Paul Kent is Co-founder and Managing Director of Sureswipe, a South African payments solutions startup dedicated to making card payment acceptance easy and accessible for small and medium-sized retailers and service providers. Sureswipe started out as a business division of the cloud-based clinical and billing practice management software firm, Healthbridge, before it evolved into the Point-Of-Sale (POS) product driven startup it is today. Since 2008, Paul has helped to grow Sureswipe into one o...
Oct 25, 2018•51 min
South African Lyndsey Duff is the South Africa Country Manager at What3Words— a British startup which provides a precise physical location solution that has broken up the world into a grid of 3m x 3m squares and assigned each one a unique 3-word address. Prior to joining What3Words, Lyndsey oversaw inward investment at the South African High Commission UK, following stints at the Palace of Westminster and the South African Chamber of Commerce. In this brief chat with Andile Masuku - taped at Afr...
Oct 17, 2018•9 min
On this podcast, Andile Masuku chats with two exceptional, Cape Townian entrepreneurs who are both actively involved in a youth-focused tech hub initiative called the Masakhe Techville Creative Technology Center in KwaLanga township, where they both grew up. The project is an initiative of the Masakhe Foundation. Mpilo Ngcukana co-founded the Simon Deporres men’s clothing brand in 2007 - while studying Finance and Economics at the University of Cape Town, and is currently working to launch an ar...
Oct 12, 2018•24 min
This podcast features two South African startup founders working the trenches of the emerging gig economy. Human geneticist-turned-entrepreneur Aisha Pandor is the Co-founder and CEO of SweepSouth, an on-demand booking platform for home cleaning services. SweepSouth is quite notably the first South African start-up to be accepted into the 500 Startups Accelerator in Silicon Valley. Velani Mboweni is the Co-founder and CEO of the ride-sharing service, LULA. This Global Fellow of the San Francisco...
Oct 11, 2018•45 min
Anita Mendiratta is the Canadian Founder and Managing Director of Cachet Consulting, a firm which services governments, multinational corporations and global NGO’s. Anita has over two decades of tourism and economic development experience gleaned on almost every continent and possesses an enviable grasp of the economic, social, political and environmental dynamics impacting nations grappling with change. She is currently a Strategic Advisor to CNN International, a Board Member for the Thebe Grou...
Oct 10, 2018•16 min
This super-chill conversation, taped at the fringes of Africa Tech Summit 2018, features Google South Africa’s Head of Communications and Public Affairs, Mich Atagana. Mich is an exceedingly well-travelled former-journalist who, as Editor of Memeburn and Ventureburn, previously covered emerging tech and startups on the continent. Mich was a GSMA Global Mobile Awards judge for 4 years (from 2014 to 2017), and also formerly penned a column for CNN which featured insight about leading tech companie...
Oct 05, 2018•21 min
Honourable Najib Balala is Kenya’s Minister of Tourism and Wildlife. After previously serving in that cabinet position once before, from 2008 to 2012, and subsequently serving as Chairman of the United Nations World Tourism Organisation, Hon. Balala was re-appointed as Kenya's Tourism Minister in 2015. Following the establishment of Kenya’s new Constitution in 2012, Hon. Balala was responsible for delivering the country’s reformed Tourism Bill and providing the sector with a policy designed to p...
Oct 03, 2018•16 min
Stephan Ekbergh is the Founder and CEO of Travelstart. He is a Swedish entrepreneur who is probably best known for growing Travelstart from a provocative online travel startup in Scandinavia to one of the world’s largest online travel agencies servicing emerging markets in Africa and the Middle East. Prior to founding Travelstart, Stephan was a touring DJ and entertainment entrepreneur who performed at events all over Europe. After founding Travelstart in 1999 and steering the business to profit...
Oct 01, 2018•22 min
Pearl Boshomane Tsotetsi is the Lifestyle Editor at the Sunday Times (South Africa). Pearl was voted one of Mail and Guardian's Top 200 Young South Africans in 2015 and assumed her current role in 2017. She previously served as Editor of Daily Planet, an intersectional pop culture and social commentary website covering the arts, feminism, racism, social media and digital consumer trends. In addition to working at the Sunday Times, the self-proclaimed "Blonde Bombshell" writes and curates for her...
Sep 27, 2018•38 min
Chris Lehane is Airbnb’s Head of Global Policy, Public Affairs and Communications. Chris engages with policymakers around the world to safeguard the rights of people who have bought into the travel industry giant's home sharing proposition. He also frequently contributes to public discourse around the societal hazards, economic benefits and democratisation potential of the new "experience economy" Airbnb is propagating. In the 1990's, Chris served in various positions in the Clinton Administrati...
Sep 26, 2018•47 min
Mark Mwongela is the Co-founder and CEO of Pesapal, a leading Kenyan mobile, online and point-of-sale (POS) payment platform operating in seven African countries including Malawi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Kenya. Previously, Mark served as Technical Director at Pesapal— overseeing the firm's product development efforts, and prior to that, he was Managing Director of Variant Technology Management Consultancy. In this conversation with Andile Masuku - taped at Africa Travel Summit 2018 (http:...
Sep 24, 2018•41 min
According to a recent World Bank report, it's more costly to send money to Africa than to anywhere else in the world. On average, a 12% remittance fee is charged for every USD200 sent to the continent. Just last year (2017), African Diasporans reportedly sent home USD38 billion, and doubtless, a solid chunk of that sum served to line the pockets of financial incumbents who are only too happy to promote the status quo. In this episode of the African Tech Roundup, Herbert Banhire, AMA.ZING's Head ...
Sep 17, 2018•1 hr 30 min
You might recall that in September 2017 the Cameroonian former Founder & CEO of Afrostream and current Chief Brand Officer of African Leadership Academy's Anzisha Prize, Tonjé Bakang, published a heavily-publicised Medium post in French announcing that his VOD streaming service was shutting down. Here is Tonjé's letter in English— translated by Audrey Lang: http://bit.ly/tonjéokayafrica. Our very own Andile Masuku even wrote a syndicated op-ed for Business Report South Africa (http://bit.ly/...
Sep 07, 2018•49 min
Congolese Jean-Claude Tshipama is the CEO of Eutelsat's Konnect Africa subsidiary which delivers satellite broadband connectivity services in Africa. Jean-Claude has over 16 years’ experience in telecommunications, computer and Pay TV industries’. He holds an MBA from HEC-Montreal in Canada and a Master’s degree in Economics from the Protestant University in Congo. Jean-Claude was formerly the Commercial Director at Celtel in DR Congo, and also previously served as Director of Sales and Distribu...
Aug 30, 2018•33 min
South African Simon Dingle has worked with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies since 2011, designing products that make it easier to engage in an increasingly digital world. He has proved to be especially gifted at using his broadcasting, writing and speaking talents to make complex crypto-related matters simple for audiences all around the world Simon previously led the product team at one of the world’s earliest Bitcoin exchanges and spearheaded collaborations on several other popular fintech p...
Aug 23, 2018•32 min
At the fringes of Afrobytes Tech Marketplace 2018, Andile Masuku caught up with virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) evangelist, founder of the Lagos-based Ìmísí 3D and co-founder of the We Will Lead Africa initiative, Judith Okonkwo, to take in her compelling arguments for why VR tech ought to be more enthusiastically embraced across Africa. Listen in to hear how Judith and her team at Ìmísí 3D - an "Extended Reality (AR/VR) creation lab dedicated to growing a community of AR/VR deve...
Aug 17, 2018•10 min
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 ...
Aug 07, 2018•35 min
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...
Aug 02, 2018•22 min
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, Ama...
Jul 27, 2018•25 min
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...
Jul 19, 2018•20 min
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:...
Jul 09, 2018•59 min
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 ...
Jul 05, 2018•33 min
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 Cat...
Jun 28, 2018•46 min
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 tech...
Jun 22, 2018•55 min
Look out, Amsterdam! We're coming!
Jun 01, 2018•9 min
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 conversatio...
May 28, 2018•13 min
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 ent...
May 21, 2018•18 min
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 pe...
May 13, 2018•1 hr 21 min
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 strea...
May 10, 2018•8 min
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.
May 02, 2018•22 min
