Naadiya Moosajee, Zachariah George, Marième Diop and Iyinoluwa Aboyeji participate, each in their own way, in the
construction of start-up ecosystems on the African continent.
Deeply confident in Africa's potential, these four personalities are deploying funds
investments, training or support programs for start-ups.
If, in volume, the investments injected into African tech remain marginal compared to the rest of the
world (5% of capital invested in Europe), the progress of the continent's ecosystems is dazzling. According to
a report published by Partech, invested funds increased by 108% between 2017 and 2018. The main
However, the ecosystems of Nairobi, Lagos and Cape Town remain very immature and need to be structured.
During the last edition of AfricArena, these four personalities expressed their ambitions for the continent and
the actions they put in place so that start-ups can flourish there - namely training, funds
investment or support structures.
Naadiya Moosajee More women in African tech
She was only 21 when she created her first project, WomEng. “The idea was to help girls make
engineering studies and then to find a job", explains Naadiya Moosajee. For several years, the
young woman took care of what was then an NGO in her spare time, while she managed the logistics
VIP transport for the FIFA World Cup in 2010 or that she worked in consulting. "And everything
Suddenly, I realized that WomEng was growing,” she smiles. In 2014, she decided to change the statutes
of the organization to turn it into a start-up. “Many women approach entrepreneurship from the side
philanthropic. I came back, and am now convinced that we can change things AND gain
the money! »
WomEng now employs 9 people and has three major clients, including De Beers and Unilever, which
generate close to a million dollars in annual revenue. In concrete terms, its customers finance the
training programs for young women, then hire 20 women from each cohort. Naadiya
Moosajee runs the company with his co-founder, Hema Vallabh. "We are inseparable, by the way
a lot of people think we're the same person, she laughs. Frankly, if my husband
left, I would survive, but if she left I would be devastated! It is therefore quite natural that the two
women decided to keep this association on their second project.
“We created WomHub three years ago, telling ourselves that it was time for women to do more than
work, but take ownership of the tech industry,” recalls Naadiya Moosajee. Both
entrepreneurs have developed an eight-month support program for women wishing to
get started in entrepreneurship. A first cohort of 25 people followed him to Uganda, and an incubator is
currently under construction in Johannesburg, with the aim of welcoming a new promotion there the year
next. "We are going to couple this with a $25 million investment fund," says the young
women. The goal of the founders is to offer "fairer" fundraising contracts to women entrepreneurs "because on the continent, the cost of capital is extremely expensive, entrepreneurs are being fooled",
laments Naadiya Moosajee.
Zachariah George Creating the African Kima
It is likely to see him, on the same day, talking about investment and bringing together budding musicians around
of his guitar to jam. Zachariah George, 37, has become a figure in the start-up ecosystem in
Cap, South Africa, where he has been based since 2011. He holds the position of Head of Investments
at Startupbootcamp Africa, which he co-founded. “We are inspired by the YC model [Y Combinator, a famous
accelerator of young American start-ups, Editor's note]”, he says. The start-ups integrating this program are
accompanied for three months and financed up to 15,000 euros against 8% of their capital.
Born in India to an Iranian mother and a Tanzanian father, Zachariah George grew up in Oman, before joining
the United States to study corporate finance at Stanford, then India, to study engineering
mechanics at the Indian Institute of Technology, "where Sundar Pichai studied [the CEO of Google, editor's note]",
he says proudly. After working at Barclays and Lehman Brothers in New York, he moved to Cape Town
with the aim of developing the start-up ecosystem there. “Why I left Barclays at 27, when I was winning
$300,000 a year? he asks. Because the impact you have when you build an ecosystem is everything
completely different. Me, I don't want to build empires, I want to build ecosystems. »
The young investor has already bet on 42 start-ups as a business angel, and is in the process of raising funds.
Surprise, it is to a Frenchman that he refers when asked to describe his investment thesis. " I want
let Launch Africa be the Kima of Africa,” he said. Xavier Niel's fund has the particularity of carrying out a
high number of investments, all at the start-up stage. "Priming is extremely important, and that's where you
can multiply your bet by ten, he explains. We want to be able to get out as soon as possible,
when Orange, Partech or Sequoia invest in our companies. »
Passionate about music, but also literature and the performing arts, Zachariah George continues to demonstrate
that his life does not stop at business. Divorced father, he takes his six-year-old daughter to the events to which
he is invited and insists on the importance of taking time with his family. “Never see children
like a burden, on the contrary, they are happy to be involved in all aspects of your life, he says.
Besides, I know the families of all the entrepreneurs I work with! » Entrepreneurship outside Silicon
Valley has this advantage of being able to imagine different models of the "hustle" dear to the west coast of the
United States.
Marième Diop Structuring the investment of business angels
If African start-ups lack funding, the situation is even more critical for start-ups
French speakers. Alongside Lagos, Nairobi and Cape Town, West African ecosystems are still struggling to
emerge. But in Dakar, Marième Diop has made it her mission to make things happen. beside his work
as an investor at Orange Digital Ventures, the 34-year-old young woman created a business angels club, the
Dakar Network Angels. “It brings together around forty people, who invest from Africa, the United States
or Europe," she says. In addition to injecting money into it, the members of the club undertake to grant
time at funded start-ups; an essential dimension in ecosystems that are still immature. "
In French-speaking Africa, entrepreneurs often lack 'soft skills', she observes. They must
learn how to sell yourself, build relationships with large groups and investors. »
The art of relationships, this engineer graduated from Telecom Paris had the opportunity to practice it where no error
in this matter is tolerated: the political world. In 2015, she joined the Operational Plan Monitoring Office
Senegal Emergent, a unit responsible for restoring the country's growth through 27 projects and 17 reforms.
In 2017, Marième Diop joined the Orange group, where she had already worked as a consultant.
at Sofrecom. She is part of the three-person team responsible for deploying the fund's investments
in venture capital of the group on the African continent.
Iyinoluwa Aboyeji Serial entrepreneur
He was greeted as a star on the AfricArena stage. Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, who simply calls himself "I",
is an emblematic figure of African tech. The 28-year-old co-founded Andela, a start-up
considered one of the big successes of African tech, although it is legally based in New York.
Specializing in the training and placement of developers, the young shoot has raised a total of 180 million
dollars and announced a turnover of 50 million for 2019.

After creating it with four other entrepreneurs in 2014, Iyinoluwa Aboyeji left office
operational in 2016 to create another start-up, Flutterwave. "I'm a boot man, I'm
less good on the sequel”, he explains. With Flutterwave, he deployed a payments solution "with which
we have helped companies like Uber or TransferWise to do business in Africa,” he says. The
start-up has signed a major partnership with Alibaba this year, allowing African merchants to
receive payments from users of its Alipay payment application. But at that time,
Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, had already left the start-up he developed for two years.
This serial entrepreneur is now focusing on his new project, Future Africa, which aims
to support entrepreneurs in the creation of their start-up while financing them up to 50,000
dollars. "My wish is to live in a world where everyone can make themselves useful and be prosperous",
he declares.