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Before the venture capitalists write the big cheques and the headlines follow, someone has to take the first bet on a startup. Angel investors, often with less capital and certainty but more risk, make these bets. Across Africa, this early risk has increasingly been organised and amplified by the African Business Angel Network (ABAN), a pan-African non-profit that has helped build the backbone of the continent’s early-stage investment infrastructure. Founded in 2015 by six pioneer angel networks, like the Lagos Angel Network and Ghana Angel Investor Network, ABAN has grown into a community of over 5,000 investors organised across over 60 angel networks in 37 African countries. Together, they have deployed $35 million into more than 1,200 startups spanning fintech, agritech, health, clean energy, and the creative economy. Its flagship vehicle, Catalytic Africa, a matching fund run with AfriLabs, mobilised $2.5 million from 200 angels in just 12 months. Even as global VC funding in Africa slows down, ABAN’s local networks keep deals moving. At the centre of all this is Fadilah Tchoumba, ABAN’s CEO and the fund manager for Catalytic Africa. Her conviction is simple. Africa must fund Africa. The angels who backed Flutterwave and Paystack before anyone else were Africans operating on the continent, she likes to point out. Without that foundational capital, Tchoumba argued, global investors have nothing to follow. Tchoumba and I met in Kigali during the Innovative Fintech Forum (IFF), and in our short conversation on the sidelines, we talked about the problems with angel investing in Africa, what ABAN does to help early-stage investing in Africa, the importance of local investors, and Kigali’s compelling case as a fund domiciliation platform for angel networks in this edition of Ask an Investor. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. How many startups have benefited from ABAN’s network? From late 2021 to 2025, angel investors across the continent that are part of the ABAN network have invested in more than 5,000 companies. The ticket size varies between $5,000 and can go all the way to $250,000. A small portion are growing quite well, some of which have attracted additional funding from VCs. Why do you think local venture capital is still very thin compared to the capital that flows in from outside? There are many reasons. If we look at capital flow within the whole capital value chain, it always starts with angel investors, and then from angel investors, you hit the line of commercial capital, which mostly starts with VCs and eventually PE, and so forth. Right now, we have structural challenges. A group of angel investors will come together, and the moment they are ready to deploy capital, they hit setbacks which are related to the legal framework that would be most appropriate to protect the interests of the startup, especially since they’re investing for the future. The second is the speed at which capital is deployed. Since 2015, angel networks have deployed more than $32.5 million across the continent. But when you look at the figures for 2025, it’s about $4.5 million that was deployed by angel investors. People ask me: ” Do you think we can do more? The answer is yes. But why didn’t we do more? It takes an angel group two or three months to deploy capital in a startup on the continent, versus a European group taking 20 minutes. The question is, why is it taking us so long to deploy $50,000 or $200,000? We have to go back to structural issues. Do we have adequate policies that can consider cross-border transactions or the diversity of our currencies? Do we have the infrastructure that can take into account the cost sensitivity of deploying early-stage capital? Do we have the legal framework to support the diversity of angels coming from various African countries? One thing we’ve been focusing on since last year is how we actually make angel capital deployment as seamless as possible. If we solve that issue, I can almost guarantee you that on this continent, we would be able to deploy between $50 million and $80 million a year through angel investing, which is very much needed to build the foundation that startups need to attract commercial capital, starting with VC. How do you think these problems can be solved? What has ABAN done? At ABAN, to truly identify the problem, we had to test it manually first. Today, apart from Mauritius, where we operate, we have an SPV based in Rwanda. The role of the SPV is to pool capital from various African countries and then deploy and invest it in a selected company. One of our recent examples: Legendary Foods, based out of Ghana, received investment participation from multiple investors coming from multiple African countries. Pooling that capital requires KYC, getting money into the account in Kigali, and then deploying that money into the company’s bank account. And to do that, the KYC itself can take you two months. The first question is: can we make KYC as light as possible without compromising international standards? If it’s a yes, you have to speak to policymakers, to key stakeholders in Kigali—which we have done. We’re still in discussion on how to safeguard and protect everyone involved without compromising the regulators, the startup, or the investors. Banks are also one of our key stakeholders. We’re speaking with banks to understand what infrastructure we can leverage to pool and push capital seamlessly. That’s also going well. We hope that before the end of this year, we’ll have a practical infrastructure that will make angel investing very easy. You’ve noted that limited participation of local corporates in the investment cycle diminishes exit prospects. But there’s also a liquidity problem in African startups. If there’s a liquidity problem, why should a high-net-worth individual put money in a startup instead of real estate or treasury bills? We all recognise that there are competing asset classes. We know that. But we also have to acknowledge that to grow our
Read MoreRoqqu, a Nigerian cryptocurrency startup that allows users to buy and sell digital assets and access crypto-backed loans, drew more than 30,000 users to its futures derivatives product during beta testing, according to Emmanuel Peter, the company’s Head of Trading and Markets. The locally-built futures contract, which launched in beta in December 2025 and is now out of beta, continues Roqqu’s push beyond its core buy, sell, and swap offering into a broader suite of advanced trading tools. Peter said the beta numbers were a signal that products built within Roqqu’s own ecosystem could hold their own. “We already have [over] 30,000 accounts that started testing and using it during the beta period,” he said. “It’s reassuring to us that things developed within our ecosystem are appealing to users.” Roqqu is preparing to launch crypto cards and a locally-built prediction market, positioning itself against competitors like Luno and Busha, which are also widening their product stacks. The startup is betting that lower fees and increased functionality will drive adoption among traders. During beta, futures trades were free, but Roqqu has since introduced a 0.1% fee after formally launching the product. “Futures is a high-frequency market, so if the fee is not low, [users] end up paying a lot just to trade,” Peter said. “[Our users] are liking the experience, and it’s cheap to use.” The renewed focus on cards marks a return to a product Roqqu previously shelved. The company launched virtual cards in 2022 but discontinued them amid reliability challenges, according to Peter. “We needed cards that actually work everywhere,” Peter said. “Not cards that decline when you try to make payments. We’re coming back with something way better; cards you can use in any market, local or international.” The new card product, expected within weeks, will be powered by crypto and built with multinational partners, according to Peter. Roqqu’s product expansion reflects a broader shift in how crypto startups are positioning themselves in an industry that is evolving beyond simple trading. Busha, a Nigerian crypto startup, is rebranding itself as a broader digital finance platform, adding loans and cards, while Luno has begun exploring products like prediction markets. Globally, exchanges like Bitget and Bybit, which operate in Nigeria, have evolved into “super apps,” offering everything from derivatives trading to payments and savings products, including a buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) feature. “It’s like evolve or die,” Peter said. “If you’re not able to evolve fast, the industry may change so rapidly that you’ll be playing catch-up.” That philosophy underpins Roqqu’s product roadmap. Beyond futures and cards, Roqqu is building a prediction market, a derivatives marketplace that allows users to take a view on real-world events and earn money. The startup is also exploring tokenisation and reward-based products, all developed in-house with a product-first ideology, said Peter. In 2025, Roqqu acquired Flitaa, a Kenyan-based crypto exchange, as part of its expansion strategy, but the startup continues to run independently. Peter declined to comment on Flitaa’s operations, noting that “operationally, it’s not the same company,” though Roqqu retains ownership. Roqqu’s aggressive product push comes as crypto firms in Nigeria navigate a changing regulatory landscape. The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Nigeria Revenue Service (NRS), the country’s tax authority, now oversee payment-based digital assets, while the Nigerian Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regulates assets that behave like securities under the Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority (VARA) framework introduced in February 2026. Peter said the pace of innovation in crypto—from stablecoins to new trading instruments—is forcing companies to adapt quickly. Roqqu’s push is a response to that pace.
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For eight years, Lara.ng, the WhatsApp-style chatbot that told you which bus to take, what the fare should be, and which backroad to avoid, was Lagos’s unofficial transit oracle. Samuel Odeloye, the founder behind that chatbot, now lives in the United States. But the data Lara.ng has collected never left Lagos. From an office thousands of kilometres away, he is working on something harder than giving bus directions: building the invisible pipes to make last-mile delivery in Nigeria reliable and effective. That tension, building deeply local infrastructure from abroad with local data, is what defines this chapter of his life as a digital nomad. Get The Best African Tech Newsletters In Your Inbox Select your country Nigeria Ghana Kenya South Africa Egypt Morocco Tunisia Algeria Libya Sudan Ethiopia Somalia Djibouti Eritrea Uganda Tanzania Rwanda Burundi Democratic Republic of the Congo Republic of the Congo Central African Republic Chad Cameroon Gabon Equatorial Guinea São Tomé and Príncipe Angola Zambia Zimbabwe Botswana Namibia Lesotho Eswatini Mozambique Madagascar Mauritius Seychelles Comoros Cape Verde Guinea-Bissau Senegal The Gambia Guinea Sierra Leone Liberia Côte d’Ivoire Burkina Faso Mali Niger Benin Togo Other Select your gender Male Female Others TC Daily TC Events Next wave Entering Tech Subscribe Act I: Leaving home to build for home Odeloye left Nigeria in 2011 for what he describes as ‘a better life’: access to an environment that inspired his entrepreneurial drive. There was better access to United States banking, corporate structures, and a dollar‑denominated fundraising environment that was almost impossible to replicate from Lagos. It was on a flight from the US that he conceived the idea for Lara.ng. “I like to introduce myself as an engineer, sometimes an entrepreneur, but in most cases, a problem solver,” Odeloye said. “I’ve refused to wait for someone else to build infrastructures in cities where I see things being needed.” Fresh out of the University of Lagos with a mechanical engineering degree, he was more obsessed with design thinking than oil‑and‑gas paychecks. A flight in 2012 made the problem he wanted to solve feel painfully obvious. On a New York–London leg en route to Lagos, he found himself seated next to an American who had never left the US and was panicking about getting around London. Odeloye talked him through Transport for London’s (TfL) system, which his cousin had shown him once. With TfL, you typed in a postcode and got step‑by‑step directions. On that flight, they laughed about how “Nigeria can never have something like that.” But the joke landed with a sting. “I had this strong call in my heart that this is something I could do,” he recalled. The question that refused to leave him was: What happens when it’s the American flying into Lagos with no cousin and no TfL? The obsession followed him into business school. In 2014, he joined Stanford Graduate School of Business for an executive master of business administration (EMBA) in innovation and entrepreneurship, hoping to add structure to his instincts. That same year, with partners Opeoluwa Bada and Nnamdi Nwanze, he started RoadPreppers (RP), a localised public transit intelligence system for Nigeria that worked like Google Maps but tried to keep up with Lagos’s ever‑shifting bus routes and fares. RoadPreppers attracted about 10,000 registered users and then grew. It was a culture misalignment, said Odeloye, as he noticed that Nigerians found it difficult to do away with inborn navigation instincts. “I was building for the Nigerian user with a Western understanding,” he said. Nigerians might appreciate a map, but they grew up asking conductors, shopkeepers, and strangers for directions. “[Nigerians] reach out to have conversations. And if [they] don’t know how to get somewhere, [they] will ask on the road.” He stopped fighting the culture and leaned into it. Act II: The chatbot that thought like Lagos In 2017, Odeloye launched Lara.ng after sunsetting his previous city navigation-based attempt, RoadPreppers. This time, he wasn’t trying to teach Nigerians how to use or love maps, he said. He taught a chatbot to talk like a Lagosian: a simple digital friend that answered navigation questions, for the shy users who weren’t bold enough to walk up to strangers on the street. He and his co‑founders took the routing intelligence they had built and wrapped it in a WhatsApp‑style interface. Users could type “from Oshodi to Ikeja” the way they would text a friend. Lara.ng would respond with the exact danfo to take, where to drop off, and how much to pay. Lara.ng sharing directions. Image Source: Bolu Abiodun via X According to Odeloye, the growing user traffic told them they were onto something: the app pulled in 10,000 users within days of going live. Just before the COVID‑19 pandemic, Lara.ng had more than 250,000 users navigating Lagos and Abuja’s transport networks. Before ChatGPT and the current wave of AI hype, a bot built by a Nigerian founder in the diaspora had become a daily companion for people trying not to get lost—or extorted—on their commute Yet, popularity didn’t translate into profit. Keeping Lara updated meant constant fieldwork, hitting the streets to map new routes, track fare hikes, and keep pace with transport unions. The business model never fully clicked, even though the need was clear. COVID‑19 exposed that fragility. As lockdowns and remote work shrank mobility, Lara’s usage dipped, and the economics stopped making sense. “For most of 2020, it was hard,” he admitted. Teammates left, and all that was left was a messy roadmap and a mountain of hard‑won data. Odeloye at the RP office in 2020. Image Source: Samuel Odeloye Eight years into the experiment, Lara.ng was taking a break. But the information it had collected—on how people move, where they get stuck, and how much they pay—was too valuable to abandon. Get The Best African Tech Newsletters In Your Inbox Select your country Nigeria Ghana Kenya South Africa Egypt Morocco Tunisia Algeria Libya Sudan Ethiopia Somalia Djibouti Eritrea Uganda Tanzania Rwanda Burundi Democratic Republic of the Congo Republic of the Congo
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