Business & founders stories across Africa
Stories
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.
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.
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.
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…
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…
“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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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