Building The Future Podcast

“Always provide a fantastic service” On today’s episode, we have Kendall Ananyi, co-founder of Tizeti which operates as Wifi.com.ng Wifi.com.ng provides unlimited uncapped internet to users for less than $25 per month. Kendall has an interesting. He has studied as an engineer and has worked with ExxonMobil, Microsoft, and PricewaterhouseCoopers. He started Wifi.com.ng in order to solve their perso...

"Leadership is not about titles or positions, leadership is about solving problems." Oby Ezekwesili is a force. She was recognized by Time Magazine as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the world and by New York Times as one of the 25 Women of Impact for 2015. She was Vice President of the World Bank (Africa Region) with responsibilities for operations in 48 countries and a lending portfoli...

“No matter the rules, delivery is key” On today’s episode of Building the Future, we have Cecil Nutakor, Founder of eCampus. eCampus literally puts the classroom in your palms, giving you the power and control to self learn and explore at your own pace. Cecil is using technology to disrupt self-paced education in Africa. Cecil has an interesting story. He failed his senior secondary school certifi...

“The customer is not just the king, he runs the business” On today’s episode of Building the Future, we have Oluyomi Ojo, Co-Founder of Printivo. Printivo is  a DIY (do it yourself) web-to-print-to-doorstep platform. This startup is trying to redefine the digital printing business by offering consumers a radically easy solution  for meeting their printing requirements. Oluyomi has always been an e...

On today’s episode of Building the Future, we have Afua Osei, Co-Founder of She Leads Africa. She Leads Africa is a community that helps young African women achieve their professional goals with engaging online content and pan-African events.   Afua’s journey to entrepreneurship has been an interesting one: from working in the Office of  First Lady Michelle Obama and working in other political cam...

On the podcast today, we have Michael Ocansey, the CTO and Co-Founder of AgroCenta.  Michael runs an interesting business. Agrocenta aggregates small holder farmers in rural farming communities, and give them access to market, capital and resources. Agrocenta aim to sign up 1000 farmers and working on 1000 hectares in Ghana.  And they are barely scratching the surface of opportunity! On This Episo...

On the podcast today, we have the CEO and Co-Founder of Paystack, Shola Akinlade. Paystack is a payments processing company which lets businesses accept payments via debit card or money transfer on their websites or mobile apps. Paystack was the very first Nigerian company to get into YC - which is no small feat! Shola is a software engineer by training and his foray into software engineering star...

On the podcast today, we have Ngozi Dozie, Co-Founder at One Finance (OneFi). OneFi is a platform that provide access to finance by leveraging data and technology. One of their major product is a lending mobile app which enable people to get access to short term loans in Nigeria as quickly as possible. Ngozi  has an interesting background…. he has First Class degree in Physics from Imperial Colleg...

Bob Collymore is the CEO of Safaricom one of the leading telco in Africa and pioneer of Mpesa, the world’s most developed mobile payment system. If there is any poster child of how innovative mobile technology is changing Africa, Mpesa will be a top contender. Bob was originally born in Guyana, but his work experience spans across diverse countries such as Japan, South Africa and the United Kingdo...

“One of the biggest mistakes online businesses make is to think that just because your service is delivered online, it means your customers can only be acquired online” Our guest this week is Marek Zmysłowski Marek is the cofounder of Jumia Travel (formerly Jovago) and HotelOga. is a hotel management system which enables hotels in Africa to have their own booking engine, websites and customer rela...

“In business, emotions should play a secondary role and logic a primary one” Deepankar Rustagi is the Co-Founder and CEO at Vconnect, Nigeria’s largest online business directory and local search engine. Vconnect was one of the first players in the Nigerian tech ecosystem and has been active since 2010. This episode is a lesson on how to get traction for your startup by focusing on ‘One Metric that...

Kola is the founder of Ventures Platform, an early stage fund and startup accelerator for founders across Africa. Within a year, Kola and his team have invested in over 20 startups through the programme. Kola bootstrapped his original business, Emerging Platform from idea to a significant success by mixing healthy dose of risks with grit. I met Kola last year, and we seem to immediately connect du...

One of the major challenge for doing business in Africa is lack of data. It’s hard to get information about private businesses in the continent. There are lots of consultants and researchers scouting around the continent for every bit of data they can get on businesses. Rob Withagen used to be one of those researchers. Until he got stucked in traffic in a sweaty taxi on the Third Mainland Bridge i...

“Your product is only as good as its distribution channels” Mark Essien is the founder and CEO of hotels.ng an online hotel booking platform in Nigeria. With over 8000 hotels on the platform, hotels.ng is one of the largest online aggregator in Sub-Saharan Africa. He has raised over $2m from the likes of Spark, EchoVC and Omidyar Network. Mark is one of the most impressive founders I know. when I...

Tayo Bamiduro is the co-founder of Max.ng. He is an interesting guy….  and I’ve got lots of time for him. I understand his business. My first startup was trying to solve similar problem. Max.ng is a hyperlocal, on-demand delivery service based in Lagos, Nigeria. Max.ng aims to tackle Lagos’ notorious logistics problem (traffic) using proprietary geotagging technology and also help reduce youth une...

On this episode, I discuss waste, upcycling and making social impact with Wecyclers’ CEO, Bilikiss Abiola.   I met Bilikiss in 2015, and the first thing that struck me was her passion. Bilikiss is a force. And I have huge respect for her and what she is doing. It was a pleasure to sit down with her to have this interview in Lagos.   Wecyclers offers a convenient recycling service using a fleet of...

In this first episode of Building the Future podcast,I had a chat with Iyinoluwa Aboyeji. He is a serial entrepreneur at a very young age, and was recently listed in Forbes 30 under 30 influencers in Africa. He was a co-founder at Andela, a talent accelerator startup which raised $24m from Mark Zuckerberg's foundation. He later left to start Flutterwave, a payment processing company which is growi...