NewThink - Radical Ideas for Development in Frontier Markets

Aubrey and Gyude are joined by Maya Horgan Famodu a venture capital investor, entrepreneur, Forbes 30 Under 30 entrepreneur, and the founder of Ingressive Capital, a $10 Million venture fund focused on early stage African tech as well as Vivian Nwakah, the CEO of Medsaf and a serial entrepreneur that has created and innovated around execution in the healthcare, pharmaceutical and energy space. Vivian is an award-winning Founder having received recognition from Forbes, the British Royal Family, Women in Africa, Seedstars and many more, as a high impact entrepreneur.

On this episode we dive into Africa's space sector through a discussion with Abimbola Alale, who was appointed CEO for Nigerian Communications Satellite Limited by former president of Nigeria Goodluck Jonathan and re-appointed in 2019 by current President Muhammadu Buhari; Levin M. Born, Managing Director of Afamba LLC, a US company that supports mobile network operators and ISPs throughout Africa and the Middle East; and Alex Ntale, CEO of the Rwanda ICT Chamber Private Sector Federation.

On this episode, Aubrey and Gyude are joined by Charles Overby, the Chief Engineer for Norwegian Public Roads Administration. Charles has spent his career seeking more durable and economical technologies for road preservations and rehabilitations. He's worked in various parts of Africa for decades, particularly Botswana, helping to grow road infrastructure .

Aubrey Hruby and Gyude Moore are joined by Tesi Rusagara, Managing Director and Kigali Innovation City and Artem Ermrolaev Chief Information Officer for the Moscow Government Minister, and President at NGO "Smart Cities" to discuss how smart city technology can create jobs and generate economic activity in Africa's largest cities.

Tesi Rusagara leads Kigali Innovation City, whose mission is to nurture and accelerate Rwanda’s innovation ecosystem to position Rwanda as a pan-African hub. She was previously with Deloitte Consulting in San Francisco advising financial services clients on digital transformation, growth strategy and divestitures. Tesi has also worked in the President of Rwanda’s Strategy and Policy Unit where she focused on technology, urbanization and private sector development. Prior to this role, she worked for Bank of Kigali, Rwanda’s largest commercial bank. Tesi holds an MBA from Stanford Graduate school of Business and a Bachelor of Business Science in Finance from the University of Cape Town.

Artem Ermrolaev is currently launching a new project, NGO “Smart cities”, aggregating his expertise in smart cities and connecting activities from government, consulting, business and academy to share the experience on city management and citizen engagement, and to provide some visionary insights that can be applied by cities and companies. Previously, in 2011 Artem headed the newly established IT Department as the Minister of IT of the Moscow Government. Artem coordinated building the ICT infrastructure for e-health, e-education, public services delivery, and citizen engagement projects. He was also responsible for designing Moscow Digital strategy 2030 aimed at completing digitalization in Moscow.

Aubrey Hruby and Gyude Moore are joined by Sim Shagaya, Femi Longe, and Lydiah Kemunto Bosire to discuss how COVID-19 will affect Edtech across Africa.

Sim Shagaya is a Nigerian media and technology entrepreneur. He is the founder and CEO of uLesson Education - an app built to make education available to a learners across Africa. He is the founder and former C.E.O of one of West Africa's largest e-commerce websites Konga.com and the founder of E-Motion Advertising - a leading out-of-home media company acquired in 2019 by Loadstad Media. In 2014, he was named in Forbes list of "10 Most Powerful Men in Africa".

Dr. Lydiah Kemunto Bosire is the Founder and CEO of 8B Education Investments, a fin-tech social enterprise specialized in lending to African students to attend world-class global universities. A Kenyan national who studied in the US and the UK, Lydiah brings to the field of innovative finance her personal perspective, and over fifteen years of experience working on issues of international politics, development, and human rights. Prior to founding 8B, Lydiah worked at the United Nations, the World Bank, and leading global NGOs.

Femi Longe is a social entrepreneur, enterprise trainer, innovation consultant, and speaker with a keen interest in helping individuals and organizations be their best selves and to do their best job to enable a better world. He is currently the co-Founder and Director of Innovation at Co-Creation Hub, Nigeria’s foremost social innovation center committed to stimulating and supporting innovation for a better Nigeria. As Director of Innovation, Femi drives collaborative co-creation processes to generate innovative technology solutions for social and commercial challenges. He is keen about helping individuals find the intersection between their passion and the needs of the world. He is an avid traveler and has visited or lived in 42 countries and counting.

Celina Lee is the CEO and Founder of Zindi, a company that connects organizations with Africa's data science community to solve the world’s most pressing challenges using machine learning and AI. Celina is a dynamic leader with a passion for unleashing the power of data for social good. Celina has a proven track record of thought leadership in the intersect between data and development and has played central roles in the launches of global platforms including the Alliance for Financial Inclusion (www.afi-global.org), insight2impact (www.i2ifacility.org), and Zindi (www.zindi.africa). Celina's work has expansively bridged across the private and public sectors and across various development areas including financial inclusion, micro and small enterprise development, market system development, gender, climate change, and public health. She has lived and worked in countries throughout Asia, Latin America, and Sub-Saharan Africa. 

Vijaya Ramachandran is a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development. She works on the impact of the business environment on the productivity of firms in developing countries, and is the coauthor of an essay titled "Development as Diffusion: Manufacturing Productivity and Africa's Missing Middle,” published in the Oxford Handbook on Economics and Africa. Vijaya is also studying the unintended consequences of rich countries’ anti-money laundering policies on financial inclusion in poor countries. She has published her research in journals such as World Development, Development Policy Review, Governance, Prism, and AIDS and is the author of a CGD book, Africa’s Private Sector: What’s Wrong with the Business Environment and What to Do About It. Prior to joining CGD, Vijaya worked at the World Bank and in the Executive Office of the Secretary-General of the United Nations. She also served on the faculties of Georgetown University and Duke University. Her work has appeared in several media outlets including the Economist, Financial Times, Guardian, Washington Post, New York Times, National Public Radio, and Vox.

Helen Hai is the Head of Binance Charity Foundation, a not-for-profit foundation dedicated to using blockchain for transparent philanthropy and achievement of SDG. It was initiated by Binance, the largest crytocurrency exchange by trading volume in the world. She was previously the CEO of the Made in Africa Initiative through which she advised African governments on industrialization, investment promotion, as well as cofounding C&H Garments, a Pan-African export-oriented garments manufacturer.

She was trained as an actuary in the United Kingdom and over 20 years of international experience in FTSE100 companies. She has a BA in actuarial science and MSc in actuarial management from CASS Business School in London and EMBA from INSEAD and Tsinghua University.

Bright Simons is a Ghanaian social innovator, entrepreneur, writer and vice-president (in charge of research) at IMANI. He is also the founder and president of mPedigree. Simons writes for the Huffington Post, Harvard Business Review Digital and is a regular contributor to the BBC's Business Daily programs. The Financial Times has described Bright Simons as "frighteningly clever".

Melissa Frakman is the Founder & Managing Partner of Emphasis Ventures, an early-stage venture investor and award-winning business strategist with over a decade of on-the-ground experience in India and other global emerging technology hubs. She invests in, and builds bridges for, digital finance products and services that are created in developing markets and have global applications including: Payments, personal finance and capital markets innovation, new credit models, hyperlocal consumer, artificial intelligence, capital, markets innovations, biometrics, and blockchain.

Lucy Parry is the Cofounder and VP Operations at Carry1st, where she's responsible for global operations and growth. Carry1st is helping to build the premier mobile content company for African consumers through an interactive content platform leveraging mobile technology to delight and serve the first generation of African smartphone users.