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 poten...
Apr 24, 2018•37 min
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 blockcha...
Apr 12, 2018•1 hr 17 min
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 abou...
Apr 06, 2018•14 min
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 marke...
Apr 02, 2018•26 min
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...
Mar 26, 2018•17 min
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 hi...
Mar 20, 2018•45 min
Collins Onuegbu is the Nigerian Founder of Signal Alliance as well as a Director of the Lagos Angel Network. In this conversation with Andile Masuku - taped at Africa Tech Summit Kigali 2018 (https://www.africatechsummit.com/kigali/) - Collins frames the massive business opportunity that is Nigeria, explains the difference between business angel investment efforts and less disciplined traditional angel funding activities, and unpacks why he believes that Africa’s early-stage startup scene would ...
Mar 12, 2018•16 min
Back on the show for the first time since contributing his fair share of involuntary hot takes on Episode 109 entitled "Investor Bias Debate 2.0 + Should Africa Embrace Uberisation?" (http://bit.ly/investorbias) Tapsnapp Founder, Vije Vijendrenath assumes co-hosting duties in Musa Kalenga’s absence. Andile Masuku chats to him about the workarounds he's deployed to secure funding for two startups that he previously struggled to get investors to take seriously-- namely, www.tapsnapp.co and www.you...
Mar 08, 2018•1 hr 24 min
Wambui Kinya is the Chief Strategy Officer at Andela-- a startup helping companies overcome tech talent shortages by delivering high performing distributed engineering teams that leverage some of Africa's finest coding talent. Wambui joined Andela after spending over eighteen years working within the professional services space (spanning digital, mobile marketing and technology consulting) in North America, Europe and Africa for companies such as ThoughtWorks (where she notably served as Group M...
Mar 05, 2018•30 min
Karabo Songo and Musa Kalenga are the savvy business minds behind FastGro-- the 100% black-owned investment firm which just acquired a 25.1% share of the independent agency, House of Brave (HOB). As part of the deal, Karabo has been appointed the business' Group CEO, while Musa has assumed the position of Chief Future Officer. In this conversation with Andile Masuku, Karabo and Musa share how they plan to go about applying platform thinking and leveraging technological innovation to thrive withi...
Feb 25, 2018•49 min
Bunmi Akinyemiju is Co-founder and CEO of Nigeria's Venture Garden Group-- a global technology firm which owns several fully-developed SaaS intellectual properties. Bunmi has over 16 years of entrepreneurial experience in high-tech sales, solutions development and management, and has so far led the development of over 20 proprietary technologies in multiple sectors globally. In this conversation with Andile Masuku, Bunmi unpacks the platform strategy driving Venture Garden's approach to incubati...
Feb 22, 2018•37 min
So, we invited friends of the African Tech Roundup podcast to join us for drinks at the Kigali Marriott's Iriba Bar between 4:30 PM and 6:00 PM on Feb 13th, 2018-- the day before the Africa Tech Summit Kigali conference. And when the homies demanded an impromptu podcast session, we gladly obliged. Listen in to hear what was trending at the recent #ATRULive Meetup Kigali.
Feb 19, 2018•9 min
We aren't even halfway through the first quarter of 2018 but already, we've seen a fair amount of questionable 'factual' content do the rounds on social media. In this episode of the African Tech Roundup, https://AfricaCheck.org Editor, Anim Van Wyk, joins Andile Masuku and Musa Kalenga to examine the seriousness of Africa's fake news problem and chat through recent highlights from Africa's emerging tech and innovation scene. Listen in to hear Anim explain why you shouldn't trust anyone - not ev...
Feb 05, 2018•1 hr 29 min
Tunde Kehinde is the co-founder of Lidya, a branchless internet bank that aims to ease Nigeria's estimated $30 billion small business credit gap. Tunde holds a honours degree in finance from Howard University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He previously co-founded the logistics startup, Africa Courier Express (ACE). Before that, he co-founded Jumia.com and served as the e-commerce giant's Managing Director. In this chat with Andile Masuku, Tunde reflects on his founder experience and e...
Jan 30, 2018•37 min
Kola Aina is the Founder and CEO of the Nigerian-based pan-African seed-stage fund and accelerator, Ventures Platform. The firm's portfolio includes well-publicised Nigerian rising startup stars like Paystack and Printivo, as well as promising, lesser-known ventures like the Cameroonian wifi entertainment platform, Viva. In this conversation with Andile Masuku, Kola unpacks his firm's investment thesis and their Y Combinator-esque approach to startup incubation and acceleration. He also shares h...
Jan 22, 2018•20 min
In the first full African Tech Roundup podcast of 2018, Andile Masuku mulls over Gefira Solutions Founder and CEO Bert Bruggeman's assertion that we can't just "app our way" to solving all of Africa's problems. Then, he ponders which hybrid investment approaches might prove successful in fueling African startups in 2018, and echoes the questions posed by Seyi Fabode’s blog post entitled: “Is It Time To Dump The ‘Lean Startup’ Approach?” Also, in this episode, Andile gives a quick update on the #...
Jan 15, 2018•25 min
Bert Bruggeman is the Belgian Founder and CEO of the Silicon Valley-based technology advisory firm, Gefira Solutions. Bert has an impressive 25-year track record of successful technology product development and C-level leadership in a broad range of high-tech industries. Gefira Solutions is keen to act on their expansion agenda within Africa's hardware development and innovation space. In this conversation with Andile Masuku, Bert unpacks his organisation's vision and explains why Africa can't s...
Jan 12, 2018•17 min
Montserrat native Kenfield Griffith is co-founder and CEO of mSurvey-- a data analytics SaaS startup based in Nairobi Kenya. In 2012, Kenfield partnered with Kenyan Louis Majanja to launch the business following an extended visit to Nairobi to conduct some research for his MIT PhD on the use of technology as a means to improving communication. In this conversation with Andile Masuku, Kenfield explains why he's bullish on 2018 and unpacks how mSurvey's data analytics platform is delivering solid ...
Jan 04, 2018•18 min
Rich Tanksley is the Senior Vice President of Special Projects at the Nigerian-American consultancy, NeuBridges. Formerly the CEO of Pulse.ng, Rich continues to be the Ringier-owned online media platform's brand ambassador. Prior to that, he spent three years working at the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) in Ghana as a senior faculty member and headed up Africa operations for Seedstars. In this conversation with Andile Masuku - taped at Afrobytes Tech Conference 2017 - Rich...
Jan 01, 2018•22 min
French-born Cameroonian Alec Fokapu is the founder and CEO of FiftyFor, a B2B rating platform for African companies. FiftyFor uses an algorithm to compute ratings on governance structure, financial strength, operational capability, and the social and environmental impact of African companies. Alec has 10 years of experience working as a financial analyst in international infrastructure projects at Total and Crédit Agricole CIB. Prior to launching FiftyFor in 2014, he founded an investment firm d...
Dec 22, 2017•24 min
By this time last year, Africa's tech and innovation media community had started to go into hibernation for the Festive Season. But this year’s different… Bitcoin is doing the thing, America’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is poised to put net neutrality out of its misery, Uber is bracing for a severe regulatory backlash after trying to conceal a 2016 data breach affecting 57 million users, and complex corruption allegations continue to dog the JSE-listed IT service management giant, E...
Dec 13, 2017•1 hr 26 min
2017 has seen Maya Horgan Famodu transition from overseeing efforts to assist corporations and investors integrate into the African tech ecosystem via Ingressive's market entry and operations services, to becoming an early stage tech venture capitalist at Ingressive Capital. In this conversation with Andile Masuku, Maya explains how she's leveraging her Nigerian-Swedish-American heritage, her bullet-proof professional reputation and the insights she's continuing to glean via Ingressive's legacy ...
Dec 11, 2017•18 min
This Medium blog entitled, "Startups4Africa: This is NOT OUR MANIFESTO" by Co-Creation Hub Nigeria Co-founder Femi Longe has caused quite a stir on social media: http://bit.ly/2AxCEMv. In this chat with Andile Masuku, Femi explains why he couldn't keep his pen still after he returned to Nigeria following the recent EU-Africa Summit, where a "collaborative" document entitled "Startups 4 Africa: Manifesto for the development of a thriving community of African-European startup ecosystems" was prese...
Dec 05, 2017•39 min
Khaled Ismail is the Chairman and Founder of two Cairo-based angel funds— KI Angel and HIM Angel. He also serves as advisor to Algebra Ventures, Egypt’s leading technology venture capital outfit, which focuses primarily on Series A and Series B investments in Egypt and the MENA region. In this conversation with Andile Masuku - taped at the fringes of African Angel Investor Summit 2017 (www.AAIS2017.com) - Khaled relates how he went from being a career technologist to founding seven tech ventures...
Dec 04, 2017•17 min
Israeli investor Ido Sum is a Partner at TLcom Capital— a venture capital firm with a presence in Nairobi, Lagos and London. Since 1999, the firm has invested in Telecom, Media and Technology (TMT) companies in Europe, Israel and Sub Saharan Africa and currently manages total commitments in excess of €200 million. In this conversation with Andile Masuku - taped at the fringes of African Angel Investor Summit 2017 (www.AAIS2017.com) - Ido fields questions regarding the prevalence of investor bias...
Nov 28, 2017•39 min
In this conversation, Andile Masuku asks PesaCheck.org Managing Editor, Eric Mugendi, to reflect on the unprecedented leveraging of digital technologies by leading actors in Kenya's controversial elections, and to factor in on how the country's emerging tech ecosystem is doing in the aftermath.
Nov 22, 2017•18 min
Last week, Africa’s early stage investor community came together for the 4th annual African Early Stage Investor Summit (#AAIS2017). At this exclusive investor-only event, hosted at Workshop17 in Cape Town, South Africa, key stakeholders in the ecosystem exchanged insights on best practice, shared lessons learnt, and debated what the roadmap for the future ought to look like. In this African Tech Roundup episode, Andile Masuku and Musa Kalenga discuss some of the more contentious issues unpacked...
Nov 20, 2017•40 min
Timothy Kotin was born and bred in Ghana. He is the co-founder and chief executive of SuperFluid Labs-- an ambitious African data analytics firm which supports enterprise clients spread across multiple sectors. Superfluid has offices in Kenya, Ghana and Germany. Kotin holds an MPhil. in Engineering for Sustainable Development from the University of Cambridge and a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Harvard University. Prior to co-founding Superfluids Labs, he ...
Nov 10, 2017•38 min
The Facebook-sponsored TechCrunch Startup Battlefield competition which took place in Nairobi recently brought together fifteen African startups for a glitzy pitch session that offered entrants the chance to win $25,000, as well as the opportunity to go on and compete for $50,000 at the Disrupt Cup, which will be held in Silicon Valley next year. After the Kenyan logistics startup, Lori Systems, won the Nairobi event murmurings of alleged tournament rigging started doing the rounds and eventuall...
Oct 30, 2017•1 hr 1 min
Electrical engineer, Yannick Lefang, is the Founder and CEO of Kasi Insight-- a research and advisory firm that provides African consumer data and actionable insights. Since 2013, Yannick's firm has been intent on empowering business leaders and entrepreneurs with the game-changing insight they need to tap into the continent's fast-growing markets. In this conversation with Andile Masuku - taped at Afrobytes Tech Conference 2017 - Yannick explains why even some of the most-quoted macroeconomic s...
Oct 23, 2017•27 min
