Asili Africa — origin stories of Africa’s biggest companies
An American founder built a lending company that reads a stranger’s phone — not their bank statement — to decide who deserves credit, and handed millions of unbanked Kenyans their first formal loan; the alternative-credit-scoring bet that redefined who counts as creditworthy
Tala — The Phone That Became A Paper Trail Read More »
The phone that became a paper trail — how a UN researcher built the first smartphone lender in Kenya.
Tala — The Phone That Became A Paper Trail Read More »
The pipes that African fintech runs on
Interswitch — The Engineer Who Took No Equity Read More »
Strive Masiyiwa fought his own government for five years — all the way to the constitutional court — just to be allowed to build a mobile network, and won; the legal war that broke a state telecom monopoly and seeded a pan-African and global telecoms empire
Econet Wireless — The Only Company Licensed By A Court Read More »
Training Africa’s developers for the world
Andela — Brilliance Is Evenly Distributed Read More »
Benjamin Fernandes — ex-NBA Africa marketer turned Stanford GSB student — built NALA from a Tanzanian diaspora remittance app into a stablecoin-powered B2B payments platform (Rafiki) running corridors across five African countries; the company’s pivot from consumer-only to consumer + infrastructure is the narrative spine
NALA — The Friend at the Other End Read More »
The Amazon of Africa that might be neither
Jumia — The Continental Market Read More »
The fintech that dared to be Africa’s Stripe
Flutterwave — The Bridge of Money Read More »
The only African airline that actually works — and why
Ethiopian Airlines — Bird of the Continent Read More »
Post-apartheid bet became Africa’s largest telco
MTN — The Yellow Network Read More »
