UrbanGeekz 50 2024: Africa

Shola Akinlade: Founder and CEO, Paystack 

Shola Akinlade is an entrepreneur who has played a pivotal role in revolutionizing online payments across Africa. This young software engineer embodies the Nigerian startup dream.

Akinlade is the Co-Founder of Paystack, a company that provides payment solutions to businesses, helping them accept various payment methods, including debit and credit cards, bank transfers, and mobile money. Together with his old schoolmate, Ezra Olubi, they set out to unlock the Nigerian digital economy by offering businesses and individuals new ways to transact online. 

In November 2015, Paystack was accepted into the Y Combinator accelerator program, propelling it toward becoming one of Africa’s most prominent tech companies. 

Paystack’s success led to its acquisition by Stripe, a global online payment processing company, in October 2020. The acquisition marked a significant milestone for the Nigerian tech industry, showcasing the potential and talent within the country’s startup ecosystem. 

Shola’s entrepreneurial efforts have earned him various recognitions at home and abroad, such as an Officer of the Order of the Niger (OON), conferred by President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria in October 2022, a feature on Forbes Africa’s “30 Under 30” list in 2016 and on CNN.

Hannah Subaiyi: Co-Founder, Launch Africa Ventures

Hannah is also the co-founder of two top investment clubs in Africa: Dazzle Angels, the first women-led tech club investing in female-led tech businesses, and DIA, the first DRC impact investment club in the country. Before joining Proparco, one of the largest DFIs in the world, where she was Country Office for the Democratic Republic of Congo, she was a portfolio manager in a $1 billion African fund and an investment banker in London.

She is now an acting Partner at Launch Africa Ventures, focusing on frontier markets and female founders. Passionate about African investments, Hannah also advises African investment funds (including Aruwa Capital, the leading gender-lens fund in Nigeria) and was recently re-appointed as a non-executive director of ABAN. The African Business Angel Network (ABAN) is a pan-African non-profit association.

She graduated from HEC Paris Business School and from Paris I — La Sorbonne Law School in France with two Masters (in Finance and in Business Law). She is a 2023 Desmond Tutu Fellow. She is the winner of 2023 BWAM in the category Impact Investor, is a 2022 Alumni from the Boardroom Africa and a 2022 Fellow of Africa Venture Philanthropy Alliance. 

Fara Ashiru Jituboh: Founder and CEO, Okra

Fara Ashiru Jituboh is a Nigerian tech whiz with over 20 programming languages under her belt. Her brainchild, Okra, is a Nigeria-based fintech platform that helps connect customer accounts to banking apps and get real-time financial information.

The company makes money from the product fees it earns when customers connect their bank accounts to third-party applications using the platform. Okra was oversubscribed within six months of its launch, and even a pandemic couldn’t delay the startup. As a testament to her company’s growing success, Jituboh raised a $1 million seed round.

Jituboh was born in Nigeria but grew up in the United States. She spent a year in Nigeria as a teenager but never expected to settle in Nigeria permanently. During a visit she kept thinking, “ I can do something really big and impactful [here]. There’s so much more opportunity to do, to solve so many problems,” said Jituboh. Returning to Nigeria from the US after giving birth to her son, Jituboh realized none of her banking applications worked in Nigeria because they weren’t connected to Nigerian apps. Okra grew from this. Jituboh will remain CEO and CTO, and Ido Sum, a partner at TLcom, their investor, will join the board.

Omar Cisse: Founder and CEO, InTouch

The young Senegalese investor founded InTouch in 2014 after founding a small boutique in Dakar and juggling the increase in online payment methods. InTouch is now one of the industry leaders for mobile payments in Africa, with partners Total, Orange, and the International Fund for Agricultural Development. InTouch is a digital platform that brings all these payment solutions together.

Over the last eight years, InTouch has onboarded over 2000 corporate clients, a network of 50,000 TouchPoints (or InTouch terminals), and usage in over 14 countries. In 2017, InTouch raised € 10 million, the largest investment raised by any francophone African startup. In 2019, InTouch facilitated 30 million transactions, for a total of over 580 million euros.

Cissé founded the company with just four engineers, working from their savings. Today, the company employs more than 200 people and participated in the launch of Teranga Capital, an investment fund focusing on mid-size start-ups, investing between €75,000 and €450,000. By 2025, InTouch forecasts a network of partners in every country on the continent.

 Michelle Elegbe: Founder and CEO, Interswitch

Mitchell Elegbe is the Group Managing Director, founder, and CEO of Interswitch, the digital payments and commerce company he founded in 2002. Under his leadership, Interswitch has remarkably diversified its business, driving revolutionary payment innovation and social impact across Africa. It’s no surprise that Deloitte recognized the company in 2014 as ‘Africa’s fastest-growing technology business.’

Elegbe graduated from the University of Benin in Nigeria and is an alumnus of the Wharton Global CEO Program. After a stint in Scotland as an engineer, it was upon his return to Nigeria that he was struck by the struggle to access cash. Identifying various problems in the payment industry, he strove to take on the task of revolutionizing payment systems in Nigeria. Over the past two decades, Elegbe has evolved from a Lagos-based visionary and business owner into a trailblazer on the African continent – and now a globally recognized entrepreneur.

He is the recipient of a long and impressive list of coveted awards, including the 2019 African Banker Icon by The African Banker, and more recently, he was awarded as the 2023 EY West African Entrepreneur of the Year. A Bishop Desmond Tutu fellow of the African Leadership Institute, Mitchell enjoys mentoring young entrepreneurs as a member of the board of Endeavor Nigeria.