African tech founders are redefining the continent’s digital economy, building companies that span fintech, e-commerce, healthtech, logistics, and deep technology. These founders are not only creating innovative products and platforms but are also laying the foundational infrastructure for Africa’s digital future.
From enabling secure payments and expanding access to capital, to deploying artificial intelligence in medical diagnostics and empowering content creators, African tech founders are solving complex local challenges while delivering globally competitive solutions.
This list highlights ten African tech founders whose work exemplifies innovation, scale, and impact. This demonstrates how African tech founders are not only leading startups but are shaping entire ecosystems, influencing investment flows, workforce development, and digital infrastructure.
1. Strive Masiyiwa (Zimbabwe)
Founder of Econet Group and Cassava Technologies
Strive Masiyiwa stands among Africa’s foremost technology entrepreneurs and industrialists. Best known as the founder and executive chairman of Econet Group and Cassava Technologies, Masiyiwa has driven ambitious projects such as expansive fibre-optic infrastructure across multiple African countries and, more recently, the establishment of AI factories to support local and regional AI development.
With decades of leadership under his belt, Masiyiwa’s vision extends well beyond connectivity, he’s shaping the backbone of Africa’s digital future, empowering startups, enterprises and governments to leverage next-generation technologies.
2. Gbenga Agboola (Nigeria)
Founder & CEO, Flutterwave
Gbenga Agboola is emblematic of Africa’s transition from fragmented payments to interoperable financial infrastructure. Flutterwave was founded to solve a fundamental problem: African businesses could not easily accept or send payments across borders, currencies or platforms.
Under Agboola’s leadership, Flutterwave’s reach across dozens of countries and currencies has made it one of the continent’s most critical fintech backbones. More importantly, Flutterwave helped redefine African fintech ambition. It showed that African founders could build deep infrastructure companies, not just consumer wallets, and compete on engineering, compliance and scale with global peers.
3. Rebecca Enonchong (Cameroon)
Founder & CEO, AppsTech
Rebecca Enonchong is one of Central Africa’s most important tech founders, a region often overlooked in continental narratives. Through AppsTech, she built a global enterprise software company serving clients across Africa, Europe and North America.
Her significance lies in longevity and leadership. Enonchong has consistently advocated for better digital policy, stronger founder protections and inclusion of Francophone Africa in global tech conversations. She represents a generation of founders who built sustainable tech businesses before venture capital became fashionable on the continent.
4. Shola Akinlade (Nigeria)
Co-founder & CEO, Paystack
Shola Akinlade’s Paystack addressed a deceptively simple problem: Nigerian businesses struggled to accept digital payments reliably. Paystack’s clean developer documentation and obsessive focus on user experience made it a favourite among startups and SMEs.
Its acquisition by Stripe was not merely a financial exit; it was a validation of African engineering standards at the highest global level. Akinlade’s influence extends beyond Paystack. The company became a training ground for fintech talent and a reference point for what “good product” looks like in Africa.
5. Juliana Rotich (Kenya)
Co-founder, Ushahidi
Juliana Rotich co-founded Ushahidi at a moment of national crisis in Kenya, creating a platform that allowed citizens to crowdsource reports of violence and disruption. What began as an emergency response tool evolved into a globally adopted civic-tech platform.
Ushahidi’s software has since been used in disaster response, election monitoring and humanitarian work across continents. It stands as one of Africa’s earliest proofs that open-source technology born on the continent can shape global civic systems. Rotich’s work also highlights East Africa’s leadership in civic tech and socially driven innovation.
6. Katlego Maphai (South Africa)
Co-founder & CEO, Yoco
Katlego Maphai is a defining figure in Southern Africa’s fintech landscape, with a career that bridges technology, entrepreneurship, and strategic execution. As the co-founder and CEO of Yoco, Maphai has built a technology company dedicated to helping small businesses accept payments, run operations more efficiently, and grow sustainably.
Yoco provides a combination of card payment acceptance, software-driven business tools, and working capital solutions, targeting the critical yet underserved segment of small and micro-businesses in South Africa. Before founding Yoco, Maphai was instrumental in setting up Jumia in Nigeria in 2012.
7. Iyinoluwa Aboyeji (Nigeria)
Co-founder, Andela
Iyinoluwa Aboyeji’s impact lies in reframing Africa’s role in the global tech economy. Andela was built on a thesis that African software engineers could compete globally if given access to world-class training and opportunities.
Andela’s distributed talent model connected African developers to companies like Google, Microsoft and Stripe, challenging long-standing assumptions about where technical excellence resides. Beyond Andela, Aboyeji has become one of Africa’s most influential founder-investors, backing companies across fintech, healthtech and logistics.
8. Mustafa Elattar (Egypt)
Founder, Intixel
Mustafa Elattar represents a new wave of Northern African founders applying deep artificial intelligence to mission-critical sectors, with healthcare at the forefront. Through Intixel, Elattar is tackling one of medicine’s most complex and high-stakes challenges: improving the accuracy and speed of medical image interpretation.
Intixel develops AI-powered modules for medical image analysis, designed to support radiologists in detecting and classifying abnormal growths with greater precision. Rather than positioning AI as a replacement for clinicians, the company’s technology functions as an intelligent diagnostic layer, augmenting human expertise in environments where time pressure and diagnostic volume are constant challenges.
9. Nick Mwendwa (Kenya)
Founder, Swerri
Nick Mwendwa is emblematic of East Africa’s evolution from traditional payment infrastructure into fintech, decentralised finance (DeFi), and creator-economy platforms. Riverbank Solutions Ltd, which he has led as CEO since 2009, focuses on payment solutions and transaction channels.
Building on this foundation, Mwendwa expanded into decentralised finance with Swerri, founded in 2022. Swerri positions itself as a community-driven DeFi platform, allowing users to earn, lend, borrow, and trade peer-to-peer, while also supporting phone-based transfers, payment requests, and merchant transactions.
10. Maya Horgan Famodu (Nigeria)
Founder of Ingressive
Maya Horgan Famodu is the founder of Ingressive. By providing market intelligence, go-to-market support, and operational guidance, Ingressive has enabled global firms to navigate Africa’s complex and diverse tech landscape, reducing barriers that often prevent cross-border partnerships.
In addition to services provision, Famodu founded Ingressive Capital, a venture fund investing in technology startups based across the continent. She also founded the Tech Meets Entertainment Summit, which brings together African celebrities and tech companies to forge revenue-generating partnerships.
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