Business & founders stories across Africa
Section
Inventors, engineers and new ideas from across the continent.
The Kenyan technologist co-founded Ushahidi, the crowdsourced crisis-mapping tool born in the 2008 post-election violence, and BRCK, a rugged internet device. She now works on M-Pesa…
The South African technologist co-founded one of the country’s first free mobile VoIP services, built a learning company, and now co-leads an education charity serving children…
South African inventor Ludwick Marishane came up with DryBath as a teenager. He turned it into a patented product, a company, and a business that sells…
The Econet founder saved 75 dollars from his salary to start a company, won a landmark Zimbabwean court ruling on telecoms licensing, and went on to…
Started in 2006 while at university, Yeigo won the first Enablis Business Plan competition and was bought by a South African operator in 2009.
From a computer science diploma in Jos to a PhD in innovation, Bosun Tijani built CcHUB in Lagos and acquired Nairobi’s iHub along the way.
Juliana Rotich co-founded BRCK after a familiar Nairobi problem: blackouts that cut internet access. The device keeps running for about eight hours without mains power.
Karim Beguir and Zohra Slim started an artificial intelligence company that grew from Tunis to offices in London, Lagos, Cape Town and Kigali.
In the weeks after Kenya’s disputed 2007 election, a small group in Nairobi built a tool to collect reports by text message and plot them on…
A University of Cape Town graduate, Mark Shuttleworth founded the internet-security firm Thawte, sold it, and went on to create Canonical and the Ubuntu operating system.
Co-founded in 2014 by Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, Andela grew into a company backed by Spark Capital, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Google Ventures and SoftBank.
An electrical engineer who built a career at Verizon and MTN Nigeria, Funke Opeke founded MainOne in Lagos in 2008 to lay a submarine cable from…
Never miss a founder story. Get a notification when we publish something new.
