Day 1-1000: Storipod wants to make reading as addictive as scrolling
For African writers, sharing your work to get paid on global platforms has always been a herculean task. African startups are building to solve this problem, but Storipod has a different approach, serialising the stories in the format of social media stories. It’s a bold approach that seeks to take advantage of increasingly short attention spans. This is the Day 1-1000 of Storipod. Day 1: When blog posts die James Nelson has always written. In 2019, while working at Interswitch, he’d publish blog posts one week and spend the next week spamming the link everywhere. “Come read my blog. Come click. Come to my blog.” After a while, he felt like he was just annoying people. Then he started writing on his WhatsApp Status instead. Same content, different format. By slide five, people were already responding. “Oh, I don’t think that should have happened.” “I actually think this makes sense.” The engagement was instant. “People consume things in tiny bits,” Nelson explains. “That’s how we read now, WhatsApp Status, IG Stories, tweets. So why not use the same approach for actual storytelling?” The insight was simple but powerful—music has Spotify and Apple Music. You can record a song in your living room and make streaming money. Movies have YouTube and Netflix. Put up a great film, people watch it, you get paid. But what happened to writing? Nothing. Medium doesn’t pay. Substack doesn’t pay Africans. Twitter’s monetisation requires subscriptions. “There’s no platform that enables people who write incredible stories to actually make influencer money,” Nelson says. Writers deserved better. In 2022, while still head of product at Shuttlers, a startup digitising shared commutes, Nelson registered the Storipod.com domain. The name came from ‘peas in a pod’, writers sharing stories together. ‘Storypod’ with a y was already taken, so Nelson went with ‘Storipod’. “We’ll out-market them,” he figured. By December 2022, he’d left Shuttlers, bought a Mac and an iPhone. “If I have these two, I will not be jobless,” he told himself. “I realised the difference between most Nigerian founders and me is that they’ve raised money and I haven’t. That’s it.” After a brief stint at Edukoya in 2023, he made the call: “We’re going to do Storipod, or we’ll die trying.” 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 TC Scoop Subscribe Day 500: 15 developers and a prayer Building a social media app is one of the hardest things you can do as a startup. The bar is brutally high. Users expect Instagram’s polish from 2-3 people. They don’t want lag. They don’t want it to ‘feel like a Nigerian app.’ They want the international version. Nigerian developers “know how to fix things and work in a company,” Nelson says. “They don’t know how to build from scratch to scale.” Storipod burned through 15 mobile developers. Nelson used his last savings to hire an Indian developer who left bugs everywhere, but in December 2023, they got into the Android store. Then came the iOS dance. Twenty-two builds rejected. Nelson kept pushing. On February 6, 2024, the email arrived: “Welcome to the App Store.” “I read it twice,” Nelson says. “That’s the most powerful email I’ve ever received.” But money was gone. The Indian developer left. The team was down to Nelson and his co-founders, Caleb Chinga and Prince Ita. No mobile engineer. No way forward. “At some point, I thought this was the end,” Nelson admits. Then he went on LinkedIn and began cold-messaging Flutter developers. “We have bugs. Can you help us? We don’t have money, but this thing can blow.” Most ignored him. One developer, Daniel, asked to see the documentation. “This is what I do for a living,” Nelson replied, sending over everything. Daniel looked at the code, fixed a few bugs, then said he’d keep helping when he was free. He was between jobs. That’s how Storipod survived the first crash. But in those early months, he kept the app alive for free. Then Nelson found Taiwo Farinu. Brilliant, coding from a beer parlour with a broken laptop. When Farinu needed ₦20,000 ($13) for an emergency, Nelson sent it immediately, even when he was broke himself. Farinu solved the most complex problems, like making stories remember where you stopped reading, just like WhatsApp Status. “Working with Taiwo can be really hard,” Nelson says. “But once he gets it, he can solve anything.” Getting free Microsoft Azure 150,000 credits from Microsoft saved them. So did relationships. Nelson called in favours everywhere; former interns built the web app, a pharmacy encounter led to a designer who sketched the entire web interface during her NHS night shifts at 3 a.m. “She finished it in two days,” Nelson says, still amazed. “If there’s a will, there’s a way.” But the team still wasn’t getting paid. Nelson was burning out. His co-founders were juggling day jobs and night shifts on Storipod. “I see what they’re going through,” Nelson says. “I’m like, ‘Guys, how far? We need to fix this one. Let’s push.’” Every night he’d pray the same thing: “God, let this succeed, not for me, for these guys.” 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
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Digital Nomads: How Amaka Amaku travelled to 27 countries with a Nigerian passport
Since 2021, Amaka Amaku, a social media-loving travel influencer, has not spent more than three consecutive months at her apartment in Lagos, Nigeria, where she’s based. On a call on November 17, 2025, she was in Berlin, Germany, taking a break between work meetings and executive MBA classes while scrolling through flight options for her next trip. “Lagos is my base, my home, but I barely spend up to three months at a stretch there,” said Amaku. “And if you don’t spend more than three months in a place, you can’t really say you live there. I’ve realised that my lifestyle is practically nomadic.” The bus trip to Accra All it took to set her off on this path was one impromptu bus trip to Accra, Ghana. In 2019, Amaku worked at a publishing house in Lagos. Some authors she was promoting planned a book chat and panel in Accra; the company was paying for their hotel, so she volunteered, paid for a bus ticket and joined the trip. The journey took more than 24 hours by road, and by the time she arrived in Ghana—tired, frazzled, and already checking flight prices back to Lagos—something had shifted. “When I went to Ghana, I knew that the life I knew before was never going to remain the same,” said Amaku. “That one stressful trip opened my mind in a way it never would have if I’d stayed home; I knew I would chase this and travel a lot more.” From that first trip, she began setting herself quiet challenges: one more country, then another, each destination proof that travel was not reserved for richer, more powerful passports. She has now visited 28 countries in total, though she insists the count is 27 because she only passed through Dubai’s airport on a long layover and refuses to claim a place she has not properly explored. Her passport tells the real story: stamps from West African road trips, Schengen hops that string ten countries into a single itinerary, and journeys to places like Lebanon, Qatar, Singapore and Turkey, where she says she learned as much about community as she did about herself. Amaku at the Phoenician wall, Batroun, Lebanon “I’ve learned about sharing and community from Asian countries like Lebanon and Singapore,” said Amaku. “People there have this sense of togetherness; you feel how much they believe in people, and it changes how you see the world.” How Amaku travels on a Nigerian passport For many Nigerians, the first question about travel is not where to go, but how to get there when your passport is one of the weakest in the world. Amaku does not soften that reality; she leans into it, treating access as a problem to be solved repeatedly rather than a wall to turn back from. She still travels on a Nigerian passport, but layers it with every advantage she can find: residency, visa strategy, obsessive research and a work life built around flexibility. “Every year, I spend thousands and thousands of dollars on visa applications,” said Amaku. “I get some, I get denied for some, but the world is mine for exploration, so a visa denial will not stop me.” Her first structural hack was a residency in Benin Republic, a status she picked up after overhearing a casual conversation and deciding on the spot to pursue it. Amaku at Ouidah, Benin Republic in 2023 That residency makes it easier to apply for visas to some francophone African countries, giving her more straightforward access to parts of West Africa and beyond. On top of that, she has learned to maximise every visa she secures. A UK visa, for example, has taken her not just to England but also to Scotland, Montenegro, Albania, Jersey and even as far as Mexico, Turks and Caicos Islands, and the Bahamas, destinations many Nigerians do not realise are accessible with that single sticker in their passports. “People don’t know the access is that broad,” said Amaku. “That’s why I still apply even after denials; I hate the documentation, but I love what the access lets me do.” Building this life required money, earned slowly, then all at once. Before social media became her full-time lane, she worked in publishing and then in corporate communications, running a small hair business on the side and quietly gaining a reputation for being good at social media. When the COVID-19 lockdown hit in 2020, the demand for online creators exploded, and so did her workload. At the time, she was the head of corporate communications at a home automation company, but referrals continued to pour in for her to handle social media and content for small brands. By mid-lockdown, she was working three roles from her bedroom in Lagos: attending corporate communications, contracting as a social media manager and content creator for a fintech, and managing social media for a fashion business, all while running her hair brand. “At some point in 2020, I was earning three salaries and living at home,” said Amaku. “I wasn’t paying rent or spending on food, so after the grind and the exhaustion, I looked up and realised I had this financial buffer—and that’s when I started travelling.” Those months built more than savings; they built credibility. Every campaign, every brand recommendation, every successful experiment with social content made it easier for future employers and clients to trust her, which, in turn, made it easier to insist on remote or flexible work. Today, she leads social media and marketing efforts for a Nigerian fintech unicorn in a largely remote role, with occasional in-person time in Lagos during event-heavy seasons. “Marketing is mostly online now,” said Amaku. “I can press go on a campaign here in Germany, and it starts converting in Lagos; I don’t have to be there except during event season.” That flexibility is what lets her line up flights with classes, work calls, and group trips for the travel business she co-founded in 2022 after a trip to
Read MoreBlack Friday spending soars in South Africa as one shopper drops $66,000
Black Friday spending in South Africa has surged to striking levels, with payment processor, Peach Payments’ live dashboard showing nearly R1.1 million ($66,000) in travel and tourism transactions. By 9 am Southern African time (SAT), the payments processor reported that about R380,000 ($22,800) in transactions were made in travel and R336,000 ($20,160) in retail, in single transactions. Discovery Bank, the country’s eighth-largest bank by total assets, also reported that a single shopper made a card purchase worth R500,000 (approximately $30,000). The figure, displayed on the bank’s SpendTrend dashboard at 11 am SAT, highlights the scale of consumer demand driving this year’s retail activity. This surge in activity reflects a wider structural shift in South African commerce. The country’s e-commerce revenue is projected to surpass R130 billion ($8 billion) by the end of 2025, approaching a 10% share of the national retail market. This projection is highlighted in the Online Retail in South Africa 2025 report, compiled by World Wide Worx in partnership with Mastercard, Peach Payments and Ask Afrika. The report indicates that online retail expanded by 35% in 2024 to reach R96 billion ($5.76 billion), accounting for 8% of overall retail sales. That momentum has continued through 2025, with the sector growing at an annualised rate of 38%, outpacing traditional retail, which recorded growth of only 2.5% in 2024 and 1.6% by mid-2025. Read: South Africans ditch cash and cards for digital payments, new report shows Both Discovery Bank and Peach Payments indicate that online transaction volumes are well above 2024 levels, highlighting a shift in consumer behaviour toward digital purchasing channels. “We are closely monitoring all our transactions and already seeing impressive growth this Black Friday,” said Peach Payments CEO Rahul Jain. “Our early morning transaction counts from midnight to 9 am are already double compared to 2024.” Leading retailers and payment trends Discovery Bank data shows that by 15:44, Woolworths was the leading in-store card transactions, while Takealot held the highest total online Rand value. Checkers Sixty60, meanwhile, dominates the number of individual online transactions, driven largely by frequent, lower-value purchases for essential items. Card payments remain the dominant payment method on Peach Payments’ platform, with Visa, Mastercard, and American Express leading, followed by Pay by Bank options. Regional spending patterns also reveal strong participation from major economic hubs. The Western Cape accounts for approximately 65% of Peach Payments’ transaction value, while Gauteng contributes 34%. Discovery Bank data indicates that in-store spending is highest in Johannesburg. This preliminary data suggests that Black Friday is becoming a critical indicator of South Africa’s evolving retail landscape. The surge in high-value online transactions reflects growing consumer trust in digital payments and the strengthening capacity of online retail infrastructure. As retailers expand their digital presence and payment providers scale to support higher transaction loads, South Africa’s shift toward a digitally driven retail economy appears increasingly entrenched. Read: South Africa’s online retail boom exceeds $7bn as Amazon, Shein, Temu shake up the market This is a developing story. A comprehensive analysis will follow after Black Friday trading concludes. Editor’s note: This article was updated at 5:43 pm WAT on Friday, Nov. 28, to clarify that the travel and retail transactions on Peach Payments were single transactions.
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7 African startups redefining research, regulation, retail, and recreation
Startups On Our Radar spotlights African startups solving African challenges with innovation. In our previous edition, we featured seven game-changing startups pioneering media, real estate, health, social networking and artificial intelligence. Expect the next dispatch on December 5, 2025. This week, we explore seven African startups in the health, research, e-commerce and logistics sectors and why they should be on your watchlist. Let’s dive into it: Swaddle wants to become Lagos’ motherhood command centre (FemTech, Nigeria) Founder, Feyikemi Bello, described the invisible load of motherhood, such as tracking meals, vaccines, schedules, childcare logistics, and emotional overwhelm, as the real pain point no one is building for. Bello identified a gap in the market where existing technology caters to pregnancy and labour but vanishes when the actual work of parenting begins, leaving mothers to juggle personal schedules and household planning manually. Swaddle’s MVP (minimum viable product), launching January 13, introduces a location-aware AI assistant that helps mothers navigate their environment by recommending nearby pharmacies, schools, activities, and child-friendly venues. It will also have a motherhood-focused planner that organises children’s schedules, automates reminders, and separates childcare tasks from the chaos of everyday life. To be integrated is a Memories feature, which is a daily log for photos and notes. The app is manually fed with Lagos-specific data to avoid inaccurate AI suggestions. Swaddle is launching with a freemium business model. Core productivity tools will be offered for free. Premium users will eventually gain access to features like an anonymous community where mothers can seek advice without fear of judgment. The startup also plans to generate revenue through B2B partnerships by connecting brands to its targeted user base. Long-term, Bello intends to monetise aggregated data insights, such as a high volume of requests for parks in a specific neighbourhood, to guide real estate and infrastructure developments. Why we’re watching: Swaddle is entering a market with virtually no direct competitors. While apps like Peanut exist internationally, they focus on social connection, not productivity, planning, or support. Swaddle’s key differentiator is its purpose-built AI, grounded in manually verified local data, ensuring accurate, Lagos-specific recommendations that generic AI tools might be unable to provide. MegaQuest wants to replace rigid text surveys with voice-first data collection (Research, Ghana) Co-founded by Ahorlu Delali, Emmanuel Enya, Francis Val-Neboh, and Magath Nael, MegaQuest is a research platform designed for Africa’s multilingual reality. The idea came when they noticed how difficult it was to conduct research across African markets without a common language. Researchers told them they struggled to collect feedback from respondents who preferred speaking over typing, especially older users or rural communities, and that voice responses often gave more honest insights than typed answers. Existing tools required researchers to use different platforms for audio collection, transcription, translation, and analysis. MegaQuest brings all of this into one place and lets researchers create audio surveys called quests. With this platform, respondents hear questions in a selected voice and answer using speech. Users can choose default synthetic voices or upgrade to custom options that use the researcher’s own recorded voice. MeqaQuest supports six Ghanaian languages, as well as Yoruba, Igbo, English, and French. The platform automatically transcribes responses into English even when the original answer is in a local language, and gives researchers both the audio and text versions. The platform’s backend captures responses even if a user abandons the survey halfway through, ensuring partial data is not lost. The system also provides deep analytics and the ability to request specific insights like gender breakdowns. Why we’re watching: MegaQuest is tackling the challenges of language fragmentation and the difficulty of collecting rich feedback across African cultures. Global players like Voiceform and GeoPoll cover parts of this stack, but they don’t provide local-language support. MegaQuest is positioning itself as the continent’s first voice-native research platform. The startup generates revenue from subscription packages of $10 or $50. Recommended reading: How this tech startup helps humanitarian organisations understand Somali OMENAI wants to connect African artists to global collectors (Art & Culture, Nigeria) Founded by Gbenro Adeyemo, OMENAI is a specialised marketplace designed to bridge the gap between African contemporary artists and the international art market. Adeyemo, a creative who frequently travelled between Nigeria and the US, noticed that talent is immense in cities like Ibadan. Still, artists lacked the visibility and trusted infrastructure to sell internationally. So, he designed an ecosystem to give African visual artists the global visibility, fair compensation, and logistical support that they struggle to access. OMENAI offers a web and mobile application where vetted artists and galleries can create profiles and upload their work for a collector to see. When a collector purchases an item, the funds are instantly credited to the artist’s in-app wallet for withdrawal, and OMENAI’s integrated logistics partners handle the pickup and shipping of the physical artwork. In addition to the built-in wallets, creators get an analytics dashboard and sales tracking. Collectors are also able to track the flow of their purchases and orders. OMENAI generates revenue by charging galleries subscription fees and commissions on every artwork sold by artists. Additionally, OMENAI generates revenue through brand advertising, merchandise sales, and long-term data and insights licensing. Despite being in the pre-launch phase with a full rollout scheduled for January, the startup claims to have processed $60,000 in art sales from social media and is raising pre-seed funding at a $1 million valuation. Why we’re watching: A report by ArtTactic shows that African artworks now account for auction sales that exceed $72 million annually. OMENAI is positioning itself as a technology company that is catering to this market segment. Its differentiator is a combination of authenticity and cultural relevance, in contrast to global platforms that spotlight African art seasonally. The platform is assembling a multi-layered ecosystem that could give emerging African artists consistent global visibility. Infinity Health Africa wants to automate regulatory compliance for the continent’s healthcare (HealthTech, Nigeria) Infinity Health Africa is a regulatory technology company tackling the fragmentation and opacity of African healthcare markets. Regulatory pathways
Read MoreVodacom now enables Tanzanians to pay merchants globally via M-Pesa
Vodacom’s Tanzania arm has launched M-Pesa Global Payment, a suite of new international payment features on M-Pesa that allow its over 22 million users to pay merchants in China, Dubai, Uganda, and anywhere Visa is accepted, directly from their phones. The launch is in partnership with global payments network provider Visa, Alipay, a Chinese digital payment platform, Middle-Eastern payments network providers, Network International and Magnati, and MTN Uganda, a mobile money operator. “Our partnerships demonstrate our commitment to building a strong and interconnected digital payments ecosystem,” Epimack Mbeteni, M-Pesa Director at Vodacom Tanzania, said. “ Together, we are enabling people and businesses to transact across borders with the same ease as they transact locally, securely, instantly, and affordably.” Vodacom Tanzania introduces a pioneering feature in Africa, the M-Pesa Tap & Pay, powered by Visa’s tokenisation technology. The feature allows customers to make contactless payments globally using their phones, just like how cardholders tap their physical cards at point-of-sale terminals. Instead of carrying a card, users generate a secure virtual Visa card within the M-Pesa app, allowing them to tap at any Visa-enabled terminal globally. “This innovation supports Tanzania’s transition toward a fully digital payments ecosystem and empowers consumers and businesses with more modern ways to pay,” Victor Makere, Visa Country Manager for Tanzania, said. The M-Pesa Global Payment initiative opens several new trade corridors. M-Pesa users can now make payments to Chinese merchants through Alipay, an important link for Tanzanian importers who source goods from China’s major markets. In September 2025, Tanzania had imported goods worth $862 million from China. The feature is enabled by the global network of Thunes, a cross-border payments infrastructure provider. In East Africa, Vodacom has partnered with MTN Uganda to allow users to pay merchants directly into MTN MoMo wallets, making settlement easier for traders operating between Tanzania and Uganda. Customers can also transact with selected merchants in Dubai through TerraPay’s global merchant network. These additions address a longstanding gap in cross-border trade and payments. The corridors remain slow, expensive, and fragmented for East African SMEs. Some traders have to rely on cash-based workarounds or high-fee intermediaries. Vodacom’s bet is that since M-Pesa is already embedded in Tanzania’s domestic financial system, it can offer a regulated and familiar solution for international payments. “Through this combined effort, we are opening new trade corridors, reducing the cost of doing business, and giving customers greater freedom to participate in the global digital economy,” Mbeteni said. 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 TC Scoop Subscribe
Read MoreVisa taps Aquanow to extend stablecoin settlements to Africa
Global payments giant Visa has partnered with Aquanow, a global digital assets company, to extend its stablecoin settlement capabilities across Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (CEMEA). Rather than relying solely on traditional banking rails, this partnership allows Visa’s network of issuers and acquirers in the region to settle transaction obligations using stablecoins, specifically USD Coin (USDC). It combines Aquanow’s digital assets and infrastructure with Visa’s traditional technology stack, enabling banks to transfer funds using blockchain technology instead of relying on legacy fiat wire transfers, and will support 365-day settlement capabilities. “By harnessing the power of stablecoins and pairing them with our trusted global technology, we are enabling financial institutions in CEMEA to experience faster and simpler settlements,” said Godfrey Sullivan, Visa’s Head of Product and Solutions for CEMEA. While swiping cards at a counter appears like an instantaneous transaction, the actual movement of funds between banks can take days due to reliance on legacy correspondent banking networks. The collaboration with Aquanow introduces a digital alternative where fiat currency is converted to stablecoins, cutting layers of intermediaries and costs, and reducing settlement timelines. Visa piloted USDC settlements in 2023 and is now expanding this offering to the CEMEA region. The payment network company says that demand from financial institutions wanting quicker and more cost-effective cross-border transactions is rising sharply. Visa says its stablecoin rails have processed over $2.5 billion in annualised settlement volume, signalling that stablecoins are becoming essential infrastructure. “Visa’s reliable global network has long moved money securely and efficiently. Together, Visa and Aquanow are unlocking new ways for institutions to participate in the digital economy,” Phil Sham, CEO of Aquanow, said. 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 TC Scoop Subscribe
Read MoreAfam Nwaoboli once directed music videos; now he wants to democratise AI for African creatives
After shaping the country’s music scene by directing and editing videos for artists like M.I Abaga, Jesse Jagz, and Brymo, Afam Nwaoboli has successfully transitioned from the analog demands of the early 2010s media terrain to the digital frontier of artificial intelligence. His latest venture, AI Studio, is the culmination of this journey, representing a platform poised to democratise AI for the Nigerian and African creative economy by making world-class tools locally accessible. Nwaoboli’s early life in tech was sparked by a simple but profound experience: the speed of email. “The first time I got interested in tech was when someone told me that I could send an email to somebody, and then the next minute they send a reply to you. That was a wow [moment] for me,” he says. Fascinated, he began building websites for clients, a foundation that quickly merged with an interest in media. Working from a cyber cafe and armed with software like Fruity Loops, he taught himself the intricacies of music and video production. This path was forged without formal instruction, embodying a tenacious, problem-solving spirit. “I’ve always been self-taught…you have to find a way of figuring out yourself. There was nobody that could come and teach you, so you [had to have] figured it out,” Nwaoboli says. Through his media company, Entourage Media, Nwaoboli became a key creative force behind the visuals of several early Nigerian music A-listers. With the pseudonym “Afamdman”, he notably directed, shot, and edited music videos for artists like M.I Abaga, Jesse Jagz, and Brymo, alongside work for others like African China, Ruggedman, and Sooti. His portfolio includes designing the album sleeves for Faze’s first album. Nwaoboli’s creative trajectory began with music under his production company, Beatdown Productions, as evidenced by his early clientele. He recalls: “I started in beat making production first… before visuals took over.” This production arm allowed him to work on beats for artists like Faze. His definitive move to visuals came in 2006 after producing for the female group Dynamix: “[I] started first producing for a female group called Dynamix first and [worked on] their first video in 2006. That is how I entered the visual space.” Working on visuals solidified Nwaoboli’s status as a pioneer in media production before he shifted his focus back to technology around 2010. 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 TC Scoop Subscribe Early tech ventures and the modular mindset Nwaoboli’s return to full-time tech was driven by an entrepreneurial spirit focused on using technology to solve everyday Nigerian challenges. This drive led to the founding of YesModular in 2022, the parent company under which his tech products are housed. His projects often demonstrate a vision well ahead of the market’s capacity. In 2002, he co-founded Smit (Smart Messaging Information Technology), attempting to push mobile apps and SMS products—a venture that proved challenging due to the underdeveloped ecosystem and lack of funding at the time. “This was when GSM just came out, so we were working on pushing out ringtones for GSM then. We were really ahead of our time, basically,” he says. This forward-thinking approach continued with Busfare, a mobile solution designed in 2023 to allow Nigerians to pay for bus transportation by scanning a QR code with their phones, eliminating the need for cash or specialised cards. While successfully test-run, the project had to be paused due to regulatory challenges, particularly the need for a CBN license to facilitate financial transactions. Currently, Nwaoboli is also finalising creators.ng, a platform designed to connect brands with content creators to run viral campaigns, thereby democratising access to brand partnerships. “The idea is for brands to go to the platform and drop their briefs, and for different content creators to pick up the briefs, create content around the brief, post them, and get paid based on the metrics the brands have set up. It could be likes, views, comments, or shares and the brands will pay the creators based on how much of these metrics they have amassed,” he says. Read also: Why Samuel Ogunkoya built a writing tool for people who want to write better AI Studio The culmination of Nwaoboli’s journey now rests with AI Studio, a Large Language Model and image generation platform launched in May 2024. AI Studio is built explicitly to address the barriers facing African users attempting to leverage global AI tools. The platform’s primary impact lies in its ability to solve the core issues of accessibility and cost. Globally available AI models typically charge in dollars, creating an enormous hurdle for local users. AI Studio cuts through this by allowing users to pay in naira, effectively bringing world-class technology within reach. “That’s one of the challenges we found that Nigerians are having, having to pay for all these different models because they charge in dollars.” Beyond payment, AI Studio aggregates several top AI models in a single location, allowing users to move seamlessly between different tools without juggling multiple subscriptions. The platform also fosters a community by allowing users to view, test, and learn from the prompts used by others, turning the platform into a learning environment. “We are also adding AI Studio Academy, an arm of AI Studio, which we hope to be the AI school for all Nigerians, where you go and learn about all the ways you can use AI,” Nwaoboli says. A collaborative future Nwaoboli’s philosophy views AI not as a threat, but as an indispensable equaliser for the African continent. He
Read MoreAXIAN rebrands fintech arm in digital banking push across Africa
AXIAN, a pan-African infrastructure and services group operating in five sectors including telecom and digital banking, has rebranded its fintech cluster, formerly Axian Open Innovation & Fintech, to AXIAN Digibank & Fintech, marking its shift from a mobile-money operator into a full digital banking ecosystem to serve individuals and businesses across Africa. The company said the new cluster will expand its mandate beyond payments to the broader financial services that individuals and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) increasingly demand but cannot access through mobile money alone. According to the World Bank, access to banking services grew in recent years across Africa, driven by mobile money and digital banking platforms. AXIAN’s shift comes at a moment when African consumers and SMEs are demanding more than wallet-based transfers, pushing fintechs to provide credit, savings and other bank-grade services. It believes the new cluster gives it the structure to build those products and compete in a market where users now expect more than transfers. The cluster brings together AXIAN’s financial services operations, including MVola and Mixx, the company’s flagship fintech products, which help individuals and businesses send money, pay merchants and access short-term credit across Madagascar, Comoros, Tanzania, Togo and Senegal. AXIAN says the new structure will allow it to integrate these services more deeply and build the long-term financial products African markets are demanding, including credit and savings, insurance, investments and cross-border transactions. “With AXIAN Digibank & Fintech, we are entering a new chapter, one where mobile money evolves into full digital banking,” Erwan Gelebart, CEO of AXIAN Digibank & Fintech, said. “This transformation is about scaling impact, giving millions of Africans affordable access to the financial tools they need to grow, thrive, and shape tomorrow’s economy.” Under the new cluster, the company constituted a new board including former N26 executive Georg Hauer, mobile-money pioneer Brad Jones and former Madagascar central bank governor Henri Rabarijohn. AXIAN says bringing in operators with global digital banking experience is essential as it expands into more sophisticated and capital-intensive services. “As we scale into full-spectrum financial service providers, the calibre and diversity of our Board is vital to ensuring disciplined innovation, responsible governance, and pan-African impact,” Gelebart added. The company did not disclose whether new capital is backing the transition, but said it is pursuing partnerships to support its scale. It added that its revenue mix is from transaction and payment fees and financial services. SMEs sit at the centre of its strategy under the new cluster. The company said it already serves nearly 500,000 merchants monthly and wants to reach millions by 2030 through restocking credit, improved payment terms and cross-border settlement tools. AXIAN believes these services can move SMEs from cash-based operations, which it considers its largest competition, into structured financing that supports expansion and job creation. The company plans to scale longer-tenor loans, insurance, investments and eventually mortgages; these products, it said, are scarce in its operating markets. It acknowledges the technical and regulatory hurdles, especially around issuing higher-ticket loans digitally and managing risk across countries, but says automation and AI-driven underwriting will be crucial to supporting scale. Recommended: Madagascar’s AXIAN Telecom acquires Kenya’s Zuku operator Wananchi Group for $63m
Read MoreMTN’s MoMo PSB seals deal with Thunes to expand cross-border payments for Nigerians
MoMo Payment Service Bank (MoMo PSB), the fintech platform of Nigeria’s largest mobile network operator, MTN, has inked a strategic partnership with Thunes, a global B2B platform for cross-border payments, to enable its users to receive funds from abroad instantly. The partnership significantly expands MoMo’s international remittance capabilities, allowing users to receive money from key markets including the USA, UK, Canada, France, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and South Africa. This collaboration allows MoMo’s approximately 2.7 million Nigerian users access to international funds in real time, useful for everyday transactions such as buying airtime, paying bills, sending money to family and friends, or engaging in digital commerce. MoMo PSB, now a member of Thunes’ Direct Global Network, provides a broad range of digital financial services, including payments, e-commerce, insurance, and remittances. As part of Nigeria’s largest mobile network, MoMo PSB also provides millions of Nigerians with convenient, secure, and scalable digital financial solutions. Thunes’ Direct Global Network connects members to local wallets, neobanks, and financial institutions across borders, enabling real-time transfers in over 130 countries and more than 80 currencies. Through this partnership, MoMo PSB users can receive remittances quickly and securely, while Thunes strengthens the flow of global money into Nigeria’s rapidly growing digital economy. According to World Bank data, remittance inflows into Nigeria rose 9% in 2024, reaching $20.9 billion. “This alliance makes it possible for Nigerians to receive money from abroad instantly, securely, and conveniently,” said Aik Boon Tan, Chief Network Officer at Thunes. “It allows more people to access the global economy, giving them control over their finances while opening a vast and growing market to our network members.” Phrase Lubega, CEO of MoMo PSB, added, “Joining the Thunes Direct Global Network allows us to deliver on our commitment to financial inclusion by bringing global remittances directly to users’ fingertips. Thunes’ robust cross-border payments network ensures our users can access global financial flows reliably, transparently, and cost-effectively, helping them participate fully in Nigeria’s digital economy.” Headquartered in Singapore with offices in 14 global locations, Thunes’ network connects over 7 billion wallets, 15 billion cards, and more than 320 payment methods, including GCash, M-Pesa, Airtel, MTN, Orange, JazzCash, and WeChat Pay. Its platform supports gig economy leaders, super-apps, fintechs, PSPs, and banks worldwide. MTN’s MoMo PSB and Thunes are setting a new standard for real-time international remittances, offering Nigerians instant access to global funds while advancing financial inclusion and economic participation nationwide.
Read MoreChui Ventures surpasses $10 million target at close of first fund
Chui Ventures, an Africa-focused seed-stage fund, has raised $17.3 million for its debut fund, surpassing its $10 million target and joining a small group of African venture firms, including Launch Africa and Ventures Platform, that closed oversubscribed first funds. The fund drew commitments from a diverse mix of foundations, family offices, and more than 30 high-net-worth (HNW) individuals, including the Mastercard Foundation Africa Growth Fund and the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation. Notably, over 90% of its HNW backers are of African origin, and 60% are African female executives. “Our vision at Chui is simple but powerful: For Africa, by Africa,” said Joyce-Ann Wainaina, general partner of Chui Ventures. “We believe African founders are best positioned to solve Africa’s challenges at scale, and Fund I is proof that global and local investors share this conviction. As we look ahead, we will continue to double down on technology-driven ventures that deliver both returns and measurable social impact.” Since its first close in February 2023, the fund has deployed 60% of its committed capital over the past 30 months, investing in 18 of its targeted 22 portfolio companies across five Sub-Saharan African markets. Five of those companies have already raised follow-on rounds at higher valuations, and several are either profitable or on track to reach profitability within the next year, the firm said in a statement. The portfolio spans fintech, healthtech, e-commerce, agritech, and logistics, including startups like Pricepally (a Nigerian online grocery platform), Leta (a Kenya-based supply chain SaaS company), Uncover (a skincare brand for African women), and Flex Finance (a spend-management SaaS platform). These startups reflect Chui’s thesis, addressing essential needs through tech-enabled, adaptable business models designed to scale within and across markets. Following the successful close of its first fund, the firm is now launching Fund II, targeting $60 million with a hard cap of $100 million. The new fund will maintain Chui’s core strategy but expand into North Africa and deepen its focus on financial services, B2B software, digital commerce, and climate tech. It will also pursue larger ownership stakes in portfolio companies.
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