# Visionary

> Business & founders stories across Africa


## Posts

- [The $20 dinner that became a school-meal network feeding hundreds of thousands of Kenyan children](https://visionaryafrica.online/wawira-njiru-food-for-education-kenya/): Wawira Njiru started with a fundraising dinner in Adelaide and a borrowed kitchen in Ruiru. Today Food for Education serves a subsidised hot lunch to children across Kenya, paid for by the tap of a smartwatch.
- [Mysol: thirty years in the pit, then a mining company of his own, and a bonus for every employee](https://visionaryafrica.online/mysol-solly-soka-madibela-mining-inspiration/): Solly Soka Madibela, known as Mysol, built MySol Holdings & Logistics in the chrome belt of South Africa’s North West. He also funds bursaries and training through the MySol Foundation, and made headlines for gifting his staff R20,000 each.
- [A viral piggy bank, two weeks of building, and Nigeria’s biggest savings app](https://visionaryafrica.online/odunayo-eweniyi-piggyvest-nigeria/): Odunayo Eweniyi and her co-founders pivoted from a struggling job-matching startup after a social media post about a broken piggy bank. PiggyVest now counts millions of Nigerians as savers.
- [From Andela to Flutterwave to Future Africa: the serial founder now backing the next wave](https://visionaryafrica.online/iyinoluwa-aboyeji-andela-flutterwave-future-africa/): Iyinoluwa Aboyeji co-founded two of Africa’s best-known unicorn companies before he turned 30. His current bet is on early-stage founders and on training a generation of AI talent.
- [Olugbenga Agboola and the bet that Africa’s payments could run on one network](https://visionaryafrica.online/olugbenga-agboola-flutterwave-mono/): The Flutterwave chief executive left PayPal and Google to build payments infrastructure for a continent. Now he is buying open-banking startups and funding African AI.
- [Shola Akinlade built Paystack for Nigerian merchants, then sold it to Stripe](https://visionaryafrica.online/shola-akinlade-paystack-stripe/): A database trainee at Heineken became the founder of the payments company that Stripe bought in 2020. He has since turned his attention to football and to the next payments product.
- [Temie Giwa-Tubosun and the startup that delivers blood the way couriers deliver parcels](https://visionaryafrica.online/temie-giwa-tubosun-lifebank-nigeria/): After a difficult childbirth and years studying maternal health, Temie Giwa-Tubosun built LifeBank to find blood and deliver it to Nigerian hospitals fast. In 2019 it won a quarter of a million dollars.
- [Lorna Rutto left banking to turn Nairobi’s plastic waste into fence posts](https://visionaryafrica.online/lorna-rutto-ecopost-kenya-plastic/): Raised in a Nakuru informal settlement, Lorna Rutto founded EcoPost to recycle plastic into durable fencing. The company says it has diverted millions of kilograms of waste and created hundreds of jobs.
- [Juliana Rotich helped build Ushahidi, then made a modem that survives power cuts](https://visionaryafrica.online/juliana-rotich-ushahidi-brck-kenya/): 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 at Safaricom.
- [Rapelang Rabana went from free mobile calls to teaching 700,000 children with tablets](https://visionaryafrica.online/rapelang-rabana-rekindle-imagine-worldwide/): 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 across Africa.
- [Ludwick Marishane invented a bath you do not need water for. He was 17.](https://visionaryafrica.online/ludwick-marishane-drybath-south-africa/): 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 mostly to export markets.
- [Vusi Thembekwayo: from a marketing start-up at 21 to backing Africa’s growth companies](https://visionaryafrica.online/vusi-thembekwayo-mygrowthfund-school-of-scale/): A former Dragons’ Den investor and international speaker, Vusi Thembekwayo turned a hard early lesson about due diligence into MyGrowthFund Venture Partners, an investment firm for high-growth African SMEs.
- [JUMO began as a Ghanaian mobile finance start-up and delivered over 10 million loans by 2016.](https://visionaryafrica.online/jumo-ghana-mobile-lending-startup/): Founded in 2015, JUMO connected mobile network operators and banks to people with no collateral, offering loans and savings over USSD codes on basic phones.
- [Paystack was accepted into Y Combinator in 2016. In 2020 Stripe bought it for over 200 million dollars.](https://visionaryafrica.online/paystack-company-story-stripe-acquisition/): Founded in 2015 by two Nigerian software engineers, Paystack processed more than half of web payments in Nigeria by 2020, and is now part of Stripe.
- [Raymond Ackerman bought four Pick n Pay stores in Cape Town in 1966. The chain now has about 2,300 stores.](https://visionaryafrica.online/raymond-ackerman-pick-n-pay-four-stores/): After nine years running Checkers from 4 stores to 85, Raymond Ackerman bought the first four Pick n Pay stores and built them into a national retailer.
- [Flutterwave reached unicorn status in 2021 with a 170 million dollar round, the largest for an African start-up at the time.](https://visionaryafrica.online/flutterwave-company-payments-africa-growth/): Founded in 2016, Flutterwave grew from a payments start-up into a platform licensed in 34 African countries, and in 2026 acquired the open-banking company Mono.
- [Odunayo Eweniyi launched FirstCheck Africa to put early money behind women-led startups.](https://visionaryafrica.online/firstcheck-africa-feminist-coalition-odunayo-eweniyi/): In January 2021 Odunayo Eweniyi and Eloho Oname launched FirstCheck, an angel platform for women-led and women-focused startups across Africa.
- [Sheila Johnson co-founded BET in 1979, then built a hotel and resort business of her own.](https://visionaryafrica.online/sheila-johnson-bet-salamander-resorts/): A co-founder of Black Entertainment Television, Sheila Johnson later started Salamander Hotels and Resorts and became a leading donor to education and women’s causes.
- [Stephen Saad started by distributing prescription drugs in black townships. His company is now Africa’s largest generic medicines producer.](https://visionaryafrica.online/stephen-saad-aspen-pharmacare-durban/): Born in Durban to Lebanese parents, Stephen Saad was a millionaire at 29, then co-founded Aspen Pharmacare in 1997.
- [Strive Masiyiwa started with 75 dollars. He then fought for five years in court for the right to build a mobile network.](https://visionaryafrica.online/strive-masiyiwa-econet-wireless/): 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 build one of Africa’s largest technology groups.
- [Bayo Ogunlesi grew up in Ibadan and clerked at the US Supreme Court. He now chairs Global Infrastructure Partners.](https://visionaryafrica.online/adebayo-ogunlesi-global-infrastructure-partners/): A Nigerian-born lawyer and investment banker, Adebayo Ogunlesi founded Global Infrastructure Partners in 2006 after a career at Credit Suisse First Boston.
- [Zipline started delivering blood by drone in Rwanda in 2016. Its drones have made over two million deliveries.](https://visionaryafrica.online/zipline-rwanda-ghana-drone-delivery-medical/): An American start-up whose most visible work began in Africa: delivering blood, vaccines and medicines to rural clinics in Rwanda and Ghana.
- [Rapelang Rabana and fellow University of Cape Town students built Yeigo, one of South Africa’s first free mobile VoIP services.](https://visionaryafrica.online/yeigo-free-mobile-calls-cape-town-rabana/): Started in 2006 while at university, Yeigo won the first Enablis Business Plan competition and was bought by a South African operator in 2009.
- [Anton Rupert dropped out of medical school because of money. He started making cigarettes in a garage with £10.](https://visionaryafrica.online/anton-rupert-rembrandt-garage-cigarettes/): From a dry-cleaning business to the Rembrandt Group, Anton Rupert built a business empire that also funded education, art and conservation.
- [Oprah Winfrey was born into poverty in rural Mississippi. She became a media owner and host for 25 years.](https://visionaryafrica.online/oprah-winfrey-harpo-own/): From a radio job in high school to a production company and her own television network, Oprah Winfrey built one of the most recognised media brands in the world.
- [A man living with his mother could not find Nollywood films online. So he went to Lagos and bought the rights.](https://visionaryafrica.online/iroko-nollywood-streaming-jason-njoku/): After several failed ventures, the founder of iROKO started a YouTube channel for licensed Nigerian films. It led to 25 million dollars of investment and 5,000 titles.
- [Wendy Luhabe founded South Africa’s first fund to provide capital to women-owned businesses.](https://visionaryafrica.online/wendy-luhabe-women-investment-portfolio-holdings/): From Daveyton to the boardroom, Wendy Luhabe founded Bridging the Gap in 1991 and Women Investment Holdings in 1993, launching an R120 million private equity fund for women.
- [Fola Adeola co-founded Guaranty Trust Bank in 1990, then built a foundation for young entrepreneurs.](https://visionaryafrica.online/fola-adeola-gtbank-fate-foundation/): A chartered accountant from Yaba College of Technology, Fola Adeola ran GTBank for twelve years, then turned to mentoring founders and building Nigeria’s internet cable.
- [Kaymu opened in 35 countries in under three years. In 2016 its African markets became Jumia.](https://visionaryafrica.online/kaymu-35-countries-two-and-a-half-years/): Launched in Nigeria and Pakistan in January 2013, the online marketplace expanded to 35 countries. The business lesson is about breadth, and what happens when a group consolidates.
- [Rapelang Rabana now co-leads a charity that teaches children with tablets. It reported serving 700,000 by early 2025.](https://visionaryafrica.online/imagine-worldwide-rapelang-rabana-tablet-learning/): Imagine Worldwide delivers literacy and numeracy through tablet-based learning in Sub-Saharan Africa, and won the 2024 Klaus J. Jacobs Best Practice Prize.
- [Two friends bought a takeaway in Rosettenville for about R80,000. Nando’s now has more than 1,200 outlets in 30 countries.](https://visionaryafrica.online/nandos-rosettenville-peri-peri-chicken/): In 1987 Fernando Duarte and Robert Brozin bought a small Portuguese-Mozambican chicken takeaway in Johannesburg, tried the peri-peri sauce and renamed it.
- [Daymond John sewed 90 wool hats at home, sold them for ten dollars each, and made 800 dollars in a day.](https://visionaryafrica.online/daymond-john-fubu-hollis-queens/): From his mother’s house in Hollis, Queens, Daymond John built FUBU, a clothing brand that has earned over 6 billion dollars in global sales.
- [Bridgette Radebe started as a miner in the 1980s. She founded Mmakau Mining.](https://visionaryafrica.online/bridgette-radebe-mmakau-mining/): Managing individual shafts under contract in the 1980s, Bridgette Radebe went on to start Mmakau Mining, a firm exploring and producing platinum, gold and chrome.
- [TymeBank got the first new full banking licence in South Africa in nearly two decades. It has no branches.](https://visionaryafrica.online/tymebank-gotyme-south-africa-digital-bank/): Born from a consulting project and later acquired by African Rainbow Capital, the bank signed up customers at kiosks in Pick n Pay and Boxer stores, and rebranded as GoTyme in 2026.
- [Bosun Tijani co-founded Co-Creation Hub in Yaba. It became the heart of Lagos’s tech scene.](https://visionaryafrica.online/bosun-tijani-cchub-yaba-lagos/): 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.
- [Mumias Sugar made about 42 percent of Kenya’s sugar. It was placed under receivership in 2019. What the record shows.](https://visionaryafrica.online/mumias-sugar-receivership-kenya-lessons/): Founded in 1971 with 50,000 outgrower farmers, Mumias Sugar produced sugar, electricity and ethanol. Falling output and an audit led to a decade of trouble.
- [BRCK is a battery-backed modem built in Nairobi so the internet keeps working when the power goes out.](https://visionaryafrica.online/brck-rugged-modem-nairobi-rotich/): 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.
- [Berry Gordy dropped out to box, came back with a record label, and built Motown.](https://visionaryafrica.online/berry-gordy-motown-detroit/): From a Detroit family of eight children to the founder of Motown, Berry Gordy signed acts including the Supremes and Marvin Gaye and ran the highest-earning Black-owned business for decades.
- [Adrian Gore left Liberty Life and launched Discovery in 1992 with seed money from the founders of Rand Merchant Bank.](https://visionaryafrica.online/adrian-gore-discovery-vitality-insurance/): A trainee actuary at 22, Adrian Gore founded Discovery as a medical insurer. It became a diversified financial services group.
- [Richard Maponya delivered milk by bicycle in Soweto. He lived to open a 200-store shopping mall there.](https://visionaryafrica.online/richard-maponya-soweto-dairy-mall/): Refused a clothing licence under apartheid, Richard Maponya built a dairy, shops and dealerships in Soweto, and opened Maponya Mall in 2007.
- [Dr Ola Brown built West Africa’s first air ambulance service, then backed African tech startups.](https://visionaryafrica.online/ola-brown-flying-doctors-greentree/): Born in London, the physician and entrepreneur founded Flying Doctors in Lagos in 2007 and later co-founded a venture firm that invested in Paystack.
- [InstaDeep was founded in 2014 in Tunisia. In 2023 BioNTech acquired it for 636 million euros.](https://visionaryafrica.online/instadeep-tunisia-ai-biontech/): Karim Beguir and Zohra Slim started an artificial intelligence company that grew from Tunis to offices in London, Lagos, Cape Town and Kigali.
- [Ushahidi began as a way to map eyewitness reports in Kenya. It has since been used around the world.](https://visionaryafrica.online/ushahidi-testimony-kenya-crisis-mapping/): 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 map.
- [Air Afrique was owned by eleven African states and flew for 41 years. Why shared ownership is hard.](https://visionaryafrica.online/air-afrique-multinational-airline-liquidation/): Established in 1961 as the carrier for francophone West and Central Africa, Air Afrique declined from the 1980s and was liquidated in early 2002.
- [Robert F. Smith called Bell Labs every Monday for five months to get an internship. He later founded Vista Equity Partners.](https://visionaryafrica.online/robert-f-smith-vista-equity-partners/): A chemical engineer from Denver who earned patents at Kraft, then moved into Goldman Sachs technology banking in Silicon Valley, Robert F. Smith founded Vista Equity Partners.
- [Mark Shuttleworth founded the security firm Thawte in 1995, then funded Ubuntu and flew to space.](https://visionaryafrica.online/mark-shuttleworth-thawte-ubuntu-cape-town/): 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.
- [Capitec struggled for its first five years. It is now South Africa’s most valuable commercial bank by market value.](https://visionaryafrica.online/capitec-bank-banking-for-low-income-south-africans/): Formed in 1997 from micro-lending businesses and registered as a bank in 2001, Capitec went after the low-income market and grew from 5 million clients to over 24 million.
- [Tara Fela-Durotoye opened Nigeria’s first makeup school. House of Tara now spans stores, schools and thousands of representatives.](https://visionaryafrica.online/tara-fela-durotoye-house-of-tara-lagos/): A Lagos lawyer who chose beauty, Tara Fela-Durotoye pioneered bridal makeup in Nigeria and built House of Tara into a brand with its own stores and schools.
- [Moniepoint started as TeamApt in 2015. In October 2024 it became Africa’s eighth unicorn.](https://visionaryafrica.online/moniepoint-teamapt-lagos-unicorn/): A Lagos fintech serving merchants, Moniepoint won a central bank switching licence in 2019 and raised over 200 million dollars in its Series C.
- [Andela set out to train African software developers and place them with global companies.](https://visionaryafrica.online/andela-iyin-aboyeji-training-developers/): Co-founded in 2014 by Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, Andela grew into a company backed by Spark Capital, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Google Ventures and SoftBank.
- [Konga raised 35 million dollars in a year and was valued around 200 million. Then came cuts and a sale.](https://visionaryafrica.online/konga-lagos-ecommerce-rise-and-sale/): Founded in Lagos in 2012 with 20 staff, Konga became one of Nigeria’s best-known online retailers. After laying off over half its staff it was acquired by Zinox in 2018.
- [Reginald Lewis bought McCall Pattern for 22.5 million dollars and later built TLC Beatrice into a billion-dollar company.](https://visionaryafrica.online/reginald-lewis-tlc-beatrice-mccall/): A Harvard-trained lawyer from Baltimore, Reginald Lewis moved to the other side of the deal table, and went on to become the first African American to build a billion-dollar company.
- [Patrice Motsepe learned business in his father’s spaza shop. He founded African Rainbow Minerals.](https://visionaryafrica.online/patrice-motsepe-african-rainbow-minerals/): A lawyer who became the first black partner at Bowman Gilfillan, Patrice Motsepe began with contract mining, then bought marginal gold shafts and built a mining group.
- [Vivian Reddy was fired from his apprenticeship. He started an electrical firm with a R500 loan and a borrowed bakkie.](https://visionaryafrica.online/vivian-reddy-edison-power-durban/): The youngest of nine children of a Durban teacher, Vivian Reddy built Reddy’s Electrical into Edison Power, and has backed clinics, schools and an AIDS orphans fund.
- [Funke Opeke left New York to bring faster internet to Nigeria. Her company, MainOne, was acquired for 320 million dollars.](https://visionaryafrica.online/funke-opeke-mainone-submarine-cable/): 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 Portugal to West Africa.
- [How many startups are there in Africa? There is no single count, but the funding numbers tell a story.](https://visionaryafrica.online/how-big-is-africas-startup-scene-the-numbers/): No one has an authoritative total of African startups. Funding trackers do measure how much money reaches them, and 2025 saw a rebound after two years of decline.
- [Equity Bank began as a building society in Kangema with about KSh5,000. By 2019 it had over 14 million customers.](https://visionaryafrica.online/equity-bank-kangema-building-society-to-14-million-customers/): In 1984 Peter Munga started a small building society in his hometown. A decade later, James Mwangi joined to wind it up, and instead led a turnaround.
- [Madam C. J. Walker was orphaned at seven. She built a hair-care company and became a self-made millionaire.](https://visionaryafrica.online/madam-cj-walker-hair-care-pioneer/): Born Sarah Breedlove in 1867, the first child in her family born into freedom, Madam C. J. Walker built a cosmetics and hair-care business for Black women and gave generously.
- [Kobo360 matches cargo owners with truck owners across six African countries.](https://visionaryafrica.online/kobo360-lagos-trucks-cargo-platform/): Based in Lagos and founded by Obi Ozor and Ife Oyedele II, Kobo360 uses technology to cut delays in moving goods.
- [Tabitha Karanja closed a hardware store and started making wine. Keroche became Kenya’s first large brewery not owned by a multinational.](https://visionaryafrica.online/tabitha-karanja-keroche-breweries-naivasha/): Starting with fortified wine in Naivasha in 1997, Tabitha Karanja adapted to new taxes, switched to spirits, then beer, and built Keroche Breweries.
- [Comair ran British Airways flights and kulula.com for decades. In 2022 it was liquidated. What a capital-heavy business teaches.](https://visionaryafrica.online/comair-kulula-liquidation-airline-lessons/): Founded as Commercial Air Services in 1943, Comair launched South Africa’s first low-cost airline in 2001. It entered business rescue in 2020 and was liquidated in 2022.
- [Ibukun Awosika began as a furniture showroom manager. She became the first woman to chair First Bank.](https://visionaryafrica.online/ibukun-awosika-first-bank-chair-lagos/): A chemistry graduate who found her calling in furniture, Ibukun Awosika rose to chair one of Nigeria’s oldest banks, and wrote books to bring other women up behind her.
- [Where in Africa should you start a fintech or software company? Four ranked markets and what each offers.](https://visionaryafrica.online/best-african-countries-to-start-fintech-software-company/): South Africa, Kenya, Egypt and Nigeria top the 2025 StartupBlink ranking for Africa. Here is what each market offers a fintech or software founder.
- [Sol Kerzner built South Africa’s first five-star hotel in 1964. Fifteen years later he started Sun City.](https://visionaryafrica.online/sol-kerzner-sun-city-sun-international/): From his family’s hotels in Durban, Sol Kerzner built the Southern Sun group, Sun International and Sun City, then took the model to Mauritius and Connecticut.
- [John H. Johnson grew up in poverty in Arkansas. In Chicago he founded Ebony and Jet.](https://visionaryafrica.online/john-h-johnson-ebony-jet-chicago/): Born to parents who were the children of slaves, John H. Johnson built the Johnson Publishing Company into one of the most influential Black-owned media businesses in the United States.
- [Chris Kirubi lost both parents young and worked school holidays to support his siblings. He became a Nairobi property and industry builder.](https://visionaryafrica.online/chris-kirubi-murangas-poor-boy-nairobi-property/): A salesman who repaired and sold gas cylinders, Chris Kirubi began buying run-down buildings in the early 1970s. He later chaired companies and held large stakes in Centum.
- [Ory Okolloh left a US law career to build tools that hold power to account. Ushahidi was one of them.](https://visionaryafrica.online/ory-okolloh-ushahidi-mzalendo-nairobi/): The Kenyan lawyer and blogger co-created the Ushahidi crisis-mapping platform and co-founded Mzalendo, a parliamentary watchdog site, before moving into venture investing.
- [Mike Adenuga drove a taxi to fund his studies. He later struck oil and built Globacom.](https://visionaryafrica.online/mike-adenuga-globacom-consolidated-oil/): From selling lace and soft drinks to leading the first Nigerian company to strike oil in commercial quantity, Mike Adenuga’s climb runs through oil and telecoms.
- [M-KOPA lets people who earn daily pay for solar power daily. It started in Nairobi and has lent over 1.5 billion dollars.](https://visionaryafrica.online/m-kopa-nairobi-pay-as-you-go-solar/): Founded by people who had worked on M-Pesa, M-KOPA built a pay-as-you-go model for households that earn income day by day.
- [Kigali is building an innovation city. Here is what it plans to bring together.](https://visionaryafrica.online/kigali-innovation-city-rwanda/): Kigali Innovation City aims to combine universities, startups and large technology firms on a master-planned site in Rwanda’s capital.
- [Edcon ran Edgars and Jet for decades, with over 1,400 stores. In 2020 it entered business rescue. What changed.](https://visionaryafrica.online/edcon-edgars-jet-retail-business-rescue/): A retail group founded in 1929 grew to ten brands, then carried heavy debt and too much leased floor space as shoppers moved to cheaper imports and online. A business case study.
- [Mo Ibrahim launched the first cellular network in the UK, then built Celtel across Africa.](https://visionaryafrica.online/mo-ibrahim-celtel-foundation/): A Sudanese-born engineer, Mo Ibrahim founded Celtel when banks would not back African telecoms, and later set up a foundation focused on leadership and governance.
- [Bright Simons built mPedigree so that anyone could check a medicine with a text message.](https://visionaryafrica.online/bright-simons-mpedigree-ghana/): A Ghanaian technologist who studied astrophysics, Bright Simons founded mPedigree to help people verify products and expose counterfeit medicines.
- [Takealot launched in June 2011. It took 13 years for the main site to turn a profit.](https://visionaryafrica.online/takealot-cape-town-online-retail/): Started in Cape Town by a former MWEB chief executive and an investment firm, Takealot grew into South Africa’s largest online retailer. Patience was part of the plan.
- [Jim Ovia lost his father at four and started work as a bank clerk. He founded Zenith Bank.](https://visionaryafrica.online/jim-ovia-zenith-bank-agbor-lagos/): Born in Agbor, Jim Ovia worked his way from a clerk’s desk in Lagos to founding Zenith Bank in 1990, and later a university and a memoir for young founders.
- [Why Nairobi is called the Silicon Savannah, and what Konza Technopolis is for.](https://visionaryafrica.online/silicon-savannah-nairobi-konza-technopolis/): M-Pesa, mobile phones, iHub and a planned technology city, Konza, helped earn Kenya the nickname Silicon Savannah.
- [Cosmas Maduka hawked akara at six, after his father died. He founded Coscharis Motors with 300 naira.](https://visionaryafrica.online/cosmas-maduka-coscharis-akara-to-motors/): A failed first start-up and a dismissal at 17 did not stop Cosmas Maduka. The Coscharis Group now distributes major car brands and runs farms.
- [Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu started soleRebels in a workshop on her grandmother’s land. It now sells in dozens of countries.](https://visionaryafrica.online/bethlehem-tilahun-alemu-solerebels-addis-ababa/): From Zenebework in Addis Ababa, Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu built a footwear brand with soles made from recycled tyres and hired skilled artisans from her own community.
- [An ATM in Scotland gave Mitchell Elegbe an idea. Interswitch became a Lagos payments company with its own card.](https://visionaryafrica.online/interswitch-lagos-payments-verve-quickteller/): Founded in 2002, Interswitch started as a transaction switch and grew to include Quickteller, a retail payments platform, and Verve, a home-grown card scheme.
- [Esther Ocloo began by selling marmalade in Accra in 1943. She co-founded Women’s World Banking.](https://visionaryafrica.online/esther-ocloo-nkulenu-industries-microlending/): From a small gift and a pot of marmalade to the first food-processing factory in the Gold Coast, Esther Ocloo became a pioneer of microlending for women.
- [Folorunso Alakija started as a secretary in Lagos. She became a fashion designer and then an oil-block owner.](https://visionaryafrica.online/folorunso-alakija-rose-of-sharon-lagos/): From executive secretary to fashion house founder to holder of an offshore oil licence, Folorunso Alakija’s career shows how many chapters one business life can have.
- [Uchumi was rescued from receivership in 2006 and relisted in 2011. Why a turnaround is not the end of the story.](https://visionaryafrica.online/uchumi-supermarkets-receivership-rescue-decline/): Founded in 1975 by three state-owned firms, Uchumi has been through receivership, a government-led rescue and a return to profit. A business lesson in turnarounds.
- [How Yaba, a Lagos suburb with a technical college, became the home of Nigerian tech.](https://visionaryafrica.online/yaba-lagos-yabacon-valley-tech-hub/): Yaba’s universities, fibre connectivity and the Co-Creation Hub helped make it Lagos’s technology cluster, nicknamed “Yabacon Valley”.
- [Theo Baloyi sold perfume door to door as a student. He built the Bathu sneaker brand from his uncle’s back room in Alexandra.](https://visionaryafrica.online/theo-baloyi-bathu-sneakers-alexandra/): An accounting graduate who spent time at PwC in Dubai, Theo Baloyi founded Bathu in 2015. It now has more than 30 stores across South Africa and the SADC region.
- [William Kamkwamba dropped out because his family could not pay 80 dollars in school fees. He built a wind turbine from scrap.](https://visionaryafrica.online/william-kamkwamba-wind-turbine-malawi/): In Malawi in 2001, a teenager read a library book, collected bicycle parts and blue gum trees, and built a turbine that powered his family’s house.
- [Innocent Chukwuma missed the engineering cut-off. He apprenticed in Nnewi spare parts and later built Nigeria’s first home-grown car maker.](https://visionaryafrica.online/innocent-chukwuma-innoson-nnewi-vehicles/): From a ₦3,000 start in 1980 to the founding of Innoson Vehicle Manufacturing in Nnewi in 2007, Innocent Chukwuma built a company step by step.
- [Patrick Awuah left a Microsoft career in Seattle to found Ashesi University in Ghana.](https://visionaryafrica.online/patrick-awuah-ashesi-university/): After eight years at Microsoft, Patrick Awuah moved home to Ghana in 1999 and founded Ashesi, a private non-profit university built to train ethical African leaders.
- [Tony Elumelu began as a copier salesman. He went on to lead a pan-African bank and fund young entrepreneurs.](https://visionaryafrica.online/tony-elumelu-uba-heirs-foundation/): Born in Jos, Tony Elumelu turned a struggling Nigerian bank profitable, led United Bank for Africa into 20 countries, then set up a foundation to back African entrepreneurs.
- [Jumia launched in Nigeria in 2012. Four years later it was Africa’s first unicorn, and in 2019 it listed in New York.](https://visionaryafrica.online/jumia-african-ecommerce-unicorn-ipo/): A marketplace, logistics and payments business spread across 14 African countries by 2018, Jumia’s story includes a record IPO, a sharp share-price swing and a decision to focus.
- [Why is Cape Town called the Silicon Cape? The name began as a 2009 networking idea.](https://visionaryafrica.online/silicon-cape-why-cape-town-is-called-silicon-cape/): “Silicon Cape” borrows from Silicon Valley, with “Cape” for the region. The nickname started as a networking initiative in 2009 and stuck to Cape Town and the wider Western Cape.
- [Mo Dewji took over a family trading business in Tanzania. MeTL Group now spans eleven countries and tens of thousands of jobs.](https://visionaryafrica.online/mohammed-dewji-metl-group-tanzania/): Born in Singida in a mud house, Mohammed Dewji graduated from Georgetown in 1998, returned to run the family company, and grew MeTL from 30 million dollars in revenue to over 1.5 billion.
- [Nakumatt had 65 stores in four countries in 2015. By 2019 the chain was gone. What the record shows.](https://visionaryafrica.online/nakumatt-supermarket-chain-collapse-lessons/): A Kenyan supermarket group that anchored most of the country’s big malls ran out of cash in 2016 and 2017. A business-focused look at what happened and what other retailers can learn.
- [Herman Chinery-Hesse built Ghana’s oldest and largest software company and was called the “Bill Gates of Africa”.](https://visionaryafrica.online/herman-chinery-hesse-softtribe-accra/): In 1991 Herman Chinery-Hesse co-founded theSOFTtribe in Accra, an African software house that became the oldest and largest in Ghana. He died in 2024; his work lives on.
- [Yoco began with four friends and a card reader. It now serves over 200,000 South African businesses.](https://visionaryafrica.online/yoco-cape-town-card-machines-small-business/): From a Cape Town office with 24 staff to a payments company valued at an estimated R12.5 billion, Yoco set out to help small sellers accept cards.
- [Aliko Dangote started by trading sugar and salt in Kano. Today his group makes cement, sugar and more.](https://visionaryafrica.online/aliko-dangote-cement-sugar-kano-lagos/): Born in Kano in 1957, Aliko Dangote began with a small trading company at twenty and built the Dangote Group into one of Africa’s best-known industrial businesses.

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