African Tech Round-Up

As Managing Director of Thomson Reuters Africa, Kenyan-born Sneha Shah oversees the firm's Financial, Risk, Tax and Legal businesses across the continent. Initially founded as a news agency in 1851, today Thomson Reuters is frequently cited by media watchdogs as an "invisible information giant" worth monitoring closely as it delivers unprecedented amounts of data, along with automation and digitisation solutions to financial institutions, governments and corporates around the globe. Sneha holds a BA (Hons) degree in Politics with International Studies from the University of Warwick in the UK and prior to joining Thomson Reuters in 2001, she was a Commodities Trader for Cargill in South Africa and traded money markets and foreign exchange at CFC Bank in Kenya. Sneha is a member of the Board of the US Chamber of Commerce US-Africa Business Center, the One Young World (PYW) Africa Local Organising Committee, the Young Presidents Organization (YPO) and the African Leadership Network (ALN). She is also a Steering

aKoma Media Co-founder and COO Chidi Afulezi is "a Naija boy true and true". Chidi is an electrical engineer with product-development experience earned working in America's digital wireless network industry. Chidi's resume also features executive stints at top media and entertainment brands such as Time Warner, Sony Music and CNN. While at CNN, Chidi met and began plotting a media coup with one the network's leading international anchors, the Kenyan Zain Verjee, with whom he co-founded aKoma. In this conversation with Andile Masuku, taped at Africa Tech Summit Kigali 2018, Chidi shares why he is bullish about African storytelling and why he is enthusiastically backing African creators. Listen in to better understand some of the pain points aKoma is looking to solve for and to learn how African media makers, intent on shaping the way the world perceives the continent, are harnessing tech innovation to assert themselves on the global stage.

This year's Afrobytes Tech Marketplace event attracted a large, impressive Ethiopian delegation of tech innovators sporting some serious swag. Ethiopia boasts a solid track record of meaningful digital innovation in spite of the fairly insular political and economic outlook that prevailed in the past. Today, tech ecosystem heavy-hitters like the Ethiopian founder of investment advisory firm Ibex Frontier, Zekarias Amsalu, and the Senegalese founder of the IT expert online marketplace Gebeya, Amadou Daffe, are bullishly surfing a wave of renewed global investment interest catalysed by Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's changes to economic policy. In this chat with Amadou Daffe and TechPoint.ng Founder Adewale Yusuf - taped at the fringes of Afrobytes Tech Marketplace 2018 - Andile Masuku learns more about why Ethiopia, with its population of 100 million people and one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, is well-positioned to assert itself as one of the continent's leading tech hubs.

BongoHive Co-Founder and Director of Entrepreneurship, Simunza Muyangana reckons that Lusaka has what it takes to become one of Africa's choicest tech and innovation hubs. When it launched in May 2011 BongoHive was Zambia's only technology and innovation hub. Today, no small thanks to Simunza and his team's context-relevant ecosystem upliftment efforts, the early-stage startup scene in Zambia is more vibrant than its ever been. In this throwback conversation with Andile Masuku - taped at African Angel Investor Summit 2017 - Simunza chats about BongoHive's portfolio of startup and tech programmes, workshops and events, which are all focused on making Zambia Africa’s next hotbed of innovation. Listen in to learn more about BongoHive's relatively new investment arm and why Simunza believes that the time is right for his organisation to bet on local startups.

On Tuesday, June 5th, 2018 the international African Tech Roundup LIVE Tour launched with a live podcast event in The Netherlands dubbed #VillageDiariesAmsterdam. For the second (and final part) of the evening's programme, hosts Andile Masuku and Musa Kalenga were joined by a stellar lineup of African tech and innovation ecosystem insiders who have past and present links to Amsterdam. Namely, Tania Habimana (Co-founder and Head of Digital and Strategy: Nonzēro Africa), Babusi Nyoni (UX Designer: Booking.com), Danai Musandu (Investment Associate: Goodwell Investments) and Augustina "MS.ABA" Austin (Artist, Entrepreneur and Host of HiRadio Netherlands' "Africa on Focus"). This meandering roundtable conversation features unvarnished views on what it's like to navigate Amsterdam's increasingly Africa-focussed impact and innovation scene while African and confronts several awkward truths that are too frequently swept under the rug.

South African Rushil Vallabh and American Brenden Mullen are the co-founders and co-managing directors of a Johannesburg-based, venture capital outfit called Secha Capital. Secha’s mission is to “provide patient capital to established African SMEs” - primarily within FMCG and agri-business industries - and to support them by providing access to best-in-breed, hands-on business consulting. In this conversation with Andile Masuku, Rushil and Brendan expound on Secha’s hybrid investment thesis and explain how they are channelling all the skills and competencies they acquired at Bain (where they both formerly worked) into promising businesses.

A couple of hours before the recent #VillageDiariesAmsterdam event went down, Andile Masuku managed to land a sit-down with Cellulant Founder and CEO, Ken Njoroge, and Director of Private Equity at Velocity Capital, Allard Luchsinger, in order to glean insider perspectives on what went into closing Cellulant's historic round of funding. A few weeks ago, digital payments firm, Cellulant, announced the close of a $47.5 million investment round led by TPG Growth— a deal which included Endeavour Catalyst, Satya Capital as well as Velocity Capital. Listen in to hear Ken explain why landing investment is a demanding full-time job, shed light on the toll fundraising has taken on him and his team, and most importantly, how Cellulant plans to deploy the fresh funds they've reeled in.

On Tuesday, June 5th, 2018 the international African Tech Roundup LIVE Tour launched with a live event in The Netherlands dubbed #VillageDiariesAmsterdam. For the first part of the evening's programme, hosts Andile Masuku and Musa Kalenga were joined by headline guest, Nigerian Partner and CEO of HYBR, Charles Ojei. Prior to founding HYBR, Charles was Director of Enterprise Business at Samsung Electronics West Africa and earned nearly two decades of sales, business development, strategy and technology professional experience while embedded at Procter & Gamble, General Electric, Samsung, and DuPont. He implemented projects in Africa, Americas, Asia and Europe across multiple industries such as retail, healthcare, food, agriculture, technology, education, hospitality and financial services. Charles has completed the Executive Leadership Program at THNK School of Creative Leadership in Amsterdam and holds a B.Sc in Industrial Relations & Personnel Management from the University of Lagos, as well as a Master

Look out, Amsterdam! We're coming!

Joel Macharia is the Founder and CEO of Abacus (https://abacus.co.ke), a Kenyan fintech firm that builds web and mobile software designed to help people anywhere in the world gain access to African financial markets. Joel previously founded and headed up the consumer financial news publication, PesaTalk.com, and prior to that, he served as the Africa Head of Product Development for the Mobile Money team at the Kenyan mobile commerce and payment technology provider, Cellulant. In this conversation with Andile Masuku, Joel provides insights into Kenya's dicey financial services regulatory environment and explains how Abacus is doubling down on providing safe, affordable micro investment options both for Kenyan citizens who might otherwise have been excluded from participating in securities markets, as well as more affluent Kenyan investors based abroad.

In this conversation with Andile Masuku, TechAdvance CEO, Edmund Olotu, sketches Nigeria's digital payments infrastructure landscape and explains why he feels the time is right for his company to participate more actively in the discourses around the next wave of data analytics-driven tech in Nigeria. Listen in to hear Edmund unpack TechAdvance's ambitions to take the game to competitors like Interswitch and position to be the platform partner of choice for big corporate and government-owned enterprises looking to reduce payments friction, as well as newer fintech startups looking to deliver digitized financial services to the masses.

In this episode of the African Tech Roundup podcast, Oliver Sauter— Co-founder and Head of Strategy, Product & Operations at https://WorldBrain.io, joins Andile Masuku and Musa Kalenga for a meandering conversation that explores the link between the trend towards interoperability and idealised notions of individual data ownership. As Africa grapples with the reality of large swathes of its population being either digitally "invisible" or completely oblivious to the commercial value of the personal data they are palming off so freely, Oliver, Musa and Andile discuss how interoperability might contribute towards private citizens wielding control and commercial agency over their personal data. Also, listen in to hear why Oliver and the rest of the team at WorldBrain have chosen to embrace the non-mainstream "stewardship-ownership" model of corporate guardianship - as unpacked in Armin Steuernagel's recent TEDxZurich talk(http://bit.ly/stewardownership) - as they attempt to solve the global fake news problem. A

Chinasa Udeala is Regional Director for East Africa at Boomplay Music. The music streaming platform is a subsidiary of the Chinese firm Transsnet Ltd which also owns TECNO Mobile. In this quick chat with Andile Masuku, Chinasa explains how Boomplay is attempting to outsmart the likes of Spotify and Apple Music to deliver localised digital downloads and streaming service offerings that are relevant to key consumer markets on the continent. Listen in to hear Chinasa unpack Boomplay’s revenue streams and speak to some of the challenges they have to overcome in terms of building a solid catalogue of local music and delivering on differentiated curation.

Helen Anatogu is the Chief Executive and Programme Director of the Information Technology Developer Entrepreneurship Accelerator (IDEA) in Nigeria. In this throwback conversation with Andile Masuku – taped at the African Angel Investor Summit 2017 - Helen shares her thoughts on the startup investment landscape and factors in on how African founders ought to position themselves to land much-needed funding.

Kigali-based Singaporean, Karanvir Singh, is the CEO and MD of Yego Innovision Ltd— a company which has launched a cashless transport service called YegoMoto in Rwanda, which is essentially an 'Uber for motorcycle taxis' or "motos" as they are commonly called. In this conversation with Andile Masuku – taped at the Africa Tech Summit Kigali 2018 (www.africatechsummit.com/kigali/) – Karanvir fields questions about surfing the global mobility wave to launch an ambitious platform play with the potential to become a ubiquitous part of Rwandan civic life— a prospect that has some people worried about issues like data privacy, given YegoMoto's pretty cosy relationship with the Rwandan government.

It's fair to say that Facebook is the elephant in pretty much every room at the moment. In this month's instalment of the African Tech Roundup podcast, Marvin Coleby joins Andile Masuku and Musa Kalenga to factor in on some of the biggest tech and innovation headlines that have trended over the last month or so— not least, Facebook's diabolical data privacy gaffes. Marvin is a venture lawyer who hails from The Bahamas and his startup, Raise Impact (http://raiseimpact.io/), is harnessing blockchain technology to build a tokenized impact exchange to democratise private investments made in companies based in emerging markets. Listen in as Andile, Musa and Marvin wade through some of the more promising Africa-relevant blockchain and crypto developments happening around the world and grapple with the potentially problematic concept of “impact investment” concept. Music Credits: Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Music licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Image Credit: Thought Catalog

The Kigali-based Sara Oon is Co-Founder and Partner at NISK Capital, a Nairobi-head quartered boutique advisory and investment outfit serving Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda. Sara, a Singaporean, holds business degrees from Princeton University and the University of California, and in this conversation with Andile Masuku – taped at Africa Tech Summit Kigali 2018 (www.africatechsummit.com/kigali/) - she speaks on the challenge of helping East African startups and SME’s overcome the funding gap, and about assisting investors who struggle to identify investible prospects to sink their funds into.

The runaway global success of the Marvel blockbuster sensation, Black Panther, has ignited debate about the influence and business potential of African cinema. In this Mapo Radio (http://bit.ly/MapoRadio) interview, Thembekile Malindi speaks with South African author, filmmaker and founder of the BRICS-focussed RapidLion Film Festival (https://filmfreeway.com/RapidLion), Eric Miyeni, about the state of South Africa's feature film industry and the need for Africans to master the business of marketing and film projects. Listen in to hear Eric's candid take on how African film producers might go about 'reclaiming the African narrative' and asserting themselves more confidently on the global stage.

Caine Wanjau is the Chief Technology Officer of Twiga Foods, a Nairobi-based distributor of fresh fruit produce that's leveraging tech to introduce business efficiencies to one of Kenya's more logistically-challenged industries. Caine holds degrees from Monash University and Strathmore University specialising in Computer Technologies and Engineering (Hardware). In this conversation with Andile Masuku - taped at Africa Tech Summit Kigali 2018 (www.africatechsummit.com/kigali/) - Caine talks about what life at Twiga Foods has been like following the successful close of a $10.3 million Series A funding round in 2017. Listen in to hear Caine's advice for African diasporans who might be keen to emulate him in terms of leaving a comfy overseas gig at a leading bank in order to participate in Africa's emerging tech and innovation scene.

Feyi Olubudun’s new book, The Villager: How Africans Consume Brands, puts forward a lens for helping Africa-focussed brands and businesses achieve commercial success by correcting their perception of the African Consumer, or as he posits, “The Villager”. Feyi is the CEO of Insight Publicis Nigeria, one of West Africa’s leading creative agencies, and in this chat with Andile Masuku he unpacks insights gleaned from observing many brands fail to crack "the African opportunity". Listen in to hear him share some of the most common mistakes that foreign international businesses make in approaching African markets and how you might avoid making the same ones yourself.