Afrigather In keeping with this report by the United Nations, Africa’s sustainable progress is closely depending on how nicely Africans can use instruments like expertise to struggle multidimensional vulnerabilities.
Individuals all throughout the continent are taking their expertise, expertise, and community, and utilizing them to construct purpose-driven options for the continent. From Aisha Husseini, who’s making digital instruments extra accessible, to Nomsa Makgabenyana, who helps entrepreneurs higher perceive the African market. Up to now years, the African startup scene has witnessed a pointy rise within the variety of founders utilizing expertise to innovate and profer options to African issues.
This listing options fifteen founders creating impactful options throughout the continent that you need to take note of.
1. Marie-Reine Seshie
Marie is the CEO/co-founder of Kola Market. She has over a decade of expertise on the continent, driving outcomes for SMEs and startups. She has over 5 years of expertise within the banking sector and has additionally labored as a administration marketing consultant for SMEs.
Marie’s startup, Kola Market helps SMEs develop nicely. They’re a B2B platform that leverages knowledge science strategies and different digital instruments to supply constant gross sales, good stock insights and blended finance to SMEs throughout Africa. Their purpose is straightforward: assist SMEs promote out their stock and develop their revenue. For Marie, SMEs are the important thing to unlocking the immense potential of Africa. She sees an Africa the place small companies are rising quickly and profitably, driving employment and rising the GDP of African economies. As an alternative of taking loans that find yourself killing their companies, they’re capable of develop sustainably, cost-effectively, and profitably.
2. Aisha Husseini (Nigeria)
Aisha Hussaini has over seven years of expertise in shopper lending and commerce within the African expertise ecosystem. She is a 2x founder, having beforehand led the startup, Cell Waiter, and labored at Cars45 and Autochek Africa.
Aisha’s startup, Keza Africa is a smartphone financing platform that permits individuals to purchase smartphones and pay in instalments. They wish to make digital work instruments extra reasonably priced for individuals, by enabling Africans to pay in month-to-month instalments for his or her gadgets.
3. Olusola Amusan (Nigeria)
Olusola, who has a background in software program engineering is the co-founder and CEO of Vesti. He’s a two-time founder and has expertise designing studying curriculums for prime banks and universities.
Vesti is a finance and authorized software program platform that gives monetary funds and settlement of migration-related charges, enabling customers to maneuver from one place to a different and switch cash. With Vesti, anybody who needs emigrate can discover data & monetary companies like authorities funds, financial savings & medical insurance. Customers may create digital playing cards and pay a whole lot of migration retailers.
4. Nomsa Makgabenyana (Botswana)
Nomsa Makgabenyana is an MPhil (Inclusive Innovation) candidate on the Graduate Faculty of Enterprise, College of Cape City and founding father of Seriti Insights.
Seriti Insights is a advertising expertise that addresses the truth that Africans don’t all the time categorical themselves in good English. They combine languages, create “sayings” that
are continually altering, and share our experiences with manufacturers, merchandise, and companies, particularly on social media platforms. Their product: The Seipone.ai SaaS is ready to
give entrepreneurs, model builders, and product homeowners, true insights and sentiments of the
African shoppers in real-time, whatever the language they categorical themselves in.
Seriti is presently seeking to increase a pre-seed spherical to allow them to scale into East Africa.
5. Chineye Ochem (Nigeria)
Chineye is the co-founder and COO of Tyms Africa. She’s a Chartered Accountant and a Licensed Fraud Examiner, with over six years of expertise in accounting and finance.
Chineye’s startup, Tyms Africa, helps companies with money stream administration and short-term money stream financing. They’ve a product, Tyms Ebook, which is an automatic bookkeeping and accounting platform that makes it simple and seamless for companies to maintain sufficient monetary information and generate monetary studies.
Chineye is captivated with utilizing her expertise and expertise to unravel monetary issues for companies as a result of she believes it is a method to contribute in direction of bettering the usual of dwelling of Nigerians and Africans.
6. Naledi Magowe (Botswana)
Naledi is the co-founder of Brastorne. She has an unwavering dedication to closing the digital divide for rural African communities and her startup Brastorne has reworked the lives of over two million Africans via cellular options that empower the agricultural poor in Africa with data, assets, and connectivity. With intensive expertise in T4D tasks, technique, and communications, Naledi has been recognised as a thought chief on the worldwide stage, inspiring audiences and profitable quite a few awards for her exceptional achievements.
Her startup, Brastorne, join the unconnected to the world by offering the agricultural poor in Africa with equitable entry to the web, markets, data and neighborhood with out smartphones or knowledge bundles.
7. Ope Onaboye (Nigeria)
Ope is a serial entrepreneur and the CEO of Renda. He has 10 years of expertise spanning totally different sectors and can be the founding father of Incite Enterprises Group of firms.
Renda is a web-based platform that makes it simple for e-commerce companies to function and entry logistics companies. They don’t simply show you how to discover a dispatch rider, they concentrate on the entire different bulk logistics companies like procurement, warehousing, stock administration, freight and a lot extra. They’ve constructed a community of over 300 drivers, and 90+ warehouses and are presently obtainable in 10 cities.
8. Blandine Umuziranenge (Rwanda)
Blandine is the founder and CEO of Kosmotive, a social enterprise that focuses on bettering menstrual, maternal and baby well being in Rwanda and all through Africa. She has twelve years of expertise combining IT, Social Entrepreneurship and Round Enterprise Modeling with an ambition to pave menstrual freedom for women and girls in Africa.
Kosmotive supplies entry to menstrual, maternal and baby well being data via their eHealth platform and Helpline, in addition to manufacturing and distributing girls’s hygiene merchandise, primarily KosmoPads reusable sanitary pads for investing in women’ training, girls’s well being and the planet; one pad at a time.
9. Jennat El Guennouni (Morocco)
Jennat is the co-founder of JobBee. She grew up in Morocco after which labored in Europe for 10 years earlier than coming again to her dwelling nation. Initially educated as an industrial engineer, she switched careers, received educated as NLP practitioner and reconnected along with her ardour: behavioural science. In her free time, she loves reconnecting with nature, practising yoga, taking part in sports activities and studying about human psychology.
Jennat’s startup, JobBee is an HR Tech start-up on an inspiring mission to unlock African tech expertise. JobBee helps scaling tech firms rent vetted distant builders extra effectively and likewise helps builders to develop their careers inside worldwide firms.
10. Nyambogo Jennifer (Kenya)
Jennifer is the CEO and co-founder at Mawu Africa. She has huge expertise in fintech and e-commerce main inventive imaginative and prescient, ideation, technique, and execution. Jennifer can be captivated with telling African tales and presently work with a gifted group of African creatives to showcase their work on-line and make it simply accessible to international patrons.
Mawu is a web-based market serving to international patrons uncover and purchase from Africa’s greatest craftspeople. They’re digitally connecting Africa’s greatest craftspeople with international shoppers.
11. Pauline Kariuki (Kenya)
Pauline is the co-founder & CTO at Mawu Africa. She’s additionally an IT knowledgeable with over 5 years of expertise in product administration and e-commerce. She’s additionally captivated with utilizing expertise to create an influence in our society.
Mawu is a web-based market serving to international patrons uncover and purchase from Africa’s greatest craftspeople. They’re on a mission to showcase distinctive items made by proficient craftspeople all through Africa and make them simply accessible to international shoppers.
12. Chikodi Ukaiwe (Nigeria)
Chikodi is the co-founder of Salad Africa, a startup working to supply workers with monetary companies and advantages, past what they sometimes can entry with their paychecks. Chikodi is a two-time founder with about ten years of expertise constructing options in Africa.
Salad Africa has options like Wage On Demand, which supplies workers entry to their salaries even earlier than PayDay.
13. Agness Mollel (Tanzania)
Agness Mollel was born and raised in Tanzania. She is a Lawyer by occupation and a co-founder of Mipango Fintech. She is very pushed to make an impactful change by creating merchandise that empower girls and youth detached sectors.
Mipango app is an AI-enabled private finance app that permits clients to maintain monitor of their money, cellular cash, and financial institution transactions. The purchasers are additionally capable of create and monitor their funds, objectives, financial savings and funding. Via the info they gather, they offer them personalised monetary recommendation that speaks to their wants.
14. Oare Ehiemua-Ochui (Nigeria)
Oare is the Founder and CEO of LaborHack, and he or she is captivated with constructing a brand new economic system for artisans. In my spare time, I prefer to journey, discover historic cities and take a look at new meals!
LaborHack is a digital platform serving as a proxy for building companies seeking to entry a pool of educated, examined, and vetted expert staff obtainable on demand for tasks. They supply skilled and vetted artisans on demand to fulfil what you are promoting and residential care service wants. All artisans on Laborhack are OPL Academy licensed and should meet OPL Academy’s rigorous coaching requirements for comfortable expertise, professionalism, and high-quality ending.
15. Joyce Mbaya
Joyce is the co-founder & CEO of Zydii, a workforce upskilling resolution offering accessible, transformative digital coaching that’s designed for Africa. She has been a full-time entrepreneur for over ten years. Previous to launching Zydii, she designed and developed a private growth framework which she printed as a e book – GIBÉBÉ: imaGIne, BElieve, BEcome.
Zydii supplies accessible, transformative digital coaching that’s designed for African companies. They supply a workforce upskilling resolution with African and relatable digital programs, that may be accessed each on-line and offline (USSD & SMS).
For many SMEs in Africa, coaching their groups was a privilege that appeared reserved for corporates and enterprise purchasers that would afford it. This didn’t appear truthful to Joyce, as she believes that having the ability to practice groups with the best expertise is essential for the expansion and success of any enterprise, which is why they’re captivated with making it potential for almost all of African companies to affordably practice their groups with culturally related African programs.
