After almost a decade working in the US, including at Goldman Sachs, he returned to Nigeria in 2005, to join the United Bank of Africa as principal manager, enterprise networks. In this role, he standardised and improved the security of the bank’s networks.

Today, Guobadia has moved from being the hands-on engineering guy who worked on the backend of technology infrastructure, to being a policymaker. In August 2020, he was appointed by Nigeria’s outgoing president, Muhammadu Buhari, as senior special assistant on digital transformation. In June of the following year, he led the design and drafting of the Nigeria Startup Bill, now passed into law last October. The law is designed to protect the interests of startups and the government in the advancement of technological innovations. 

In this episode of My Life in Tech, Guobadia discusses the thinking behind the Nigerian Startup Act, the state of infrastructure to support innovation, the need for e-governance, and lookaheads for the Nigerian tech ecosystem under the incoming Bola Ahmed Tinubu presidency.

Tell me about your leading the clamour for the Nigeria Startup Act. What specific pain points were you operating from?

I’ve been a project manager for a very long time. It’s one thing to be an engineer, it’s another to understand how to execute projects and programmes. I’ve been an entrepreneur in Nigeria for 16 years; I started my company in 2007. So I understand the difficulty involved in developing and executing ideas in Nigeria. Nigeria is VUCA+++ (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous). It’s very difficult to do business here. One of the reasons I came into government was because I was inquisitive as to what happens in government that makes doing business in Nigeria difficult. I wanted to learn. 

What the Startup Act does is create an enabling environment for young people to feel confident enough to work on hard problems. Otherwise, our startups will focus on the easy problems, the problems you can easily do a valuation for, for which you can easily see an exit or market. But there are problems for which we can’t easily see a market because you’re creating a new market. And we may not get to those innovations, because they are difficult to do; not because the ideas are not there but because the environment is difficult. What the Startup Act does is create an enabling environment that makes it easy to address these problems.

Can you give me some examples of these problems for which we could be creating a new market?

I know banking the unbanked is an issue, but there are harder problems that digital technology could probably address—healthtech, agritech (I mean, real agritech, not in the Ponzi scheme way). You look at problems like fuel shortage—what’s the solution for that? I heard of a group of girls somewhere that were creating a scheduling app for the delivery of water, like Uber for water. 

Even giving examples is difficult, because it’s just like everything else you hear about new ideas, like the iPhone; this is not how we thought phones should work, but then it was created and we go, oh, we always needed it!

What steps is the government you’re a part of taking to implement the NSB across the federation?

The implementation of the Act lies with the minister of communication and digital economy, specifically with the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA). The law itself is self-implementing; it basically gives instructions as to what should happen. The minister of communication and digital economy has gone ahead and created an implementation committee that is currently working on different aspects of the act. We’ve started a programme where we are trying to get states to adopt the act.

What’s this state adoption programme like?

The real impact on startups of the NSA happens at the state level. So it’s critical that every state adopts the act. It is up to them how they want to adopt it because states should compete globally with other countries, not against each other. What is key is that states adopt the Act and put together policies and incentives that will attract young people to them. I’m from Edo state, but maybe an idea I have will work best in Zamfara and Sokoto, so I will move to Zamfara and Sokoto because the policies there are best suited for my business. It should be that Nigerians have the mobility to execute their ideas all over the country, not just in Lagos. 

We will definitely be going to every state and running programmes there. The ultimate idea is that when we are done with a state, there will be an ecosystem there. The next startup that impacts the world could start in a Nigerian village because you created the opportunity and environment for young people to develop ideas.

Are you worried that the infrastructural deficit in Nigeria will impact the rate at which states are able to domesticate the NSA and build attractive tech ecosystems in their domains?

No, because you have to start somewhere. If you Google Osun state and the Nigerian Startup Act,  you’ll see what I’m trying to say: the government has waived right-of-way fees for cabling companies. If you start these programmes in every state, then the infrastructure problems will become something that makes sense to solve. Policy shows the posture of government, as in what it wants to do; and regulation shows you what you [should and] shouldn’t do.

Let me take you back to your intention in joining this government. You told me you wanted to learn about governance from the inside. Can you share your key learnings with me, now that your time in government draws to a close?

Collaboration and engagement with the government is one of the key ways to solve our problems. You can’t build anything, really, without the government. The truth of the matter is that, even some of the fintech stuff we have going now was because of certain policies that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) had built that now led to us being able to find opportunities with fintech. If certain policies went the other way, we wouldn’t have a fintech market. You need government and you must continue to partner with and engage government in order to have a healthy ecosystem.

The other key learning for me is that politicians do listen. I think it’s a case of, what are we saying to politicians? Political will is driven by citizens’ sentiments. If we all agree that we want to do XYZ, and we all believe it together, it’s quite likely that the politician that we end up with will now take that as a political will. When we are not collaborating on a set of sentiments, then the political will has nothing to build on. It’s about understanding that all of us are Nigerians; people who enter government service or become politicians are not from Mars. We must continue to engage them to get the desired results. 

The Nigeria Startup Act would not have happened without collaboration and engagement, [it] would not have survived and become what it is without continued and sustained citizen participation in the process. The Act is designed to have strong citizen participation through what we call the consultative forum, which will be a body of citizens from the sector. Before I came to government, if you’d asked me who the ecosystem is, I would have said it was me.  But the ecosystem is made up of government, policymakers and founders; and if we are not engaged with each other, we will not have a healthy ecosystem. 

Let’s linger a bit on your point about political will being driven by citizens’ sentiments. I’m thinking of the Nigerian government’s ban on crypto, under Buhari, in 2021, despite the country being one of the fastest crypto-adopting economies in the world. Why wasn’t the government listening to the people regarding this innovation then? How would you address that issue now, at this moment?

When you are building a startup, you’re disrupting how things work. Let’s say, it takes 100 people to change a lightbulb, and I build a solution that makes it possible for just one person to change that lightbulb, that is disruption, right? What the policymaker sees is not disruption, but displacement; there are now 99 people who don’t have a job. Policymakers are meant to protect what exists. Without collaboration and engagement, there is no way for the policymaker to understand that, although that disruption has enabled just one person to change the lightbulb, it should now be in their business plan to make 99 other light bulbs, because they know that the inefficiency is that the room [where the one lightbulb is] is too dark. So now we have 100 lightbulbs, and each person gets their own lightbulb to change.  But if innovators and the government are doing things separately and the policymaker is ignorant of what the innovator is doing, he will ban the innovation. In Nigeria, everybody is creative and entrepreneurial; it’s one of our greatest traits. But while you’re going entrepreneurial, you must consider the impact towards what exists because our economy is not that deep. Small things that happen with finances affect bigger things.

What can you tell me about the government’s recent approval of a national blockchain policy?

Policy and regulation is that the audit should be done in a collaborative manner. I’d like to believe that the people in the blockchain ecosystem are involved in conversations with the policy’s development. What the policy statement says is what the government intends to do with certain technology. However, I come from the school of thought that, even with new technology, we have to get our infrastructure right first. What tends to happen in economies like ours is, we believe we must leapfrog. Machine learning, AI; these are all new technologies that need to sit on existing infrastructure.

The new government should focus on ensuring that we have the right infrastructure in place; that we have access to connectivity in government, the private sector and rural areas; that we have e-governance in place; and that citizens can access the government over the internet. We have to move away from paper and do governance on digital platforms. Right now, governance is still heavily reliant on paper. How do we talk about blockchain and AI when even the policy on it is moved around on paper?

Look at it as a three-stack approach: infrastructure, digitisation, and virtualisation. Infrastructure covers things like cabling, data centres, networks, and wireless connectivity. Digitisation is when you convert [analogue] processes into digital form; then I can pay my taxes online, access my bank accounts with one unique number, and apply for a licence without having to go see anybody in an office.

Virtualisation—not to be confused with server virtualisation—is a higher stack where all these other things fall into place. How do you use all the data—AI and machine learning—that you have moved from manual to digital? That’s what machine learning is. But how is AI going to get information that is stored on paper, in a  warehouse, for the last 50 years? So, when you say AI in Nigeria, what exactly are you training the machine to do? How is AI going to get information that is not digitised? 

Does that mean our current infrastructure deficit worries you, then?

I don’t say this to burst the bubble of new technology. What I’m saying is from a programme manager and engineering perspective. Blockchain technology is resource-intensive: where is that resource going to come from, when you haven’t built enough data centres that the cost of hosting data drops? 

Also, the market for some of our startups is truncated. The market is huge, but the addressable market is truncated because of our paper problem. You cannot sell fintech to somebody that wants to go into a bank branch, because they want “to sign”. You also want to think about the education of the citizens, so that they understand they are going digital.

Look at every other country that has moved into the digital space successfully—Estonia, Dubai—they built the infrastructure to support new technologies. Otherwise, what you’ll have is taking the data and putting it on somebody else’s server, which is the problem we’ve had with every other resource in Africa. We take our oil, we don’t refine it, we take it out. If you take your data and put it on somebody else’s server, is that not refining? Why would we want to repeat that mistake?

My Life in Tech (MLIT) is a biweekly column that profiles innovators, leaders, and shapers in the African tech ecosystem, with the intention of putting a human face to the startups and innovations they build. A new episode drops every other Wednesday at 3 PM (WAT). If you think your story will interest MLIT readers, please fill out this form.

1. The peer-to-peer (P2P) lending model for fintechs isn’t quite popular in Nigeria. How have operations been so far?

You are right. P2P lending isn’t very popular in Nigeria. What is popular in Nigeria and globally, however, is that people lend to friends and family. In fact, there’s a report by the African Development Bank that shows that 44% of all credit gotten by people in sub-Saharan Africa is from friends and family. So unlike the regular P2P lending model, which typically entails lending and borrowing among people in the open market, Sycamore has narrowed the concept to focus on lending between friends and family, which is already common through our Loan Friends product. We have seen success with this model. Our platform also offers normal loans to those not looking to borrow from friends and family, but our P2P lending model works through Loan Friends, and it has been great so far since it’s adapted to suit an existing problem.

2. What are some things you wish you knew about running this model that you wish you knew before starting out?

It is a model that relies on having much more experienced people, in terms of software engineering and risk management, than we had originally anticipated. Though we have been technology-driven from day one, we initially had to rely on a number of off-the-shelf software tools in the early days. As the business grew, we realised that a lot of tools available simply couldn’t serve the growing needs of our customers, so we had to get in the talent to start building in-house. We are still on the journey, so it’s not like things are perfect. But I’m confident that we have established a world-class team and things can only get better from here.

3. What challenges do you believe are specific to the Nigerian fintech space?

There are several challenges, but one major one we face is the uncertainty of the regulatory environment. Contrary to popular opinion, I think the Nigerian environment has actually been supportive of fintechs to a good extent, and that’s part of why it’s the most thriving startup space in the country. The major challenge is that policies seem to sometimes come up too suddenly, and it seems like there is little coherence among different government bodies. And, of course, like every other sector, we also have to deal with doing business in an environment that needs more supporting infrastructure like power, better roads for logistics, and so on. Until we can eat kilobytes, there are still a good number of offline infrastructures that fintechs rely on to thrive.

4. There are a lot of fintech loan apps available currently. What makes Sycamore different? 

Sycamore aims to simplify lending and borrowing in their entirety. We’re not only working on institutional loans: we’ve also gone into the “relationship lending” space with our product, Loan Friends. With Loan Friends, we are creating a seamless process of lending and borrowing between friends and family. In fact, we recently expanded it with a PayForMe feature, which allows you send a request to a friend to sort out a bill on your behalf while you pay them later. This might sound unreal, but I believe we have one of the most dynamic and versatile lending apps on the continent, when you look at the number of things Sycamore enables one to do, in terms of lending and borrowing. 

5. What should we expect from Sycamore in the next five years?

Global reach! We have major plans in place for Sycamore to be a global brand within the next five years, and we look forward to this becoming a reality even as we implement and work towards it.

We recently spotlighted Adeola Ayoola in our exciting new video series, My Startup in 60 Seconds. You can watch her episode here and other videos in the series here.

My Life in Tech (MLIT) is a biweekly column that profiles innovators, leaders, and shapers in the African tech ecosystem, with the intention of putting a human face to the startups and innovations they build. A new episode drops every other Wednesday at 3 PM (WAT). If you think your story will interest MLIT readers, please fill out this form.

Adeola Ayoola is the founder of Famasi Africa, a digital health platform that helps people manage and access their medications, schedule doorstep deliveries, as well as automate monthly refills.

What are some challenges you’ve encountered in the course of operations?

The major challenge is that there’s no existing technology to build on. Starting a digital pharmacy requires stringing multiple tools into one and trying to make them function in a way they weren’t designed to. This is why we started to build our own in-house infrastructure for us and others to build on. Ultimately, by aggregating everything required to power digital health on one platform, our goal is to power 1 million refills directly and indirectly by 2027. 

How do you counter the problem of self-medication? Do you only provide medication when patients present an official prescription; or anyone can get access to drugs?

Self-medication is a huge menace in healthcare globally and it goes beyond self-prescribing to self-dosing, self-therapy, medication misuse, poor adherence, and illicit use of controlled substances. In Nigeria, the prevalence is between 60–90%. One of the things my co-founder and I did when we started was to find out medication trends and patterns. We asked a ton of questions, one of such being conversations with a Bolt driver. A major determinant for self-medication is the convenience and accessibility of medications to self-medicate.

At Famasi, we don’t prescribe medications, and we only work with prescriptions or directly with providers. However, we prioritise convenience, access and personalised support for our customers.  Via a dashboard, they can order, track and refill their medications with a dedicated support channel to provide information on the proper use & benefits of the medications.

As we grow, we aim to continue to find simple ways to communicate health information and warnings to our customers.

What should we expect from Famasi Africa in the next five years?

Our aim is to power 1 million refills across five African countries in the next five years, including countries in East and West Africa. By our roadmap, our APIs should be embedded in fintech and uper apps, allowing people to access same-day medication delivery, medication insurance and personalised care services via their wearables & a mobile app.

What are some things you know now about running a healthtech that you wish you knew before you started Famasi Africa?

Lack of infrastructure. One of the major reasons healthtech is hard to build is the absence of infrastructure to layer the innovations on. This also contributes to why healthtech solutions are built in silos and fragmentation is apparent.

If we had known how much gap exists due to lack of infrastructure, we’d have solved for it first. However, by building a digital pharmacy first, we learnt quickly  the needs of our customers and we’re better equipped to deliver on them. Today, we’re building the infrastructure to power last-mile care for Famasi and other digital health innovations to be built.

Founders talk about how hard it is to get talent. Has this been a challenge for you so far?

We’ve had our fair share of talent challenges, but it’s not so much in getting the talents as it is  finding the right talent who align with the goals and pace. At Famasi, we want people who can do the work but also contribute positively to the culture; at the core of what we do is a deep connection to the problems we’re solving for Africans. 

We recently spotlighted Adeola Ayoola in our exciting new video series, My Startup in 60 Seconds. You can watch her episode here and other videos in the series here.

My Life in Tech (MLIT) is a biweekly column that profiles innovators, leaders, and shapers in the African tech ecosystem, with the intention of putting a human face to the startups and innovations they build. A new episode drops every other Wednesday at 3 PM (WAT). If you think your story will interest MLIT readers, please fill out this form.

What are the challenges of running a healthtech in Nigeria?

Patience! Health is generally a slow adopter of new ways, so you require a lot of patience to thrive. You can look over the fence and see what is happening with fintech, and wonder what the problem is with health. Why am I not raking in as much money, etc? Healthcare and healthtech, in particular, require patience in everything—product development, raising money, building a team, etc. 

What are some things you know now about running a healthtech that you wish you knew before you started Healthstack Solutions?

Build for the market not what you think the market needs. Understand the problem of each stakeholder and solve for the problem, not the feature you are dreaming about. Just be customer-focused.

Founders talk about how hard it is to get talent. Has this been a challenge for you?

No, it has not been hard. 

What should we expect from Healthstack Solutions in the next five years?

The most widely used digital healthcare platform on the continent. Your provider and payer will be managing your health using Healthstack and perhaps the healthcare regulator as well,  and wherever you are, the state ministry of health would be monitoring population-level healthcare indices in real-time with Healthstack. You just might be paying for your healthcare needs and services via Healthstack. Healthstack will be helping countries fight emerging epidemics and pandemics and limiting the impact they may have on the population.

Simply put, Healthstack will be saving lives!

How far do you think e-health and telemedicine can go to solve Nigeria’s health problems?

It will go a long way to solve Nigeria’s healthcare challenges if designed, developed, deployed, distributed and delivered the right way with the customer at the centre. But more than the tools, I hold that data from digital health technology will be the saviour of our healthcare. The next generation of medical breakthroughs will be built through artificial intelligence using data. In essence that is what Healthstack is seeking to catalyse.

We recently spotlighted Simpa Dania in our exciting new video series, My Startup in 60 Seconds. You can watch his episode here and other videos in the series here.

My Life in Tech (MLIT) is a biweekly column that profiles innovators, leaders, and shapers in the African tech ecosystem, with the intention of putting a human face to the startups and innovations they build. A new episode drops every other Wednesday at 3 PM (WAT). If you think your story will interest MLIT readers, please fill out this form.

What is climate-smart farming, and how is it different from regular farming?

Climate-smart farming is an integrated approach to farming that takes into consideration the impacts of climate change and increasing soil degradation on farm productivity. It differs from regular farming in the sense that it is data-driven; farm-operational decisions are made not based on gut feelings or farming knowledge passed down from one generation to the next, but on climatic, soil, and field data that keep changing in real time. 

What are some of your company’s milestones?

We are currently enabling over 16,000 smallholder farmers across nine states of Nigeria to transform their livelihoods, providing them end-to-end support from inputs to market. 

We have built three functional products to support farmers: YieldMax, a satellite-based advisory, crop health audit, and inputs recommendation platform; eProcure, a commodities aggregation tool; and Storagex, a post-harvest management system that also leverages warehouse receipts as collaterals for farmer financing. We are a 20-people team at the moment, with 50% of our senior management team being women. 

What are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced so far?

I think perhaps the synonym for agriculture in Nigeria is “challenges”. But to name a few, we have experienced lots of difficulties getting banks and financial institutions to come on board to provide financing for smallholder farmers, which is a huge challenge, given that smallholder farmers have low purchasing power. This sort of limits adoption and scale rate. Another challenge is the high cost of data capture, especially for a space that has limited data available. Insecurity has affected us so badly. We had to close some farmer’s service centres in Niger [a state in Nigeria], and that has limited the ease with which we are able to engage our farmers. Most recently, the difficulty in accessing cash has been a big pain for us, especially with the majority of farmers who do not have bank accounts. This has increased the cost of farm commodities by over 40%. 

How easily can farmers adapt to your technology?

We adopted what we call a “human tech” approach. So there are our products, and then there are agents and micro-entrepreneurs we work with. We train them on platform use, and they earn an income by providing the services to the farmers last-mile using, their smartphones. We don’t burden the farmers with the problem of learning how to use technology, especially given that the average age of smallholder farmers in Nigeria is 64 years. Using that human tech approach removes that problem for us. 

What should we expect from Kitovu Tech in the next five years?

It’s 2028. KItovu will be operational in five African countries, serving at least 200,000 smallholder farmers whose crop yields are increased by 30%, post-harvest losses reduced by 20%, and annual incomes increased by 40%. One million tons of Greenhouse gas emissions reductions would have been recorded by a combination of climate-smart good agriculture and regenerative practices by our farmers. We would have also created 2,000 new income-earning opportunities for young people working with us, under our microenterprise programme. Leading financial institutions are working with us to truly transform African agriculture by providing tailored lending. We’ve hit $1 million in annual revenue, and we have just closed our Series A. 

We recently spotlighted Emeka Nwachinemere in our exciting new video series, My Startup in 60 Seconds. You can watch his episode here and other videos in the series here.

My Life in Tech (MLIT) is a biweekly column that profiles innovators, leaders, and shapers in the African tech ecosystem, with the intention of putting a human face to the startups and innovations they build. A new episode drops every other Wednesday at 3 PM (WAT). If you think your story will interest MLIT readers, please fill out this form.

This interview has been edited for length.

Why did you leave microbiology?

There weren’t many research institutes in Nigeria when I worked in the field. I didn’t want to end up in some lab just mixing reagents and doing basic malaria tests. I studied it because I really love it; I still do. But I couldn’t practise it in that kind of way. Maybe if I’d gotten some research opportunities, I would have stayed on. 

I’m familiar with risk assessment for credit and insurance services, but not for product development. Can you help me out here?

Because Sparkle is a digital bank, things that a traditional bank would consider to be a service—receiving funds, making transfers, etc—we look at them, holistically, as products. My role as a risk manager in product development starts with conceptualisation of what the product should be. As a risk manager, I like to ensure that we’re asking the right sort of questions. What does this product do for the customer? How does it add value to them? How do we deliver that value? These are some of the practical ways that could help you in delivering your products, if you have risk management involvement. My job even goes as far as product launching: after you’ve launched the product, you come back to review and ask the right questions. How do you determine when to tweak the product because it’s not really meeting the purpose for which it was designed? And so on.

How did you get into risk management? 

I’m a curious person. Once something doesn’t add up, you can trust that I’d want to look into it to find out what I don’t know. I started my career in Guaranty Trust Bank. I was in sales; and many times, when my customers wanted to purchase treasury bills or bonds, those conversations were a bit difficult for me to have because while at training school, treasury was not my forte. I lived in Northern Nigeria at the time. I had a conversation with my divisional director at the time about doing something I felt would challenge me. The bank was just setting up its enterprise risk team. In enterprise risk, you’re not only doing credit risk, you’re doing operational risk, market risk, all the risk areas. I thought this might be a good time to join that team. I took a gamble on it. The more I got into it, the more I loved it. I started out with interest rate risk management, within the financial market risk team. I’d later get redeployed from market risk to credit risk. I didn’t like it at the time, because, you know, I’d been practising in financial risk management for about four years and was actually considering a career in just financial risk management. But a mentor told me my redeployment would broaden my horizon. He encouraged me to give it a try, and that’s what I did. I ended up loving it because credit is the engine room of banking.

After a while, in line with the conversation my mentor had with me, I wanted to be a holistic risk manager. It wasn’t something that was common at the time; a lot of my peers and senior colleagues were experts in one area but didn’t know so much about another area; even organisations were looking for risk managers who were experts in one area or another, not so much open enterprise. And I thought to myself that because I wanted to have a holistic view, I should take a gamble. And so I requested to move to operational risk, where I also got the opportunity to do things like environmental and social risk management or sustainability and business continuity. And that’s kind of how I got to experience various areas of risk management.

Was the sustainability risk aspect anything to do with climate change? 

Exactly, yes. It was something that my manager sort of threw at me, and I took it up because I was curious. At the time, the Central Bank of Nigeria had just started to drive the conversations around sustainability, and it was a great opportunity to delve into it.

Why did you decide to move from traditional to digital banking at a time when traditional banks are increasingly  shipping digital-heavy services? 

Part of risk management is waking up and smelling the coffee. What I’m referring to is change. Like you said, even the traditional banks are going digital. Risk management is about  recognising change. Another reason, for me, was my sense of purpose and vision. All the organisations I’ve worked with, I believed in their vision. When I worked with Guaranty Trust Bank it wasn’t just about making revenue from customers; it was about offering transparent services that helped customers build their businesses, from small and medium businesses (SMEs) to multimillion naira businesses. When I worked with AXA, it was about helping people live better lives. Here at Sparkle, the mission is financial inclusion. I am definitely connected with that vision and that’s why I decided to move to Sparkle. 

As someone from a traditional background, banking and insurance, what do you think fintech can learn from the more established legacy institutions? 

I’d say issues around governance: definitely risk management, compliance with risk,  information security risk, and data privacy. I think traditional environments are more conscious around governance topics whereas in the fintech space, you want to be nimble. But you also want to build to last.  I mean, look at what’s happening in the crypto market today. I’m pretty sure there are some people saying, “I told you so!” because there’s nothing new under the sun. Life is a cycle; if you apply certain principles, you get certain results. There are a lot of gains to be made from having the right level of governance, the right level of risk management, and even the right level of compliance in the digital space.

Speaking of crypto, Sparkle doesn’t facilitate crypto transactions. Why? 

We are a licensed bank in Nigeria; that means we have to comply with the regulations and laws of the country. It goes back to finding that right balance, in terms of governance.

Let’s talk about your time in insurance. Why did you go into insurance, all the way from banking?

I was driven by a desire to gain more technical competency in risk management. I had been approached by a recruiter and asked if I was interested in the opportunity to work with AXA. AXA had just bought a majority stake in Mansard.

Risk management in insurance is, in my humble opinion, more technical. In the context of the Nigerian environment, you are dealing with a lot more. If I pick the average banking product, for example, loans, and I wanted to give you a loan and I have certain information about you, there is a certain constant that I can put on top of those variables to have a certain level of confidence to know that I’m pricing correctly to improve the chances of the client repaying the loan. In banking, both as a relationship manager and also as a credit manager, there were various controls that we could put in place to ensure that if funds were disbursed to a client, they would utilise those funds for the stated purpose and, therefore, the purpose of the credit would be achieved. 

In insurance, you’re dealing with so many other variables. If I sold car insurance to a client, for example, it’s difficult to price the client adequately as low-risk because there’s the state of Nigerian roads, traffic, and road-raged drivers who could bump into their car. 

And in the context of the Nigerian market, I also felt very strongly that because of the business model AXA was operating, I was going to be able to leverage on that to learn risk management in a much more technical way—and that was my experience.

Let’s talk about Sparkle Business. That’s something you’re promoting now…

One of the things Sparkle Business is passionate about is financial inclusion, and when you look at the financially under-included businesses, you’re talking about SMEs and individual entrepreneurs. With traditional banking, it is time-consuming and challenging for folks like this to have to go and spend so much time in the bank. And so, we are offering a solution like Sparkle Business, where we have features such as inventory and invoice management and we also offer solutions like a payment link.  If I buy a product from a vendor on Instagram, she can send me a payment link, which is tied into her bank account; and that is building her records and financial history, which is going to make it a lot easier for her to get credit and even grants.

We have a solution that allows our Sparkle Business users to do inventory management, take advantage of tax advisory services, and manage their payroll. So what you’re getting is not just a traditional banking app, but really a solution that takes care of the customer’s needs in one total package.

My Life in Tech (MLIT) is a biweekly column that profiles innovators, leaders, and shapers in the African tech ecosystem, with the intention of putting a human face to the startups and innovations they build. A new episode drops every other Wednesday at 3 PM (WAT). If you think your story will interest MLIT readers, please fill out this form.

Shamba Network was founded in 2020—or was it 2021?

The idea came to me in 2020; that’s when I started doing the research. But Shamba itself was founded in 2021, around September or October.

So you’re a year old now. How has it been for you, as a founder? 

Before founding Shamba, I’d actually been involved with another startup. I’m accustomed to the grind in the startup world; pulling long hours is something I’m comfortable with. Not just long hours, but also odd hours. The most important thing in any startup is the willingness and flexibility to be able to learn new things, and adapt and implement changes quickly. The more you do it, the easier it becomes.

Coming to your work at Shamba, there’s increased agitation around climate concerns, with fears that the earth needs saving. Where exactly is Shamba Network in this conversation?

At Shamba, our mission is two things: putting in place mechanisms that will promote regenerative action to mitigate climate change; and building solutions to help farming communities adapt to the changing climate. So we are dealing with both climate change mitigation and climate change adaptation. 

A good example is that we provide data for carbon credit in order to incentivise people to do things like planting trees; and we build solutions that monitor that. We also provide data for insurance for farmers in order to power solutions that provide crop insurance to some of the most vulnerable people.

When you say that you provide solutions to farming communities, what do you mean?

We have two pillars we are working on when it comes to climate change. 

The first one is the pillar for adaptation, where we provide farming communities with access to solutions that help them adapt to climate change. We do this by providing data that can be used for index-based insurance. We operate at the nexus of geospatial data (which is data collected by satellite) and blockchain technology. We bring to the blockchain satellite data and other forms of data that can be used to check if a place has been affected by climate change.

The other pillar is mitigation, where Shamba is providing data that can be used by projects working on regeneration. So, for instance, projects that want to create carbon credit on the blockchain can use Shamba’s data that is sourced from satellite as well as other sources to do monitoring, reporting, and verification, which is basically a way of ensuring that if they’re going to create a carbon credit for a place, they’re able to verify that regenerative action was put up there. And it has had the impact of sequestering a certain amount of carbon. 

So why have you decided to input or host this data on the blockchain and not on any other medium that already exists?

It goes down to the core advantages of web3 and blockchain-based solutions. One of them is transparency. By the very nature of the blockchain, a lot of solutions built on it have enhanced transparency, therefore people find it easier to trust that solution.

For example, farmers in Africa have typically shied away from insurance solutions, because they are not affordable to them and  the people providing such solutions are not trustworthy. But when these insurance solutions are implemented on the blockchain using smart contracts, then they can be fully automated; there is no risk of another party deciding to not honour an agreement because they want to save money. These are systems that are driven by data. When an insurance solution has been baked into a smart contract, it will only wait for the expiry of the insurance contract, and then source data from the outside world to decide whether or not it will make a payout to the farmer if a risk has occurred. 

What’s the digital literacy level of the farmers you work with? How do you ensure you’re carrying them, and any other stakeholders in the agricultural sector, along? 

We use a lot of emerging technology, quite all right. We are deep in the Web3 space and are building a lot of smart-contract-based solutions. We are using cutting-edge data from satellites—what is called remote sensing data. In addition, we are also using a lot of cutting-edge analytics using machine learning and artificial intelligence. But the people who are going to be using the solutions we’re building don’t really need to know about these technologies that are in the backend. 

So what we do with the farmers we work with is, we educate them and build their capacity to understand solutions such as crop or livestock insurance. We teach them how to interact with the solution, show them its benefits and what they should expect from working with it. But we don’t really go into explaining geospatial analytics or smart contracts or the machine learning running in the backend. 

Let’s talk about green bonds in Africa. We’ve had just 16 green bonds issued to the continent. Is that good or bad?

I think it’s good. A bit small, but it is definitely building momentum.

Why are we where we are with these bonds? And what could be better?

Green bonds are in their infancy in Africa. I think this is part of the paradigm where people are starting to become very climate-focused and looking at the climate economy. This is a rethinking of the financial system that allows us to put environmental conservation at the core of the economic system—being able to get to a point where funds can be pooled and used for activities that have a huge impact on the environment. 

I want us to talk about Africa’s absence in the carbon credits conversation. Why do you think this is?

When it comes to the carbon credit space and the voluntary carbon market, the methodologies that have been accepted for creating carbon credits are not applicable to Africa because they are designed for large landholders—people who own 5,000, 10,000 hectares of land, basically big ranches, as you are likely to find in the Global North.

Across most of Africa, as well as across Southeast Asia and Latin America, you have smallholder farmers—people who typically own less than five hectares of land, where they grow their crops to feed their own family and only sell the tiny remainder. The methodologies that exist for creating carbon credits are designed for places where people have large holdings, they cannot be applied in Africa. 

One of our biggest missions at Shamba is to fix that issue and come up with methodologies that would be applicable for creating carbon credit on smallholder farms; methodologies that find a balance between the rigours of monitoring, reporting, and verification. 

Are you currently raising at Shamba?

We’re planning to raise a seed round, probably in December 2022 and early 2023. We’ve had some interest from some investors.

How much do you plan to raise?

A million dollars.

What will you do with the money?

The seed round will help us get to our milestones, which are going to help us get to the next fundraising. One of them is that we want to finish developing our software, roll that out, and enrol a certain number of farmers onto our platform, people who will be using it to create carbon credits, and use the platform as a community to start getting involved in the carbon market. 

But we’re also going to be using those funds to do quite a lot of marketing. We have a lot of products that we’ve built, case in point being our data oracle that is already serving some solutions, such as insurance, all based on satellite data. We believe that if we are able to get this information out there, then we will have more people who are willing to use this technology. 

I want to talk about your value proposition. Climate is probably not number one on the list of sectors investors coming into Africa are looking into. What is your experience with seeking funding, especially with investors who say no to you? 

Apart from the fact that we’re in the climate space, we’re also in the Web3 space. As you know, right now, the crypto space has taken a beating in the credibility department, following the recent FTX fiasco. So, when you’re trying to raise in Web3, in a climate where there’s a lot of fear and doubt, investors’ due diligence process will take a while. But the the people who have told us no haven’t done so because of the uncertainty in the crypto sector. It was rather because earlier on when we had tried raising, we had not yet got to a point where we had traction and a good product-market fit. But now we do, and we are targeting the end of January to become revenue-positive. 

My Life in Tech (MLIT) is a biweekly column that profiles innovators, leaders, and shapers in the African tech ecosystem, with the intention of putting a human face to the startups and innovations they build. A new episode drops every other Wednesday at 3 PM (WAT). If you think your story will interest MLIT readers, please fill out this form.

In this episode of My Life in Tech, I speak to Mori about his foray into cloud computing, the rather amorphous meaning of “the cloud” and his most surprising lesson as a startup CEO.

You studied computer engineering at university.

Yes.

Did you like it?

I really loved university.

What kind of student were you?

I managed to achieve several degrees that were focused on physics. I majored in theoretical physics, mathematics and computer science. I wasn’t very attentive at school. I wasn’t strong at mathematics. I didn’t apply myself as a young teenager. If I could go back in time, I would have spent my high school years a little bit more focused on academics than I did. I only came into my own in university. I was paying for every class [from my student loan], so I didn’t fail anything.

Do you want to talk about what it was like needing a loan for your education?

Absolutely. Not everyone has the same background and privileges in life. I have friends who didn’t need to take out student loans. But, for me, I absolutely needed some support. I couldn’t afford university; I took out expensive loans to pay for my tuition, and I supplemented that by working part-time. I was a little bit crazy; I ended up doing three degrees [up to PhD level]. It took a total of 10 years, and all of that was funded through student loans and working part-time.

How long did it take you to clear your student loans?

Six years.

How did you get into cloud computing?

The cloud didn’t exist when I got into computer science. I think I ended up being a partial expert on the cloud through being a computer scientist and software developer. A software developer builds applications, and they typically need to be hosted somewhere. And before the cloud, we used to host these applications on premise or on computers that sat in our boardrooms and data centres. As a developer, technical lead or engineering manager, there’s this mentality: “You write it, you run it.” Just because you’ve written the application doesn’t mean you just hand it over to someone; if you’ve built it, you typically own it, and that means deploying it, monitoring it, and looking after it, and making sure it doesn’t fall over. 

Amazon Web Services typically built the first public cloud [in August 2006] and all of a sudden, there was this wonderful opportunity: you didn’t have to buy your own servers or build your own internal network team. You could simply rent it, pay-as-you-go, in the cloud. I was responsible for maintaining applications for many companies over the years, and that’s how I ended up in cloud computing.

What was your first job in computer science? 

One of the first real jobs I got after university was lecturing computer science to students. And that quickly turned into me realising academia was not going to get me out of my student loan debt, and I’d better get a high-paying job. So, my first programming job was at a bank in the UK, building financial software.

The last time we spoke, you talked about public misconceptions about what the “cloud” means. From your explanation that day, it seems as though its meaning is still evolving. Where is that definition at today?

The main understanding of the cloud is that it’s a place for backups—backing up your emails or storing your photos. So, people who are not software engineers typically think of it as storage. In reality, it’s not just that. Many people interact with the cloud without realising it. While storage is a fundamental part of what the cloud is, the ability to serve requests from an origin server from a host application is the majority of what the cloud actually is. Whenever you Google something, or talk through Google Meet, or make a request to join a Zoom call, or you refresh Facebook, or search something on YouTube, all of those requests would typically resolve to a software application. And majority of the time, that software application is being served from the cloud, which means that application is hosted or being run in the cloud. That is the quickest definition of what the cloud is: a home or hosting environment for software applications to serve customer requests.

Are you saying everything we do on the internet is hosted and controlled in a concept called the “cloud”?

Generally, yes. I would say the data would speak for itself. In 2022, we will cross the boundary where more applications reside in cloud hosting systems than not in cloud hosting systems. There are still many financial institutions, government institutions, and other industries like manufacturing and healthcare that will still depend on what we call on local (or on-premise) data centres. But the reality is, the technology of the cloud is so far superior that, slowly but surely, all of those previously self-contained, self-hosted applications that were running on-premise will be migrated to the cloud. And that is a large focus of what Deimos does. Our job is to securely migrate a customer from an on-premise deployment to a cloud deployment. 

You said earlier that the cloud did not exist when you started out in computing. Does this description override that earlier assertion? Has the cloud existed since the dawn of the internet, then?

The cloud came after the internet, when Amazon Web Services, or Amazon in general, decided to take their internal hosting and managed platforms and make them accessible to the public, hence the word “public cloud”. There’s different kinds of clouds. The clouds most of us talk about would be in reference to the public clouds, which are Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, and my favourite, Google Cloud.

When did Deimos start?

June 2018. 

What successes have you recorded?

I think the biggest success here is that we’re an incumbent. After four years of operation, we are the largest Google Cloud partner on the continent, which means we have the largest number of customers that we support on Google Cloud in Africa. And we have the largest reach. We’re operational in Congo, in Ghana, in Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa, and we’re currently expanding to other regions. and that’s from a customer perspective from a staffing complement. We’ve managed to grow to around 100 employees, but we’ve done it in a sustainable way, in the sense that, you know, we didn’t take any investment from investors. 

Another area worth mentioning is the calibre of customers that we’ve ended up collaborating and partnering with. We’ve worked with brand-new companies like TeamApt and older public organisations like the Central Bank of Nigeria. We work with publicly listed companies in the States and in South Africa, and with startups across the continent—with a fair amount of business in the UK. 

Why are you helping companies migrate their applications and data to the cloud?

It boils down to the desire to help companies make smart technology decisions, and also to help African companies benefit from cutting-edge technologies like cloud solutions. Our company is focused on helping businesses make smart decisions, particularly from the cloud perspective. It’s imperative to note that migrating to the cloud, if done incorrectly, can be a very costly, difficult and demoralising experience. So having vast experience before starting Deimos, I can help companies mitigate risks. Deimos is assisting companies looking to modernise their software systems. Most people don’t realise that software requires maintenance and constant attention. Generally, companies want to improve their software applications, either because nobody can fix them or because the systems have loads of problems, or they don’t scale, or the user experience is bad. And Deimos exists to help that situation, whether it be a migration to the cloud, or a modification of systems. A lot of the time, we are simply listening to what the business goals are: what is the customer prioritising, and how do we make technology decisions that further those goals and directions?

So Deimos has had no VC investment yet?

There’s been no friends-and-family, no seed rounds, no private equity, and certainly no venture capital, at this point.

The company is profitable, then?

Absolutely. It was profitable from the first month…okay, maybe that’s overstating it. It was profitable in the first month because we didn’t pay anybody in the beginning! We didn’t pay the founders of the company salaries. But as soon as you start hiring [other] people you need to pay them, and that requires some profitability or some personal investment. 

How many people worked at the company that first month?

We started with four people.

Do you have other co-founders?

I have one main co-founder, and that is actually my wife, Jana [Schoeman]. She is not full-time at the company and never has been, but has been absolutely pivotal in its creation, and identifying the opportunity and markets, and then being strategically involved in the company. But I do have actual co-founders, each of them in legal and engineering at the company. They are full-time and have been with us since day one.

Tell me more about Jana’s involvement in starting the company.

Sure, I’d love to. I really appreciate the interest. My wife and I worked in Nigeria for many years, and we both fell in love with the country. I was at a previous company, where I was engineering leader. When the company shut down, I started interviewing at multiple companies in Europe and America. I received multiple offers to join companies—healthy paychecks with stock options and lots of certainty around the role. But my wife encouraged me to take a risk and start something of our own. And I’m forever grateful for that. In terms of guiding operations, and in terms of guiding focus at the company, I wouldn’t be anywhere close to where we are right now if it hadn’t been for Jana. She’s a technologist, a user experience expert, a researcher, and she understands aspects of the African market.

Google recently announced the establishment of a data region in South Africa, its first on the continent. They’ll be working with Deimos on this. What exactly will you be doing with Google?

Deimos is a crucial partner in the Google Cloud ecosystem in Africa. While we have no direct involvement with the launch and operations of the three data centres that will form the new Google Cloud Region in Cape Town, we have the responsibility of working with some of the largest Google Customers in the region. This means we will be assisting our clients in terms of moving workloads from European regions to the new African Region. This is an opportunity to assist our clients by modernising their deployments through infrastructure as code (IaC). This helps with future migrations and recovery.

We will also play a key role in aiding more African companies in adopting Google Cloud. Deimos recently received the first Cloud Security Specialisation in Africa, a rigorous certification process performed by Google that uniquely positions Deimos as the leading cloud security partner for Google Cloud in Africa. Customers wanting to adopt the cloud and take security practices seriously can benefit from what Deimos has to offer. 

In summary, Deimos will have no direct involvement with the creation of the cloud region, but will play a significant part in supporting and ensuring customer success when the region is live.

What challenges has Deimos faced these past four years?

We couldn’t have started a company at a worse time. We started Deimos and two years later COVID hit. Most financial advice would be: “Why don’t you save up six months’ costs, so if something goes wrong, you’ll have a bit of cushioning to prevent you from falling all the way down?” That’s a difficult thing to do, especially when you’re not engaging with capitalisation and investors. 

When COVID hit, we had no money in the bank. We hear about companies extending runway—what’s your burn rate? how much do you have in the bank? how many months of runway? Being profitable negates all of that conversation. But being a bootstrapped startup company, a small business that’s about a year old, you typically won’t have made enough profit to have built up a buffer of six months’ costs. We certainly didn’t. That was probably the biggest challenge—servicing customers and the effects that COVID had on our customers. 

Basic infrastructure has been a problem—internet speeds, electricity, the cost of fuel, and data. In Nigeria, SARS is harassing our staff, accusing them of online fraud. So these are things I hadn’t expected to deal with and overcome.

What is it about being a CEO and founder that has surprised you? 

What was surprising was realising that even though I’m CEO, I can’t just do whatever I want. If you want to build a team that trusts you, that likes working with you, then you need to take everyone into consideration. Just because I’ve made a decision doesn’t mean it’ll happen; there has to be a buy-in. 

My Life in Tech (MLIT) is a biweekly column that profiles innovators, leaders, and shapers in the African tech ecosystem, with the intention of putting a human face to the startups and innovations they build. A new episode drops every other Wednesday at 3 PM (WAT). If you think your story will interest MLIT readers, please fill out this form.

In this episode of My Life in Tech, she tells me about Ìmísí 3D’s core interest in technology education and about her childhood interest that has led her to build a startup for XR adoption in Africa.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

First, is the name Ìmísí an Igbo phrase for “inside the head”?

No. It means inspiration. It’s Yoruba, not Igbo.

Really!

It means inspiring difference and change, and this new reality. But then, going a step further, it really is about making the change actionable and real.

Interesting. So, how did you get interested in extended reality?

I was always super interested in three things: technology, the future, and people. When I was a child, one of my favourite toys was the View-Master. It looks like binoculars, and you can click through these holographic images in it. It’s kind of like a virtual reality (VR) headset. 

I was super pumped when Oculus was acquired by Facebook in 2014; that was a big deal in the space. And then, of course, Google Cardboard came out as well, and all of a sudden, people could start to imagine what was possible. A lot of people say that that is not really VR, but it is like an entry point into it. 

I remember I was just waiting for the Samsung Gear VR to come out—it had been announced—and I got the first one. Once I tried it out, there was no going back.

What exactly does Ìmísí 3D do? What are you about?

To answer that question, one of the things that will be useful is to tell you the three categories of effort in what we do. 

The first is that we have a mission to evangelise. We want to make sure everyday people know what the technologies are—you know what AR and VR and mixed reality are; you don’t think it’s something over there, you don’t think it’s alien. We have a lab, and it is open-access. You can walk in, try stuff out, and ask questions.

The second core purpose for us is: we believe that if we’re ever going to realise the potential of these technologies, then we have to build them ourselves; we have to be the creators. We invest heavily in trying to support a creator community across the African continent. We do meetups, and run events, masterclasses and hackathons all across Africa. We have opened labs in several states across Nigeria. Back in the day, we used to offer scholarships for VR nanodegrees. We do whatever we think can help people start building community. Our third category of effort is that we invest in initiatives in sectors we think have the greatest potential for significant impact. For us, that’s doing work in areas like education, healthcare, storytelling, and digital conservation.

We have spent 18 months working on an Africa XR report and are trying to get it out into the world.

Tell me about the AR/VR Hackathon you’re running in partnership with Meta.

The AR/VR Hackathon is our thing. We’ve been running this hackathon for years. We ran our first hackathon in 2016. By 2018, we had taken the AR/VR Africa hackathon to seven African countries. In 2020, we planned to do it physically in 10 countries, but then the pandemic happened and everything went haywire. So we made it a hybrid event in which 28 countries took part. We got volunteers from around the world to run workshops and masterclasses and offer mentorship sessions; we had about 120 of those sessions. We had a two-and-a-half-month boot camp the next year (because the hackathon started in December the previous year), which ended in a demo day. 

So this year, with Meta’s focus on the metaverse, there’s definitely a lot more interest from their teams on the continent to do stuff related to this and they approached us to ask, “What can we do?” They were interested in doing something similar. In the past, other Facebook teams—not this particular one we’re working with this year—have supported our hackathons. So, this year’s AR/VR Africa Hackathon is still our event, but this time, we are working more closely with Meta to make it happen.

The hackathon is happening in 16 countries from mid-August this year to April 2023. Will that be simultaneous?

The physical in-person hackathon will happen during the first weekend in December, and that will be simultaneous across the 16 countries. For people who are not in those 16 countries, they will be able to hack virtually, and they will be able to do that at the end of November. By the end of the year, we’ll announce all of the winners, and then the first place teams from each country will go on to participate in the boot camp. 

So what has your funding journey been like?

What do they say here in Nigeria—“hot tears”? What would be ideal for folks doing what we do is to have someone say, “Here is a bunch of money for you to run your thing or ecosystem development initiatives for X amount of time.” But what we’ve had is doing events and getting sponsorship for them. In between, we hope for the best!

Is this because XR is not an in-demand solution; that it is rather niche?

The problem is that people are not able to develop skills in this field the way that they should. One should be able to wake up and say, “I’m going to this institute or school where I can learn XR, where there’s a fully functioning lab.” But there’s nowhere you can get that in Nigeria—never mind the equipment. 

And you should know that none of the big tech companies sell their XR hardware in Africa, which is ridiculously expensive and challenging for us. You pay almost double the RRP to get your hands on a Meta Quest. Microsoft has a mixed reality engineering team in Lagos, but its HoloLenses are not here.

What inspires you?

I really believe that if this work isn’t done, it will be catastrophic for the continent and the world. I keep thinking that when these technologies become pervasive in 100 years and come to define almost every aspect of human interaction, what will people [who haven’t prepared for this] do then? And, for me, the answer to that is terrifying. 

The other part of it is: there are some challenges on the continent that I don’t think we will ever solve conventionally. For a sector like education, even if Nigeria was to allocate its entire budget for next year to education, it still wouldn’t be possible, that we could snap our fingers and suddenly there would be enough schools built, or enough qualified teachers. If we’re going to have these infrastructures succeed, we will have to leverage technologies like this to improve education, and things like that. 

My Life in Tech (MLIT) is a biweekly column that profiles innovators, leaders, and shapers in the African tech ecosystem, with the intention of putting a human face to the startups and innovations they build. A new episode drops every other Wednesday at 3 PM (WAT). If you think your story will interest MLIT readers, please fill out this form.

On this episode of My Life in Tech, Dare-Johnson shares her journey building her young company, her experience at Techstars 2021, and the company’s goals for its recent seed raise of $1.5 million.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

During your internship at UCH, you realised you didn’t want to work in a medical lab but on the business end of healthcare. What do you mean by that?

One of the things I learnt about myself during my internship was I have empathy for people going through health issues; and one of the things I felt was helplessness. I wanted to be on the other side of making decisions that would make their lives better, as opposed to being the clinical person giving drugs.

You’ve mentioned that your dad suffering a stroke and eventually passing led you to found Healthtracka. Can you share with me what happened with your dad?

When I got the call that my dad had slumped and was in hospital, almost unconscious, it was unbelievable. My dad was the most optimistic person on earth; there was nothing wrong with him. And then I spoke to the doctor who said my dad had untreated hypertension and diabetes. That was news to me. And that’s why, today, one of the things that we do is proactive, preventive healthcare. Just because you feel and look all right doesn’t mean all is well inside your body. 

We watched my dad become a shadow of himself. He needed help, and I think it broke his heart knowing that this wasn’t who he was—that because of his illness he had to depend on other people. 

After he passed, I realised we cannot make the same mistakes: we cannot watch and allow ourselves to get to this point where you’ve worked hard, it’s time for you to enjoy, chill and relax, and then your body says, “Nah, you’ve not paid attention to me; I’m not going to show up for you.”

At-home testing is Healthtracka’s service model. Why is the business designed that way, as opposed to being a diagnostic lab with at-home testing being one of a few options for clients? 

It’s about identifying the one thing that changes the game, and that was what we did. What is that one thing we will do that will make it convenient for people to get their tests done and be in control of their health? There are labs in different places and people have access to these things, but at the end of the day, when was the last time you went to the hospital for a checkup? Apart from affordability, the second common reason [people don’t go in for checkup] is convenience. It’s just not convenient to leave work, spend hours in traffic, go sit down and queue just to see a doctor for 10 minutes. It’s such a long process, and you’d rather keep it on the backburner, unless you are ill and urgently need to see someone. And that’s the behaviour behind the non- and late diagnosis of health issues. So we basically said we’re going to choose at-home lab testing and make it seamless, so that anyone who goes on our platform will realise they don’t need to go through the stress of testing at a hospital. 

In your article about healthcare marketing, you said that the space in Nigeria was underdeveloped at the time. Has that changed? Are you doing any health marketing at Healthtracka?

Thankfully, my background in marketing has been helpful. I understand customer acquisition and how to design experiences that make customers want to come back for our products. What we’ve done from day one is to clearly communicate our offerings. Even from the flow of landing on our website, that’s all marketing—how we make people feel when they come; how genuine our messages to them are; how helpful our customer experience team is. So, it is everything I wrote in that article. What of SEO? What are people looking for concerning their health that we can provide information about, so that they can then see that we care about these topics and have solutions for them. 

Congrats on raising $1.5 million in seed and getting selected for Techstars. How was your Techstars experience? 

[My co-founder Victor Amusan and I] were just about five months into launching Healthtracka when we got into Techstars, in May 2021. We did our accelerator programme online [rather than live in Toronto], because it was during COVID. In hindsight, it was perfect for us because we couldn’t have spent two months outside the country at that time. We were only five months into the business and had to be on the ground; our team was small and we were doing everything by ourselves. It was a lot of work—meetings at odd hours because we were in different time zones, combining our day-to-day activities at a five-month-old company with being present to attend the global accelerator for four hours each day.

But that was one of the best decisions we ever made; it helped us to quickly focus on what was important. We were learning from people who had built businesses—the mentorship, the networking, and of course, the money, because it costs money to run a company, especially at the early stages. Techstars accelerated our business in ways that might have taken two to three years to get to. 

What was your most significant learning at Techstars?

That fundraising takes longer than most people think. You see people announce raises all the time and might be tempted to think, “Oh it must be easy! They are throwing money at you people at this point!” You hear about the raise but don’t actually know all that has gone down for it to happen.

What are your goals for the $1.5 million seed?

Our number one goal is to penetrate the Nigerian market and get our services to the hands of everyone. Number two is, of course, expansion to other countries. We have our eyes set on Ghana and Kenya.

What’s the most difficult thing about being a founder? 

You never truly shut down. Even when you’re sleeping, you’re not sleeping deeply. I wake up at 3 AM, and I bring out my notes and I’m writing. Sometimes I’m leaving notes for my team members, and going, “No, no, no, you don’t need to respond, right now. Just dropping this so I don’t forget.” It is hard sometimes to rest, and if you’re not careful, all your validation comes from how well or not your business is doing. I think it’s difficult for most founders, not just me, to shut down.

My Life in Tech (MLIT) is a biweekly column that profiles innovators, leaders, and shapers in the African tech ecosystem, with the intention of putting a human face to the startups and innovations they build. A new episode drops every other Wednesday at 3 PM (WAT). If you think your story will interest MLIT readers, please fill out this form.