TECH SOLUTIONS

Okechukwu Ofili:

With the emergence of smartphones, and its growing influence on human evolution, it’s only commercially viable that an app is created for anything whose operation can be shrunk into people’s favourite handheld device. This was the concept Okechukwu Ofili adhered to when he founded Okadabooks. 

Okadabooks is an ebook app that affords up and coming indigenous authors a platform to sell their work to the world. Okechukwu Ofili is an author who clearly understood that Nigerian authors needed a place where they would be heard and he created Okadabooks in response to this. 

He has noted that he wants to grow Okadabooks to a level where people can feel comfortable leaving their 9-5 jobs to become an Okadabooks author.

Victor Asemota

Victor Asemota is a is a serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist, one of the biggest investors in the African Tech Industry. He has in hands on a number of big name tech organizations in the country, including; Flutterwave, Asset and Resource Management Holding Company (ARM), IBM HyperProtect Accelerator, and Placefund, all of which he serves a board member.

As an entrepreneur, he founded Swifta Systems and Services, a professional services company focused on technology service delivery and business change management, and Alterna Capital Group, an investment firm which invests in capital assets and companies.  

He is an expert on bootstrapping and tweets a host of ideas about building revenue-generating businesses. He is very conversant with many of his followers and his advice on local tech investments, like Elon Musk’s on cryptocurrency is not to be taken lightly.

Jason Njoku:

Jason Njoku is the founder of one of Nigeria’s most successful streaming services: Iroko TV. Iroko TV is a web platform that provides paid-for Nigerian films on-demand. Jason Njoku is a tech entrepreneur who has made major investments in now lucrative ventures.

He started with YouTube, before eventually creating Iroko TV. Jason is also the Executive Chairman of Black Bet and Betty Bingo.

Seni Sulyman

Seni Sulyman is a highly disciplined tech entrepreneur who prides himself on running high-performance organizations.

He is currently the CEO at Bellhop, a moving company which employs the use of an advanced tech-enabled model. He is also the Founder and Community Manager of Black Ops, a community which aims at addressing the scarcity of support systems for African operators i.e , Finance, Marketing, Sales, Customer Success etc.

He is a board member of the FATE Foundation,   a non profit organization focused on helping small businesses start, grow and scale through a combined approach of learning, growth support services and scale up programs.

He was the Vice President, Global Operations at Andela, up until last year, 2020. Under his leadership, Andela in 2019 raised around $100 million in the next round of funding. In the same year Andela also announced the departure of nearly 250 junior developers and staff from its Nigeria and Uganda offices, with another 170 potentially impacted in Kenya.

In recognition of Andela’s achievements during Sulyman’s tenure, the company emerged as number one on Jobberman’s Best 100 places to work in Nigeria list (2018) and earned the US Secretary of State Award for Corporate Excellence.

Onyeka Akumah:

Onyeka Akumah dabbles in Agriculture, Transportation and Real Estate, all of which he has been able to contribute positively. 

He is the founder of Treepz, Nigeria’s first vehicle-hailing app. He is also the founder of the popular agritech platform; Farmcrowdy, a company focused on helping stakeholders in the food value chain maximise their output and increase their profits with technology. 

He is a prolific tech entrepreneur who co-founded Plantywaka, Crowdyvest and RentSmallSmall. He is the recipient of numerous awards including 2021 African Leadership Persons of the Year – African Agricultural Champion of the Year (2020) 50 African Innovators to Watch by Global Shakers, 2020 Top 10 Nigerian CEOs Under 40 Years, 2020 Entrepreneur of the Year 2019 at the GAGE Awards, and many more.

Nadayar Enegesi:

Nadayar Enegesi is one of the most proficient tech investors in Nigeria. He is the founder of Eden Life, a tech-enabled services company that automates home chores. He also co-founded the popular Edtech company Andela and led the training and learning teams there. All he has been able to accomplish stems from a burning desire to simplify people’s life using tech.

Before getting on Andela and Eden life, he had co-founded Fora, an education technology platform that provides North-American online courses for African students and emerging professionals.

Yomi Adedeji and Omoseindemi Olobayo:

Yomi Adedeji is all about seeing the dreams of young people come to fruition, and impacting the economy to the best of the abilities of those he invests in. As he once stated, his life goal is to accelerate the growth of dreamers and doers wherever they are, by providing them with intuitive digital solutions. 

Yomi Adedeji is the CEO and co-founder of Softcom Limited. Softcom is a technology solution company with a resolve to support organisations in their quest for impact and growth using technology. They are primarily across a few sectors including Education, Energy, Telecommunications, and Financial Services.

His partner on Softcom; Omoseindemi Olobayo, is also a tech enthusiast who has put his blood sweat and tears into growing the Softcom initiative. His passion for identifying and solving problems got him the position of Chief Solutions Officer in the company for half a decade, and made him a key figure in pushing the product to greater heights. In 2019, he stepped down from that position and became the Chief Operating Officer of the company.

Very recently, he became the Chief Executive Officer of Eyowo, a digital bank which places an emphasis on restructuring its customers spending habits. The brand is also keen on enabling micro lending to people who may not even have a bank account

Raphael Afaedor:

Having gained a ton of experience in the internet and retail industries, this tech entrepreneur and business manager has been the backbone of some of the most ingenious retail solutions in the country. 

He is the founder of Kyosk Digital Services, a tech-led platform that connects informal retailers who retail in kiosks and other similar retail outlets directly to fast-moving consumer goods companies (FMCGs). 

Prior to founding and running this outfit, he co-founded Jumia and Supermartng. Raphael began his career at Monster.com where he rose to be a senior manager in charge of Software Product Development for 18 Western European countries.

Yele Bademosi:

Yele is the founder of Bundle Africa, a social payments app for cash or cryptocurrency, with an emphasis on social. He is also a founding Partner at Microtraction, an investment platform that provides seed capital to technology entrepreneurs at the earliest stages of their venture. 

A tech entrepreneur and enthusiast, Yele got into the tech world as soon as he was done with his tertiary institution. His first startup was Purple, a social app that let university students with shared interests in the UK find and connect with each other. 

Prior to founding Bundle Africa, Yele was the General Manager at Starta, a resource platform & online community for African Entrepreneurs that reached 28,000+ subscribers under his leadership.

Buchi Okoro:

Buchi Okoro is a man with professional experience in a number of sectors including real estate, investment banking, fashion logistics and of course, tech. After having an awful experience the first time he decided to explore the bitcoin craze, he decided to go into tech.

He founded Quidax, a digital assets exchange platform that allows its users buy and sell bitcoin. His plan for this venture is to create the easiest platform for Nigerians to trade in cryptocurrency. He came up with this idea in 2016. In one year since he launched the public beta, the company processed over 110 million US Dollars in transaction volume, showing a very promising trajectory.

Onyekachi Izukanne:

With over 17 years in tech and consulting, Onyekachi Izukanne has grown to become a very successful business owner. He is the co-founder of TradeDepot, a distributor and retail aggregator whose goal is to strengthen Nigeria’s fragmented informal retail supply chain, by connecting the world’s top consumer goods manufacturers to retailers in Africa. 

Prior to TradeDepot, Onyekachi co-founded C2G Consulting, a technology consulting practice. Last year, the company was able to raise $10 million, to use in boosting its operations.

Bright Williams:

He is a Product Manager, Software Developer, and Data Analyst, who understands the importance of tech in solving both social and economic problems. He is the co-founder of Neohaul Technologies, an IoT powered web application that tracks logistics field operations in real-time. 

In 2019, the company was able to raise 15 million naira to put its operation in gear. He also founded a similar company earlier this year, called Broka. Broka is a truck-matching platform that helps its users move their containers out of the ports within 72 hours.

He is the CTO at MyStach, a multibank savings platform.

Evans Akanno:

Owing to how undervalued Evans Akanno felt at his day to day job, he quit and went on ahead to create his own companies.

Between 2013 and 2015, this tech entrepreneur was busy trying to create the next best tech product that could one day be touted as one of the best innovations to come out of Nigeria. In that time, he managed to found three startups, one of which has become a very valuable piece of tech in the corporate world, they are Zegist, Farmkart Foods, and Cregital. 

Cregital is a standout piece of ingenuity owing to the services it offers. Cregital is a digital agency that offers anything from web design, to web development, to videography, graphics design, and software building. So far, Cregital has serviced numerous high-end clients. 

Evans is also the current CEO and Product Manager at Disha Pages, a tool for creators to create a single-page website from their mobile phones. In 2019, Evans launched Farmkart, a platform that enables people invest in agriculture and increase local food production. In the same year, he was listed in the Forbes 30 under 30, Technology Category. In 2020, The Vanguard (Nigeria) Newspaper listed Akanno as one of the young “Top 10 Nigerian CEOs Under 40”.

Kola Aina:

He is a Founding Partner at Ventures Platform which takes on the responsibility of supporting the growth of startups. Since the company’s inception, it has backed around 30 companies including now successful thriving companies like Paystack, Mines.io, Kangpe, Wifi.com.ng, Piggybank, and Printivo, among many others. 

Kola Aina has a work history that spans different sectors and many companies, including a tech-enabled diagnostic company, an HMO company, an arts and history gallery and a financial firm. 

Mark Essien:

With his proficiency in a number of programming languages, and a mind built for business, Mark Essien was able to create one of the handiest tech services in Nigeria; Hotels.ng. He founded the company in 2013, and today it has become the biggest online hotel booking agency in the country. 

With 13,000 hotels signed onto the platform, there is no other booking service that is quite as attractive as this one. He is also the founder of HNG internship, a large-scale, remote internship to train software developers in Nigeria.

In January 2020, Hotels.ng employed 150 full-time staff and over 300 agents. Mark also reported that the site reached more than 400 million people annually. Prior to Hotels.ng, while in school, Mark founded a file sharing service he called Gnumm, and a MPEG encoder called Standard MPEG.

Henry Mascot:

Identifying the problem of data insecurity on the internet, Henry Mascot founded Curacel, a technology-driven company that uses artificial intelligence to detect insurance fraud. 

Curacel today is touted as the number one claims and fraud detection platform in Africa. Curacel is currently present in 3 African countries. 

The security platform is not Henry’s first rodeo with startups, as he has been behind the creation of at least 3 startups since 2013, including HUB10, a hub for tech entrepreneurs, and Velexo IT solution, an IT solutions company that affords businesses technology to increase their productivity.

Ikenna Nzewi:

Ikenna Nzewi is the co-founder and CEO of Releaf, an Agtech which uses hardware innovation to scale the sale of high-quality raw materials to food factories in Africa. In 2021, the startup secured $4.2 million in a mix of investment and grant capital, from several investors. 

The company is focused on creating inventions that massively increase the rate of food processing, like the machine that cracks palm kernels much faster than humans can. 

Releaf dates back to 2017, when it was just an online marketplace that connected buyers and sellers of agricultural commodities. The startup has an emphasised interest in the production of palm oil, one of Nigeria’s most valuable agricultural exports.

Oluyomi Ojo:

With a goal to change how Africans order print products, Oluyomi Ojo came up with the idea of Printivo. Prinvito is a company that aims to help African businesses print marketing and business materials with ease. 

Since coming into the market in 2014, the company has worked with the likes of Microsoft, Samsung, Google, Uber, Iroko TV and many more. Last year, Ojo stepped down as CEO of the company, but that has not deterred him from procuring other tech solutions. 

He is currently the founder and CEO of Cova, a digital asset tracker. Prior to co-founding Printivo, Ojo had set up a design and advertising firm called Urbanbaze.

Opeyemi Awoyemi:

Given how complex it is to find a job in Nigeria, Opeyemi Awoyemi came up with the brilliant idea to simplify this daunting task. He devised a platform; Jobberman, where talent could be properly matched to the right opportunity. 

The platform also offers career guidance and has been the reason why so many young graduates have been able to secure a job. Awoyemi is a highly proficient investor and a tech entrepreneur who has founded quite a number of startup companies. 

He is the founder of Moneymie, a banking service for African migrants and global citizens. He founded TalentQL and Who Go Host, a cloud hosting company in West Africa with 50,000+ paying clients, amongst other startups under his belt.

Ahmad Mukoshy:

He is a highly skilled programmer and the brains behind Gigalayer, a web hosting company, which has garnered over 12,000 clients since the company was founded. 

He is also the founder of Yarnable.com, a social micro-discussion site that brought in the power of tweeting and group discussions together in the areas of Music, Gaming, Writing, Programming, Travel, and more. 

He is very skilled in using PHP, MySQL, JS, WHMCS, and more, and this fact is made all the more impressive considering that he was self-taught. Before building his own web hosting company, Ahmad served as the interim CTO of ConnectNigeria for a year, between 2012 and 2013.

Sanusi Ismaila:

As he boldly stated, Sanusi Ismaila is a tech entrepreneur whose interests are deeply rooted in technology, telecommunications, mobile, gadgets, new media and startups. 

He is the Founder of CoLab, Kaduna’s first co-working space and innovation hub. He is currently the CEO of Precogmedia, an outfit that helps scale the brands of businesses and individuals. He is the founder and editor in chief of Techsuplex, a technology e-magazine, which delivers tech news, review gadgets, analyse user patterns and behaviors, forecast technology trends, provide technology tips and solutions.