The Grinders Table

This week we had the pleasure of chatting with Snehar Shah, the CEO of Moringa school. Snehar is passionate about spearheading the development of Africa's young people through learning tech skills and this is evidenced in his leadership at Moringa school. Snehar has over 25 years of diverse experience in building and running businesses in multiple industries and geographies (UK, Europe and Africa).

This week we had Mouna Akefli, Marketing Manager CU West Africa & Morocco at Ericsson. Muna discusses her journey of finding purpose in life and her deep-rooted love for Africa. She talks about purpose-led marketing and impacting initiatives through her work, and why young professionals should focus on growing their talents, taking risks, and experimenting. 

Last weekend we spent time on the Grinders Table with Solape Akinpelu, CEO of Hervest. Hervest is pioneering inclusive finance for the African woman! Solape took time to share her experience and wisdom about fundraising, why businesses and the world are not as inclusive to women, what holds them back, and how the behaviour of finance needs to be part of the conversation in order to change.

Martin is a technologist and PanAfricanist who believes in technology's ability to put Africa on the map as the most significant workforce in the world. He has been working on delivering programs and aggregating relevant programs to empower Africans with 21st-century skills and bringing remote workers from around the world to Africa to realise the continent's beauty.

Martin talks about his motivations, as well as shares some really good advice you don't want to miss.

Folake Owodunni is the Co-founder and CEO of Emergency Response Africa (ERA), a health-tech company dedicated to saving lives one emergency at a time. Folake shares her inspiration for building the company, lessons she learned along the way and tips for aspiring founders.

I had the pleasure of speaking with Damilare Ogunleye, the co-founder at FoodLama. FoodLama is a personalized genie that helps you find the best food for you, based on your preferences and your lifestyle choices. Damilare shared how being an entrepreneur requires work-life balance, communication, and discipline. 

He talked about building distribution into your products and having a clear vision and roadmap for the next ten years. He touched on relationships and how being a father impacted his life.

This week I caught up with the founder of Nigeria Agritech, ThriveAgric, while playing football. ThriveAgric provides access to finance, technology-based advice, extension services, and global and local markets to smallholder farmers in Africa. They noticed that smaller farmers faced a lot of problems, and they wanted to provide them with solutions so that they could increase their yield and also assess a larger market.

Uka shared his story of building his business, and he advised founders to take their time to relax, have friends within their startup, and embrace uncertainty. He shares that the key to solving a problem is to take one step at a time and to have the right mentors who can help you along the way. 

Yvonne Bajela spent time with us on the Grinders Table sharing her experience building a career, following her intuition, taking risks and pivoting throughout her career. 

Yvonne invests in startups across the UK & Africa. She is a founding member at Impact X a UK-based venture capital fund founded to invest in companies led by underrepresented entrepreneurs. Over the last five years, Yvonne has invested over £200 million in various startups across Europe, the Middle East and Africa including Wise (formerly TransferWise), Flutterwave and Marshmallow.

This week's episode features a conversation with Sam Sturm, Chief Venture Architect at Founders Factory Africa (FFA). FFA is the go-to innovation partner for startups, investors, governments, and corporates — throughout Africa and beyond. Sam shares insights on the value of relationships, his journey into the venture space, his thoughts on the Venture ecosystem, the myth of talent scarcity and his favourite productivity hacks.