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Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, CEO, Future Africa (Nigeria)

A serial entrepreneur, Aboyeji uses technology to solve issues facing Africa such as financial inclusion and mobility. As CEO and General Partner of Future Africa, an early-stage venture capital firm which has so far invested in over 90 start-ups such as Flutterwave, Andela, Stears and 54gene, they are worth over $6 billion. Aboyeji is also the founder of Moove, an African-born, global mobility fintech that provides revenue-based vehicle financing and financial services to mobility entrepreneurs across ride-hailing, logistics, mass transit, and instant delivery platforms.

Before this, he was the founding CEO of Flutterwave, a billion-dollar global payments platform connecting African businesses and individuals to the global economy and Andela, a billion-dollar business which matches Africa’s top engineering talent to global technology companies.

Last year, Future Africa’s Lagos-headquartered venture capital firm announced it is teaming up with TLG Capital, a London-based open-ended credit fund, to launch a $25 million venture debt fund reserved for portfolio companies. The fund created from TLG’s existing funds will help Future Africa’s portfolio companies preserve their runway in an increasingly tight fundraising environment. On the other hand, Moove, which operates in six cities including Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa, announced expansion to seven new emerging markets in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East after raising $105 million in its latest round of funding.

Babs Ogundeyi, Co-Founder & CEO, Kuda (Nigeria)

In 2019, Babs co-founded Kuda with Musty Mustapha and has overseen the company’s growth in the three years it has been in existence. Over this period, Kuda has raised a total of $90 million in seed funding, while still expanding its customer base to over five million users.

Kuda, a neobank, boasts easy and free to low-cost transactions, instant lending, debit card services, and more recently, international remittances from the UK. Tagged “The bank of the free,” Kuda demonstrates a new era of banking to Nigerians: free, easy, and completely digital. Today, the start-up is poised to replay the script of its revolution in the Nigerian market to its latest South Asian market entrance. In early 2023, the Nigerian-born digital banking platform set on its way to power digital banking services in Pakistan as the fintech acquired a digital banking licence from the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP). The license was issued to KT Bank, a joint venture between Kuda and two leading Pakistani companies, positioning Kuda as one of the five companies to receive the highly coveted digital banking license in Pakistan.

Through Kuda, Ogundeyi has answered the question many have asked - Can African fintech start-ups can offer global solutions? He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Business Studies and Accounting from Brunei University, London.

Mahmoud Fathy, Co-Founder & CEO, ArabyAds (Egypt)

Fathy prides himself on being a physics graduate who happens to be passionate about revolutionising digital marketing, not leveraging chances, yet simultaneously creating potential. His adtech company mainly operates in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region.

Founded in 2013 in Egypt, with headquarters in the UAE and tech hubs across Egypt, Tunisia, and Jordan, ArabyAds helps advertisers in customer acquisition, retention, and monetisation by leveraging its technology platforms for influencer marketing (iConnect), Coupon based advertising (Boostiny), retail media (Ritelo), live commerce (Dmenta), and on-device contextual advertising (Deviceboost). In January 2023, ArabyAds raised $30 Million in a Pre-Series B funding round from AfricInvest, a pan-African investment platform. The start-up aims to use the funds to expand its footprint and further invest it to accelerate its technological advancement and talent acquisition to support the growth.

Prior to founding ArabyAds, Mahmoud founded the Arab Affiliate Summit that served as a hub for affiliates from the Middle East and North Africa. For several years, the Summit established the idea of making money online to help the youth leverage their time and overcome unemployment utilizing their skills and improving them via performance marketing. Fathy holds a BSc. Physics from Benha University.

Karim Beguir, Co-Founder & CEO, InstaDeep (Tunisia)

This AI start-up comes armed with offices around the continent and beyond. InstaDeep has offices in Tunis, Lagos, Cape Town, Dubai, Paris, and London. The company is considered a leader in advanced AI decision-making systems for solving real-world problems. At the start of 2022, InstaDeep raised $100 million in a Series B round which brought it up to unicorn status. InstaDeep put the funding into advancing its high-performance computing infrastructure optimised for decision-making AI. The start-up went ahead and hired elite talent to accelerate the launch of disruptive AI products across multiple industries – including biotech, logistics, transportation and electronics manufacturing. The company is also planning to expand its global presence into the US.

Beguir and his fellow co-founder Zohra Slim were honoured as ambassadors of talent and innovation in January 2023, highlighting the success of InstaDeep as a “Message of hope” to young Tunisians. The award recognised their exceptional company trajectory as an example of international excellence. InstaDeep was also recently acquired by BioNTech, which came as a testament to Beguir’s impact on the development of AI and deep tech innovation in Africa. He holds an Economist degree in Mathematical Statistics & Probability from ENSAE Paris and a Master of Science in Applied Mathematics & Finance from the New York University.

Prince Boakye Boampong, Founder & CEO, Dash (Ghana)

Dash is a Ghanaian fintech start-up focused on building an accessible, modern, and unified alternative payment network for African consumers. Dash users can send/spend and receive money (regardless of currency), pay for goods/services (online or offline), save, and invest all in a single app. He launched the company in 2019. Prior to that, Boampong was the co-founder of OMG Digital, a YC-backed Ghanaian media start-up he started alongside Jesse Ghansah – the current CEO of Float – in 2016.

Two years before founding Dash, Boampong travelled to Kenya and was fascinated by how unbanked Kenyans sent and received money while paying bills with mobile money, a system of payments pioneered by Safaricom’s M-PESA, which has close to 30 million customers. But having come from a mobile money background himself as a Ghanaian, Boampong experienced how interoperability posed a challenge within and outside mobile money systems.

In 2022, the unified payments app raised $32.8 million in an oversubscribed seed round. With a playbook similar to Visa or Mastercard, routing payments through banks and telcos regardless of who issued it, Dash acquired customers across Ghana, Nigeria, and Kenya, for now – who can connect their bank or mobile money accounts to Dash. Boampong holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration.

David Akinin, Co-Founder & CEO, Jabu (Namibia)

Akinin is something of a social entrepreneur driven by accountability and geared by the fusion of finance and technology. He founded Jabu in mid2020 to fix Namibia’s inefficient and almost non-existent supply chain and distribution. Jabu, B2B e-commerce start-up focuses on providing supply chain and distribution solutions in Namibia. In 2022, the start-up raised $3.2 million in a financing round which made it one of the highest financed startups in Southern Africa. Jabu shines a light on the Southern African region as it operates in three cities in Namibia and has also since expanded into two Zambian cities.

As a last-mile distribution e-commerce company, Jabu joins a list of startups across the continent that help small retailers order and stock their products and, at the same time, provide data-driven services to suppliers and manufacturers.

Their platform connects over 6,000 retailers to local and multinational suppliers – such as Namibia Breweries Limited, ABInBev, Bokomo, Coca-Cola, Namibmills etc – and digitises orders, payments, and logistics. As with most African countries, Namibia is heavily reliant on cash. Jabu profits from owning its supply chain and is currently making efforts to digitise its physical cash collection processes via wallets.

David is also currently a Board Member at GS1 Namibia and Atenu Development. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from the University of Chicago and a Master of Philosophy from the University of Cape Town.

Hamza Faiz, Co-Founder & CEO, SmartProf (Morocco)

Faiz created a Morocco-based online tutoring marketplace for school-aged students Mustapha Faiz and Ali Faouiz, with the aim of designing a one-stop-shop edtech for private tutoring in North and West Africa. SmartProf was launched once the trio private education was failing in Morocco. They were convinced every student needs of private assistance in order to overcome challenges faced at school.

In Morocco, the private tutoring market is incredibly fragmented finding a tutor burdensome. Additionally, there’s no visibility on pricing. There was a real need for product with a great tutoring experience.

In 2022, SmartProf closed a pre-seed funding round of $110,000 to help it expand its home market and into the West African region. With the growth the company already seen, there’s much potential for the startup to raise more funds in the future. Currently, the major challenge that the company is facing is the complex and poor payment infrastructure in Morocco. However, the market opportunity for SmartProf remains huge, and it’s trying to adapt as much as possible to a very rigid banking system. However, fintech is growing in the continent and there’s potential for growth of the startups.

Hamza holds a Bachelor’s degree in Finance/Management from the University of Warwick and a Bachelor of Arts in Humanities from Sciences Po.

Emeka Ajene, Serial Entreprenuer, (Nigeria)

Emeka is a true African tech professional having founded, and still part of, three different startups – two of which operates in Nigeria and one that operates from Togo. Emeka is the founder of Afridigest (Nigerian), a co-founder of GoZem Africa (Togo), and the founder & Managing Partner of Africapital (Nigeria).

Afridigest is a business media brand with an editorial focus on ideas, analysis, & insights for business innovators across Africa and beyond. The company helps smart readers get smarter about the future of business and innovation in Africa. Africapital, on the other hand, is an emerging investment firm focusing on early-stage,tech-enabled investments across Africa leveraging on the ongoing digitization of Africa’s economy.

In Togo, Emeka is one of the three co-founders of GoZem, which is an African Super App that offers a suite of services, from motorcycle-taxi transport to cartaxi transport, to e-commerce to delivery & logistics services to various financial services. He co-founded the Togo-based startup with Gregory Costamagna and Raphael Dana.

In 2022, Emeka landed the role of Principal, Africreate, a strategic thinking partner and trusted advisor to senior executives doing business in Africa. The company supports start-ups, corporates, and investors in creating and capturing opportunities across African markets.

Emeka is passionate about self-development and the development of others –especially in the context of tech, innovation, and leadership across Africa. He also actively makes time for coaching/mentoring, speaking, reading, and writing to further his passion.

He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Quantitative Economics & Mathematics from Morehouse College and a Master of Business Administration in Entrepreneurial Growth Strategy & Finance from the University of Michigan.