African Tech Roundup

aKoma Media Co-founder and COO Chidi Afulezi is "a Naija boy true and true". Chidi is an electrical engineer with product-development experience earned working in America's digital wireless network industry. Chidi's resume also features executive stints at top media and entertainment brands such as Time Warner, Sony Music and CNN. While at CNN, Chidi met and began plotting a media coup with one the network's leading international anchors, the Kenyan Zain Verjee, with whom he co-founded aKoma.

In this conversation with Andile Masuku, taped at Africa Tech Summit Kigali 2018, Chidi shares why he is bullish about African storytelling and why he is enthusiastically backing African creators. Listen in to better understand some of the pain points aKoma is looking to solve for and to learn how African media makers, intent on shaping the way the world perceives the continent, are harnessing tech innovation to assert themselves on the global stage.

This year's Afrobytes Tech Marketplace event attracted a large, impressive Ethiopian delegation of tech innovators sporting some serious swag. Ethiopia boasts a solid track record of meaningful digital innovation in spite of the fairly insular political and economic outlook that prevailed in the past.

Today, tech ecosystem heavy-hitters like the Ethiopian founder of investment advisory firm Ibex Frontier, Zekarias Amsalu, and the Senegalese founder of the IT expert online marketplace Gebeya, Amadou Daffe, are bullishly surfing a wave of renewed global investment interest catalysed by Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's changes to economic policy.

In this chat with Amadou Daffe and TechPoint.ng Founder Adewale Yusuf - taped at the fringes of Afrobytes Tech Marketplace 2018 - Andile Masuku learns more about why Ethiopia, with its population of 100 million people and one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, is well-positioned to assert itself as one of the continent's leading tech hubs.

BongoHive Co-Founder and Director of Entrepreneurship, Simunza Muyangana reckons that Lusaka has what it takes to become one of Africa's choicest tech and innovation hubs. When it launched in May 2011 BongoHive was Zambia's only technology and innovation hub. Today, no small thanks to Simunza and his team's context-relevant ecosystem upliftment efforts, the early-stage startup scene in Zambia is more vibrant than its ever been.

In this throwback conversation with Andile Masuku - taped at African Angel Investor Summit 2017 - Simunza chats about BongoHive's portfolio of startup and tech programmes, workshops and events, which are all focused on making Zambia Africa’s next hotbed of innovation. Listen in to learn more about BongoHive's relatively new investment arm and why Simunza believes that the time is right for his organisation to bet on local startups.

On Tuesday, June 5th, 2018 the international African Tech Roundup LIVE Tour launched with a live podcast event in The Netherlands dubbed #VillageDiariesAmsterdam.

For the second (and final part) of the evening's programme, hosts Andile Masuku and Musa Kalenga were joined by a stellar lineup of African tech and innovation ecosystem insiders who have past and present links to Amsterdam. Namely, Tania Habimana (Co-founder and Head of Digital and Strategy: Nonzēro Africa), Babusi Nyoni (UX Designer: Booking.com), Danai Musandu (Investment Associate: Goodwell Investments) and Augustina "MS.ABA" Austin (Artist, Entrepreneur and Host of HiRadio Netherlands' "Africa on Focus").

This meandering roundtable conversation features unvarnished views on what it's like to navigate Amsterdam's increasingly Africa-focussed impact and innovation scene while African and confronts several awkward truths that are too frequently swept under the rug.

South African Rushil Vallabh and American Brenden Mullen are the co-founders and co-managing directors of a Johannesburg-based, venture capital outfit called Secha Capital. Secha’s mission is to “provide patient capital to established African SMEs” - primarily within FMCG and agri-business industries - and to support them by providing access to best-in-breed, hands-on business consulting.

In this conversation with Andile Masuku, Rushil and Brendan expound on Secha’s hybrid investment thesis and explain how they are channelling all the skills and competencies they acquired at Bain (where they both formerly worked) into promising businesses.

A couple of hours before the recent #VillageDiariesAmsterdam event went down, Andile Masuku managed to land a sit-down with Cellulant Founder and CEO, Ken Njoroge, and Director of Private Equity at Velocity Capital, Allard Luchsinger, in order to glean insider perspectives on what went into closing Cellulant's historic round of funding.

A few weeks ago, digital payments firm, Cellulant, announced the close of a $47.5 million investment round led by TPG Growth— a deal which included Endeavour Catalyst, Satya Capital as well as Velocity Capital. Listen in to hear Ken explain why landing investment is a demanding full-time job, shed light on the toll fundraising has taken on him and his team, and most importantly, how Cellulant plans to deploy the fresh funds they've reeled in.

On Tuesday, June 5th, 2018 the international African Tech Roundup LIVE Tour launched with a live event in The Netherlands dubbed #VillageDiariesAmsterdam.

For the first part of the evening's programme, hosts Andile Masuku and Musa Kalenga were joined by headline guest, Nigerian Partner and CEO of HYBR, Charles Ojei.

Prior to founding HYBR, Charles was Director of Enterprise Business at Samsung Electronics West Africa and earned nearly two decades of sales, business development, strategy and technology professional experience while embedded at Procter & Gamble, General Electric, Samsung, and DuPont. He implemented projects in Africa, Americas, Asia and Europe across multiple industries such as retail, healthcare, food, agriculture, technology, education, hospitality and financial services.

Charles has completed the Executive Leadership Program at THNK School of Creative Leadership in Amsterdam and holds a B.Sc in Industrial Relations & Personnel Management from the University of Lagos, as well as a Masters in Social Entrepreneurship (with Distinction) from Hult International Business School in San Francisco and Boston. He currently serves as a faculty member at the Enterprise Development Centre at the Pan-African University in Lagos, Nigeria.

In this candid chat with Andile, Musa and the #VillageDiariesAmsterdam live audience (which has been edited for listenability), Charles shares practical insights into the necessary mindset and relevant approaches required to do business in Africa.

Look out, Amsterdam! We're coming!

Joel Macharia is the Founder and CEO of Abacus (https://abacus.co.ke), a Kenyan fintech firm that builds web and mobile software designed to help people anywhere in the world gain access to African financial markets.

Joel previously founded and headed up the consumer financial news publication, PesaTalk.com, and prior to that, he served as the Africa Head of Product Development for the Mobile Money team at the Kenyan mobile commerce and payment technology provider, Cellulant.

In this conversation with Andile Masuku, Joel provides insights into Kenya's dicey financial services regulatory environment and explains how Abacus is doubling down on providing safe, affordable micro investment options both for Kenyan citizens who might otherwise have been excluded from participating in securities markets, as well as more affluent Kenyan investors based abroad.

In this conversation with Andile Masuku, TechAdvance CEO, Edmund Olotu, sketches Nigeria's digital payments infrastructure landscape and explains why he feels the time is right for his company to participate more actively in the discourses around the next wave of data analytics-driven tech in Nigeria.

Listen in to hear Edmund unpack TechAdvance's ambitions to take the game to competitors like Interswitch and position to be the platform partner of choice for big corporate and government-owned enterprises looking to reduce payments friction, as well as newer fintech startups looking to deliver digitized financial services to the masses.