Digital Nomads: A Ghanaian serial tech entrepreneur who’s finding his place in the UK pet-tech industry
At 30, Freeman Faithful, a Ghanaian serial tech entrepreneur, has lived multiple lives. Faithful has been a student, a tech gadget connoisseur, a student (again), a founder, a tech consulting maven, a student (again), a cybersecurity engineer, a founder (again), a builder, and overall, somebody who’s always eager to find the next thing once he’s thrived in a place. During one of the slow peaks of December, we had a hearty conversation about his life, travels, and the series of businesses that have taken him across Ghana and, eventually, into the UK. “I’ve always been intrigued by travelling,” he told me. “Not in the tourism sense. I just don’t like feeling boxed in. Once I feel like I’ve seen the edges of a place or a system, my instinct is to ask what else exists beyond it.” Life in Ghana Faithful grew up in Ghana, a country and culture which shaped his earliest views, exposure, and instincts. Like many young men raised in West Africa with an aptitude for numbers and logic, Faithful was nudged toward a respectable path early. In secondary school, he gravitated naturally toward the sciences, partly out of expectation and partly because he was good at it. Engineering seemed like the obvious destination. In 2013, he enrolled at KAAF University in Accra, Ghana, to study Mechanical Engineering, believing that fulfillment would eventually catch up with discipline. It never did. “I’m a failed mechanical engineering student,” he said, laughing. “I was going through hell. I wasn’t feeling fulfilled at all. Every day felt like a different movie. And I just knew that wasn’t it.” The problem was not intelligence or a lack of effort, Faithful said, describing his time in college. It was misalignment. Mechanical Engineering demanded repetition, patience with rigid systems, and comfort with long feedback loops. Faithful wanted immediacy. He wanted to see cause and effect. He wanted to build something and watch it work or fail in real time, and this nudged his interests toward entrepreneurship. Even while unhappy in school, he began tinkering. In Accra, the equivalent of Lagos’ Computer Village is Circle, a sprawling, chaotic marketplace where phones and laptops are repaired, and deals are made with equal parts trust and suspicion. Faithful knew Circle intimately. He knew which vendors were honest, which ones cut corners, and how to spot quality hardware without getting burned. His classmates noticed. “People trusted me to help them go and swap phones or buy phones because they didn’t want to get scammed,” he recalled. “I would always add my markup on it.” It started informally. A favour here. A phone there. Then Faithful decided to make it visible. “I printed a flyer at the school entrance gate with my phone number on it,” he said, smiling at the memory. “I called [the tech repair business] ‘Doctor Android Services’. And business took off. Like mad.” Students called him for everything. Broken screens. Software issues. Battery replacements. Faithful was not just fixing devices; he was learning how trust converts into demand. That experience became his real education. He eventually left Mechanical Engineering behind and enrolled at Venkateshwara Open University, an Indian university with ties in Ghana, to study Information Technology in 2017. Faithful noted that studying how the plumbing of technology works felt like a path that appealed to him strongly. “I liked it because it was a practical course where you weren’t just learning theory,” he said. “You were expected to build things, fix things, and understand how systems actually work.” He completed the three-year degree in 2019. Along the way, he picked up skills in design, front-end development, and systems infrastructure. More importantly, technology gave him something mechanical engineering never did: room. After graduating, he joined Melcom, Ghana’s largest retail chain, as an IT lead. There, he encountered scale for the first time. “I saw what happens when technology touches real businesses with real volume,” he said. “You don’t get to hide behind theory. If something breaks, it breaks publicly.” Yet, even that environment began to feel limiting. Faithful had tasted independence too early to be fully satisfied with maintenance. His successful ‘Doctor Android Services’ business showed him he already had the entrepreneurial knack; coupled with his design and technical coding skills, he soon craved the “excitement” of building his own thing from scratch. It led Faithful to tech consulting, a business that would soon pull him far beyond Ghana’s borders. Act 1: Tech consulting business Faithful launched Peges as a small tech and IT consulting business in Lapaz, Accra, in 2018, while he was still in school. He continued building the business even after completing his IT degree and joining Melcom. Soon after quitting his job at Melcom, he turned his focus full-time to Peges. Freeman Faithful started Peges as a Venkateshwara College student in 2018; this picture was taken from its early days, with the development and design team working on a project for Ghana’s Junction Mall. Image Source: Freeman Faithful At Peges, he was helping companies design, build, and maintain digital systems at a time when many Ghanaian enterprises were still finding their footing online. Faithful was hands-on; he coded, designed, and helped manage some of the biggest digital transformation projects for Ghanaian enterprises. Faithful was part of the core team that built Melcom Online, the e-commerce platform of the country’s largest retail chain—and his former employer. His firm also worked with Allianz Insurance, Junction Mall, and Shelter Mart, a Ghanaian property listing platform. At its peak, Peges was invoicing over GH₵ 3 million ($286,000) across clients in a single year. Freeman Faithful (centre) with an employee (left) and Amar Deep Singh Hari (right), CEO of IPMC Group, one of Africa’s biggest ICT training institutes. Image Source: Freeman Faithful Over time, Peges evolved into a full-fledged tech boutique agency, working with startups at different stages, from founders building their first minimum viable products (MVPs) to companies that had already raised significant capital. Some paid in cash; others offered equity. “Peges has been
Read More“The crypto ban that made us stronger”: Day 1-1000 of Yellow Card
When Chris Maurice landed in Lagos, Nigeria, in 2018, he had only been on a plane four times in his entire life. And then he was on a different continent with two options: make Yellow Card work, or live in Nigeria permanently. Day 1 It started with $90. In Alabama – “the capital of innovation,” Maurice says with obvious irony – he met a Nigerian man at Wells Fargo trying to send $200 to his family. The bank wanted $90 to process it. “I thought, you know, well, that’s insane, right?” Maurice recalls. “How could it possibly cost that much?” He did what any crypto enthusiast would do: told the guy about Bitcoin. Free transfers! Instant! Revolutionary! Then he went home, and reality hit. “I just started thinking, you know, what on earth is this guy’s mom gonna do with $200 in Bitcoin?” Maurice says. “You can’t buy food with that. You can’t pay rent with that. What problem is this actually solving?” That question led Maurice down a research rabbit hole about Nigeria, its currency, its banking system, and its economy. And somewhere in that research, he realised something critical: if he wanted to understand Nigeria, he needed to speak to someone from there. So, he did what any reasonable person would do. He put out an ad online. “Looking to speak to Nigerian men,” Maurice says, then pauses. “Which, you know, in hindsight, probably could have been worded better.” The phrasing attracted exactly the wrong kind of responses. But eventually, he connected with the right Nigerian man. And that’s when Maurice learned his first lesson about Nigeria. Nigerians are the most convincing people in the world. “Within about a month and a half of meeting this Nigerian man on the internet, he convinced me to get a passport and take the first international flight of my life,” Maurice says. He’d never left the United States. He knew almost nothing about Nigeria beyond what he’d researched online, maybe a YouTube video or two. None of that mattered. “The options, very literally, were build something that works or live in Lagos for the rest of my life,” Maurice says. It’s the kind of founder commitment story that sounds insane until you realise: it worked. The pivot nobody expected Maurice and his co-founder, Justin Poiroux, had gone to Nigeria with a remittance app in mind. Make it easier for people to send money home. Simple, obvious, needed. Except it wasn’t. “The truth is that there are 500 remittance apps, right?” Maurice says. “By the time I finished the sentence, you can download 700 different apps to help you send money. The world doesn’t need another remittance app.” What Nigeria needed, what the continent needed, was something more fundamental: a better way to facilitate international payments and enable money to interact with local economies. “Stablecoins are the first and only technology that actually enables that,” Maurice explains. “There’s a huge opportunity to do something here with international payments, with access to dollars, and other fundamental issues that exist across the continent.” The realisation shifted everything. Instead of building another remittance app competing with a host of others, Yellow Card would build infrastructure – the rails that would make it easier for every company to operate on the continent. “How do we make it easier for all of these remittance companies, rather than build a remittance app ourselves?” Maurice says. Yellow Card launched in Nigeria in 2019. And for a while, everything worked. Maurice found that Nigerians had something most other markets lacked: a genuine openness to new technology. “From the beginning, everybody just really understood crypto,” he says. “People have such an openness and willingness to try new technology and implement new technology that solves their problems. That’s one of the biggest benefits of doing business in Nigeria—the culture of innovation.” Maurice compares it to his experiences in Europe, where innovation moves more slowly, vacation days pile up, and risk-taking is discouraged. In Nigeria, as in the US, people hustle. “There’s no such thing as work and life separation, like it’s all just one,” he says. “Nigeria, man, people hustle. There are certain countries around the world where people just hustle, right? And those countries, from a business perspective, get along much better.” By 2021, Nigeria accounted for over 90% of Yellow Card’s volume and revenue. The company had built meaningful infrastructure in seven other African countries, but Nigeria was the engine. Then, in February 2021, everything changed. Day 500: The ban that separated winners from losers The Central Bank of Nigeria issued a directive prohibiting banks from processing transactions from cryptocurrency companies or users. It wasn’t technically a crypto ban—Nigeria never actually banned cryptocurrency—but it might as well have been. “Look, it was a major hindrance to the industry and to being able to grow in Nigeria,” Maurice says. For most crypto companies operating in Nigeria, the directive was devastating. Companies that had raised seed funding around the same time as Yellow Card started firing staff. Growth stalled. Some shut down entirely. Yellow Card didn’t fire anyone. “We were the only company that came out of that without having to fire anybody,” Maurice says. “We were the only company that came out of that able to raise a Series A.” The difference? Those seven other countries. While competitors had gone all-in on Nigeria, Yellow Card had actually opened entities, secured bank accounts, obtained licencing approvals, and built infrastructure across the continent. When Nigeria went offline, it could shift resources immediately. “We were the only Pan-African crypto player that had actually built meaningful infrastructure outside of Nigeria,” Maurice explains. “When that happened, we were the only company actually able to shift resources to other countries, to other markets, to be able to grow.” The ban lasted about two months before things largely returned to normal. Yellow Card worked with payment service providers to maintain operations, even if it was ‘a little bit uglier from an operational standpoint.’ But the damage to
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3 African startups reshaping mobility, management, and markets
Startups On Our Radar spotlights African startups solving African challenges with innovation. In our previous edition, we featured five game-changing startups pioneering agritech, fintech, HRTech, and cleantech. Expect the next dispatch on January 9, 2026. This week, we explore three African startups in the ecommerce, HRTech, and mobility sectors and why they should be on your watchlist. Let’s dive into it: Vinlogs wants to end vehicle fraud with its blockchain-powered verification platform (Mobility, Kenya) Morris Wairimu founded Vinlogs in 2025 to combat the vehicle fraud crisis in emerging markets, where tampered histories, odometer fraud, and the resale of stolen vehicles from North America result in significant financial losses and contribute to higher accident rates, as unsafe vehicles remain in circulation. Vehicle fraud in the used-car market is a global issue, as data shows that roughly 2.45 million vehicles are suspected of having odometer tampering, with buyers losing an average of $3,300 to $4,000 per vehicle due to misrepresented mileage. For consumers, insurers, and financiers in these regions, the lack of reliable verification tools often makes buying used cars a risky gamble. Vinlogs’ solution is a blockchain-secured vehicle history verification platform that aggregates automotive data from multiple sources, including government registries, inspection bodies, insurance claims, and service centres. The data is then aggregated to create tamper-proof vehicle histories, which users can access through a web dashboard, and businesses can integrate verification directly into their workflows using APIs. Vinlogs collects data from verified sources, including the UK Ministry of Transport, Quality Inspection Services Japan (QISJ), and the National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) in Kenya. It then cross-checks records for consistency and stores them on blockchain infrastructure to prevent tampering. On top of this data layer, Vinlogs applies AI-powered analysis to detect fraud patterns, flag mileage discrepancies, and generate risk scores that support decision-making for buyers, dealerships, banks, and insurers. Its business model combines pay-per-report pricing for retail buyers, subscription plans and API access for enterprise clients, and a marketplace layer for vendors. Vinlogs reports over 100 committed users, including car sellers and brokers, ready to onboard before its MVP launch. The startup says it is in active discussions with regulators in Uganda, South Africa, Ghana, Ethiopia, and Tanzania to expand its presence. Why we’re watching: The Kenyan used-car market size is expected to reach $1.50 billion (KES 193.5 billion) by 2030. Vinlogs is positioning itself at this intersection. Unlike competitors such as Autocheck, Carfax, CarChek, and CarVertical, Vinlogs emphasises blockchain storage, AI-driven fraud detection tailored for emerging markets, and multi-country regulatory alignment. Its advantage also lies in its integration with Japanese vehicle exports and African import markets. The startup plans to expand into five key African countries within the next 12 months and aims to reach operational break-even by the end of its first year. Cedisaver wants to unite Ghana’s informal clothing sellers on one platform (E-commerce, Ghana) Founded in 2015 by Moriah Adika, Cedisaver aims to address a fragmented fashion market that Adika noticed, where shopping for affordable clothing is plagued by stress, online fraud, inconsistent quality, and overpriced products, while local artisans and informal clothing retailers struggle to scale beyond scattered social media pages. Cedisaver is a centralised e-commerce platform that aggregates trusted informal clothing sellers and artisans into one digital marketplace. Rather than holding bulk inventory, it operates a hybrid direct-to-consumer model that sources products directly from vendors. When a customer places an order, Cedisaver picks up items from retailers and delivers them through local depots, a system that allows users to bundle purchases from multiple sellers into a single delivery. By avoiding bulk inventory and focusing on logistics, vendor partnerships, and digital marketing, Cedisaver reduces overhead costs and maintains healthier margins. Cedisaver reports an accumulated revenue of GHS64,115 ($6,000) as of April 2025, with over 500 products sold to over 218 customers. Why we’re watching: The size of Ghana’s fashion market is projected to reach $1.30 billion (GHS 13.6 billion) by 2030. Cedisaver is attempting to modernise the region’s fashion e-commerce market by organising the informal sector rather than competing directly against it. By integrating informal sellers into a single platform, Cedisaver differentiates itself from traditional retailers with high overhead costs and from social media sellers with limited reach and trust gaps. The startup plans to adopt a data-driven approach to trend forecasting and near-shoring-inspired production. WorkFlowsHR wants to streamline workforce management for Nigerian SMEs (HRTech, Nigeria) Founded in 2024 by Funsho Oke, WorkFlowsHR was developed to address the fragmented HR systems Nigerian businesses face, which often lead to data inconsistencies, compliance risks, and lost productivity. WorkFlowsHR addresses these pain points with a unified cloud-based platform that handles the entire employee lifecycle. It is an integrated human resources and CRM software built to help employers manage the operational complexity of running a workforce, from payroll and onboarding to time tracking and performance management. The startup began its journey as a recruitment agency, where its team encountered recurring challenges in employee retention, engagement, and payroll as both its own operations and those of its clients grew. WorkFlowsHR automates core HR functions, including payroll management, employee onboarding, attendance, leave management, and compliance with local labour laws. Its onboarding module offers self-service workflows with real-time status tracking, automated employee invitations, and categorisation of employment types. It also includes performance management tools that align individual goals with organisational objectives, an Employer of Record (EOR) service for companies hiring across jurisdictions, and the management of complex tasks such as terminating employees, conducting background checks, and handling workers’ compensation for companies expanding into new markets. The startup targets African startups and growth-stage SMEs, particularly companies with about 10 to 200 employees. The startup operates on a subscription-based revenue model with tiered pricing ranging from ₦500 ($0.35) to ₦4,200 ($2.91) every six months. Additional revenue streams include advertising on social media and newsletters, and partnership revenue sharing. Since its launch in 2024, WorkFlowsHR says it has onboarded over 200 companies, and claims to have delivered 22.2% cost savings for its users, an 18.5%
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Founders, business leaders, and scientists Africa lost in 2025
A fintech executive, a mobile-gaming pioneer, a nuclear scientist, the first African engineer to work at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and a first-generation banker who helped build the rails for modern African finance were among the notable figures Africa’s technology, banking, and science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) ecosystems lost in 2025. This is a partial list, focusing on people whose impact was felt across startups, finance, academia and the broader technology ecosystem. Senamile Masango, South African, 37 Senamile Masango, South African nuclear scientist. Image Source: Photo shared on LinkedIn by Colleen Larsen/American Nuclear Society South Africa’s first Black female nuclear scientist, Masango’s career symbolised what was possible when more women gained access to advanced STEM training. She died on February 9, 2025, after an illness, leaving a legacy that stretched beyond research into representation and role‑modelling. Her work in nuclear physics, including research at the European Council for Nuclear Research (CERN), the world’s largest particle physics laboratory based in Meyrin, a western suburb of Geneva, Switzerland, and leadership roles at South Africa’s nuclear energy corporation. Her visibility as a young Black scientist inspired students across the continent. Adetunji “Teejay” Opayele, Nigerian, 32 Adetunji “Teejay” Opayele. Image Source: Bumpa. Adetunji “Teejay” Opayele, who died in a car crash in Lagos on March 4, 2025, was co-founder of Bumpa, a Nigerian startup helping small businesses digitise sales, inventory, and customer engagement. A self-taught mobile developer and former e-settlement engineer, he built much of Bumpa’s technical stack, helping the e-commerce startup close a $4 million seed round in 2022 and grow to tens of thousands of merchants using its tools to run informal and micro-retail businesses. His colleagues and co-founder Kelvin Umechukwu described him as a builder at heart, always full of ideas. Pascal Gabriel Dozie, Nigerian, 85 Pascal Gabriel Dozie, founder of defunct Diamond Bank and co-founder of African Capital Alliance. Image Source: The ICIR Founder of Diamond Bank, the Nigerian tier-2 bank acquired by Access Bank in 2019, and pioneering chairman of MTN Nigeria, Dozie helped lay two of the core rails that today’s African tech ecosystem runs on: modern retail banking and mass‑market mobile connectivity. As Diamond Bank’s founder, he backed consumer and SME banking decades before “fintech” became a buzzword, and as MTN Nigeria’s first chairman, he helped steer the telecom firm’s entry and expansion in what became one of its most important markets. He died on April 8, 2025; many of today’s fintechs, neobanks, and mobile‑first startups are effectively building on the infrastructure he helped put in place. He was father to Uzoma Dozie, former group managing director of the now-defunct Diamond Bank and CEO of digital bank Sparkle, and Ngozi and Chijioke Dozie, both cofounders of digital lending and microfinance bank Carbon. An influential figure, the Dozie patriarch was mourned by Nigerian President Bola Tinubu after his passing. Abiola Olaniran, Nigerian, 36 Abiola Olaniran speaking on a panel at a Standard Chartered–supported tech event held at Eko Hotels and Suites, Lagos, in June 2016. Image Source: Disrupt Africa Founder of Gamsole, one of the continent’s most downloaded mobile game studios, Olaniran was a pioneer of African mobile gaming, an early backer of the ecosystem, and the first angel investor in Techpoint Africa, the Nigeria-based tech publication. He died on July 16, 2025, aged 36. His titles, such as Gidi Run, Monster Ninja, and a styled version of the popular game Temple Run, collectively surpassed 10 million downloads worldwide, proving that African‑made games could compete on global platforms. He left behind a catalogue of games and a generation of younger developers he quietly mentored. Susan Kamengere Njoki, Kenyan, 48 Susan Kamengere Njoki. Image Source: Discover JKUAT A registered nurse, lactation specialist, and certified infant massage instructor, Njoki founded Toto Touch Kenya to support children and parents with mental health and nurturing care, blending clinical practice with digital community building. Her death on July 16, 2025, shortly after a forced admission to a Nairobi mental‑health facility, and a post‑mortem finding of death from manual strangulation, sparked public outcry and renewed scrutiny of how Kenya’s mental‑health and patient‑rights laws are applied in practice. Leon Kiptum Kidombo, Kenyan, 44 Former Flutterwave East Africa VP Leon Kiptum. Image Source: Flutterwave on X A respected fintech executive and mentor, Kidombo served as Senior Vice President for East Africa at Flutterwave, the Nigerian payments unicorn operating in more than 30 countries, where he played a critical role in expanding the company’s presence across the region. He rebuilt relationships with regulators and forged partnerships with banks and enterprise clients. He died on August 3, 2025, aged 44, after a battle with cancer, just weeks after stepping back from work to focus on his health. Beyond his day job, he served on the board of the Association of Fintechs in Kenya, where he pushed for more collaboration and standards across payment startups. Frank Marangu Ireri, Kenyan, 63 Frank Ireri speaking at a 2017 interview with Trading Bell, a capital market-focused analysis programme by Kenya’s Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE). Image Source: NSE Kenya/YouTube As managing director of Housing Finance (later HF Group) for over a decade, Ireri was one of the executives who sought to drag East Africa’s oldest mortgage lender into a digital, more competitive era. He died on October 26, 2025, after a long battle with cancer, leaving behind a generation of Kenyan bankers and operators he had mentored. His greatest impact at HF was diversifying the firm’s product offerings beyond traditional home loans and driving early digitisation of its lending services. Before his death, he held governance roles at Centum Real Estate, Habitat for Humanity Kenya, and the HR‑tech firm SeamlessHR, where he served on the startup’s Kenya advisory board. Madiassa Maguiraga, Malian, 82 Madiassa Maguiraga speaking at the Conférence Annuelle sur la Haute Technologie (CAHT) in November 2019, an annual tech conference held at Université Mapon in Kindu, Democratic Republic of Congo. Image Source: Université Mapon Madiassa Maguiraga, who died on November 5, 2025, was a towering figure
Read MoreFive African founders who staged major comebacks in 2025
In 2025, Africa’s technology ecosystem stopped running on untested optimism. After years of speculation, the ecosystem has matured into something leaner and more calculating. The hopeful belief of outsiders no longer governs the market, but by a collective memory of what happens when the hype runs out. After a bruising two-year contraction, venture funding into African startups has climbed back across the $3 billion threshold, a 36% jump from last year’s $2.2 billion, according to data from Africa The Big Deal. However, while the headline figure suggests a return to the boom times of 2022, the market’s internal structure has undergone a fundamental shift. The days of sprinkling capital across a hundred early-stage experiments are over. Now, the money is moving in heavy, deliberate tranches, focusing on fewer bets, with rounds often exceeding $50 million. At the centre of this recalibration is an emerging class of “survivor” founders. They are a distinct minority because numbers show that while 68% of African founders walk away for good after a startup fails. In 2025, the stigma of failure no longer defines this group, nor are they celebrated with the uncritical “fail fast” worship of Silicon Valley’s past. For the modern African investor, a previous collapse is now a stress test. They are demanding a forensic accounting of why a company failed, separating unavoidable macroeconomic shocks, such as the regulatory shifts and funding droughts of 2023, from the self-inflicted wounds of unchecked cash burn and weak governance. They look for operational scars like missed hires, misjudged purchasing power in low-income markets, and flawed assumptions that can only be corrected by an expensive failure. In a landscape where trust is the most expensive currency, founders who returned unused capital to their backers, a practice recently documented in high-profile closures, are finding a much warmer reception than those who left a trail of unpaid creditors. These second-time founders are returning to the arena with a newfound sense of restraint, raising less capital upfront and treating every dollar as something to be earned through proven demand rather than assumed by right. 1. Meshack Alloys, from Sendy to TABB – Kenya Meshack Alloys built Sendy into one of East Africa’s most visible logistics startups, raising over $24 million before the company collapsed in 2023, according to Crunchbase. The promise of asset-light logistics across multiple markets collided with thin margins and operational complexity, producing scale without durability. Alloys’ return with TABB, a trade credit network that allows banks to extend revolving credit to small businesses using transaction data, reflects a rejection of that model rather than an attempt to refine it. The idea grew directly out of Sendy’s failure, where liquidity constraints repeatedly limited customer growth. Credit infrastructure offers higher margins and clearer regulatory pathways than physical logistics, provided relationships with banks and regulators are built early. TABB positions itself as a partner to existing financial institutions rather than a challenger, signalling a more conservative approach. 2. Tesh Mbaabu, from MarketForce and Chpter to Cloud9 – Kenya Tesh Mbaabu has become one of the most closely watched repeat founders of the cycle. Mbaabu’s B2B marketplace RejaReja, under MarketForce, shut down in 2024 after operational costs and FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) margins eroded sustainability, a diagnosis Mbaabu made publicly. His interim pivot, Chpter, an AI-driven conversational commerce platform, grew rapidly, onboarding about 1,500 merchants in four months, according to company statements. By late 2025, Mbaabu and his co-founder stepped aside to launch Cloud9, a digital bank aimed at younger users. Kenya’s fintech market is projected to reach $14.5 billion (KES 1.9 trillion) by 2028, making the sector attractive but crowded. Cloud9’s appeal to investors lies in its insistence on early usage data and unit economics, a response to lessons learned in earlier ventures. Mbaabu’s repeated reinvention invites debate about focus, yet his willingness to abandon models that fail quickly rather than defend them indefinitely aligns with the market’s current preference for evidence over narrative. 3. Abasi Ene-Obong, from 54gene to Syndicate Bio – Nigeria Abasi Ene-Obong co-founded 54gene and helped raise more than $54 million to build genomic datasets focused on African populations. Obong’s departure in 2023 and the company’s shutdown in September 2023 followed governance disputes that played out publicly. Ene-Obong returned with Syndicate Bio, launched in 2023, but moved into full operational mode in 2025 with the opening of its first sequencing laboratory. The company wants to provide genomic infrastructure for global medicine, positioning Africa as a foundational contributor rather than a peripheral sample source. Early backers include Nubia Capital, Techstars, African Union Development Agency-NEPAD, and StoryHouse Ventures, according to PitchBook. The decision to remain in biotech signals confidence that domain expertise accumulated over the years can outweigh reputational risk when paired with revised governance and operational discipline. Syndicate Bio is capital-intensive and slow by design, qualities that now attract investors seeking infrastructure-level businesses. 4. William McCarren, from Zumi to quieter second acts – Kenya William McCarren scaled Zumi, a B2B e-commerce platform, to $20 million in sales and roughly 5,000 customers before the company shut down in March 2023, a closure attributed less to demand failure than to the inability to secure follow-on capital amid heightened risk aversion toward African e-commerce. McCarren’s return has been deliberately low profile. He now works in South Africa as a co-founder of FARO, a re-commerce startup founded in 2023 but only gaining traction after a $6 million raise in 2024 led by Bloomberg President JP Zammitt. FARO runs physical stores that resell reconditioned fashion inventory, pairing software-led pricing with in-house garment refurbishment. Unlike the purely digital Zumi, FARO is built around tight control of stock and cash flow. In 2025, the model moved into execution, with physical retail openings and scaled reconditioning operations validating unit economics through repeat demand and disciplined inventory turnover. FARO’s model has helped retailers recover value from unsold goods while reducing environmental waste and offering shoppers high-quality products at lower prices. 5. Alexandria Procter, from builder to funder – South Africa In 2018, Alexandria Procter
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