This is an interview I had with Sean Riley who is the Founder and CEO of Ad Dynamo, a leading digital media sales business in Africa that represents brands like Twitter, Spotify, SnapChat, and Yahoo! Sean has an interesting part of being involved in various startups focussed on Internet-based businesses before he founded Ad Dynamo that initially started off as a digital ad network reaching over 58 million users in Africa before it pivoted to become a digital media sales business that won a pitch to handle Twitter Ads.

I reached out to Sean after finding out that Ad Dynamo had been acquired by the Aleph Group, a major global player in emerging markets for digital media sales representing many of the world's leading digital brands in markets like Central America and Eastern Europe. Ad Dynamo now becomes a part of a global digital media sales behemoth that will invariably arm them with state-of-the-art digital marketing technologies and best practices to make Ad Dynamo even more successful in serving brands and clients in Africa. I hope you enjoy our conversation!

This is an interview I had with Sitho Mdlalose, the Managing Director of Vodacom Tanzania. Sitho joined Vodacom Tanzania from Vodacom South Africa where he was the Finance Director in November 2021, meaning he has been in his current role for just a few months. However, in that time, Sitho has been impressed with the enormous potential that the Tanzanian market has from a digital enablement perspective for all Tanzanians from all walks of life. In our interview, Sitho shared his hopes and aspirations for Vodacom Tanzania in terms of what they can achieve across their diverse offerings in the marketplace. I hope you enjoy the podcast! 

This is an interview I had with Kris Senanu in June 2021 when he joined Safaricom as their Chief Enterprise Business Officer. Kris and I go way back to 1994 when we got to know each other as students at the United States International University Africa or USIU-Africa as undergraduates. Kris and I also ended up living in the same apartment block at the time when I was unable to get accommodation on campus. As events would have it, we became fast friends all those years ago.

Kris and I also ended up both working together in Kenya's nascent Internet back in the late 1990s when he joined Swift Global and I worked at both Form-Net Africa and Africa Online - the largest Internet companies in Kenya at the time which effectively made us frenemies! That being said, in the last two decades Kris joined Access Kenya, and then Internet Solutions Kenya before he went to Telkom Kenya and finally ended up at Safaricom in probably his most ambitious role to date.

Kris and I discussed the motivations behind him joining Safaricom and what he hoped to achieve there not just for Safaricom and himself but also for the entire technology services industry. Indeed during the COVID-19 pandemic, Safaricom changed its strategic direction from being a telecommunications business to becoming a technology services business meaning it intends to evolve dramatically going forward to serve all customers small and large with a myriad of offerings. Kris is very much a key aspect of these transitions for Safaricom. I hope you enjoy the conversation on this podcast!

This is a really interesting interview that I had with Bernard Momanyi Nyagaka, the Founder and CEO of Onesha Technologies. Bernard started Onesha Technologies when he was still at the University of Nairobi a few years studying economics and planning for a career in banking. He became aware of a gap when he noticed many of his peers were actually already working on client projects but could not effectively market themselves even though the quality of their work was excellent. 

This inspired him to learn how to code and build a creative talent platform that soon had over 2,000 creatives signed up at the University of Nairobi. This prompted him to take a sabbatical from his studies after he went to Asia for an entrepreneurship conference and he realized he could actually make a serious business out of Onesha Technologies. 

Bernard's ultimate goal is to make Onesha Technologies the biggest creative talent marketplace in Africa and to have one million creatives on it to serve customers globally. I hope you enjoy this candid and inspiring conversation as much as I did!

This is an interview I had with Niladri Roy, the COO of Little App on the 22nd January 2022. Little App started life as a taxi hailing mobile app a few years and is gradually transforming into a 'super app' that enables business and individual customers to access a myriad of on-demand digital services. Niladri shared various perspectives of where Little App is today and where they are going as a business in the fututre. 

One of their bigger initiatives is their plan to soon launch a myriad of electric mobility offerings including e-motorcycles, e-bikes, and e-scooters. Little App wants to be a part of the increasingly global trend for mobility to become environmentally friendly, reducing carbon emissions at scale. Niladri also shared how they operate as a business where they have focussed primarily on serving the business segment rather than the consumer segment to grow the business whilst avoiding price wars. I hope you enjoy the podcast!

This is an interview I had with Ranjith Cherickel, the CEO of IColo on the 15th June 2021 on the role of data centres in Kenya’s digital economy and transformation. iColo is a technology infrastructure company that designs, builds, and operates state-of-the-art carrier-neutral data centers which serve a broad spectrum of clients in Kenya and globally. iColo's data centers are hyper-connected hubs that provide colocation services including power, security, network access, redundancy, rack space, and precision cooling to for customers. iColo is part of Digital Realty (DLR) with 275+ data centers in 24 countries across 6 continents.

This is the Interview I had with Oscar Pierre, the CEO of Glovo when he visited Kenya for the first time on Monday the 7th June 2021. Glovo is on an aggressive expansion plan for Africa in 2021 with Kenya, Uganda, Ghana, Ivory Coast, and Morocco all operational and markets like Nigeria coming soon.

The on-demand delivery app, and service launched in Kenya almost 3 years ago. Glovo is a massive business globally with operations in Europe and increasingly in Africa. The business started out in Spain in 2015 and expanded quickly to Europe and thereafter to Latin America which they recently exited.

Glovo has around 10 million customers globally as of the writing. Glovo as a business has also been raising major funding rounds with a Series F of $528 million (€450 million) in April 2021. The business is now valued at over US$ 2 Billion on this basis and is expanding fast! Here is what Oscar and I discussed when we met for lunch with the broader Glovo team