But these are the early days and there is still more work to be done. This is why Kevin Fomengia sat down with Blessing Iyamadiken on the Live The African Dream podcast to discuss the role of technology in Africa's further development, and how Africa is at the point where we need to integrate infrastructure with technology.

Kevin Fomengia is the founder of Bridge Labs, a software development firm in Africa, and the co-founder of Pathway OZ, an Opportunity Zone management company, where he supports entrepreneurs and businesses. Bridge Labs has an ecosystem of over 100 African software engineers, and is on a mission to develop Africa’s tech talent.

He said,

"Africa is a very young continent but is growing so quickly. As we improve our digital infrastructure, that would allow trade to happen a lot more, and it would also allow tech, e-commerce and payments to be more streamlined. In the next 10-15 years, I believe that we are going to see a lot more unicorns come out of Africa".

Mark Kleyner is the Co-Founder of Dream VC, an investor accelerator for Africa. To date, Dream VC has helped people from over 30 African countries, get a career kick in the African Venture Capital space, thus enabling them to build the future they desire.

For a long time, Nigeria’s retail investors had little or no access to the global investment scene. All that changed with the launch of Bamboo, a platform that not only made it possible for retail investors to buy and sell stocks, but also educated the Nigerian market on stock investing.

Today, Bamboo is present in Nigeria and Ghana and is also looking to expand to other African countries.

In this episode, Richmond Bassey, the CEO and Co-Founder of Bamboo shares his story about how he is using technology to help African investors tap into global markets with just the click of a button.

From advice on fundraising to learnings from his path to launching a startup, this episode will give you an inside look into Richmond’s vision for Bamboo, and his next plans for the company.

Yemi Olulana’s walk to being the CEO of Flex Finance is a journey that has seen him go from working as a software engineer at reputable companies to launching his own startup. After cutting his teeth as a startup founder of Giddiphones, Yemi started Flex Finance, a spend management and corporate card platform for African businesses.   

Flex Finance empowers businesses to take control of their expenses via the web, mobile and corporate cards; they also help companies manage hundreds of millions of dollars in spending.  

From the onset, Yemi’s focus has been on creating a lasting legacy that positively impacts lives while building sustainable businesses. He is achieving this by leveraging technology and data to give African businesses the tools they need to make intelligent financial decisions, gain visibility into their spending, reduce costs and increase profits.  

“African businesses spend over $1.6 Trillion dollars in 2022 and it is expected to rise to over $4 Trillion in just seven years and so the market is growing really rapidly. In order for businesses in Africa to be globally competitive, they need world-class tools that can help them take control of their spending because poor spending is the largest cause of business failure”  

So far, his experience has made him uniquely placed to bring Flex Finance’s vision to fruition. In early 2022, they crossed their first billion naira transaction, and in less than 2 weeks crossed their next billion naira transaction. Today, they have done hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions.  

From all indications, this is a company that is poised for success.

In this episode, Dr Ola Brown breaks down the economic opportunities in the African markets, and her passion to see Africa lift its citizens out of poverty.

"China lifted a billion people out of poverty, and they did it primarily through investments. GDP is about being able to export and it is about the government's ability to spend and investment is a really big part of that," says Dr Ola Brown.

It's amazing how much effect, investments can have on African markets, and Dr Ola is passionate about shining light on why people should invest in Africa, and what the potential returns could be.

The majority of digital payments in Africa are done on the USSD rail, but who is innovating in this area to improve its user experience for Africans?

This week, on Live the African Dream, I interviewed Ben Lyon. Ben Lyon is the CEO of Hover, Creators of Stax a proprietary innovation of Hover. Ben Lyon has built a technology that allows the company to put an app interface on top of USSD to improve its user experience.

“In Africa, people have a strong preference to be offline. About 87% of smartphone transactions are done using USSD, and so we figured out a way to automate USSD sessions in the background of an android application. ”

Stax is the Apple Pay for Africa. The innovation gives you one way to pay with all of your existing bank accounts, and existing mobile wallets (and soon crypto) in a single app that works without using the internet.

Listen to the podcast: https://anchor.fm/euniceajim

Watch on Youtube: https://youtu.be/N6m0UuW7QxQ

New podcast episodes every week.

How many times do businesses in Africa have to lose a sale because they can’t accept the way a customer wants to pay? This is the problem Abraham Ojes the Co-founder and CEO of Collect Africa set out to solve when he founded the company.

Collect Africa enables businesses to add local payment methods to their websites or apps through a single API.

“At Collect Africa, we started out using payments as a wedge, trying to help businesses accept payment both online and offline. Online using payment links and customers can easily see different payment methods which they can pay you with, both bank transfer, cards, or wallets that they can easily pay you with; or offline using POS terminals”

Interestingly, it doesn’t end there, as Abraham has been able to leverage on the data provided by merchants who use Collect Africa to build even more products for them.

“We see payments as a wedge towards building other tools for businesses. For instance, we were able to see how merchants were using our platform to do a lot of expense or spend, and we decided to build a spend management tool.”

Today’s episode features Foluso Ojo, the Co-Founder and Chief of Operations of truQ. truQ is an African tech startup providing seamless logistics for businesses helping them move items across Nigeria. truQ is also one of our portfolio companies.

According to Foluso, the solution for truQ came when she needed to move a piece of furniture and she had to search for up to 4 days before she could find a vehicle that could transport it for her.

In the first couple of months of running the business, she and her Co-Founder, Fatayo Williams bootstrapped and ran the business using a google sheet before going on to build a product as demand increased and the need to scale and introduce new product offerings became imminent.

truQ’s customers are startups, SMEs and large enterprises that have found they just can’t get their logistics right. truQ offers a better solution to this problem of poorly executed logistics operations in Nigeria, and so far, it has recorded great success.

Today, truQ is fast becoming the Uber for Logistics as more businesses leverage on their fast, reliable and affordable service. The company is also scaling up to a whole new level with plans of expanding into other African countries in the near future.

Victor Alade is the founder of Raenest, an African payroll tech startup providing borderless payments for African startups. Raenest is also one of Ajim Capital’s portfolio companies.

In this episode, I spoke to Victor Alade about his journey as an entrepreneur and his experience as a startup founder solving one of the most critical issues on the continent.

“One of the core export of Africa is talent. The population of youth and the rate at which they are adopting technology is growing rapidly. Gone are the days when people only hire software developers from Africa. Today, people hire product managers, designers, and customer support.”

This explosion of talent growth in Africa has led to a high demand for African tech talent worldwide, which has led to the need to solve the problem of cross-border payments. Before becoming a VC, I was a founder. I also experienced this same issue of facilitating payment to my African tech hires, primarily because traditional payroll systems could take up to 10 business days.

Hence, when Raenest pitched its tech solution to Ajim Capital, we immediately saw its potential to transform how African tech talent gets paid globally.

And so far, investing in Raenest has proven to be a great decision.