African Tech Roundup

Montserrat native Kenfield Griffith is co-founder and CEO of mSurvey-- a data analytics SaaS startup based in Nairobi Kenya. In 2012, Kenfield partnered with Kenyan Louis Majanja to launch the business following an extended visit to Nairobi to conduct some research for his MIT PhD on the use of technology as a means to improving communication.

In this conversation with Andile Masuku, Kenfield explains why he's bullish on 2018 and unpacks how mSurvey's data analytics platform is delivering solid business results for an impressive roster of big-name clients in East Africa, the US and the Caribbean.

Rich Tanksley is the Senior Vice President of Special Projects at the Nigerian-American consultancy, NeuBridges.

Formerly the CEO of Pulse.ng, Rich continues to be the Ringier-owned online media platform's brand ambassador. Prior to that, he spent three years working at the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) in Ghana as a senior faculty member and headed up Africa operations for Seedstars.

In this conversation with Andile Masuku - taped at Afrobytes Tech Conference 2017 - Rich speaks on some of the gaps he perceives within Africa's innovation culture and factors in on issues that he reckons make doing business in Africa a tricky proposition for naive outsiders. He also comments on the massive growth potential of Nigeria's commercial digital media scene.

French-born Cameroonian Alec Fokapu is the founder and CEO of FiftyFor, a B2B rating platform for African companies.

FiftyFor uses an algorithm to compute ratings on governance structure, financial strength, operational capability, and the social and environmental impact of African companies. 

Alec has 10 years of experience working as a financial analyst in international infrastructure projects at Total and Crédit Agricole CIB. Prior to launching FiftyFor in 2014, he founded an investment firm dedicated to financing promising African SMEs and entrepreneurs.

In this conversation with Andile Masuku - taped at Afrobytes Tech Conference 2017 - Alec explains why business rating not only helps big business interests vet prospective African investees and suppliers but can also assist local SME’s in improving their investibility and bridge the entrepreneurial culture gap between them and the developed world.

By this time last year, Africa's tech and innovation media community had started to go into hibernation for the Festive Season. But this year’s different…

Bitcoin is doing the thing, America’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is poised to put net neutrality out of its misery, Uber is bracing for a severe regulatory backlash after trying to conceal a 2016 data breach affecting 57 million users, and complex corruption allegations continue to dog the JSE-listed IT service management giant, EOH, as well as Naspers (who now indirectly own a piece of Spotify thanks to the streaming service’s recent mini-merger with Tencent Music).

The tail-end of Q4 2018 has also featured some encouraging local tech ecosystem developments— like several promising African startups landing much needed early-stage funding and key ecosystem stakeholders (founders, investors, policy makers and innovation hub runners) participating in vigorous public debates about maximising the creation and exchange of solid business value within Africa’s emerging tech industry.

Joining Andile Masuku and Musa Kalenga on this African Tech Roundup podcast (the last full show of 2017) to chat through some of the more interesting digital, tech and innovation highlights to emerge during the past couple of weeks is Bain consultant-turned-venture capitalist, Rushil Vallabh of Secha Capital. Rushil also explains how the founding team at Secha Capital arrived at their investment thesis, why he believes their “hybrid” model gives them the edge, and factors in on the pros and cons of some of the angel investment and VC approaches we’ve discussed on the show recently.

We would just like to thank you - the listener - for your part in making the African Tech Roundup community rock in 2017. Our next full episode drops in mid-Jan 2018, but don’t worry, we’ve got your back this Festive Season because every week this holiday, we’ll be publishing previously unreleased Quick (Tech) Chats podcast episodes taped at Afrobytes Tech Conference 2017 and the African Angel Investor Summit 2017.

So, go ahead and turn on your notification settings wherever you listen to us, or simply check back into AfricanTechRoundup.com for all the freshest content drops.

Happy Holidays!

Music Credits:

Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Music licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

2017 has seen Maya Horgan Famodu transition from overseeing efforts to assist corporations and investors integrate into the African tech ecosystem via Ingressive's market entry and operations services, to becoming an early stage tech venture capitalist at Ingressive Capital.

In this conversation with Andile Masuku, Maya explains how she's leveraging her Nigerian-Swedish-American heritage, her bullet-proof professional reputation and the insights she's continuing to glean via Ingressive's legacy activities to take on the challenge of participating in the continent's emerging early stage investment scene.

This Medium blog entitled, "Startups4Africa: This is NOT OUR MANIFESTO" by Co-Creation Hub Nigeria Co-founder Femi Longe has caused quite a stir on social media: http://bit.ly/2AxCEMv.

In this chat with Andile Masuku, Femi explains why he couldn't keep his pen still after he returned to Nigeria following the recent EU-Africa Summit, where a "collaborative" document entitled "Startups 4 Africa: Manifesto for the development of a thriving community of African-European startup ecosystems" was presented.

Khaled Ismail is the Chairman and Founder of two Cairo-based angel funds— KI Angel and HIM Angel. He also serves as advisor to Algebra Ventures, Egypt’s leading technology venture capital outfit, which focuses primarily on Series A and Series B investments in Egypt and the MENA region.

In this conversation with Andile Masuku - taped at the fringes of African Angel Investor Summit 2017 (www.AAIS2017.com) - Khaled relates how he went from being a career technologist to founding seven tech ventures since 1991 (including a 4G mobile tech firm which was acquired by Intel) before accidentally falling into structured angel funding activities.

Khaled also explains how he’s acting on his idealistic desire to tear down trade barriers linked to Africa’s colonial past. He's determined to normalise the interchange of both angel funding and startup founding talent across the continent.

Israeli investor Ido Sum is a Partner at TLcom Capital— a venture capital firm with a presence in Nairobi, Lagos and London. Since 1999, the firm has invested in Telecom, Media and Technology (TMT) companies in Europe, Israel and Sub Saharan Africa and currently manages total commitments in excess of €200 million.

In this conversation with Andile Masuku - taped at the fringes of African Angel Investor Summit 2017 (www.AAIS2017.com) - Ido fields questions regarding the prevalence of investor bias, the appropriateness of certain VC approaches on the continent, and of course, TLcom's participation in one of 2017’s most well-publicised startup investment deals— Andela’s $40 million Series C, led by South African Pule Taukobong of CRE Venture Capital.

Here's a link to Ido Sum's crowdsourced African Investment Landscape Database: http://bit.ly/2Abm8lj. If you are actively involved in early-stage investment efforts on the continent, Ido welcomes your contributions to the spreadsheet.

In this conversation, Andile Masuku asks PesaCheck.org Managing Editor, Eric Mugendi, to reflect on the unprecedented leveraging of digital technologies by leading actors in Kenya's controversial elections, and to factor in on how the country's emerging tech ecosystem is doing in the aftermath.

Last week, Africa’s early stage investor community came together for the 4th annual African Early Stage Investor Summit (#AAIS2017). At this exclusive investor-only event, hosted at Workshop17 in Cape Town, South Africa, key stakeholders in the ecosystem exchanged insights on best practice, shared lessons learnt, and debated what the roadmap for the future ought to look like.

In this African Tech Roundup episode, Andile Masuku and Musa Kalenga discuss some of the more contentious issues unpacked at the conference-- including whether or not the hunt for the "African Unicorn" is constructive and how Africa-focused investors might best go about investing with exits in mind.

Music Credits:

Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Music licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0