2021, Omnibiz raised a seed round of $3 million to expand into new markets after proving its viability with its user-base in Lagos and Kaduna.

Rustagi, a Stanford University graduate, reveals to Business Elites Africa in this interview why VConnect failed and how he’s mapping the success routes for Omnibiz, among other issues.

What inspired you to start Omnibiz, and what problem are you solving?

Omnibiz is my second startup. My first startup was a company called VConnect. It was a local search engine helping small businesses create online visibility. My team and I have been very passionate about making a difference in the small business segment. We feel the oil has been there for long, but the real power of Nigeria or Africa will be unleashed if every business can scale 20% per anum; nothing can stop us at that point. So our focus or the businesses that we build are in that direction.

Omnibiz is a business that enables traditional retailers with tools to help them be as profitable and scalable as a supermarket so they can manage their business and supplies more efficiently. They have access to more working capital. Nothing more is required to scale your business.

As you know, Nigeria is a country where internet penetration is really high. We have WhatsApp, Facebook, online banking, and then COVID came, which forced people in various ways to get closer to technology. And when we started, we realised that almost every retailer has two phones. One is a basic mobile phone (non-smartphone) and the second is a smartphone, which they activate for data and use for their online banking, Whatsapp and so on. So we have given them the reason to bring that phone forward and use it for business.

We have not had the situation where we have to buy them smartphones or train them on how to use it. What we have experienced around is that Nigerian retailers are very adaptable. They have adopted technology lately, and once you give them a good enough reason to use technology, they take that opportunity.

I’m trying to understand the process. How do you onboard the retailers?

We have a team of scouts who are on the field. They go to these retailers and educate them on how to use the application and highlight the benefits of using the app. So the first experience is hand-holding them in using the appregistering them, getting their username and password on the application. And once they have done that, the application has push notifications and communication with the retailer to help them use the application.

How has the experience been so far?

It’s not easy. I would say because whenever you are talking about any mass-market

product. It requires a lot - having to go out in the open market, recruit people, recruit retailers, educate them, and sometimes re-educate them. It takes time to wean them off the age-long habit of going to the market to purchase goods, and asking them to do everything online. So there is a learning curve.

But I think it’s very rewarding because when you see the benefit a retailer gets from using your technology, you and your team feel empowered that, yes, we’re solving the real problem. That’s what drives us and makes us more passionate about our goals.

Besides convincing these retailers to shop from your app, isn’t it difficult to get them to pay upfront, considering the trust deficit in this environment?

You’re absolutely right. In the adoption process, we try to minimise the barriers as much as possible. We envisaged whatever barriers could come in them making the desired decision, like the trust issue, like making payment up front, and like doubts about quality and choice of goods. We removed all those barriers.

We made it in such a way that you can place an order, and once the goods are available, you can see them, and that’s when you have to pay. This removed many doubts the retailers had.

It would seem funding is the biggest problem for startups. Have you raised any funds?

I don’t think there is a problem with funding. I believe there are enough funds available. The problem is when you cannot prove that the investor will get their returns, or you cannot prove what you will do with these funds, so it will multiply.

In our case, as a startup, we did our prototype and our seed stage only in Lagos. And that’s when we raised $US3

I understand your focus is on the informal sector. Considering most of these retailers are not so familiar with tech, how are you onboarding them?

million, because Omnibiz had done well in Lagos and Kaduna.

Once we showed our investors that we have the potential to scale, we were able to raise the fund. And similarly, we do the same for our retailers. We give them additional working capital once we see they have the potential to scale.

We don’t provide it to someone whom we are just onboarding. We see their data for the last five to six purchases, and once we see that the retailer has the potential, we have a clear reason to provide that working capital.

So, in any business, when you can showcase that these funds will get multiplied, funds will be available for you.

You said you started in Lagos and then moved to Kaduna. Have you expanded beyond these areas?

Yes, we started with Lagos, and we went to Kaduna. We wanted to check that it is not a Lagos-centric business and to be sure it can be multiplied in other cities. And now we are in 12 cities. We are in Kano, Kaduna, Abuja, Minna, Suleja, Port Harcourt, Enugu, Asaba, Ibadan, Ilorin and Osogbo.

Why did your first startup fail?

I think VConnect was a nice concept. We were on that journey for seven years. We raised capital in the process and got great traction

from the users. If you searched online, VConnect was one of the top companies that would come up in providing you service providers like a plumber, a painter, electrician, fumigation service, or any other service provider you needed.

But in terms of monetisation, we were a little ahead of curve payments. Neither Paystack nor Flutterwave was that big then. We started in 2011. So we were doing cash collection, which was not viable. So we were a little ahead of time, but we still believe the business has potential. We couldn’t succeed in monetisation at that point.

So what lessons did you learn from that failure, and what are you doing differently with Omnibiz?

Awesome. I’m happy you asked that question because in every entrepreneur’s journey, there are various failures which teach you to move forward to something bigger.

One of the biggest lessons we got from VConnect was passion, focus and persistence. Focus is the key. So you should focus on one stakeholder, and in our case, it is our retailers. We don’t look at every stakeholder in the trade. We focus on a few products and optimise the supply chain for them. We focus on one problem at a time.

We were solving only the supply chain problem for the retailers. We didn’t get into the working capital problem. Once we achieved this, that’s when we went into the working capital issue. So I think focusing, achieving, and scaling things before adding another layer was the key lesson.

What’s really unique about Omnibiz?

Many companies are doing something similar, and we are happy because the market is very large. All the companies combined are doing less than 2% of the overall market. So that’s how big the opportunity is.

In terms of our differentiation, our unique selling proposition compared to our competition is how we are built. Our platform is structured in such a way that we can partner with the ecosystem more conveniently. We can provide more services to the retailers, and instead of replacing the existing chain, we are complementing it.

We don’t replace the distributor. We complement a logistics provider to do it more efficiently. We work with the manufacturer, providing them with more or better quality data. We work with the retailer to generate more and retain their existing customers.

Let’s talk about Africa’s tech ecosystem. The influx of VC investment is unprecedented. Are we really growing, or is this a flash in the pan?

The African tech ecosystem has grown significantly in the last five years. In the last two years, we have seen much investment complementing and recognising that growth. We are really growing. I wouldn’t doubt that. And I will say we are also solving genuine problems at scale.

But I still think we need to gradually take the valuation cycle because I believe everything should be on an incremental trend. It’s not good to say, ‘hey, we had an X million dollar evaluation and then it comes down to X minus Y.’ So try to grow fast but grow stable.

I think you hit the point I was coming to. The ecosystem is

growing fast but is the growth sustainable, or how can we ensure sustainability?

I think solving real problems ensures that our growth is sustainable. All the big startups, all the startups that have emerged or have raised capital are solving the genuine problem, and they are solving it sustainably.

Every startup should have visibility of its path to profitability because startups don’t make money in the first year and shouldn’t be pushed to make as well, but the visibility of how that startup is going to become profitable eventually should be very clear and that economics should be visible in the traction today.

I would say that makes us self-sustainable. Yes, there is capital available globally and open to being invested in Africa, but we don’t want the international sentiment to decide the growth of the African tech ecosystem. We should grow in a manner where we can sustain this growth on our own.

Where do you see Omnibiz in five years?

The problem we are solving is the problem of traditional trade being digitised. In the next five years, we would be present in 15 to 16 countries across Africa where this problem is big, and there is huge requirement for our solution.

We would be solving it for over 500,000 retailers across the continent, helping them grow their business, simplifying retail, and making the experience much better than what it is today.

As someone who has done business in Nigeria for a while, what would you say are the key elements any entrepreneur needs to succeed in the country?

That’s amazing. I would say any entrepreneur needs three key things to succeed in Nigeria or any tough market. Number one; passion, and number two, persistence. There are ups and downs that you will see when running a startup. You have to be persistent. Thirdly, I think it is to be very humble.

As an entrepreneur, your real work is to work with people who can help solve the problem because you can’t do it alone. No entrepreneur can solve the problem by themself. So if you are not humble, if you are not a people-first person, you will not be able to solve the problem for long.

How were you able to put together the team that is driving Omnibiz?

I think this is key. I worked in FMCG before, so I knew a little about the existing problems, and I worked with one of the largest companies in the FMCGs space on this continent.

We went on the field and interviewed the retailers to understand their problems. And once we were clear on the key problems and how we could prioritise and solve them, We looked for people who are the best fit in the industry to solve the problem and who understand and would be passionate about solving it for a longer duration of time. Not for three months, not for nine months but at least three to five years.

Then we built those people to build the founding team to take this forward. We got people from logistics, supply chain, people from FMCGs background, people from sales background, people from finance background, people from operational success background who could design the processes and systems, people from products background who have worked with Konga, Mckenzie and various other companies who have built product. I think bringing those people together was instrumental in building the base for the success of the platform.

By: Ebube Julius

Meet Eyitayo Ogunmola, the Nigerian Equipping Young Africans with Lucrative Tech Skills

The Nigerian digital industry does not have a shortage of talents, thanks to Utiva, a talent accelerator startup founded in 2017 by a brilliant, youthful, and enigmatic entrepreneur, Eyitayo Ogunmola. He has given many Nigerians access to the fundamental computing skills

required in the twenty-first-century workplace.

In an exclusive chat with Business Elites Africa, Eyitayo provides more information about the business and some of the current initiatives the company has in place to make sure that Nigerians acquire more skills in 2022.

What made you start Utiva?

It was in 2017. I was in the U.S., and I was working with one of the largest international development firms. We were building technology products and wanted to build an educational product. I advocated for local engineers and developers in Africa, but we couldn’t find any.

So I saw the gap, and I saw that there were opportunities, but there were not a lot of talents. I just told myself that I would just come back to Nigeria and create a solution with great data scientists and product managers. I wasn’t sure how we would do it, but I just had faith that it would happen. In 2018, we started officially, but we started the wrong way. But in 2019, we got much more structure.

What were the steps you took before starting the business?

Whenever I’m doing something, I just jump right in and figure out things along the way. So the first step I took was that I drove down to the Federal University of Agriculture with one of my friends. We got some students together and asked them what they would like to do after school. We realised that many of them were not exactly sure what they would do. So, I started a very small coaching programme for university students that I thought they were going to pay. I was naive.

We had about 25 universities where we were getting young people and training them. I knew that if I had started by helping people to learn online, no one would trust us. So we started with helping people to learn physically. We had spaces in different locations where we were doing various training programs. And then COVID started in 2020, and we started doing online training.

Did you have any resources or anybody to help you at the early stage?

Unfortunately, I didn’t have a co-founder, but I had a very large network of friends. I had amazing friends who were always willing to jump in and support me.

Today, we’ve created more than nine different paths, from Data Science to Product Management, Programming, Blockchain Technology, and Artificial Intelligence to Product Design. One other thing we wanted to do was to create opportunities for companies and businesses to train their workforce. And I think we’re working with over a hundred companies right now.

However, there’s so much to do. Africa is so big. It’s a continent of almost 1.2 billion people, and about 700 million young people. Utiva is just a very small element in a vast, massive world of opportunities. There’s just so much to do. And we are looking forward to an amazing future.

Speaking of Africa’s size, the tech ecosystem on the continent has seen an influx of venture capital funding. Do you think we’re growing too fast?

In terms of venture capital investment in Africa, I think that we have not even started. It’s like we haven’t unveiled the opportunities yet. There’s just so much to do. I’ll give you three different opportunities in three different frameworks. Access to credit is not solved in Africa, which means that you and I spend all our money to buy everything we have.

That is not a way to supercharge an economy. So there are massive opportunities that we are sitting on. Education has not been unraveled yet. If you solve education, you’ll be solving millions of other problems attached to education.

What we wanted to do was to become the biggest learning platform on the continent. And, I think we’re kind of lucky today. We are the biggest right now in terms of learning technology skills. I don’t think any company is doing the volume we are doing. One of the things we also set out to do at the very early stage was to create a different path to learning for young people.

In terms of government and policy, Africa hasn’t figured out governance yet, and by just solving that governance problem, you are unravelling many other opportunities. So think about it: if we can solve governance problems, electricity, and the ease of doing business, imagine the millions of young people that would kick start new businesses. Even investors abroad will be tired of

What were your goals when you started this business, and have you achieved them so far?

investing in Africa because there are just so many opportunities to invest here.

How did you raise your initial funds?

We have only raised about $15,000 at the very early stage from an investor who was my friend and a mentor. He gave me the money without signing a document. I’m quite happy that we didn’t raise too much because we would have used all the money to charge problems.

But along the way, we started raising impact funds that don’t dilute your business. They are like free cash to help you build, experiment, and grow.

What strategies did you use to market your business?

Friends. But now, we are marketing through multiple channels. We’re running ads, doing different documentaries, and doing road shows. But when we started, we were just doing storytelling and getting my friends to re-share.

What have you enjoyed the most about this journey?

The most important thing I have enjoyed is the amazing team that surrounds me. You know, I have super brilliant individuals that I am building with and that have built with me.

At the very early stage of my business life, I wrote proposals to companies looking for deals, and my entire financials were based on those B2B deals. I just believed they would come, but it was a dead end.

The second mistake I made was that I hired bottom-up, maybe because we didn’t have money. But that’s a very wrong way to build a business.

Don’t hire bottom-up; hire top to down. Hire the senior guys from day one. Don’t say, ‘oh, I would let these young people build for me for the first year and then when we make money, we’re going to hire those senior guys.’ If you can hire those senior guys right now, you should hire them.

This is because, as an entrepreneur, you must be the one learning from your team, not the other way around. So for me, I was the one teaching my team. But now I have team members that are teaching me. And lastly, when you’re building a business, everything is about sales. You need to be selling every minute. In fact, you need to sell like your entire life depends on it.

mind. You must learn a tech skill because it would give you opportunities. Tech skills do not require that you have any form of background.

The nine major tech skills I recommend are data science, product management, product design, cyber security, cloud computing, programming, blockchain technology, business analysis, and digital marketing.

But when you’re learning these tech skills, you must be ready to sacrifice because tech skills require that you practice a lot.

I mean, it’s like mistakes are an integral part of building a business, but I’ll tell you some of the ones that come to mind, some of the very early ones and some of the later ones. Let me start with the later ones. Pursuing business-to-business (B2B) relationships with all your life and believing that you will get deals is a fallacy. It might not come. You must make sure that you have options and alternatives.

Well, I understand people are trying to build things, but if you sell and make money, you can go back and build.

Number one, find a mentor that you can trust. Someone that, at least, can help you refine your idea. The second would be; find the community that will help you incubate your businesses. A lot of them are out there. The final and most important one is going out and talking to customers. Whatever you know is just in your head unless you talk about it. Get out there and talk to customers - devote one month to talking to customers.

Where do you see Utica in the five years?

Tech skills. I mean, if you really want to be successful and give yourself peace of

In five years, we should be the biggest learning platform on the continent. That is what we should be. The continent is our vision.

Tell us some of the mistakes you have made as an entrepreneur.

What are the best skills you feel any young person should acquire today?

For someone who has a tech business idea, how do you suggest they start?

Meet Mohamed Marei, the Trailblazer Leveraging AI to Scale African Startups

What inspired the launch of Xpovi?

Xpovi is an artificial intelligence enterprise software that automates financial and business plans in real-time. And most importantly, infuse such development with tailored industries and sub-industries, data insights, and analytics. So the experience we’re trying to create here is that you get your AI advisor that is present for you around the clock.

That’s the mission we’re on. And it’s what inspired us to launch. We had to first take the top-down approach. The business management and financial global advisory business is estimated at almost a trillion dollars in market value globally, and yet remains mostly manual work oriented with very few technology adoptions.

And long advisory processes always mandate very high fees, which in turn is a layer of constraints to accessibility for startups and small and medium businesses to get the benefits of advisory. Hence, we have touched on such a pain point for high-potential ventures.

We sat with Mohamed Marei, CFA, Co-founder and CEO of Egypt-based business AI-advisory startup, Xpovi, to discuss crucial opportunities and challenges in Africa’s startup ecosystem.

Founded in May of last year, Xpovi provides automated financial and business planning services. With an impressive pre-sale of $300k the startup looks set to

The name is short for Exponential Visionaries, and it reflects our mission to secure the exponential growth route for visionaries that try to build disruptive ventures and startups.

The first was offering tailored and inclusive industry data insights and analytics. The second was integrating such data insights and analytics in a full, automated financial and business plan. And the third, which was the most difficult to develop is to actually automate the advisory handshake for the manual meetings by inventing the concept that we call “The Questionnaire”, which automates the integration.

So after integrating these three verticals together, we were able to provide startups and SMEs with real-time business plans that contained detailed data insight that also helped them identify a lot

explore the vast opportunities across the continent.

Let’s dive in!

What’s the meaning of the brand name Xpovi?

of deliverables. Like the addressable clientele, monetization plans, automated marketing plans, potential investment needs, and others, all in a few clicks.

Can aspiring entrepreneurs leverage Xpovi?

Actually, we launched our operations last March, targeting idea-stage and earlystage startups. And now, with the new data library and new data analytics and algorithms that we are actually building and integrating, we are expanding into small and medium enterprises or crossstage startups that have been operating for a while, but we can serve all.

And that’s the beauty of it. Whatever your size is, whatever your stage is, and with the current cycles of deployments and technology developments that we are doing, you can use Xpovi. We currently operate only in Egypt.

However, next year, we are expanding into other African markets. Such data insights and analytics need to be market-tailored, so this takes quite some time. So we are rolling out our model in Egypt and by next year, we’re going to expand into serving other African markets. Nigeria and Kenya are definitely on the radar.

we are currently serving Egypt-domiciled companies and startups. So we tried as much as possible to limit non-product, non-technology decisions and establish ourselves in the market where we are serving addressable clientele.

What were the resources you leveraged when launching your startup?

Founders multitask and wear several hats early-on, I am wearing many, but I believe this is the norm with all startups trying to achieve so much with so little resources. Nowadays we are growing and delegating more to on-boarded talents after closing our pre-seed round.

So you need to achieve so much with so little. Nowadays, we’re actually growing the team after we raised a preseed round of $300 thousand dollars to gradually start delegating more. But most importantly, to make sure that whoever joins Xpovi is well onboarded on the culture and enjoys the mindset to build a global disrupting product.

Advice for African startup founders looking to raise funds?

It’s very hard to operate in Africa. And I’d say it’s a battlefield, so always be prepared for war because you’re always at war with very limited and constrained resources. So if I were to give out tips, I’d say that you need to be a hundred percent invested and in the best form round the clock to convince investors and stakeholders that you are building a new, innovative, homegrown product.

Second, sales is not a position anymore. So everyone at your enterprise or at your organisation is a salesperson, even if they work in technology. So that they can pitch whatever you are building in a maximum of 30 seconds. And third, stamina, stamina, stamina is the name of the game as it’s a very long marathon and fourth, building tech startups with a team of co-founders is always better than solo founding.

And especially if you are a first-timer, because your co-founding team is your main support, especially during the dark days, which happens a lot. So before building your first MVP, you need to build and plan your scenario analysis.

Egypt is a massive market. We have around 4 million operating companies plus around 35,000 new ventures that start every year. And this is increasing around the clock. And because it’s very diverse—we are 110 million, and 81% of the population is under 45 years old.

We have a saying here that if you succeed in Egypt, you’ll probably succeed anywhere else. And by the way, Nigeria and Egypt have very similar ecosystems. So it makes complete sense that, hopefully, our next expansion might be directed toward these regions.

It was logical to establish it in Egypt. And also, it was a plain vanilla decision since

The problem with African funding is that most prominent investors actually look for a replicated or imported business model from Brazil, India, the US or Europe. However, I think the time we’re living in will require investors to open up to new innovative African developments and technologies.

And my advice is that early-stage startups should not lose a lot of time trying to raise the biggest pre-seed round ever. And instead, focus more on closing fast and deploying such capital on developing their technology and launching their startups. A lot of startups get into the trap of trying to negotiate bigger prefunding rounds.

What are the biggest lessons you’ve learnt from launching a tech startup in Africa?

What will happen if the market dries up? What will happen if people did not like my product, or if they liked it? So you need to prepare well for pivoting. And finally rationalise your spending, especially on the good days because the market actually dries up. We might be getting into a new global recession.

How do you deal with stress?

I usually work 12 or 14 hours a day for seven days a week. What I try to do is keep a very detailed calendar. And I usually cross out every task I conclude to get a little dopamine boost. Also we celebrate small wins, even if we launch a very tiny feature or even change the font on our interface so that everyone gets a bit happier and people are relaxed. I’d advise people to spend more time with their love circle without discussing business and to try as much as possible to exercise because it releases the stress actually.

Why did you choose to start Xpovi in Egypt?

By Simeon Onoja

Meet Yemi Keri, the Investor Driving Funding for Female-Led Startups in Nigeria

Many early-stage entrepreneurs operating in Africa would bemoan the lack of angel funding on the continent. However, Yemi Keri co-founder of Tide Africa, a female angel investor network, believes that an investment culture has always existed. She said you’re not referred to as an angel investor in your culture, but you occasionally support a family member or a friend. You offer them money to start something new or expand their firm. “It’s really done informally,” Keri explained.

Photocredit: gazmadustudios

Formalising these activities helps entrepreneurs gain access to finance. There are further advantages for investors that formalise their investment operations. Angel groups have a bigger network from which to find opportunities than individuals, and they may also share the arduous work of investigation. Keri opted to become a member of the Lagos Angel Network in order to legitimise her personal investment efforts.

That’s when she realised that, despite the fact that many women were pitching, they weren’t getting financed. Keri observed that it wasn’t because they didn’t have great ideas, but there’s a specific way that an investor would look at a firm and want it presented. Women were not pitching in like that. Keri chose to fill that need. She decided to mentor a lady who, while having a viable business, was unable to secure funding. They worked on her pitch and delivery, and then Keri had her pitch again. This time, there was a lot of excitement, and she got funding. “That’s how I knew I had something,” Keri stated. That realisation birthed Rising Tide Africa.

Keri and her co-founder, Ndidi Nnoli-Edozien, are carefully expanding the network. Angel investment is all about trust for them. Because most women have no prior experience with early-stage investing, they must create trust from the ground up. Initially, women just needed to commit to investing 1 million Naira - less than $3000 every year and could pick and choose which transactions they wanted to engage in.

Rising Tide encourages women who are currently investing in other assets to add early-stage investment to their portfolios. Keri said that what they’re trying to do is get women to recognise angel investment as an asset class. And, like with any other asset class, you want risk-adjusted returns. Rising Tide has begun to show that they can deliver.

One of the early investors in the network was Migo, a lending platform which received a $20 million series B financing in December to expand beyond Nigeria to Brazil. The network’s investment has increased by 9x in a short period of time.

With a track record, Rising Tide Africa members are expected to contribute a minimum of 5 million Naira - about $14,000 annually into the fund, with that money being divided among all agreements made by the network. And you can’t just throw money in and walk away. Members of Rising Tide Africa are required to join a committee and participate to the network’s mentorship, networking, and masterclass programmes for entrepreneurs and prospective future investors.

While the fund’s primary goal is to develop a network of female investors, Rising Tide Africa will invest in businesses run by either male or female founders; however, they prefer and actively seek female-led businesses. If the founders are men, at least one woman must have an executive role. Despite having a network of strong women directing the fund, its transaction flow is still substantially skewed toward male-founded firms. Despite this, over 60% of the 7 firms that they have funded so far are run by women. They invest substantially in female CEO mentorship with the goal of creating global success stories to encourage and support more female entrepreneurs seeking capital to expand their businesses.

How Tracey Turner Built an AfricaTailored E-commerce Platform

Tracey Pettengill Turner is a serial social entrepreneur and the founder of Copia Global, a Nairobi-based e-commerce platform for middleto-low-income Africans. She launched the startup in 2012, long before major accelerators like Y-Combinator became interested in Africa.

She was, however, no stranger to entrepreneurship, having graduated from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. She saw that although there was a lot of innovation pushing western e-commerce models to reach rich people all over the world, there was very little attention towards inventing for middle and low-income African customers who were being left behind as the economy digitised.

“If we can reinvent e-commerce in a way that can reach the middle-to-low income consumer, that’s a massive opportunity, both commercially and socially, in terms of being able to have a significant impact on the market,” said Turner.

Middle and low-income Africans in Kenya and Uganda are served by an e-commerce platform. So far, the company reports having served 1.6 million consumers via 30,000 pickup stations.

Turner had to start from scratch and define what e-commerce means in that context. Low smartphone and internet penetration, reliance on cash, a lack of addresses and delivery infrastructure, and lower consumer buying power are some of the primary hurdles for e-commerce in Africa, particularly in rural Africa. Turner launched Copia Global with these limitations in mind. The e-commerce platform collaborates with agents, who are local business owners that may assist clients with internet transactions. Their storefronts serve as delivery locations, and they take cash payments from unbanked consumers who cannot pay online.

Copia Global: A different business model from Amazon

Unlike Amazon, which is experiencing rising tension with its warehouse employees, Copia Global provides a route to advancement for its agents. In addition to the extra cash generated by selling Copia Global

items, foot traffic in their stores improves by 50%. Turner stated that Agents’ earnings increased by nearly one-third.

“That’s enough for some of them to move from poverty to the middle-class,” she said.

Because 77% of Copia Global Agents are women, their increased income will have a multiplier effect on the community. According to research, women invest a greater percentage of their income in their families and communities.

Despite the fact that Copia Global intentionally designs for its context rather than importing business models, there is an acknowledgement that America’s tech behemoths have a lot to teach. Jason Murray, a former Amazon executive, joined Copia Global’s board of directors in March.

During his nearly 20 years in the firm, he witnessed Amazon’s meteoric rise and spearheaded significant programmes such as “Fulfil with Amazon.” Murray stated, “We always relearn this notion that price, selection, and convenience is what drives retail for all consumers.” His expertise will help Copia Global to unlock the next phase of growth.

Murray admits that there were services available in the United States that were important to Amazon’s success but that they had yet to completely penetrate the East African market.

Turner stated that a large part of Amazon’s narrative is not only an e-commerce story, but also a fintech one since e-commerce and fintech will go hand in hand in the coming months and years.

Copia Global will focus on adding financial services on top of their e-commerce platform to boost their clients’ purchasing power and drive corporate growth.

How Yellow Card is Driving Crypto Adoption in Nigeria Despite CBN Ban

Chris Maurice and Justin Poiroux co-founded pan-African cryptocurrency exchange platform Yellow Card. The duo had banked over $40,000 from selling bitcoin on eBay in 2013, but the dollar rain stopped after they hit a credit card snag. They re-strategised, and that strategy got them out of the woods, giving them the idea of Yellow Card.

They built the trading platform that’s now regarded as the easiest and most convenient way to buy, sell and store cryptocurrencies, with thousands of users spread across over 12 African countries.

Business Elites Africa spoke to Yellow Card’s Director of Operations in Nigeria, Babatunde Oparinde, on the journey so far, the $15 million series A in 2021 and how they’re navigating the crypto ban by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

It seems like Africa has an

abundance of crypto exchange platforms; what’s different about Yellow Card?

I would say our unique selling point is, first of all, our competitive pricing, our local business insights and our understanding of the African markets. Hence, we created a product that can be used by virtually anyone in Africa, irrespective of their demography and educational background.

Aren’t you concerned about the anti-crypto regulations by some African governments?

We are, especially with what is happening in the Northern part of the continent. But I also understand that African leaders are particularly concerned about the bad actors in the space. And as such, they are trying to create regulations that could clamp these bad actors. At Yellowcard, we are always open to working with the government and their regulatory bodies to ensure that user funds are safe. And we are not considered as one of the bad players in the space.

So far, what are some of the challenges you have faced operating in Nigeria?

I’ll highlight the most important one. And that is, the CBN disallowing commercial banks from operating with crypto entities or individuals dealing with cryptocurrencies. I feel that has limited our onboarding processes, and I wish that the CBN will look into that policy and make the space a bit friendly for us. I know the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) is working on something.

Pending that, how are you navigating the challenges?

We’ve just been very creative and looking for solutions that are out of the box for now.

With Nigeria’s current inflation and foreign exchange crisis, people are constantly looking for safety nets. Are there stable cryptos that could hedge against inflation?

Yes. There are. Whenever there’s a noise in the crypto space, people spread the news about how speculative and volatile cryptocurrencies are, especially with what is happening in the market right now, because there is a nose dive across all platforms, even stocks.

But the truth is, there are stablecoins that are pegged to the US dollars. And one of them is USDT but most importantly, USDC. These are stablecoins that would not fluctuate, and you could use that to hedge against inflation. Whatever happens, the price remains the same.

What would be your recommendation for someone who wants to start investing in crypto?

My simple advice would be to go to www.yellowcard.io, sign up with us, and begin your crypto journey. But what we’ve also done is that we have an educational platform called Yellowcard Academy. It’s for beginners and easy to use for first-timers.

Beginners can go to the academy and learn about cryptocurrency and begin their journey with us. It’s an interesting one. I’m sure they won’t regret it at the end of the day.

You guys raised $15 million in 2021. How has that impacted your business, and have you secured more funds since then?

I can’t disclose certain information, but I would say the $15 million we raised last year has really impacted our business. One, we have more funds for operations and expansion. And also, we are able to triple down on marketing and recruiting of more workforce across the continent. We are also looking at raising some more money and channelling it to the same angle - operations, marketing, and recruiting more staff.

There is a global slowdown in startup investing; what does this mean for African startups?

I’ll say it’s a global pandemic. It cuts across cryptocurrencies, FinTech and stocks. Everyone is going to be hit because I suspect a recession is coming. I would even say it has started, but we would continue to fill it.

At Yellowcard, we have risk management in place to help us handle this kind of scenario. We’ve cut down on certain internal costs and are looking to survive the whole recession period.

I’d say other startups should just do what they must to stay alive. Do not burn out, and let’s see what would happen at the end of the day.

Sim Shagaya, the Serial Entrepreneur Behind Konga, Ulesson

Following years of struggling to turn his e-commerce brainchild, Konga, into a profitable venture, and with investors unwilling to continue to fund the promising startup, serial media and tech entrepreneur Sim Shagaya had no option but to sell it off.

The e-commerce company was founded in July 2012 with headquarters in Gbagada, Lagos State to be the leading one-stop-shop online retail company and marketplace in Nigeria, but it was a long, hard journey.

Despite attracting funding from the likes of Investment AB Kinnevik and Naspers for various funding rounds to the tune of over $100 million, including a $40 million Series C round, which at the time was described as one of the largest single rounds raised by a single African startup, the e-commerce startup failed to turn in the expected profits as it recorded losses year on year.

After six years and following its spate of losses, Konga was eventually sold off to Zinox group as its major investors decided to stop funding the business as it was written off and the cash being generated could not sustain its operations.

However, Sim Shagaya can be likened to that man who falls down 9 times and rises up each time, given the number of failed tech startups he has under his sleeve.

Sim has been involved in birthing five tech companies so far (DealDey, GoMyWay, Konga, E-motion Advertising, and now uLesson) with four of them ending up in distress and having to either shut down or sold off after a number of years.

While DealDey was sold off to Ringier Africa, GoMyWay was shut down and E-motion Advertising was sold off to Loatsad Media.

Interestingly, the five above aren’t the only ones Sim has been involved in.

Other startups he has birthed and left are: Alarena.com, a dating site; Jobclan. com, a job site; Gbogbo.com, a classified site; and a media streaming service, iNollywood.com.

On why these platforms have failed, several issues come to the fore: funding, a challenging business landscape, and being way ahead of their time.

Sim himself explains thus in a 2010 interview: “My first Internet startup was in 2005, iNollywood.com, which sought to distribute Nigerian movies over the Internet. Although it did quite well because we had a few Nigerian classic content, it failed for a number of reasons, most notably because at the end, the timing was not right.”

Sim is a graduate of George Washington University, where he bagged a Bachelor of Science (Hons) in Electrical Engineering. He also has a Master of Science degree in Engineering Management from Dartmouth College and an MBA from Harvard University, Boston, Massachusetts in 2003.

Before his entrepreneurial adventures, Sim’s work experience spanned over 10 years in new media and investment banking. Upon his return from the US in the early 2000s, he had a brief stint with Rand Merchant Bank South Africa before moving on to Nigeria, where he became head of Africa for search

giant Google and Lucent Technologies before launching e-Motion Advertising in November 2005.

He has a cumulative total of more than 12 years of entrepreneurial and managerial experience spanning platforms such as DealDey, GoMyWay, Konga, E-motion Advertising, and uLesson.

After the failure of all these businesses, Sim appears to be hitting it right with uLesson, an edtech company that provides teaching videos to students.

Founded in 2019, it immediately raised a total of $3.1 million in a seed round led by TLcom Capital and subsequently raised $7.5 million in a Series A round in January 2021 led by Owl Ventures.

The edtech startup has made significant progress in West Africa and has promptly made moves to expand to eastern and southern Africa. During its Series A launch in January 2021, Sim said,

On his startup’s African expansion, Sim Shagaya had this to say, “Africa is not one place. Different needs, cultures, and curricula mean that uLesson has to carefully and deliberately think about how to design products and distribution channels to serve such a vast market. Almost daily we receive emails from families across the continent asking us to make services available to them. And in 2021, we will.”

Sim was mentioned as one of the 10 Most Powerful Men of 2014 by Forbes and was appointed as a member of the Economic Advisory Council by the Executive Governor of Plateau State, Simon Lalong, in 2019.

By: Oyetoun Olabisi

Miishe Addy is Taking Over Africa’s Logistics Industry

Ghana-born entrepreneur, Miishe Addy, has always been curious about leveraging technology. Living in Texas, United States, Addy tasked herself to identify problems and find tech-driven solutions.

After moving to Ghana in 2017 to teach and mentor software entrepreneurs through the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) programme, she met her co-founder Solomon Torgbor.

With his vast knowledge spanning eight years in the crossborder shipping industry, he enlightened Miishe on the pros and cons of the industry.

From their discourse and research, she realised the unstructured state of the continent’s supply network, which leaves it in fragments.

This, in turn, makes the importing and exporting business expensive, thus, affecting the distribution and reducing returns on exports. She said, “It is more expensive for people to cargo across Africa than it is to do anywhere else in the world”.

The beginning

With the opportunity to solve the industry problems through technology and human expertise, Miishe Addy delved into the logistics industry despite being male-dominated.

This, to her, was not a factor to be considered. She said, “From the start of my career, I have always worked in fields that I find interesting, and I have had challenges, but I don’t view them from a gender perspective”.

Instead of perceiving it from a gender perspective, she stepped into the industry with her business mindset. To her, “Logistics is a relationship business. You cannot move cargo from Lagos into Amsterdam or Johannesburg into Cairo without partnering with a minimum of nine logistics companies.

Relationships emerge with those logistics companies or define how faster cargo moves. There are benefits to being in great relationships with these providers on the ground. I find that both men and women who are good at working with others tend to excel in this field”.

With this mindset, she founded Jetstream, a logistics company with cross-border trade in Africa

in 2019 with Solomon Torgbor.

Jetstream, as a logistic company in Africa exporting to the United States or Europe requires an exporter to have an entire loaded container; however, Jetstream provides an alternative.

Through this, Miishe Addy set the company apart from its competitors.

With its Groupage service, it offers a regular Less than Container Load (LCL) service for agricultural exports. It combines items such as raw honey, vegetable oils, cassava products, and spices to enable different exporters to export their goods together.

This makes it the only logistics company in Ghana that renders such a service. This way, business is promoted. Leveraging technology, it makes door-to-door shipments to and from businesses in West Africa.

Milestones of Jetstream

Miishe Addy’s Jetstream has had a significant influence on the logistics industry in Africa since its birth in 2019, especially in the area of promoting people’s businesses.

For instance, the company’s trade finance programme makes funds available to clients who want to export or import but can’t due to financial limitations.

Since its mission is tailored to the continent, Addy’s expansion initiatives are focused on African gateway markets. Already, approximately 78% of containerized commerce purchases are from eleven African nations.

Although some African countries are surrounded by land, the Ghanaian-American plans to expand to the shores of those countries.

She said, “We aspire to build a presence in these markets – Ghana, South Africa, Kenya, Egypt, etc. We want to be the preferred provider of technological supply chain services at each of those gateway markets”.

Meet

Ashiru Jituboh, the Techpreneur Behind Africa’s First Fintech API

Fara

Profile || By Simeon Onoja

Fara Ashiru Jituboh is a Nigerian tech whiz with over 20 programming languages under her belt. Her brainchild, Okra, is a Nigeria-based fintech platform enabling secure, real-time financial information exchange between customers, applications, and banks.

In other words, this platform helps connect customer accounts to banking apps and get real-time financial information. In return, the company makes money from the product fees it earns when customers connect their bank accounts to third-party applications using the platform.

In 2019, Jituboh visited the United States to have a baby, and it was during that period she found the idea for Okra. She stayed in the United States for almost a year and used apps like Mint to manage funds directly from her mobile phone.

When she returned to Nigeria, she noticed that the app wasn’t working because it wasn’t connected to a Nigerian bank. Seeing the market gap, I decided to create a similar app. She developed okra to connect to her own bank account.

Jituboh founded the startup with David Peterside in 2020. Okra is actively moving forward by partnering with all Nigerian banks, even claiming a guarantee of 99.9% uptime. The business model provides developers and businesses with integrations into existing banking services and deducts fees from subsequent transactions. These integrations include account authorization, balances, identities, income, payments, and transactions. Top companies such as Access Bank, Aella, Interswitch and uLesson are among its over 100 partners.

Okra was oversubscribed within six months of its launch, and even a pandemic couldn’t delay the startup. As a testament to her company’s growing success, Jituboh raised a $1 million seed round.

One of the top investors in the preliminary round was TLcom. For the investor, Okra was an outlier in the portfolio, and investing in Okra was the first investment in FinTech. The company has invested in Okra’s infrastructure, and TLcom has extensive experience investing in Africa, so it also brings out the expertise that Okra needs. In April of 2021, Okra announced that it had deposited a $ 3.5 million seed round with a bank, led by US-based Susa Ventures, bringing its funding to $4.5M in total.

“We build the tools that businesses need to achieve full digital transformation and we are excited to be welcoming some highly strategic global investors as we scale our open finance as a service operation,” Jituboh said on the back of the raise.

“The opportunities to collaborate and grow together are significant and we are now in a strong position to continue to build and scale in Africa and global API space,” she added.

The Nigerian-born Jituboh, grew up in the United States. She spent her teenage years in Nigeria before returning to the United States and permanently relocating to Nigeria. “I can do something really big and really impactful here. There’s so much more opportunity to do, to solve so many problems,” Jituboh told Forbes.

Her first project in Nigeria was to develop technologies for other companies such as AXA Mansard, Sanofi Pharmaceuticals and Airtel.

By

How Dare Okoudjou Turned His Pains Into Africa’s Largest Digital Payment Company

His name may not ring a bell in certain quarters, but Dare Okoudjou is well known in the e-Payment world as a revolutionary. He is the founder and CEO of MFS Africa, a leading Pan-African fintech company operating the largest digital payments hub on the continent.

How MFS Africa started

At 18, Dare, in a bid to obtain a better education, left his parents back in Port-Novo, Benin Republic, and travelled abroad. But life in a foreign land was not quite what he expected because the sudden weather and cultural change were a constant battle.

Dare kept in touch with his family by calling and sometimes helping out with some cash. Over time, the process of calling home significantly improved, but the same could not be said of money transfers.

So every time Dare wanted to make remittances to Port-Novo, it was an uphill task.

The challenge was not exclusive to Dare; it was a common problem for millions of African-born diaspora citizens.

But where others saw problems, Dare saw solutions. In 2010, he decided that instead of just complaining about the situation and doing nothing about it, he could become the solution provider. That led to the establishment of MFS Africa, a pan-African payment company.

Funding

Like most startups, MFS Africa had to rely on angel investors for its take-off. The company built a brandnew network that connected disparate mobile network operators and then experimented with using mobile money for insurance, loans, and other financial products to solve development challenges.

Struggled to pay salaries

If Dare thought starting a company would be easy, he was confronted with reality very early after the initial funding was exhausted.

The liquidity problems exposed him to hazards that pushed the company to the brink of bankruptcy. Dare struggled to fulfil essential obligations like salary payments and utilities. The electricity at home was cut off as a result.

“To survive, we needed to focus on scaling the MFS Africa hub, narrow down our use cases to those that were simple and scalable, and find investors. Despite this pressure, I was hard-nosed about getting into the right partnerships with credible partners,” Dare explained.

Amidst his trouble, MFS Africa turned down an opportunity to be acquired. This could have provided the much-needed liquidity, but Dare said he didn’t think it was the right decision for the company’s future.

“I decided that this move was simply not right for the direction of the company at that time. I made this decision with less than two weeks’ worth of cash left in our account. The two weeks following the decision required a lot of determination, as we urgently needed to secure additional funding from a different source,” he recalled.

Partnership with Vodafone

It turned out that the decision to reject the acquisition proposal was the best because shortly after that, Vodafone came into the picture and offered to partner with MFS Africa.

Dare said it was a great moment for the company. According to him, the partnership radically improved the business profile and credibility of the young company as well as accelerated growth.

MFS Africa Growth

After the initial struggles, MFS Africa has enjoyed solid growth. By 2020, ten years after it was launched, the company’s operations cover 35 countries, with more than 80 partners connected and over 200 million mobile money recipients covered.

e-Payment industry in Africa

The e-payment industry in Africa is a fast-growing wealth creation space for young African tech-minded professionals like Dare.

In the last few decades, many young Africans, some of whom acquired education in top universities abroad, have set up multi-million dollar e-Payment platforms and created thousands of jobs.

In a recent report, the electronic payment segment on the continent is expected to sustain the growth of 18 to 20 per cent per annum until 2025, reaching $27 billion, up from $8 billion in 2018.

And according to the World Economic Forum, two of the countries driving the fast growth are Kenya and Nigeria. This reality is why Dare is optimistic about a much brighter future for the African digital payment industry.

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ADEOLA ADELE

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OMIRIN OLUWAKEMI MORENIKE

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House of Levi products and services are arranged in four arms: Levi Sandals, Levi Slippers, Levi Belts and Levi Wallets for both males and females, young and old.

We offer Casuals, party wears, children wear, shoe servicing, shoe accessories and trainings.

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Ornatium Events is an event management and decorations company, which prides itself in making client’s imagination a reality.

Our Services includes: Event Decorations, Event Planning and Management, Vendor Sourcing, Negotiations and Management, Floor plan and Spatial design as well as Event Coordination

ADUNOLA ADUNNI ABOABA

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1KSTORE is a fast-rising jewellery and accessory store in the heart of Lagos. Founded in 2019 we have risen to be one of the top competing online jewellery stores in a very short period.

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BERNARD VERONICA

Veebcollections

I started my business around 2018. It has been hectic dealing with all the forces that work against a small business in Nigeria.

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Our services include floral art installation for offices, homes, events, Mural painting/sculpture, functional art stage /Set design, photo shoot props, event design ( Birthday, wedding, fashion show)

We help event planners and architects and clients to create the look and art direction they desire.

By Joseph Ekeng

How Peter Njonjo’s Failure in Banana Export Business Led to the Establishment of Multi-million Dollar Twiga Foods

According to reports, consumers in America spend just over 6.2% of their disposable income on food, while in the European Union, it is between 13%. But here in Africa, the average household budget for food is between 50% to 60% of their disposable income.

This has put a lot of pressure on African consumers to earn more to satisfy their basic needs. Sadly, while food production is a big problem on the continent, the lack of an efficient supply chain mechanism is the bigger problem. The result is that a lot of what is produced on farms across the continent ends up being wasted, and the ones that make it to the market attract a high price tag.

Peter Njonjo Business Failure

This realisation gave birth to what is now known as Twiga Foods in Kenya, a B2B food distribution company using technology to simplify the supply chain between fresh food producers, FMCG manufacturers and retailers, and cutting out many intermediaries that contribute to the high cost of food.

Twiga is one of the few African tech startups that have secured the best funding. In

2017, it raised US$10.3 million in Series A funding. The startup got an additional US$10 million in 2018, US$34.75 million in 2019, US$29.4 million in 2020 and US$50 million Series C round in 2021.

Explaining how the company was formed some years ago, Peter Njonjo, a former Coca-Cola executive, said it was at a point he decided to venture into banana export to the Middle East. His feasibility studies showed a huge export market for bananas in the Middle East.

After making the initial contacts and making orders for the banana in preparation for export, Peter and his business partner Grant Brooke encountered a major problem which led to the failure of the business.

“We thought it would be very easy to put everything together, but sadly, we couldn’t export a single container,” Peter recounts. The pair found the local food industry lacking. The farmers couldn’t offer any traceability, there was no recordkeeping, and agricultural practices were substandard – if they were present at all.

“Everything was super informal. People didn’t even know the types of varieties they were growing,” Peter says. Confronted with this reality and burdened with seemingly worthless stock, a decision was made to pivot,” he explained in disappointment.

Fragmented Retail Food Market in Africa

Encountering disappointment was a frustrating experience for Peter and Grant, but they did not allow their experience to stop them; rather it became a springboard for success.

Seeing they could no longer export the loads of bananas they ordered, the duo decided to sell the products in the local markets from the boots of their cars in a bid to cut their losses.

In the course of doing that, they were confronted with another problem - the

retail market was so badly fragmented; this retail fragmentation made the food selling business more clumsy and less profitable.

To put this in proper perspective, the entire Europe food market is controlled by about ten big retailers. But in a city like Nairobi, one could count no less than 180 retailers.

Realistically, this led to a lot of inefficiencies in the supply chain architecture and, of course, massive wastage.

Another important discovery that the partners made was that by cutting off the wholesale market, they significantly increased their chances of making a profit from the sales of the bananas. So rather than recording losses, they actually made a profit. It was a major eye-opening moment for them.

How Twiga Foods was founded

This discovery was indeed the beginning of a new journey. “I couldn’t believe that the pricing at retail was higher than the wholesale market to the point that by bypassing wholesale, we could sell at a profit,” he explains.

“That’s what led us to understand why Africans in urban cities are spending a fortune on food in this day and age.” This realisation also led to the formation of Twiga Foods, a business-to-business food distribution platform based in Kenya.

Socio-economic changes start with food

Twiga Foods aims to organise the supply chain in Africa’s food industry to align with global best prices and ensure affordable prices for consumers. This is done by sourcing fresh foods from the farmers and delivering them directly to the retail market at a fair price.

Peter’s conviction about his line of business is rooted in the fact that the greater social and economic changes in Africa begin with food.

Partnership with Goldman Sach

For several years, Twiga Foods has stayed focused on its objectives of providing fresh foods to households in Kenya and growth has come as a result. Every month the company serves 50,000 retailers.

The company, which now boasts 700 employees, supports over 800 farmers. “That’s a testament that we’ve managed to find a model that works in terms of recruiting and retaining customers,” he says.

Twiga has also signed major partnership deals with global brands like Backers and Goldman Sach to the tune of $60million.

Experts believe that if the company sustains its growth projection, it is on track for a $1 billion valuation in 2025.

“But if you produce food efficiently, you can significantly reduce the amount of money being spent on food; money that’s then available to be spent in other sectors of the economy.”

How Nigerian Tech Genius, Omolabake Adenle Built An

“African Siri”

Omolabake Adenle is responsible for inventing a voice recognition and speech synthesis software for African languages. Adenle was born on 1982 in Lagos, Nigeria, where she also grew up. She then sets off to bag a PhD in Information Engineering from Cambridge University.

After her education, Adenle had a career as a banker, where she works as an investment strategist. But in the course of her being a banker and a software developer, she decided to venture into technology as well. Her role in technology was what brought about an application program interface that can help anyone learn five African languages, including Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Swahili and Rwanda.

How The Big Dream Came to Play

Omolabake Adenle’s invention came to life on a cool afternoon when she was in the living room with her nieces and nephews. She watched them carefully while they played with an English language learning app. She noticed that the app had animated flashcards and it taught each letter in the English alphabet and she thought to herself:

“I think we should have something similar for African Languages”, Adenle then proceeded to make one for Yoruba and she called it SpeakYoruba.

Adenle didn’t stop there. She further developed her invention into something bigger, which attracted so much attention. Adenle went back to her Yoruba learning app and added more intricate features. She added features that require voice recognition and speech synthesis, which can enable anyone to talk to the technology and also get feedback.

But in her inventory process, she discovered that very few African languages were supported in the app. At this point, she had thought to herself that building a platform that supported these features would improve the commercial, economic, and operational value of African languages. So she went right in.

Omolabake Adenle ended up building an application platform of speech technologies that facilitates voice automation in African languages. The application supports voice recognition, which means the ability to understand speech. This application also has speech synthesis that can help any user generate synthetic speech in any African language.

She also built some tools that enterprises can use to create voice-activated experiences for their customers. Apart from the five African languages it supports, she is out to digitise more African languages to enable Africans interact with a wide range of devices available in their local languages.

Adenle also founded the AJA.LA Studios, an app development company that specialises in speech technologies for African languages. In 2017, AJA.LA was noticed by Visa for being the first fintech accelerator for African startups and as finalist for the Innovation prize for Africa. In 2018, the studio was also recognised by Spindle for “Best Innovative for Development”.

The Award Winning Invention

In recognition of the importance of Adenle’s inventory, she won an award from Women in Voice, a US-based non-profit. In her words, she said

“It was quite a surprise that I was awarded a diversity in equity and inclusion award by women and voice.”

The award recognised Adenle for her efforts in building speech solutions that contribute to diversity and equity. She believed that Africans are essentially left out of the voice market because most providers do not support African languages. She wanted to make a change and invent something new, which she did.

Above all, Adenle supports women in tech and still encourages more women to create awareness for the tech industry, because they have so much to offer.

Heard of Makinde Adeagbo, the Software Engineering Genius?

The resolute and tech-minded Makinde Adeagbo does not fail to make his way into anything that concerns technology. His passion was partly instigated by his parents encouraged Adeagbo’s interest in science and math by registering him in multiple programmes during the summer.

Adeagbo on his own learned how to programme games using the graphing calculator. Both Middle school and High school had channels through which he learned science.

Just right after he got a bachelor’s degree in computer science and electrical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he continued with the chase.

Making Some Tech-Savvy Moves

In 2003, Makinde Adeagbo proceeded to work as a research and development intern at Brown-Forman Corp. Like that was not enough, he signed up to work with Apple in 2005 as an engineering intern. Adeagbo got his third internship at Microsoft in 2006.

He kept improving his skills which landed him his first full-time job on the Facebook company as a Software Engineer on the 1st of August, 2007. A few years later Makinde Adeagbo also worked as a software engineer at Bridge International Academies. From there, he still explored down to Dropbox and worked as a software craftsman in 2011. Working at Pinterest as a software engineer and engineering program in 2013 was his last job before he decided to make something personal from his acquired knowledge.

black software engineer has the right connections, resources and support they need to prosper. Dev/ color is a global career accelerator for black software engineers, technologists, and executives.

Makinde Adeagbo started his small firm in a small way, but it has grown to accommodate a community of over 600 professional members. Dev/color has also welcomed leaders that have participated in the mentorship programs the firm offers. These engineering leaders come together to solve pressing challenges which they face together as squads.

Makinde also built Dev/color to accelerate the collective advancement of black technologists, increase access to executive leadership, and increase accountability for racial equity. In summary, he frowns against racism and tries to bring together all black engineers to form a community where they can help each other with anything.

Why It All Started

Makinde further stated that he ventured into this invention because, over the years, black leaders have been excluded from the fastest-growing technical careers in the world. For this reason, Makinde Adeagbo built a small group of fellow black software engineers to accommodate them since the world would not have them.

The Dev/color community has enabled them to be available for each other, by having each other’s backs and helping one another grow. He also formulated a peer mentorship programme called the “A Star” (A*). With these motives, black software engineers can have a career, become tech-savvy and start companies across the country.

Makinde Adeagbo admitted that working in these firms helped him get a better idea of what he wanted. In total, Makinde had a sum of 7 past jobs before settling in for something better.

Inventing Dev/Color

Makinde Adeagbo founded dev/color in May 2015. The purpose of his invention was to make sure every

Adeagbo also opened his arms up to other black software engineers to share their stories and allow his current members to form deep bonds and support each other in any way they can.

Makinde Adeagbo has always advised aspiring and practising engineers not to bundle themselves in while trying to achieve their goals. He would always say, “Try not to limit yourself.”

By Wale Ameen

Following the COVID-19 pandemic years of 2019–2021, the world has gradually experienced a shift in virtually all spheres of life. Work, communication, and everything connected to how we relate and carry out business have changed.

One of the dynamics of this change is the digital transition, which has increased our reliance on technology. There has been an increase in the use of virtual workspaces, online marketplaces, and e-governance tools to overcome the limitations occasioned by the pandemic. And these have become the norm even as the world trudges on the road to normalcy.

However, the system’s strength is also its weakness. With more and more people getting online to carry out their everyday work, and with remote-based results increasing rather exponentially, the dependence on technology has increased drastically. The resultant effect is that there has been an increase in the amount of data shared daily.

According to the global consulting firm Mckinsey, cyber-attacks are rising, and market indicators signal a fear of further increase.

Companies are increasingly investing in technology that drives their businesses, but this also opens up more potential for cyberattacks.

With the shift to digital, there is an increased need for IT departments to add more layers to IT network infrastructure to support remote work and enhance usability. And all of this further increases our vulnerability and threat from the outside world.

The threats have increased, and this time, the culprits are not limited to individuals carrying out one-person attacks on cyber infrastructure; they are

now more sophisticated as they usually include a network of organised individuals carrying out coordinated attacks.

With this level of threat, small and midsize enterprises and governments are not spared from the growing cyber risk.

A peep at the figures

According to a Global X report published in January, titled ‘Rising Cybersecurity Threats Expected to Continue in 2022’,

cyberattacks, which were prevalent and expensive in 2021, are expected to continue into 2022.

According to the report, the average data breach cost between $3.86 million in 2020 to $4.24 million in 2021, the highest total cost in the last 17 years.

This point was also buttressed by CheckPoint in its own report, also released in January.

Global Cyber Threats and Investment Opportunities in Africa

per cent increase from 2020, according to CheckPoint Software Technologies.

According to the cybersecurity solutions provider, Africa was the highest, followed closely by the Asia-Pacific region, with an average of 1,299 weekly attacks per organisation.

In Nigeria specifically, about 71 percent of Nigerian organisations were hit by ransomware in 2021, which is 22 percent higher than the figure recorded in 2020. This is according to the cybersecurity firm Sophos.

A few days ago, a ransomware gang known as RansomHouse, claimed responsibility for a cyberattack on Shoprite, Africa’s biggest retailer.

The cyberattack resulted in a data breach of about 600 gigabytes of Shoprite’s customer data in Eswatini, Namibia, and Zambia and it included names and ID numbers but, thankfully no financial information or bank account numbers.

According to CheckPoint, 2021 recorded a record number of cyber attacks, with a 50 per cent increase in overall attacks per week on corporate networks compared to the previous year.

Globally, it disclosed that 2021 recorded a record-breaking number of cyber attacks, with a 50 per cent increase in overall attacks per week on corporate networks compared to the year before.

The sectors with the highest volumes

of attacks were Education/Research, with an average of 1,468 attacks per organisation each week (an increase of 60 per cent from 2020), followed by Government/Military with 1,082 (40 per cent increase) and Healthcare with 752 (55 percent increase).

Across Africa, organisations in Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, and other parts of the continent recorded the highest volume of cyber attacks in 2021, with an average of 1,615 weekly breaches, a 15

Meanwhile, according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2022 released in January this year, the increase in cyber threats is among the greatest global risks. The study, which also aims to help leaders to create effective policies that will guard against and manage risks, points to cybersecurity as one of the main areas with a growing and existential threat to organisations.

It also predicts that the global economic recovery will be volatile and uneven over the next three years.

Part of the study, which points to attacks such as Log4j and the SolarWinds Orion attacks as particular threats, states that:

“In December 2021, just one week after discovering a critical security flaw in a widely used software library (Log4j),

more than 100 attempts at exploiting the vulnerability were detected every minute, illustrating how free access coding can spread vulnerabilities widely.

“Information technology (IT) monitoring and management software also illustrate the potential for contagious exposure, which can break through the defences of critical cybersecurity supply chains, as shown by the Solar Winds Orion attack that occurred in late 2020.”

All this data establishes the fact that coordinated cyberattacks are now on the rise. With this, companies, governmental agencies, and parastatals need to be all out to ensure that their infrastructure is not compromised.

The digital future

With an estimated 2.5 quintillion bytes of data being created and shared every day, hackers now have more access to sensitive data than ever before, and the opportunities are further increased as the world becomes more digital. It is reported that, as at the end of 2021, there were 14.6 billion connected devices. That number is also expected to grow by nearly 18% in 2022 and more than double by 2027.

Popular types of attacks

There are basically two major areas of attack that have been quite popular among attackers. These are ransomware (where attackers steal and encrypt an organisation’s data and then require payment to restore access) and data breaches (leaks).

Others are IoT attacks, cloud attacks, phishing attacks, blockchain and cryptocurrency attacks, software vulnerabilities, and machine learning and AI attacks.

The Opportunity

With the grim picture painted above, industry professionals, however, score the continent’s preparedness in combating cyberattacks low.

The Global Cybersecurity Index (GCI) June 2021 report by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) which examines the cybersecurity landscape in 194 countries globally, suggests that Africa’s levels of commitment to cybersecurity and capacity to respond to threats remain low when compared to other countries.

This, right here, signals an abundance of opportunity in this sector for professionals who are specialised in this area of information technology.

This is a goldmine of opportunity, especially for cybersecurity experts who can leverage this current need to provide such services to private organisations and government parastatals.

Areas as basic as the provision of privacy tools such as Virtual Private Networks (VPN). Or other detailed and focused areas such as the provision of enhanced data management services,

network perimeter and end-point level security, application, email, and web security provisions require skilled hands.

This is also a challenge to indigenous IT firms to create home-grown solutions that will address the security needs in the IT sector.

What’s more, young professionals can also tap into this opportunity by actively putting their skills to the test and becoming white hat hackers. These individuals take it upon themselves to debug programmes and report vulnerabilities and loopholes to the appropriate channels to ensure a wholesome, well-secured network for institutions across the continent.

ORIFUNKE LAWAL

She is a visionary and pioneer by nature who seeks opportunities to create systems that help people grow effectively with supervision and accountability.

In 2018, she founded Lady with Balls, one of the biggest, fastest-growing and people-focused communities of ladies currently based in Nigeria.

At the moment, she runs the Orifunke Lawal Academy where she organizes certification courses and programs to help business owners and personal brands gain more visibility, build more authority and make more money. The academy currently runs two programs; The Canva Growth Program and the Content Creation and Marketing Course.

EMMANUEL FAITH

He is a versatile Human resource professional with hands-on cross-sectoral experiences and core competencies that cut across Talent Acquisition, Performance Management, Workforce Planning and Strategy, Workforce analysis, Employee experience and other related HR skills.

In alignment with his goal of building human capacity, he runs a series: “A word a day” geared towards improving the diction of millennials and currently reaches over 10,000 viewers on his social media platforms. He is also the initiator of Bookathon, a group with over 200 members committed to reading at least 5 books per month, enhancing their personal development, having read 200+books in the last two years.

OYINLOLA AKINDELE

Over the past years, she has driven measurable results across different Digital Marketing roles and platforms. She is an online Marketing Specialist who provides global solutions to small and medium scale businesses across Africa on marketing platform with increased returns across board.

She has worked with hundreds of businesses on different campaign strategies to achieve different results, with budget allocation and management in place.

ABOVE & BEYOND

SALEM KING

Salem King is a storytelling genius, a social media entrepreneur and a teacher. He is the founder of The Booster Academy. He is currently on a mission to help creators monetize content and community.

How Jorn Lyseggen is Empowering African Entrepreneurs with MEST

Jorn Lyseggan is a serial entrepreneur, investor, philanthropist, and founder of Meltwater as well as the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology, popularly referred to as MEST.

Jorn started off his career as a research scientist in artificial intelligence and machine learning at the Norwegian Computing Centre, but decided to leave to start up his own ideas. He launched his first business, an internet consulting business, in 1995. This he sold off in 1997 to EUnet International.

He joined Mogul as CEO in 1998 and led the company before selling it in 1999 to Optosoft. He thereafter served as CEO of Mogul Group AB, leading it to its IPO in 2000.

With a $15,000 investment, Jorn launched Meltwater in his home country, Norway, in 2001, and the company has gone on to become a formidable force in the B2B media intelligence space.

The company initially started off as Magenta News, which analysed online news in real time. The company experienced a meteoric rise, so much so that within two years it had raked in $2 million in revenue without outside funding.

It later went on and changed its name to Meltwater News and moved its headquarters to San Francisco in the mid 2000s.

As of 2017, the company currently boasts over 1,500 employees located in 55 offices spread across six continents and more than 30,000 clients worldwide.

Jorn believes in the empowerment of the future generation of entrepreneurs and this inspired his founding of the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST), a pan-African institute which serves as an incubator for African entrepreneurs as well as a seed fund and training platform, in a bid to empower tech entrepreneurs and startups coming out of Africa in 2008.

Speaking on his philanthropic efforts, Jorn said during a locally organised TEDTalk in 2017 that his philanthropic journey has been nothing short of accidental, alluding this to some experiences he went through while growing up.

“I have never been a tree hugger, and I’ve never been on a mission to save the planet. But over the years, I accidentally found myself becoming an accidental philanthropist, “he said.

MEST, which has its headquarters in Accra, Ghana, has a presence in South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, and Ivory Coast.

MEST was, in 2015, recognised by Fast Company as one of the 10 Most Innovative Organisations in Africa.

He also launched SHACK15 in 2016, as the world’s first data science hub, where promising and leading data science startups can come together to meet, collaborate, and innovate.

In 2017, Jorn released his first book, Outside Insight: Navigating a World Drowning in Data, which predicts the emergence of a new software category that will leverage insights gleaned from the vast amount of external information available on the web to help corporate leaders in their corporate decision-making.

Speaking with Forbes on what inspired the book, he highlighted the importance of data in today’s world in the decisionmaking process.

He said, “External data is one of the biggest blind spots in executive decision making today.” That’s because external information contains so much forwardlooking information. If your competitors are hiring, and your customers are changing their behaviour, those are external forces influencing your future performance, and it can be found in online ‘breadcrumbs’ and external data.”

Jorn was awarded “The Europa Hall of Fame Award” at the Europas Awards 2016, a gathering where Europe’s most progressive and forward-thinking tech companies are celebrated.

He was also named No. 5 in Digest Africa’s “Top 50 Most Influential People in the African Startup Ecosystem” for his mentorship and investment in MEST.

“External data is one of the biggest blind spots in executive decision making today.”

The world has come a long way. However, Africa’s Place in the last two or three phases of development has been a lacklustre one, with the continent playing second fiddle in the scheme of things.

With the world rapidly developing, Africans need to appraise and consciously work on the continent’s preparedness and how much it can take advantage of the technological advancements emerging at this time.

The question all stakeholders on the continent need to examine critically is whether Africa has all it takes tap into the potential the fourth industrial revolution, which is already underway.

A quick look at the journey so far

The world has gone through different stages of industrialisation, which is a term used to describe the shifts in technological advancement and the way work is done.

The first industrial revolution, which began at the end of the 18th century and continued to the beginning of the 19th, saw a shift in the way humans got by. It was the age of mechanisation that saw the practice of agriculture improve with the introduction of equipment that boosted the mechanisation of processes.

The first industrial revolution also saw a shift where agriculture became the backbone of the world economy. Massive coal extraction began to happen, which created a new form of energy - steam

Africa’s Place in the 4th Industrial Revolution

period saw the emergence of nuclear energy and brought a rise in electronics manufacturing, telecommunications, and computers. This period saw a new experience with space expeditions, research, and biotechnology with the latest technologies invented.

The fourth revolution, which began at the dawn of the third millennium, is upon us, and this is the period that gave birth to the global phenomenon called the internet. The world has basically shifted from an industrial-based one to one largely premised on the use of the internet, with ideas such as the metaverse, and virtual reality worlds, being infused into how we live and how work is done.

The fourth industrial revolution, aptly called Industry 4.0 is a convergence of the digital, biological, and physical worlds where new technologies such as artificial intelligence, robotics, cloud computing, broadband cellular networks, the Internet of Things, 3D printing, and many more are all ushering in an era of boundless possibilities. This comes with its attendant impact on the socioeconomic indices the world over.

Africa’s place in the past industrial revolutions

With the world moving at such astronomical speed with tech development, Africa has primarily played the role of an onlooker and has been more of a consumerist in the previous revolutions.

The question now is: how well is Africa positioned to play an impactful role in the scheme of things as the fourth revolution is underway?

So far, it appears the continent is yet to firmly put its feet in play to leverage the new possibilities, as many indicators still point to a weak position for the continent. However, it is good to note that many now see the 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR) as a much-needed precursor to Africa’s development.

There have been significant improvements in the deployment of information and communications technology (ICT), a major component needed in this era. This is notable as many technologies being developed at this time offer Africa the opportunity to play big on the global stage by driving innovation.

energy, and led to the establishment of railroads.

The second industrial revolution saw the emergence of energy, arising from a leap in technological advancement during this period. This led to a boom in industries as electricity, gas, and oil became a part of man’s daily life.

The third industrial revolution began in 1969 after, more than a century of the second industrial revolution. This

According to the World Economic Forum, “The Fourth Industrial Revolution represents a fundamental change in the way we live, work, and relate to one another. It is a new chapter in human development, enabled by extraordinary technological advances commensurate with those of the first, second, and third industrial revolutions. These advances are merging the physical, digital, and biological worlds in ways that create both huge promises and potential peril. The speed, breadth and depth of this revolution are forcing us to rethink how countries develop, how organisations create value and even what it means to be human.”

It is commendable to note that ICT has continued to grow, and this is expected to get better.

According to Brookings, mobile technologies and services have generated about 1.7 million direct jobs both in the formal and informal sectors, contributing about $144 billion of economic value and $15.6 billion to the public sector through taxation.

It is only imaginable how much more can be achieved if ICT is further leveraged on the continent.

Notable individuals such as South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa have argued that Africans

need to leverage the possibilities of the 4IR in order to leapfrog the continent’s development.

In fact, South Africa is one of the countries moving fast in the implementation of strategies to fully leverage the possibilities that now abound.

He led the charge when he announced that by 2030, South Africa will be an economy that has leveraged the possibilities in technological innovation to drive a revolution in its manufacturing and industrial processes, energy provision and distribution.

“We want to demonstrate how science, technology, and innovation have been used to enhance our food and water security and to build smart human settlements,” he said.

In October 2019, the South African affiliate of the World Economic Forum’s Centre for the 4IR Network was inaugurated. Subsequently, in January 2020, Cyril Ramaphosa announced the creation of a presidential commission on the 4IR. The commission is made up of start-ups, researchers, cybersecurity specialists, and researchers, among others.

The possibilities

Indeed, Africa needs to leverage 4IR technologies to leapfrog development in sectors such as education, food security, health, energy, and financial accessibility.

Pre-covid, there were already efforts to deploy components of the 4IR to improve the quality of life. For example, in Kenya and parts of West Africa, blockchain has been deployed in use cases ranging from agriculture to property record verification. It has also expanded access to credit in the informal sector. In 2016, Rwanda made history as the first country to deploy drones within its health care sector to deliver blood to remote regions.

Hopefully, this drive will be sustained into the years to come so that the continent and its people, especially its young people, are able to keep up with the rest of the world.

The challenges

While adoption is on track, several limitations still pose challenges to the uptake and adoption of 4IR technologies.

Africa still lags behind on some major indicators when compared to developed continents like Europe.

According to Brookings, several African firms indicate very low levels of business preparedness to adopt five major 4IR technologies, namely AI/robotics, IoT, big data/data mining, 3D printing, and blockchain. And this, the African Development Bank says, is a result of leadership’s inability to develop effective digital strategies, low level of education, and employee skills. This, sadly, is a reflection of the continent at large.

Also, Africa still scores low in the areas of access to technology, internet bandwidth per user, percentage of households with a computer, percentage of households with internet access, and number of fixed broadband subscriptions.

The report reveals that in developed countries, there are as many mobile broadband subscriptions as there are people, but the contrast is the case in Africa, where the continent has just about 25 subscriptions to every 100 people.

According to management consulting firm Mckinsey, internet penetration is low as it averages less than 40% compared to 62.7% in the rest of the world. It also reports that the technology sector is still not yet a top priority for many African countries. This is because African countries currently spend just about 1.1% of their gross domestic product on digital investment, and this, it says, is less than the share of what developed economies spend.

Electricity, which is a huge backbone to even the most basic of development, is still a mirage on the continent. According to Armando Manuel, former minister of finance of Angola and current World Bank alternate executive director for Angola, Nigeria, and South Africa, access to electricity on the continent currently

stands at 45%! This is a far cry from what is needed for robust development.

“You can’t develop in the darkness, and you can’t go to the moon when you have constraints to go to the next corner,” he says.

Things are, however, not all bleak for the continent. Following COVID-19, Africa’s digital economy could contribute $180bn to the continent’s GDP by 2025 following an e-commerce boom that has been seen on the continent, according to Google and the International Finance Corporation.

The Way Forward

As we move on, the challenge is for African policy leaders to effectively position their economies to benefit from the 4IR even as they battle to overcome present challenges that include unstable political environments, civil unrests, poverty, and agricultural deficits. Political leaders and policymakers must prioritise in order to leverage the possibilities of the fourth industrial revolution.

The danger of not doing this is that the continent may again lag behind in developmental strides when compared to the rest of the world.

African governments must invest in critical infrastructure that will enable countries to leapfrog their preparedness and capacity to leverage 4IR technologies. Education and programs that reskill their populace with the capacity to manage new technologies must also be given increased attention. Also, access to physical and digital infrastructures that support technologies such as broadband internet must be made a priority.

When it comes to e-commerce in Africa, one name that has been entrenched in the minds of many African consumers is that of Jumia.

And the name that has been saddled with the steering of the ship and provides leadership and direction for the e-commerce giant this past 7 years is Juliet Annamah.

Juliet joined Jumia in 2015 as its Chief Executive Officer and was in that position till January 2020 when she assumed the role of Group Chief Sustainability Officer and Chairperson till date.

As former CEO and now chairperson of Jumia Nigeria, who also doubles as the chief sustainability officer of the Jumia Group, Annamah has her hands full with providing direction for the e-commerce giant.

Jumia as a brand has pioneered a number of firsts within the e-commerce space. It is Africa’s first e-commerce unicorn and was the first to launch Black Friday (the colloquial term for the Friday after Thanksgiving in the United States, where stores offer discounts and promos on products) in Africa back in 2014. It has since gone on to expand the scope of its Black Friday offerings to span an entire month given the huge success it recorded in Nigeria.

The brand presently operates in 11 African countries and 23 countries globally, and stands out as the first African e-commerce company to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).

Launched in 2012, the Jumia brand has evolved over the years from being a retailer to a marketplace where buyers and sellers meet, thus providing the virtual infrastructure needed to onboard the informal sector. Juliet has apparently played a huge role in its progress so far.

A consummate professional, Juliet has over 28 years of professional experience which spans sectors such as consulting, consumer goods, sales and marketing, and e-commerce.

She started her career at Sanofi Aventis, a French pharmaceutical company, in 1991 and held various roles in the sales, marketing, and product management departments, after which she moved on to join Accenture in 1999, where she

rose to become Partner/Managing Director of the company’s manufacturing and consumer goods practice, overseeing all of Africa.

She has a Bachelor of Pharmacy degree from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, an MBA in Finance from ESUT, Nigeria, and is also an alumnus of the Wharton Advanced Management Program.

She is a Fellow at High Impact Leadership for a Better Society, of the Nigeria Leadership Initiative and Yale University.

She has held and continues to hold positions on several boards, in an independent and non-executive capacity. She currently serves as an EXCO at large at CGAP a not-for-profit agency of the IFC/World Bank, and also currently serves on the Boards of Flour Mills of Nigeria and Imperial Logistics South Africa.

Managing a dynamic internet-based marketplace as Jumia does not come easy, especially with the challenge of bringing more sellers on board in a market where a large portion of sellers are based in the informal sector without access to formal credit, but Juliet is well up to the task even as she provides direction for the e-commerce giant driven by a vision beyond just profit-making.

According to her, “In the end, reducing inequality is so critical and is a big part of how we create value. And how we create sustainable improvement in quality of lives on the continent is by asking ourselves: What more can we do?”

Looking ahead, the challenge for the Jumia brand, she says, isn’t really so much the expected competition from other brands like Konga, but the informal market.

“The real competition is the informal market. We are every day working to bring more and more sellers to the platform, and bring more brands to the platform, excite more consumers,” she says in an interview on Grit & Growth, a podcast produced by Stanford Seed, an institute at Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Juliet certainly has her work cut out for her and is poised to take the e-commerce brand even to greater heights in the years ahead.

By Victor Ejechi

Drew Durbin is the co-founder and CEO of Wave, a digital mobile money platform helping Africa build extremely affordable financial infrastructure. The company prides itself on being Africa’s biggest startupdiaspora community.

The Senegalese-born Durbin started Wave in 2018 with Lincoln Quirk, his American schoolmate. The pair met at Brown University, an ivy league private institution in Rhode Island, United States. Both of them also co-founded Sendwave, the money remittance company that WorldRemit acquired in 2020.

Destined partnership and aligned vision

Drew and Lincoln became friends because they shared a passion for creating simple products with a social impact. And with Wave, they believe they can make Africa the first cashless continent.

“We are deeply committed to developing products that users love. Our technological background, combined with our living experience in some African countries like Tanzania and Senegal, was the ideal combination for developing a technology-first solution to address the challenges of domestic money transfer in Senegal,” Quirk says.

Drew Durbin and his partner focused on cross-border payments in 2014 after Drew became frustrated with the difficulties of sending money to his Tanzanian NGO.

“This prompted us to create a no-fee instant remittances app that allows users to send money from North America and Europe to East and West Africa,” Drew says.

After launching that, they realised that mobile money provided by telcos was expensive and provided a poor user experience.

According to them, “Besides, the technology (USSD) was out of date, and the customer experience and agent liquidity were both lacking. So, in 2018, we launched Wave Mobile Money, our second company, in Senegal.”

Interestingly, in 2021, WorldRemit, a digital, global crossborder payments company, completed a $500 million cash and stock acquisition of SendWave in 2021.

Durbin said Wave was piloted in Senegal from within the Sendwave ecosystem. Partech invested in Wave in 2018 before spinning it off because “Wave has executed superbly from a proof of concept level,” Tidjane Dème, the firm’s general partner, told Quartz.

In the past, Drew Durbin has been associated with four companies, according to public records. The companies were formed over six years, the most recent being incorporated one year ago in May of 2021. Two of the companies are still active, while the remaining two are now listed as inactive.

The competition woes

As an independent company, Wave aimed to compete against telecom companies like Orange, also a mainstay of mobile money in Francophone West Africa.

Both companies have had at least one commercial disagreement so far: Orange refused to allow Wave to sell Orange airtime to users. The issue has been referred to Senegalese regulators.

While that is resolved, Wave looks set to march on to compete for territory in other telco-dominated mobile money markets. Its intention to launch in Uganda suggests new competition for MTN and Safaricom’s Mpesa - the continent’s flagship mobile money juggernaut.

Becoming one of Africa’s tech unicorns

According to Durbin, when mobile money succeeded in Kenya, it lifted about a million people out of poverty. And yet, over ten years later, most Africans still lack access to affordable ways to save, transfer or borrow the money they need to build businesses or provide for their families.

In 2021, Drew Durbin’s Wave became Africa’s one of Africa’s tech unicorns after a $200-million Series-A funding round. The platform was valued at $1.7 billion.

TechCrunch reported the investment as the largest-ever Series-A funding round raised by an Africa-based startup. The investment was led by top Sequoia Heritage, a subsidiary of the Sequoia brand, Founders Fund, Stripe and Ribbit Capital.

How Onyekachi Izukanne’s Startup is Connecting the World’s Top Consumer Goods Manufacturers to Retailers in Africa

Onyekachi Izukanne, a seasoned entrepreneur with 17 years of experience in technology and consulting, is the Co-founder and CEO of TradeDepot, a B2B marketplace that connects small retailers with wholesalers of Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG).

Onyekachi spent 11 years in management consulting, specialising in consumer products, energy and financial services.

Prior to TradeDepot, she co-founded C2G Consulting, a technology consulting practice that he bootstrapped to become the leading SAP Partner in West Africa by 2013.

He is well versed in discussing the African business environment, SMEs, digital economy, business growth, and the start-up industry. Onyekachi is passionate about empowering entrepreneurs to grow their businesses.

Izukanne’s TradeDepot is a distributor and retail aggregator that was launched in 2016 with a mission to consolidate Nigeria’s fragmented informal retail supply chain, by connecting the world’s top consumer goods manufacturers to retailers in Africa.

TradeDepot’s technology was built to accommodate the varying needs of its customers. It currently has about 60,000 micro retailers in its network.

Onyekachi Izukanne and his passion for distribution.

In an interview with Nairametric, Izukanne explained why he ventured into the distribution of goods, instead of entering other segments or industries.

“Our focus is distribution, which is a very feasible problem because to purchase whatever item we need, distribution is necessary for getting it from the maker to us. Whether it is a shirt, food, or digital item, there needs to be distribution,” Izukanne said

“Now especially, the biggest commercially used case you could make for distribution is the movement of consumables, personal care items, and other essential supplies.

“Items that are fast-moving, due to the high velocity of their usage, require frequent replenishment. This creates the biggest challenge as far as distribution is concerned.

“We need to build reliable distribution, and if you are building a reliable distribution, the biggest thing that we’ll need to move through that pipe will be fast-moving consumer goods.”

In 2021, TradeDepot, the leading B2B eCommerce and embedded finance platform in Africa raised $110 million in an equity and debt funding round to support the delivery of Buy-Now-Pay-Later services to 5 million SME retailers and drive further expansion of its merchant platform across the continent.

The Series B equity round was led by the International Finance Corporation (IFC) – a member of the World Bank Group, with participation from Novastar, Sahel Capital, CDC Group, Endeavor Catalyst, and existing investors, Partech and MSA Capital. The debt funding was led by Arcadia Funds.

Speaking about the new funding, Onyekachi Izukanne, said, “We remain super focused on making digital commerce and financing both accessible and affordable to neighbourhood retailers across key cities in Africa.”

TradeDepot has built a network of leading consumer goods brands and SME retailers across Africa and created a proprietary risk scoring engine that uses retailers’ purchase history, previous repayment performance, and other related data points to predict their creditworthiness.

This game-changing financing model coupled with industryleading technology to support logistics operations has led to a 200 percent increase in transaction volumes for retail store owners.

By Victor Ejechi

From Odd Jobs to CEO of Digital Bank: the Story of Tauriq Keraan

Having goals, working hard, and exercising perseverance have served Tauriq Keraan well throughout his life. And they have been guiding principles in how he manages money, family and people.

In August 2019, TymeBank announced the appointment of Tauriq Keraan as its new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) after the resignation of Sandile Shabalala in June of that year.

His appointment as the new head of TymeBank has undoubtedly been one of the best decisions the organisation has made, considering his vast experiences in management and business growth.

Keraan, who previously acted as the bank’s deputy CEO, no doubt played an instrumental role in the bank’s development; making him the next CEO was a no-brainer for the management.

He was one of the founding members that led to Tyme’s inception in 2012 and played a critical role in the market launch of Tymebank in 2019, as well as the subsequent maturation of its operations.

Describing Keraan and explaining why he was appointed to the position, Thabani Jali, TymeBank chairman said that the decision will “ensure continuity in the business.”

“He is a seasoned executive who will continue to build TymeBank in its efforts to deliver affordable and accessible banking to our customers,” Jali said

The appointment to head Tyme Group’s executive means that as TymeBank expands its footprint in new international markets, Keraan will be responsible for establishing its operations in those new territories.

The early days of Tauriq Keraan

Growing up in the neighbourhood of brightly painted houses in one of Cape Town’s most photographed communities, Tauriq Keraan recalls money lessons as complex as the community he grew up in.

In an interview with Soweto live, Keraan said he came from an average family in the community but grew up feeling that

his financial muscle in Bo-Kaap broadly followed the lines of being on the hill or the flat land.

“My family lived on the flat land. The area has since been gentrified, but growing up there in the 80s it was a coloured community that wasn’t particularly well off,” Keraan explains.

Being the youngest of three, Keraan recalls that although money was scarce in the family, the close relationship he had with his parents and older siblings helped fill that gap. His first real money lesson came from his maternal uncle.

His uncle’s act of kindness taught him the importance of giving back where you can and respecting money, and ultimately giving him the skills to preserve money.

Keraan determination to be educated

“I was already married then. My wife and I lived in a room in someone’s house. I would send R1,000 of that money to my parents, and my wife and I would live on the rest,” Keraan says.

He adds that although it was tough financially, he was driven by passion and determined to use the opportunities presented to him to improve his life.

Focusing on his studies, work and young family, Keraan was able to avoid negative peer pressure and was lucky enough to have a responsible wife. She showed him how to use credit to his favour early on in their relationship.

Keraan has an MSc degree from the University of Cape Town and has spent 10 years building and scaling digital banking businesses in South Africa.

His future with TymeBank

According to Keraan, although things were financially tight, his parents always prioritised education. He completed high school and attended the University of Cape Town despite some uncertainty about whether he would finish his education.

“My father was retrenched from his job as I was completing high school, getting ready to go into university. He was 50 years old at the time and was not able to find meaningful work at the time. However, he still woke up every morning and did various odd jobs to meet the family’s needs,” Keraan says.

This experience taught him about determination, perseverance and an honest day’s work, helping Keraan sustain himself by doing odd jobs while attending university.

During his studies, he found a scholarship programme that allowed him to convert his undergraduate chemistry degree to one in engineering. It would also cover a master’s dissertation and pay him a R2,000 stipend.

As part of his future plans, Keraan wants to continue being part of the team at TymeBank, improving the lives of ordinary South Africans through their product. He also plans to work on his own financial well-being and transfer positive lessons to his children.

Keraan sees the staffing pyramid upside down as he is the support to staff driving financial inclusion in South Africa by developing and upskilling them through solid teamwork.

TymeBank is majority-owned by African Rainbow Capital, a company within business mogul Patrice Motsepe’s Ubuntu-Botho Investments as the parent company, making it SA’s first majority black-owned bank.

Ubuntu-Botho Investments is made up of more than 600 individual black shareholders and various church, trade union, youth and community groups, and they have benefitted commercially as shareholders for 15 years.

By Simeon Onoja

Inside One of the Most Notorious Crypto Scams in Global History

As a new Netflix documentary examines one of the most infamous cryptocurrency scams, let’s detail the facts and what’s still up for investigation in the narrative of lost millions and sad investors.

It all began in December 2018 with Gerald Cotten, the founder of QuadrigaCX, Canada’s largest cryptocurrency exchange at the time. He and his new bride, Jennifer Robertson, visit India, where Cotten, who has Crohn’s disease, becomes ill. Unfortunately, his condition deteriorates and he dies shortly after being admitted to a hospital. A month later, QuadrigaCX confirms his death in a statement attributed to Robertson.

Customers had been complaining in the months preceding up to Cotten’s death that they couldn’t get their money out of the exchange and were waiting weeks, if not months, to receive funds. “There’s a bunch of warning bells going off in most people’s heads right now,” said one customer who spoke to CoinDesk at the time.

As it turned out, he was correct. The exchange was offline for “maintenance” on January 28. Soon later, a court file acquired by CoinDesk showed that QuadrigaCX owed consumers $190 million, and the startling discovery at the time was that no one understood how to access the exchange’s reserves. In court, his widow testified that while she possessed Cotten’s laptop, it was encrypted, she was never given the password or recovery key, and Cotten was the only one who had access to QuadrigaCX’s cold storage system.

The story of QuadrigaCX

Gerald Cotten and Michael Patryn founded QuadrigaCX in Canada in 2013, focused on local bitcoin exchanges (BTC). They grew with a small workforce in 2014 to install a bitcoin ATM in Vancouver, but ran out of money in 2015 following an unsuccessful attempt to go public and list on the Canadian Securities Exchange.

By 2016, plans to go public had been scrapped, the legal counsel had been fired, and all of the other directors had left QuadrigraCX, leaving Cotten to manage the company on his own.

Cotten, according to sources, ran the business from his laptop, with no permanent office. Despite its rough start, the firm expanded as the price of bitcoin skyrocketed in 2017 from $1,000 to over $20,000. People wanted a piece of the action, and the firm grew to 350,000 users trading more than a billion dollars in assets. However, the price increase was not to endure. Customers tried to cash out what they could when bitcoin collapsed in 2018, and here is where the issue began.

Who was Gerald Cotten?

To understand why so many people trusted a one-man show with their money, it is necessary to know who that man was. Gerald Cotten was an early cryptocurrency advocate who was

a founding member of the Vancouver Bitcoin Co-op in 2013. On the surface, he appeared to be a “good Canadian guy” who was an expert in cryptocurrencies and believed in the capacity of bitcoin, and cryptocurrency in general, to be a transformative financial technology.

According to a long Vanity Fair feature, Cotten always had a smile on his face. It was a calm, unflappable grin. It put outsiders at ease and made him appear cheerful.

Unlike other CEOs, such as Binance’s Changpeng Zhao, Cotten avoided the spotlight and was not well-known. QuadrigaCX, on the other hand, was a frequent supporter of local crypto educational activities and charity, such as the Indian orphanage that he claimed was the cause for his December 2018 visit.

When QuadrigaCX’s business took off, it was still impossible for most individuals to invest in cryptocurrencies, and the company benefited from being one

of the first to market. Cotten’s bitcoin enthusiasm and understanding were obvious, and some of the company’s success may be credited to his early attempts to appear to care more about helping others understand and grasp the potential of Bitcoin than making a profit.

However, things were not as straightforward as they looked. All of this was brought to light by Cotten’s death, which is currently being investigated.

It was revealed that the cold storage wallets that were intended to hold QuadrigaCX’s reserves only contained a small portion of the missing $190 million. In June 2019, accounting firm Ernst & Young released another shocking report. It described how Cotten moved millions of dollars in cryptocurrency from client accounts to other exchanges, which he subsequently used to support his extravagant lifestyle and personal trading activities.

Chinedu Echeruo, the Nigerian Man Who Built and Sold $1bn App to Apple

Chinedu Echeruo is a serial entrepreneur who has dared to imagine the future. In 2005, he founded HopStop, a groundbreaking travel software that has helped millions of people manage public transit in major cities worldwide.

HopStop was acquired by Apple in 2013 and much of its features has been subsequently included in Apple Maps.

HopStop wasn’t the only acquired company built by Echeruo. He co-founded Tripology. com, a platform that connects consumers with specialist travel professionals. The company was acquired by Rand McNally, an American travel and navigation company.

He later founded MindMeet, a networking platform based on the passion economy, where people can sell their expertise and advice in exchange for money and a promise to help the expert’s chosen charity.

Chinedu now runs his Love & Magic Company, a start-up studio that works with innovative groups to co-create businesses.

He has been rated one of Africa’s top ten most powerful persons by Forbes magazine.

Educational background

Chinedu attended secondary education at Kings College in Lagos, proceeded to Syracuse University, and subsequently earned an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.

After leaving college, he set himself up to work for a wide range of Mergers&Acquistions, financing, and private equity deals at J.P Morgan Chase’s M&A and Leveraged Finance departments for several years.

This opportunity helped him perfect his craft, dealing with finance and private equity transactions over those years.

The founding of HopStop

When Chinedu Echeruo initially arrived in New York in 1995, navigating the city was tough for him. And this was a legitimate concern shared by anyone who had recently relocated to a new city.

This led Chinedu to work on solving the problem; some years later, he built HopStop to accomplish precisely that.

The app developed to the point that it had as many as five million monthly users. They soon grew out to 600 cities because of the high acceptance rate.

Echeruo founded HopStop in 2005. The navigating platform provides door-todoor public transport, taxi, walking, bike, and hourly car rental directions in major metropolitan markets across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Australia, New Zealand, and Russia.

In 2007, the HopStop app won Black Enterprise’s Small Business Innovator of the Year. It was later designated as one of the top 100 fastest-growing software companies in the United States.

By 2010, Echeruo’s service had increased its revenue by 250 percent, from $574,268 to $2 million, then to about $5 million in 2012.

It’s no surprise that it drew the attention of Apple Inc., which paid an estimated $1 billion for HopStop.

After Apple acquisition

Following the sale of HopStop, Chinedu Echeruo joined Constant Capital Partners Ltd as a principal.

“I am delighted to be part of the transformation in culture and economy of Africa right now,” he explained his decision to join the boutique investment bank and personal investing company in West Africa.

Gigameet

Prior to joining Constant Capital Partners, Echeruo founded Gigameet in 2009, a “cause-driven” social media network now known as Mindmeet.

The platform was a recipient of the 2019 “World’s Most Innovative Company” award.

By

How Tope Awotana Built a $3Billion Company After a 3-time Failure

Tope Awotana is the CEO and founder of the $3 billion company, Calendly, a modern scheduling tool for high-performing teams and individuals that want to accelerate their business growth.

The scheduling platform, which was founded in 2013, has gained over 10

million users under Tope’s strategic management. The vision for Calendly began when Tope wasted the whole day going back and forth over email, trying to plan meetings.

This was the fuel for him to begin looking for a tool that makes scheduling easier and eliminates the need for back-andforth emails.

Most of the tools he discovered were slow and clumsy. He decided to go all-in with his idea after months of research, placing every penny he had earned into this new venture.

His wager paid off this time after three failed attempts. Tope’s company now generates about $30 million in annual revenue.

Early life and education

The 40-year-old founder is a born Nigerian, brought up in a middle-class family in Lagos. His mother worked at the Central Bank, while his father was a microbiologist and an entrepreneur.

Lagos, which is Nigeria’s economic centre, is also riddled with violence. And Awotona came face-to-face with, when he witnessed his father being shot and killed in a carjacking at the age of twelve.

“There was a part of me, from a very early age, that wanted to redeem him,” he said.

In 1996, he migrated to the United States at the age of 15. And studied computer science at the University of Georgia, before switching to business and management information, and graduating with a degree.

Becoming an Entrepreneur

Awotona got a job as a sales rep at IBM. He worked in sales, for the following seven years, selling software for tech companies, including Perceptive Software, Dell Technologies and Vertafore, but he had always aspired to be a successful entrepreneur. Due to this budding entrepreneurial spirit, he spent his evenings and weekends trying to start a company.

Most of his idea for Calendly was sparked by his frustration as a salesman. It was difficult for him to set up meetings, it was a task that most times took dozens of emails and days to complete.

Tope’s first venture was to create a dating site after reading an article on PlentyofFish, he soon recognised, however, that he lacked the necessary finances and abilities, and hence the venture was aborted.

His second business venture was an e-commerce site that sold projectors. However, he didn’t sell many, and the profit margins were poor. In addition, he was uninterested in projectors.

His third venture was a grill-selling e-commerce site. However, he was confronted with the same issues. He also lacked enthusiasm for that line of work.

Tope soon realised that he was only thinking about strategies for businesses to make money. He told himself that unless he concentrated on a problem he was enthusiastic about fixing, he would fail.

He had to wait another year before he discovered the problem. He remembered in the past that he wasted a lot of time using email to plan meetings. This began his search for the right scheduling tool.

The beginning of Calendly

In 2013, Tope founded Calendly in Atlanta Tech Village, a coworking space for entrepreneurs. The company, however, no longer has any physical offices.

He dipped into his retirement savings and maxed out his credit cards to fund it.

Awotana hired the Ukrainian firm Railsware for programming assistance, and eight years ago, was in Kyiv as rioters fought government forces in the streets.

He had a marketable product by late 2013, but no funds. Then a half-milliondollar seed investment led by Cummings came to the rescue.

The platform raised $350 million in capital last year from OpenView Venture Partners and Iconiq Capital, valuing the company at $3 billion.

Awotona’s majority holding is worth at least $1.4 billion. Along with David Steward, the 70-year-old founder of Missouri-based IT company World Wide Technology. Awotona is one of just two Black IT billionaires in the United States.

Individual users can use Calendly for free, while businesses normally pay $25 per user every month.

In 2021, he won the Most Admired CEO Award from the Atlanta Business Chronicle, as well as the Comparably Best CEOs Award in 2019.

Tope Awotana prospects

Awotona is now expanding beyond meeting scheduling to include tools that assist recruiters, salesmen, and other whitecollar workers in managing meetings both before and after they take place.

This entails assigning meetings to the appropriate individual at a major corporation, including essential information, such as agendas and budgets, in the invitation itself to streamline the meeting.

It also enables tracking results via integration with productivity applications like Salesforce.

“I loved coding, but it was too monotonous,” he says. “I’m probably too extroverted to be a coder.”

How Rediet Adebe is Using AI to Change the Narrative of Inequality and Social Justice

Recent documentaries have revealed how social media algorithms and other artificial intelligence (AI) technologies frequently discriminate against people from certain backgrounds. Phenomenal computer scientist Rediet Abebe wants to change that.

Abebe’s research focuses on developing mathematical and computational frameworks for investigating inequality and distributive justice issues.

The 29-year-old Ethiopian employs theoretical computer science techniques to assist in the development of algorithms and artificial intelligence systems that handle real-world challenges.

She’s looked at how income shocks, such as losing a job or losing government benefits, might push people into poverty, and she’s interested in how to better allocate government financial aid.

She’s also collaborating with the Ethiopian government to improve the algorithm the country employs to link high school students with institutions in order to better account for the demands of a varied population.

Abebe is a co-founder of the organisation Black in AI - a community of Black AI researchers - and Mechanism Design for Social Good, which brings together researchers from other disciplines to address social issues.

She is a Computer Science Assistant Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. She was previously a Junior Fellow at Harvard’s Society of Fellows.

Early life and education

Rediet Abebe was born and she grew up in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa. She attended Nazareth School, where she was taught the Ethiopian National Curriculum, before receiving a competitive meritbased scholarship to the International Community School of Addis Ababa for high school

She was a high-scoring student in Ethopia, and most students in this category were assigned to study medicine which made

Adebe panic because she wanted to study Maths.

“I was like 12 and super panicked that I might have to be a medical doctor instead of studying math, which is what I really wanted to do.” she said.

This brought about the idea for her to go abroad because she learned that

her doctoral degree in computer science at Cornell University.

Her dissertation received the 2020 Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (ACM SIGKDD) Dissertation Award and an honourable mention for the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Economics and Computation (ACM SIGecom) Dissertation Award for its contributions to numerous domains in computer science. She is the first Black woman in the history of the university to earn a Ph.D. in computer science.

The trigger for Adebe’s research

The trigger for the 29-year-old research started when she grew up in Ethiopia. Abede always tagged the country’s lack of enough resources for the residents as a community-level scarcity. But soon her argument was changed when she learnt about educational inequality in Cambridge’s public schools, which she noticed suffered in an environment of luxury.

“Just as AI systems susceptible to bias are a problem, so too is inadequate focus on contributions that improve the lives of marginalised communities, such as Black and brown individuals, economically vulnerable populations and many other groups whose interests are underserved in society,” she wrote in an article.

“I see this gap in action every day. I was born and raised in Ethiopia…So I look out for AI research focused on helping the people of Ethiopia and the people of Africa more generally.”

Mechanism Design for Social Good

In 2016, Abebe and Kira Goldner cofounded the MD4SG research effort, a multi-disciplinary research collective that employs algorithms and mechanism design to combat inequality.

She got a Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics and a Master of Science degree in applied mathematics from Harvard University. As an undergraduate, she co-authored research papers in mathematics, physics, and public health.

Throughout her time at Harvard she worked as a staff writer for The Harvard Crimson, focusing on the Cambridge public school system which was from 2009 to 2011.

Once she was done with college, she attended the University of Cambridge as a Governor William Shirley Scholar at Pembroke College.

Under the direction of Imre Leader, a Cambridge mathematics professor, she finished Part III of the Mathematics Tripos and earned a Master of Advanced Studies in pure mathematics.

American computer scientist, Jon Kleinberg assisted Abebe as she finished

Abebe began attending Cambridge school board meetings in order to learn more. She got increasingly motivated to assist as she learned more about the schools. However, she wasn’t sure how that desire fit in with her ambition to work as a research mathematician.

When Abebe was accepted into a doctoral program in mathematics, she decided to take a one-year intense math program at the University of Cambridge instead.

She changed her major to computer science while she was there, which allowed her to combine her talent for arithmetic with her strong desire to address social issues such as prejudice, unfairness, and lack of opportunity.

Adebe using AI

After garnering her skills in computer science, she has used her techniques to bridge the gap between who creates and deploys AI and those who use it.

MD4SG hosts an annual workshop series to promote research and connect the community of researchers working to increase social wellbeing through algorithms.

She co-founded and served as the inaugural Program Co-Chair for the ACM Conference on Equity and Access in Algorithms, Mechanisms, and Optimization (EAAMO) in 2021.

Black in AI

In 2016, Abebe and Timnit Gebru cofounded Black in AI, a network of 1,500 AI researchers.

The group hosts annual workshops at the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) and provides chances for networking and collaboration.

Abebe has led the Academic Program through Black in AI, for which she was named to the 2019 Bloomberg 50 list as a one to watch.

“In the US, you can get full financial aid if you do really well and get into the top schools.”

How Sam Udotong Bootstrapped His Transcription Startup After Pivoting Seven Times

In 2016, Sam Udotong arrived in San Francisco with only $100 in his pocket, unsure about his future prospects. The Nigerian-born entrepreneur went from eating three pizza slices and drinking a bottle of Soylent every day to owning the world’s largest transcription company.

Udotong, is the co-founder and CTO of Fireflies.ai, a venture-backed speechto-text transcription startup.

The entrepreneurial ride has been a roller coaster for Sam Udotong and his co-founder Krish Ramineni. They changed the course of their business seven times before settling on a strong foundation.

The company has offices in Hyderabad, India, and San Francisco. But at the beginning of the journey, the company first started at an MIT hackathon.

Udotong’s success has been nothing but sheer determination and relentlessness.

After graduation from MIT, many of Udotong’s friends went on to work for firms like Facebook and Google, but he opted to take a chance on himself and start his own business.

When the product didn’t resonate with clients, he asked family members in Nigeria to introduce him to engineers ready to work remotely, and he didn’t give up.

At the time, Fireflies was a bitcoin-based food delivery service for students on campus.

Educational background

Sam never considered launching a business before enrolling at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

He was born and raised in New Jersey, in a tiny village near Philadelphia, and attended MIT, where he majored in aerospace and computer science.

“That’s where I probably got my first taste, working with people who knew about tech. I never thought that I would do that before I got there,” he said.

Udotong found it easy to start a company due to vast opportunities of resources and guidance.

He stated that “one of the things that actually got me into tech was hackathons. MIT had several hackathons and when I was an undergrad, I would

go to some of them. One of them was where the actual original idea for fireflies started.”

Founding Fireflies

After graduating from MIT, he applied to graduate schools, where he got admission into really good programs alongside full-time job offers in Los Angeles, where he could earn like six figures.

“At the end of the day, I chose Fireflies. I woke up every day, excited to work on building something that could impact everyday lives.”

After deciding to start his company, Sam and his co-founder, Krish moved to Silicon Valley. The founders took the risk because they felt the best time to work on something was when they were young.

Fireflies began as an online food delivery app for students, allowing for bitcoin payments to be made.

Unfortunately, its slow speed yielded minute earnings, making the return of the capital invested a long shot.

Despite this, Udotong persisted in working 15 hours every day in a free co-working space, pivoting the business seven times while he bootstrapped the company due to a failure to raise funds.

Living in Silicon Valley, one of the United States’ most expensive cities, as a young grad without a job was not easy. Udotong had to change his habits and diet in order to survive in the city.

You would think Udotong situation was in great dismay, but with supportive people at his side like his co-founder, navigating the footwork to achieve his goals was a lot easier.

In 2022, the business has raised over $19 million, the most recent being a $14 million round headed by Khosla Ventures.

By Ebube Julius

Yonas Beshawred: the Black Founder Who Worked Twice as Hard to Scale in Silicon Valley

Yonas Beshawred is the CEO of StackShare and a slew of other businesses. Since its launch in 2014, his company, StackShare, has grown from strength to strength, allowing software engineers and IT organisations to share their tools and how they use them.

From what started as a side project on a WordPress blog, StackShare has raised $7 million and reached 1 million developers, engineers, CTOs, VPEs, architects, and founders.

Beshawred’s journey has been nothing short of rocky, but the results speaks for itself. Besides his work with StackShare, the 34-year-old co-founded Harambeans, a network of over 250 African entrepreneurs who, according to him, have collectively created over 3,000 jobs and raised over $400 million for their businesses.

He also assisted in the formation of Ethiopians in Tech and the Ethiopia COVID-19 Response Team (ECRT), a forum for experts from all over the world to work and collaborate on COVID-19 responses in Ethiopia.

Early life

After graduate school, with a degree in business, Beshawred worked for one of the world’s largest consulting firms, Accenture, for 18 months. He has always been interested in business and international development, but not necessarily tech.

However, his role at Accenture made him fond of tech by seeing how large companies made IT and large-scale technology decisions.

He worked in the IT strategy group, which gave him the opportunity to help big companies figure out a new data centre and its different components.

That was one of the things that inspired StackShare. Yonas who is also a voracious book reader, credit a book for his inspiration,

“I actually read this book called Founders at work by Jessica Livingston and I was just really inspired by what I read and after that book, I decided I had to get into software,” he said.

On this premise, he started studying humancomputer interaction at the University of Maryland, just to get deeper into software development.

Building StackShare

Building StackShare came with many hurdles, including building teams and getting funding.

To combat the issue of not having a co-founder, Yonas dealt with it by surrounding himself with people that were more skilled than him. This trait has also largely helped him when hiring or looking for a team.

His background was another challenge for him while building StackShare. He was a black founder from the East Coast without a tech background or an Ivy League pedigree. This made it hard for him to raise funds.

To counter this, Yonas made sure to prepare and out-perform in gaining traction, traffic and users for investors to analyse.

StackShare

The growth of StackShare was quick as the company entered Batch 15 of 500 Startups flagship accelerator in 2015, before eventually becoming the go-to place to debate technologies in 2020.

Today StackShare, a social network-like platform that allows developers and companies to rank open source, SaaS technology and developer tools, now boasts 1 million developers and CTOs with a recognition from Forbes as a Cloud 100 Rising Star.

For Yonas, this is a big win because there have been a few developer communities on the internet that have scaled to a million members.

“I truly believed that if my business was compelling, and I had traction, then they would invest. So I kept telling myself, traction trumps all.”

Jessica Matthews: the Techpreneur Who Invented a Power-Generating Soccer Ball

Nigerian-Americantechpreneur, Jessica Matthews was inspired on her visit to Nigeria for her aunt’s wedding. There was an electricity outage, and a diesel generator was used as an alternative. Though the power was restored, the smoke was hazardous to health. There, she conceived the idea of producing an environmentally friendly power generator.

Being a problem solver and having a background knowledge in energy came in handy for Matthews. In 2008, during her junior college, she invented Sockett, a soccer ball that doubles as a power generator. She did this with her classmate Julia Silverman, as an assignment in an engineering class.

Sockett retains kinetic energy as it is utilised. Also, a thirty-minute play produces sufficient energy to light a small LED light for three hours.

The launch of her startupSoccket

Despite not wanting to be a businesswoman, the Harvard Business School graduate found herself in the heart of it.

She said, “Believe it or not, I never aspired to be a businesswoman or run a major company. I always wanted to make cool, meaningful things and help people self-actualize and get more value out of whatever time they have left on this planet. As it turns out, to do that sustainably and at scale, you have to build a business.”

Thus, the Havard college graduate launched Uncharted Play in 2011 after quitting her full-time job at CrowdTap, a crowd-funding company.

Raising funds for Uncharted play

Jessica Matthews used Kickstarter and convertible debt to fund her firm at the initial stage. In the same year, she exhibited her invention at the Clinton Global Initiative University and also to ex-president Barack Obama during his 2013 visit to Tanzania.

As the company grew, she redirected the its attention to producing a larger variety of kinetic-energy-storing devices in collaboration with experienced manufacturers.

This included M.O.R.E, a Motion-based Off-Grid Renewable Energy, a technology that leverages Soccket’s energy storage mechanism.

This, in turn, led to the development of SOCCKET, an energy-generating soccer ball, and PULSE, an emergency batterycharging jump rope.

By leaping for 15 minutes, the jump robe creates and stores energy sufficient enough to power an LED for three hours. Both devices use the M.O.R.E to convert the power produced by minutes of play into hours of electricity.

Uncharted Play was renamed Uncharted Power in 2016. The company has been booming for three years in a row, with gross profit margins doubling yearly. In the same year, her company received $7 million in Series A funding, valuing it at $57 million.

Driving Expansion

Jessica Matthews has her sights set on the US market after dominating the African and Latin American markets with roughly 500,000 Socckets and Pulses in use as of 2017.

This is to be accomplished by enlisting the help of parents and young people interested in renewable energy and global issues.

By leveraging its Think Out of Bounds educational program, the company educates over one million kids in innovation and STEM.

In 2016, she established the Harlem Tech Fund (HTF), a non-profit organisation to support 100 new entrepreneurs and provide technology training to 10,000 Harlem residents. She served as the chairman of the HTF.

Due to her immense work, She was honoured with the Outstanding Corporate Diversity Award at the Harlem Economic Development Day in 2016.

Her achievements earned her the White House’s invitation from President Barack Obama to represent small businesses during the signing of the America Invents Act in 2012.

By receiving the highest Series A round fund ever, Jessica Matthew set a new record. She was, therefore, selected to anchor the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations (NASDAQ) opening ceremony bell on behalf of all Forbes 30 Under 30 alumni.

In 2021, Jennifer M. Granholm, the Secretary of Energy, appointed her to the Electricity Advisory Committee to advise the Department of Energy.

How to Tap Into Opportunities in Africa’s $200 Billion Energy Industry

Article || By Wale Ameen

In April 2019, the World Bank Group announced the approval of over $200 million support fund for a Regional OffGrid Electrification Project (ROGEP).

This included $150 million in the form of credit and grant from the International Development Association. There’s also

a $74.7 million contingent recovery grant from the Clean Technology Fund to the West African Development Bank and ECOWAS Center for Renewable Energy and Energy efficiency in a bid to increase off-grid access to electricity for 19 countries in West Africa and the Sahel region.

These countries include Benin, Burkina Faso, Cabo Verde, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Cote d’Ivoire, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo.

According to the bank, the overall objective of ROGEP, it said, was to increase access

of households, businesses, and public institutions to electricity through the provision of stand-alone solar systems through a harmonised approach. It is projected to benefit about 1.7 million people across these African countries.

While the continent’s energy sector is a vital component to its economic

development, the journey to energy sufficiency is far from being a reality. Interestingly, energy demand in Africa has been on the increase at an annual rate of 3%, which is the highest when compared with other continents but supply has regrettably continued to lag behind.

Initiatives like the above give an optimistic look to Africa’s energy shortage which continues to hamper development as it is a major requirement in the growth of any nation’s businesses.

A look at the numbers…

Over 640 million Africans have no access to energy, the African Development Bank (AfDB) says. This, in turn, translates to an electricity rate for African countries at just above 40 percent, the lowest in the world.

The bank also states that the per capita consumption of energy in sub-Saharan Africa (excluding South Africa) is 180 kWh, a far cry from that recorded in other parts of the world, for example, the United States boasts of 13,000 kWh and 6,500 kWh recorded in Europe.

Taking a look at the continent’s energy mix, according to BP Energy Outlook 2020, Africa’s energy mix has been relatively constant within the last 30 years and despite its number of renewable energy projects, the overall scale of renewables in Africa remains small.

Instead, it has been largely dominated by the use of fossil fuel with hydropower. Despite a recent shift within the renewable energy mix to accelerate the use of solar and wind technologies, the effort remains largely negligible at a measly 1.6%.

According to the review, the composition of the energy mix and their share as as follows; Oil - 38,7%, Natural gas - 29,7%, Coal - 22,1%, Nuclear - 0,7%, Hydro - 6,8%, Bioenergy - 0,4%, Solar - 0,6%, Wind 1,0%.

Going by this data, Africa’s energy industry is a $200 billion strong opportunity waiting to be tapped. There is probably no better time for large-scale investors to look at the sector and tap into the abundant opportunities.

Meanwhile, as it stands, a shift to the more cleaner types of energy like solar and wind is the way forward, especially with the race to achieve clean energy globally.

AfDB’s efforts at providing funding for large scale energy projects

In a bid to contribute to the improvement and plug a little of the hole, the African Development Bank recently launched a program tagged a New Deal on Energy for Africa, a partnershipdriven effort with an aspirational goal of achieving universal access to energy in Africa by 2025.

This partnership drive is built on five inter-related and mutually reinforcing principles which are: (i) raising aspirations to solve Africa’s energy challenges and establishing a Transformative Partnership on Energy for Africa.

Others are mobilising domestic and international capital for innovative financing in Africa’s energy sector; supporting African governments in strengthening energy policy, regulation and sector governance; and increasing African Development Bank’s investments in energy and climate financing.

This effort basically provides a framework through which the bank has partnered and continues to partner with individual countries to fund bankable projects that will deliver access to energy in Africa.

According to the AfDb president, Akinwunmi Adesina, about US$12 billion has been committed between 2016 and 2020 and this is expected to leverage US$45 – 50 billion in cofinancing for energy projects in Africa during the period.

It’s worthy of note that the AfDB’s energy intervention drive comes with a special focus on encouraging clean and renewable energy solutions.

This it says will require the provision of 160 GW of new capacity, 130 million new on-grid connections, 75 million

new off-grid connections and provision of 150 million households with access to clean cooking solutions.

This shows that there are abundant prospects and financing opportunities for businesses in this sector.

How to tap into the abundant opportunity in Africa’s energy industry

From the foregoing, looking into the provision of services in the area of renewable energy is the way to go for startups across Africa.

With the global drive for countries to look away from nonrenewable and dirty energy sources which include oil, gas, and coal since they are only available in limited amounts, many are looking to transition into the use of renewable energy.

As such on the energy mix list, there is a drive for more investment in renewable and clean energy sources such as wind and solar.

The use cases are numerous; households, businesses, factories all need this provision and startups that seek to target users within this demography already have their path laid out for them.

As it stands, solar is more favoured, possibly because of its lower cost for setup. Additionally, Africa has an abundant stretch of sunlight all year round the year which makes this a great resource to be maximised.

There is a need for more investment and off-grid energy service providers across the African continent. The resources as noted, are in abundance here and it’s almost a shame that Africans are the ones lagging behind in the exploitation of this energy source.

Countries like China and the United States currently lead the pack of countries making use of renewable energy with the equivalent of 349.2 million tonnes of oil in renewable energy, while the U.S. consumed 143 million tonnes.

With this and the focus of pan-African agencies like the AfDB announcing targeted support in this regard, there is no better time to invest in the industry.

The efforts of renewable energy startups such as Arnegy and Wisolar is commendable as they are leading the charge to provide more Africans with off-grid energy.

Startups with this focus looking for financing can approach the AfDB through its multi-donor Special Fund, Sustainable Energy for Africa (SEFA), through which financing is provided for private sector investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency.

How Munashe Mugonda, a Farm Girl, Sparked a Shift in Zimbabwe’s Economy

Before Munashe Mugonda became a phenomenon in the Zimbabwean fintech industry, her journey started as an everyday girl who yearned for a world beyond the farm where she was born and raised.

As a child, the now Technical Lead at Cummins used to ponder and ask her father whether there was an easier way to complete their daily tasks.

She said, “I do ask my dad if there is no machine that we can instruct to do these things that we are repeatedly doing. I was always trying to look for a convenient way of doing things.”

Her curiosity developed even further throughout high school. This made her join programming classes, not caring that she was the only girl in the class.

She was not distracted by the gender imbalance in class and graduated as one of Zimbabwe’s best students.

The opportunity to explore the world

With her exceptional programming results, Munashe Mugonda got a scholarship for talented students from low socioeconomic backgrounds to study Applied Mathematics and Computer Science at Franklin College in the United States.

“I saw this program as a way for me to travel the world and find a suitable spot to apply my abilities and follow my passion for making a change in the workplace and my home country,” she said.

Although Mungoda did not have a fully-funded scholarship, she was determined to make the most of the situation and pursue her ambition.

When her father questioned why she decided to leave Zimbabwe and choose the Franklin scholarship over the Joshua Nkomo Scholarship to the University of Zimbabwe, she told her dad she was leaving so she could return and make a positive impact.

“If there were no reason to come back home, I wouldn’t be leaving. I chose to study abroad so that one day, I could return, fully equipped to be part of the economic, social, and political progression,” she said. Indeed she returned and founded Ruzhowa SACCOS.

Building the fintech startup, Ruzhowa SACCOS

Besides working in Cummins, Munashe Mugonda is the co-founder of Ruzhowa Savings and Credit Cooperative Society (SACCOS), a Zimbabwean community fintech that allows individuals in the diaspora to invest in Zimbabwe.

The idea for Ruzhowa was conceived on a Zimbabwean Whatsapp platform where she is a member.

In 2017, she realised during one of the platform’s discussions that no Zimbabweans could invest in the country.

To do that, you need to have $50 million. This gave foreign investors an edge over Zimbabweans.

She said, “When Zimbabweans invest in Zimbabwe, there is a multiplicative effect in which the money goes back into the economy, and it continues to grow”. This gap led to the creation of Ruzhowa SACCOS.

One of the startup’s notable investors is Warren Buffet.

Develop a worldview through the lens of Franklin College.

Munashe Mugonda was also a hands-on student in college. She did various internships to round out her education with real-world experience.

She worked part-time for Multiply Technology as a web developer. However, she was interested in statistical analysis and machine learning. Noticing her interest, her supervisor connected her with someone at Cummins.

She said, “In my second year of college, I did an internship under Cummins’ chemistry department. I was in a programme where I worked between 15 to 19 hours for Cummins every week and went to school simultaneously.”

While there, Cummins offered her a full-time position, which made her graduate ahead of her class and launched her career.

Today, Munashe is working on an MBA sponsored by Cummins. She says, “I appreciate that Cummins respects and honours the fact that they are working with somebody who is or is trying to juggle things.”

Each experience has enabled her to learn about America from different perspectives and broaden her horizons.

Jihan Abbas, the Kenyan Woman Driving Transformation in Africa’s Insurance Tech

Profile || By: Oyetoun Olabisi

As a graduate of Bayes Business School and the University of Oxford, Jihan stepped into the corporate world as a commodity futures trader, trading in the New York and London sugar markets in London.

Despite a satisfactory earning, Jihan Abbas was not fulfilled. According to her, she is not only motivated by money but impact.

“I worked in a job where making money was the dominant motivation. For me, that didn’t seem like enough, and it’s also not what I wanted to stand for as a human being,” she said.

Jihan, therefore, started looking for a way out of the puzzle. Luckily, the opportunity to solve a major problem presented itself while she was on vacation in Kenya.

Stepping into the insurance industry

During her conversation with a waitress, she discovered that most people do not have an insurance policy to protect them and their single source of income from unforeseen risk.

She said, “Across Africa, many people rely on a single source of income, but they aren’t protecting it using financial services like insurance, so that was one of the key things for me, thinking how can we provide a safety net for people.”

Her research further revealed that formal insurance coverage penetration in Africa was as low as 3%. The more facts she discovered about the problem besieging the insurance industry in her country and the continent at large, the more she yearned to solve the problem.

But as a young African woman and a fresh graduate yet to get the hang of the corporate world, she was scared. At the same time, she wanted to live a life of impact, one that her new discovery may have presented.

With this mindset, she quit her job in London and pursued her hunch regardless of the fears.

The creation of Griffin and Lami insurance

In 2016, Jihan Abbas founded Griffin, Kenya’s first digital-only car insurance platform. It enables people to buy and access insurance within minutes.

By 2018, she launched Lami, an insurance-as-aservice platform and Application Programming Interface (API). This allows insurers, banks and others to provide consumers with affordable and flexible digital insurance. Many businesses leverage the platform to create and process insurance products.

“We are democratising access to insurance by creating the infrastructure to facilitate others to be able to create and distribute products,” she added.

With the API, the gap between business-tobusiness (B2B) and business-to-customers (B2C) is bridged. For instance, in some banks, 94% of their transactions are conducted online except for insurance. For such, people will have to go into the bank.

Beyond the shores of Kenya

The Griffin car insurance App has been used to complete more than 10,000 policies and more than a million dollars in premiums underwritten. The company has effectively executed its B2C and B2B products with 12+ partners.

This includes Sendy, a tech-logistics company that provides end-to-end logistics for businesses by connecting them to hundreds of transporters online.

To ensure the fulfilment of its mission, Jihan Abbas acquired Bluewave Insurance Agency, an insurtech startup. Through this, she aims to bridge the insurance gap in the underserved population in Africa.

Through Bluewave’s already established presence on the continent, thousands of people from Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Nigeria, Gambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo will have access to insurance through Lami.

“We are making this investment so that we can continue to reach out to more partners across the continent, allowing us to provide more people with the policies they require,”

Jihan Abbas is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Lami Technologies, a digital insurance platform that enables the distribution and servicing of financial products.

How Tosin Osibodu Bridged the Gap in the Nigerian Stock and Investment Industry through Chaka

Although a certified tech individual, Tosin Osibodu is a stockbroker by passion. The passion for trading and investment led the engineering graduate to launch Chaka, an investment platform that allows Africans to buy and invest in local and global stocks.

Apart from founding Chaka out of passion, Tosin also founded the company with the intention of proffering a feasible solution to the Nigerian stock market problem, which hindered Nigerians from buying and investing in stocks both locally and internationally.

The huge gap

While schooling at the University of Pennsylvania, he noticed that in terms of accessibility, there was a huge difference between the United States stock market and Nigeria’s stock market structure.

Compared to the U.S stock acquisition that is seamless, buying and investing in stock in Nigeria is a hurdle. This prevents Nigerians, especially the middle class, from investing and increasing their income over time.

Due to this, the local market and currency performance in the country continues to drastically decline while the dollar, on the

other hand, continues to skyrocket, and international companies in the country continue to generate increased revenue.

Looking at the data, he discovered that it was due to an imbalance in the industry. While international firms like Netflix, MTN, and Apple continue to generate billions of revenue from the Nigerian market, nothing goes back to the people.

This is because they cannot buy and invest in the country to have a share of the profit. He reasoned that if Nigerians could invest in such brands, they would be able to benefit from the profits being declared.

A step in the right direction

After getting all his facts right, Tosin Osibodu returned to Nigeria, his country. With his skill as a software engineer, he partnered with his cousin, Bolanle Osibodu, a financial expert.

Blending their expertise, they developed an automated system that makes the investment process in Nigeria seamless. In 2019, they founded Chaka.

With the completion of a basic verification procedure and funding of accounts, Nigerians can acquire and invest in stocks.

The platform also allows users to invest in index funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that represent different industries, nations, and regions. This provides diversification of portfolios and mutual funds.

Thanks to its no-minimum investment policy, the stock market is made available to everyone, not just the wealthy few.

He says, “If you are above 18 years and interested in investing, we don’t believe that funds should restrict you”.

Chaka’s milestones

In 2021, Chaka became Nigeria’s first financial technology start-up to acquire a digital sub-broker license from the

Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). This gave the company the authorisation to trade stocks digitally.

In the same year, the firm partnered with TradingView, a popular online charting tool for investors, to enable users to access and detect investment opportunities in the global market.

This made Chaka the first African broker to launch TradingView for retail investors and businesses on the continent.

According to Tosin Osibodu, “This partnership with TradingView aligns with our mission to enable borderless digital investing for every African.

As we work to expand our footprints on the continent, one of our key objectives

is to identify and harness strategic partnerships. Also, to leverage our proprietary infrastructure to deliver world-class, leading tools and platforms for Africans to invest, trade, and build lasting wealth”.

Life before Chaka

Before founding Chaka, Tosin held different tech positions between 2014 and 2019 at prominent firms such as AppNexus, Citiserve, and GUMCO.

He also co-founded Diastora, an e-commerce startup that distributes in-demand ethnic foods in the United States. He acted as the company’s chief executive officer (CEO) from 2014 - 2016.

By

Phares Kariuki: A Tale of Trials, Challenges & Making a Comeback

The story of Phares Kariuki teaches that every time you fall, you need to rise, dust yourself off, and give that dream yet another go. It’s okay to make mistakes, don’t brood over them, but learn from them and move on.

Following boardroom brawls with venture capital investors at his initial startup, Angani, which he co-founded

with his friend, Brian Muita, who was the CTO, Phares decided to quit the startup.

A power tussle for the soul of the startup led to a board meeting where Phares was to be relieved of his role as CEO but to retain his co-founder, Brian Muita, as CTO.

However, they both rather offered to resign from their positions, but the board wanted them to transfer all control, and the issues surrounding passwords and login details were the next nut they had to crack.

They asked for written documentation to absolve them of any liability once they released the same, but it appeared the board members were unwilling to commit. They were promptly sued, but Phares and his co-founder won and later counter-sued members of the board.

Following a long-drawn legal tussle, they both left the startup in October 2015, but this would later cause a shutdown of systems during which customers’ infrastructures were thrown offline.

However, this didn’t deter Phares or his co-founder and colleague.

Angani was a budding cloud infrastructure sensation. It was the first fully automated public cloud provider in Sub-Saharan Africa. It was also able to have the first television station that was fully cloud-based without physical infrastructure.

Before he left, Phares was able to grow the Angani business from scratch to become a company with over tens of thousands of dollars in recurring revenue.

He had to quit the startup despite his ambitious plan of growth to scale the company and its services to become a market leader both locally and in the region in the area of cloud service provisioning.

He, along with Brian Muita, subsequently went ahead to launch yet another startup called Node Africa, a data management company that provides Kenyan enterprises with tailored-made cloud infrastructure solutions.

His action of pulling out of Angani sent several lawsuits his way, but he was apparently undeterred.

He rode through the waters and subsequently went on to found another startup in the same industry.

Speaking of the experience, he said “We can dwell on what happened, or we can move on with our lives.”

His new startup Node Africa which was subsequently launched in January 2016 has since gone on to make a name for itself.

Node’s approach to cloud service provisioning is that of bespoke tailor-made solutions for each and every enterprise it works for. According to the company, its approach is neither public, private, nor hybrid but rather of cloud solutions built in response to the enterprise’s needs regardless of the provider.

Node Africa has since gone on to become a leading player in the cloud infrastructure space and it has already received several industry recognitions.

While speaking during its launch, Phares said, “Our team has years of experience running critical systems in Kenya and Africa as a whole. We know what it means to design highly available systems with nominal or no downtime. Our expertise also lies in building highly secure systems to safeguard from any types of breeches, both within and without the organisation.”

Node Africa helps its customers, who are usually enterprise users from startups, SMEs, and large corporations, design and implement solutions for them to ensure they derive maximum value from their cloud infrastructure.

Phares has over 10 years of experience in the cloud and enterprise technology space within Kenya and Africa. Between 2009 and 2011, he went through courses and certifications for VMware, technical and sales. This gave him knowledge of both technical and commercial applications of virtualization technology.

He is currently the CEO of Pure Infrastructure Limited, which he founded in January 2021. Before launching Angani, he was Project Manager at the African Media Initiative. He had also served as EA Product Manager for VMware at Westcon Africa.

Phares attended Strathmore School and Kenyatta University between 2005 and 2009.

He says he is passionate about technology in Africa and cloud infrastructure in particular. According to him, he believes Africa is the “cloud first” continent.

Kenya’s Kahenya Kamunya is a techpreneur who has successfully carved a niche for himself in the PAY TV sector in his home country of Kenya.

In 2014, he was listed as one of Africa’s 15 tech entrepreneurs to watch by CNN for his internet-based content streaming startup, Able Wireless.

Kahenya’s innovation, Able Wireless, is a game changer which is challenging the big names within the Kenyan media streaming industry by offering the service for a fraction of the price the big names like DSTV, Ruku, Star Times, and Safaricom, which is the largest telecom company in East Africa, are charging.

Able Wireless provides entertainment content to Kenyans through streaming via the internet, which is done through a wireless network-based set-up box. Essentially, Able Wireless, which is a home-grown Netflix kind of service, is a low-cost video-on-demand (VOD) streaming service that uses a combination

of a wireless router and an internet subscription to provide its service to Kenyans.

According to Kahenya, the innovation is a 100% locally built solution, with the only thing foreign being the equipment. Its ownership and management are all local.

The solution includes a Raspberry Pi-powered TV box and an internet connection. Set up for this is Kshs 2500 and monthly payments are Kshs 800 for an internet connection and media content streaming.

Initially scheduled to launch in 2014, the startup experienced several delays in securing approval and eventually launched in 2016 with a pilot for home internet in Ruaraka, Nairobi.

The monthly subscription-based streaming platform signed up more than 20,000 subscribers even before it launched. This obviously stemmed from its low cost and mass appeal.

It has been tagged as a disruptive business model within Kenya’s Pay TV services industry as it was seen as a service targeted at the masses. It cost KES. 800.00 ($6.80) a month and allowed virtually anyone, be it students or young home owners, to be able to afford unlimited video streaming over the internet as well as general internet access.

According to the founder, the diversity of the service and delivery mechanism, which is cheaper, stands it out from the pack of other providers, who interestingly have deep pockets. The Able Wireless solution is affordable by as much as 83 percent of Kenyans and this basically gives the startup leverage and advantage over the big guys.

Kahenya started off Able Wireless following his experience in technical and media companies in South Africa, the United Kingdom, and Kenya.

Speaking on what inspired the product, he revealed that he realised that there was no appropriate infrastructure to deliver both connectivity and content and that this essentially was why everything else had failed.

According to him, as against the government’s claim that there were 16 million internet users in Kenya, in reality, there were just about four, five, or six million. Even with the numbers, the country did not have any independent infrastructure to deliver content.

From his research, they found a way to go about it, and they went ahead to do it. He noted that there was a need for indigenous hands to get on board and do things rather than wait for foreign companies to come in and do things for them.

At the company’s inception, it was the very first indigenously owned company to deliver connectivity and media content for as low as 500 shillings a month.

The company has been able to build its own structure, which is independent of existing platforms in the country.

By Joseph Ekeng

How Neil Du Preez Has Changed the Face of Transportation in South Africa

Climate change is an everpresent threat to the world’s economy, and it is estimated that as much as 18 percent of the global Gross Domestic Product could be wiped out by 2050 if the global temperature rises by 3.2°C.

But while the scourge of climate change is a global phenomenon, the African continent feels much of the impact; that is why some African entrepreneurs are

very much involved in efforts to find sustainable solutions to the regressive weather pattern that endangers the continued survival.

One African entrepreneur at the forefront of this noble quest is South African genius Neil du Preez.

Preez, an automobile expert, is the founder of the light automobile utility company MellowCan. They are the manufacturers of The revolutionary eco-friendly vehicle popularly called MellowVan.

The auto concept was developed in mid-2015 as Preez sought new ways to change the urban transport landscape in South Africa to reduce its carbon footprint and make it more affordable.

Who is Neil Du Preez

The South African once described himself as someone passionate about urban transport and the development of last-mile delivery solutions.

His contribution to creating eco-friendly solutions in automobiles has earned him global accolades, including Global Gifted Citizen Award, African Entrepreneurship Award, and Siemens Foundation’s Empowering People Award.

He is also regarded as a thought leader in the global fight against climate change. And has been invited to speak at major climate change conferences like World Bank’s South African Sustainability Conference, Microsoft’s BizSpark program, and the Durban Innovation Summit.

How Neil Du Preez Founded MellowCab

The concept of MellowCab started in 2015 when Preez began to worry about the carbon implications of using a traditional taxi for transportation. According to him, 80% of urban trips take less than 4 kilometres. He insisted that it is

inefficient to use taxis for such a short journey, and Preez thought it would make better sense to come up with a smaller and more economical alternative. So he came up with the concept of building locally-produced electric vehicles, which he called MellowCab.

Mellowcabs is an electric three-wheeled vehicle designed for eco-friendly and efficient transportation in urban areas.

The entrepreneur started by building eight MellowCab prototypes, which he subjected to many tests.

As soon as the prototypes hit the roads, demands began to roll in. First, the advertisers showed interest; then, the company started to grow steadily until it became a part of the transport system in South Africa.

Commenting on the vehicle, Perez said, “We have developed ultra-rigid roll cage, safety belts and proximity sensors for the vehicles, and some will be fitted with doors.

I also recognize there are some security issues in South Africa. In very slow-moving traffic, there is a risk of bag-snatching. Passengers will be able to use lockable baggage areas underneath the seat to keep the property safe.”

From MellowCab to MellowVan

Over the years, the business environment changed rapidly, forcing Perez to tweak its business model as the company diverted from moving passengers to moving cargo. This gave birth to what is now called MellowVan, which is more of an electric delivery van.

MellowVans provide low-cost, efficient and emission-free delivery services in cities. The company also noted that MellowVan has less maintenance cost and downtime and higher operating efficiency.

Each of the MellowVans makes use of lithium-ion battery cells that come from Asia. The batteries are then assembled in a plant in Western Cape by MellowCabs.

However, the company has stressed that it is on the way to attaining complete production in South Africa. Perez reveals that the manufacturing plant is almost completed, and the ISO has been secured.

Meanwhile, the EV batteries which power MellowVans are seen as more environmentally friendly than gas emissions. More so, they can be recycled.

According to its website, MellowVans has enough cargo space to deliver almost anything and can offer cold chain solutions. MellowVans cater to almost every e-commerce player.

Other important features of the van include:

• More than enough room for parcels

• Affordable enough to deliver food

• Lockable cargo area

• 4 Cubic metres of cargo space

• Custom racking

MellowVan’s business evolution

As a result of its evolution from transporting passengers to delivering cargoes, MellowVan, now handles deliveries for top multinational e-commerce companies like DHL, Mr Delivery, and TakeaLot, among others.

Perez says he sees a future where daily consumables like milk, bread etc. can be delivered daily.

He reveals that his company could also explore the possibilities of a contactless delivery system like self-driving technologies. But he is not a fan of drone deliveries.

How Bob Van Dijk Made His Mark in the Global E-commerce Market

Back in University, Bob Van Dijk was described as an average student. Not many people gave him a chance to scale great heights in his career, but over the years, he has dramatically turned his misfortunes around and now sits on top of the corporate ladder as one of the top CEOs in the world and the highest-paid executive in the Netherlands.

Profile

Van Dijk, a dutch national, is the CEO of Naspers Group, a multinational company headquartered in Cape Town, South Africa. The Group’s investment interests span but are not limited to technology and media.

He became the Group CEO of the organisation barely one year after he was appointed to run its e-commerce subsidiary.

How Bob Van Dijk became Naspers CEO

Before Van Dijk joined Naspers, he used to be an associate at Mckinsey and co. Inc. It was there that he honed his skills in management and corporate leadership. He rose fast in the company, contributing to its growth and expansion. Later he left to join the leadership team at Schibsted’s global Classifieds business.

While at Schibsted, where he was the Chief Operating Officer, Van Dijk began to carve a niche for himself in the e-commerce and digital media space. He brought innovation and executed core strategies that drove growth for the company. He also had a brief stint with e-commerce giant eBay.

His impact in the organisation and other places where he had worked distinguished him as a unique talent in his segment and paved the way for his appointment on October 8, 2013, as the chief executive officer of Allegro group.

Under his watch, Allegro Group, a subsidiary company of Naspers, grew its revenue to over $1 billion and staff strength skyrocketed to over 6500 across Central and Eastern Europe.

Barely one year after he pitched his tent with Allegro he was promoted to Group CEO of Naspers Company, putting him in overall charge of the multinational behemoth, which has footprints in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East.

Also, in 2019, he was named CEO of Prosus Group, a position he holds alongside that of Naspers.

The world’s best in e-commerce

By 2014, Van Dijk had pretty much conquered his industry. He was a champion in the global e-commerce space. So when Koos Bekker quit his role as CEO of Naspers later that year, they could not think of a better person to replace him.

Bekker was confident that Van Dijk would do a better job than he did. He described Dijk as the best in e-commerce globally.

“They needed a capable man to lead them to prosperity and Dijk was qualified. His ability to effectively manage German eBay in his various capacities as the Vice President and Managing Director made Dijk the ideal candidate,” Bekker said.

Naspers growth

Since he was appointed Naspers Group CEO, Van Dijk has piloted the company to an extraordinary growth phase, positioning it as one of the key drivers of innovation and market leadership in various segments.

He has also made several strategic acquisitions to give the company a foothold in key markets with significant growth potential.

Acquisition of BillDesk

In 2021, in a bid to deepen its presence in the Indian market and expand market share, Prosus, the Dutch-listed arm of Naspers, concluded a $4.7-billion acquisition of BillDesk.

Following the acquisition, the combined entity of BillDesk and PayU, which is the global payments brand of the tech multinational, emerged as one of the top online payments providers — both globally and in India — with an annual total payment volume (TPV) of $147 billion.

The largest company in JSE

As a result of his efforts, Naspers is now the largest company listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange by market capitalisation. Prosus is also the largest listed consumer internet company by asset value.

Reward for job well done

For his hard work, Van Dijk received a handsome reward of $137 million in salary, pension, benefits and incentives, according to its 2019 remuneration report. He also got a 10 per cent increase in his salary in the coming financial year.

At just 49 years, Van Dijk’s extraordinary success as a CEO places him in the hall of fame of great business leaders of his generation.

Jeremy Hondara: The Face of the New Jumia

n April 2019 when Jumia got listed on New York Stock Exchange, it was a proud moment for the African e-commerce giant because it was the first company on the continent to do so. The entry into the iconic NYSE underlined Jumia’s growth trajectory and its ambition for future expansion.

Everything went according to plan at the beginning. Jumia listed at $14.50

a share, valuing the company at $1.1bn. Just four days later, its stock hit $49.77, raising its value to an African startup record of $3.8bn.

Jumia’s Fraud Crisis

But the euphoria didn’t last. Less than one year after the historic milestone, the company suffered a spectacular decline that shook it to the roots as a result of allegations of fraud and concealed losses.

What followed was embarrassing fraud lawsuits in New York courts and a public relations disaster over its identity.

The nightmare quickly impacted the company’s share price which plummeted to an all-time low of $2.15 by August.

As a result, the company was forced to pull out of three of its 14 country markets - Rwanda, Tanzania and Cameroon - in quick succession and tried to chart a path to profitability.

And as if that was not bad enough, the company’s original owner, German technology investor Rocket Internet, dumped its entire 11% stake, further worsening the crisis.

“Jumia’s first year on the NYSE is a proper reflection of the value of the company,” said Rebecca Enonchong, a Cameroonian tech entrepreneur and a critic of the firm.

Jumia’s turnaround

This was a make or mar situation for the e-commerce company. However, within a year of the crisis, the company’s fortune dramatically turned around and its share price surged to an all-time high of $69.89 by February of 2020.

(Jumia’s shares now trade at just over $6.20 as of June 17, largely because of the crash in the wider equities market globally).

One man that is credited for the transformation is Jeremy Hodara, Jumia co-CEO. He has steadied the ship by being laser-focused on profitable business models and profitable growth by implementing a system of gradual monetization and cost discipline.

In a recent interview, Jeremy explained that the reason for Jumia’s turnaround in fortune is the determination

to create growth opportunities by tapping into new markets and growth possibilities.

According to Jeremy, “The most exciting thing about e-commerce is that first, you build large assets for your own use, but it becomes relevant for other stakeholders over time. For us, we have an application and website with very engaged visitors, and we’re exploring having third-party advertisers who place ads on the platform.

“Our logistics service is also another way. We’re building tools and technology to equip our logistics partners and help them become more productive. This drives our costs per delivery down and is the type of benefit that comes with scaling.”

Hodara has also positioned Jumia to make significant inroads into payment and fintech by investing in JumiaPay which is now a major driver of growth for the company. In Q1 of 2021, the payment platform grew by 21% as payment volume grew from $35.5million to $42.9million.

Who is Jeremy Hodara

Jeremy is a French businessman and one of the four founders of Jumia. The other co-founders are Sacha Poignonnec, Tunde Kehinde and Raphael Kofi. Before starting Jumia, Jeremy used to work at McKinsey in France, India and USA.

It was during his time at Mckinsey that he saw the e-commerce opportunity in Africa and started working towards it.

How Jeremy Started Jumia

With the help of his four friends, Jeremy launched Jumia in Lagos, Nigeria in 2012 and then expanded to other countries across Africa such as Egypt, Morocco, Ivory Coast, Kenya and South Africa.

Jumia whose services have expanded to include E-commerce, Internet, Retail, Marketplace, Payment, Logistics recently announced a partnership with UPS which will enable it to access more than 200 countries.

Having been able to riggle out of its previous crisis, Jeremy says Jumia is now fully focused on adding value to Africa’s largely untapped e-commerce by creating products that engender customer satisfaction. However, the future look a bit trickier for the company following Amazon’s recent entry into the Nigerian market.

By Joseph Ekeng

Digital Transformation: Where Will Africa be in 2032?

Digitalisation offers a massive opportunity for prosperity and economic growth for Africa, but the continent needs to scale up investment in key areas to tap into the full potential of the digital economy.

In the last two decades, the digital revolution across Africa has been one of the most exciting developments on the continent. Digitisation has become a powerful tool driving socio-economic transformation in the region’s critical sectors

responsible for wealth creation and prosperity.

Investments in digital tools inspire and increase efficiency in the production and distribution of goods and services, opening up opportunities for revenue growth for millions of African youths and

enhancing connectivity and communication between the government and citizens.

The improvement in the ICT sector now accounts for about five percent of the region’s Gross Domestic Product.

But while Africa may be making some good progress towards closing the gap with the rest of the world in the knowledge-based digital economy, is the region moving fast enough, and where will the continent be in 2032?

Internet penetration as an enabler of growth

The sharp growth of the internet and mobile penetration has been a major enabler for the digital revolution in Africa.

Reports indicate that more than 80% of Africans have mobile subscriptions. This far outstrips the global average of 66.2%. Similarly, as of 2021, about 33% of the continent’s population is linked to the internet.

This has enormous economic benefits for the continent because growth in the mobile segment has so far created more than a 1.7million jobs and has boosted the region’s economy by at least $144billion.

And with the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic and the attendant lockdown, which had a telling effect on the continent’s economy, digitalisation has become even more imperative to accelerate economic progress.

Africa is a forerunner in mobile money

Amidst the digital transformation, some African countries are leveraging expanded connectivity and mobile penetration to make a difference in the lives of citizens. Courtesy of the rise of Kenya’s M-PESA, Africa is ahead of other regions in terms of mobile financial services delivery.

According to a report, Mobile money transaction values grew in Africa by 39% in 2021 to US$701.4 billion – making up about 70% of global transaction values, which hit over $1 trillion for the first time in 2021.

On the other hand, Sierra Leone, one of the world’s poorest nations, recently established the Directorate of Science, Innovation and Technology (DST).

The platform includes a “national financial data architecture with embedded automated financial tools” designed to improve service delivery and lower corruption.

Côte d’Ivoire also encourages change by establishing a Research and Development (R&D) tax incentive to steer investments away from commodities to innovation. At the same time, Tunisia has offered state salaries for up to three startup founders per company during the first year of operation, with a window to return to their old jobs if the startups fail.

Alongside these transformations, digital trades are rapidly growing while the Fintech services and cryptocurrencies have become the bedrock for financial inclusion by providing a large number of services to people excluded from the traditional financial architecture.

Africa’s least connected region

But while the transformation in the digital sector is undeniable, Africa still lags behind other regions in vital digital ranking. With 33% internet connectivity and 34% mobile broadband, the continent is at the bottom of the global internet penetration index.

This means Africans have lesser opportunities in the global digital economy when compared with their contemporaries from Europe or America.

“Few citizens have digital IDs, businesses adopting digital technologies remain the exception rather than the norm, and few governments are investing strategically in developing digital infrastructure, services, skills, and entrepreneurship,” says Dr Vera Songwe, Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa.

Hurdles to the digital revolution

However, for Africa to catch up with the rest of the world, it first must identify the key hurdles that undermine its digital aspirations.

Dr Amani Abou-Zeid, African Union Commissioner for Infrastructure and Energy, identified some of these challenges,

including a weak coordination framework, low investments in the digital sector, and a lack of necessary infrastructure.

The poor investment in the digital segment is underlined by the fact that while African startups raised $1.2 billion in new capital Investments in 2020 - a six-fold increase in five years - but this only represents less than 1% of the $156 billion raised by US startups in the same period.

On top of that, Africa’s investment in R&D was just 0.42% of GDP in 2019 – less than a quarter of the global average of 1.7%.

Africa needs a coordination framework

Dr Abou-zeid insists that one of the ways for Africa to level up with other regions is through collaboration. She stressed that the region must strengthen its “coordination framework, aligning policies and sector regulation.”

Corroborating this, Dr Songwe encouraged the African leaders to adapt and harmonise legislation on technology, including intellectual property and data privacy, to unleash Africa’s digital potential.

“To address the challenges, the African Union Commission in collaboration with other continental institutions and regional economic communities are working with member states to identify and address barriers to harmonise laws and regulations and drive leadership for necessary reforms that ensure future investment in digital transformation,” Dr Abou-zeid said.

Other experts have insisted that for Africa to reap the full benefit of the digital transformation, the regulatory frameworks must create a clear path to funding for startups.

In a recent World Economic Forum report titled, “Tech Startups Key to Africa’s Digital Transformation but Urgently Need Investment”, the region was encouraged to pass legislation such as “Start-up Acts” designed to spur private sector innovation to embed incentives for startups in legislation, such as startup grants, rebates on efficiency gains through technology as well as invest in workforce education, skills and competencies.

Currently, only 2% of Africa’s university-age population holds a STEM-related (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) degree. So while Africa has attained so much digital transformation in the last two decades, the next decade will be critical in determining whether the continent will match up with Europe and America.