aKoma Media Co-founder and COO Chidi Afulezi is "a Naija boy true and true". Chidi is an electrical engineer with product-development experience earned working in America's digital wireless network industry. Chidi's resume also features executive stints at top media and entertainment brands such as Time Warner, Sony Music and CNN. While at CNN, Chidi met and began plotting a media coup with one the network's leading international anchors, the Kenyan Zain Verjee, with whom he co-founded aKoma.
In this conversation with Andile Masuku, taped at Africa Tech Summit Kigali 2018, Chidi shares why he is bullish about African storytelling and why he is enthusiastically backing African creators. Listen in to better understand some of the pain points aKoma is looking to solve for and to learn how African media makers, intent on shaping the way the world perceives the continent, are harnessing tech innovation to assert themselves on the global stage.
This year's Afrobytes Tech Marketplace event attracted a large, impressive Ethiopian delegation of tech innovators sporting some serious swag. Ethiopia boasts a solid track record of meaningful digital innovation in spite of the fairly insular political and economic outlook that prevailed in the past.
Today, tech ecosystem heavy-hitters like the Ethiopian founder of investment advisory firm Ibex Frontier, Zekarias Amsalu, and the Senegalese founder of the IT expert online marketplace Gebeya, Amadou Daffe, are bullishly surfing a wave of renewed global investment interest catalysed by Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's changes to economic policy.
In this chat with Amadou Daffe and TechPoint.ng Founder Adewale Yusuf - taped at the fringes of Afrobytes Tech Marketplace 2018 - Andile Masuku learns more about why Ethiopia, with its population of 100 million people and one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, is well-positioned to assert itself as one of the continent's leading tech hubs.
BongoHive Co-Founder and Director of Entrepreneurship, Simunza Muyangana reckons that Lusaka has what it takes to become one of Africa's choicest tech and innovation hubs. When it launched in May 2011 BongoHive was Zambia's only technology and innovation hub. Today, no small thanks to Simunza and his team's context-relevant ecosystem upliftment efforts, the early-stage startup scene in Zambia is more vibrant than its ever been.
In this throwback conversation with Andile Masuku - taped at African Angel Investor Summit 2017 - Simunza chats about BongoHive's portfolio of startup and tech programmes, workshops and events, which are all focused on making Zambia Africa’s next hotbed of innovation. Listen in to learn more about BongoHive's relatively new investment arm and why Simunza believes that the time is right for his organisation to bet on local startups.
