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The use of technology in the day-to-day running of life on the African continent grows immensely every passing day. There are a plethora of engines driving the wave of technology usage on the continent, with goals and dreams to see it to its full potential.
Africa has a number of people/entrepreneurs who have invested in technology and these have boosted the growth of Africa’s technology industry and of course, the development of technology has in one way or the other enhanced the development of other various sectors.
Today, Monkeypesa brings the top 10 most influential entrepreneurs and Chief Executive Officers who have either sponsored or have been responsible for the growth of Africa’s technology industry.
Top 10 Most Influential Figures In African Technology
1. David Osei, Dropifi
David Osei is one of the most influential entrepreneurs in Africa. David Osei is an award-winning entrepreneur from Ghana, and a co-founder of Dropifi Limited, Africa’s first technology startup to be accepted into Silicon Valley’s 500 Startups Accelerator Program.
He graduated from Meltwater Entrepreneurship school of technology. In 2014 he was named one of 40 under 40 by the New York-based, Network journal. He was invited to the 1st US – Africa Business Forum by Bloomberg in Washington. He has been a guest speaker at Harvard University and Stanford University, speaking about Venture Financing Africa and Accelerating African Startups.
The growth of Osei’s company is owed to the help he has always offered to small and medium companies. The process of helping others has helped him to learn and correct his own mistakes. This enhanced the growth of Dropifi. He has the ability to solve a huge issue in the simplest terms or ways possible and that has helped him grow his company fast.
2. Phares Kariuki
East Africa’s cloud champion, Phares Kariuki, is the founder of Node Africa which is an IT infrastructure and cloud consulting company. With the aim of aiding large and medium companies move their workloads to a cloud hosting environment, Node Africa’s CEO Phares is accountable for moving sales, marketing, business development, talent management and public relations.
Before starting up Node Africa, Kariuki put up a cloud computing company Angani in Kenya. He was part of this till 2015 where he was accountable for strategy, finance, budgeting, business development, sales, talent management and fundraising and he described the company as “the first fully automated cloud computing company in Sub-Saharan Africa.”
3. Kahenya Kamunyu
He is the founder and the CEO of Able wireless, which is located in Nairobi-Kenya and was established in December 2012. Kahenya worked with a technical and media company in South Africa, United Kingdom and Kenya.
Able wireless strives to convey on-demand streaming; live streaming and wireless internet access to its customers especially students, low and middle income families across the country and thus has helped to decrease capital and expenditures of operators by 83%.
4. Johann Jenson
He is the founder and the CEO of sleepOut, a Kenyan accommodation website. After understanding the rate at which ecommerce was growing in Africa and the surrounding regions, Johann Jenson joined forces with Kenyan digital entrepreneur, Mikul Shah to form SleepOut.com.
While coming to the end of and the beginning of 2012, the company started acting as a booking service assisting travelers in finding discounted rates for hotels, apartments and other popular accommodations.
5. Neil Du preez
Neil Du Preez is the original founder and the managing director of South Africa’s mellowcabs who is passionate about urban transport and the development of last mile delivery solutions. Over time, he has gained loads of experience, owing to the fact that he had worked in a chemical and transport sectors. His technology innovation is an integration of technologies that include recovery of kinetic energy, converting it into electricity and storing it.
Neil has had very many other innovations including; Mellowcabs which develop and manufacture light electric cargo vehicles, called MellowVans that provide low cost, efficient and emission-free delivery services in cities. He has had many other innovations including; hydrogen fueled Mellowcabs, adaptable, renewable body shells and an app to book cab rides that can be paid for with cash or credit. These come with eye catching and user friendly services like; tracking the cab’s location, wifi access and mobile charging during the ride.
6. Jeremy Hodara
Jeremy is a co-founder and currently, a co-CEO at Jumia Technologies. Jumia is Uganda’s number one online shopping agent. It is spread beyond Uganda to the entire African continent.
Additionally, Jeremy Hodara is the Founder & Managing Director, Africa and France at Rocket Internet GmbH, he worked at McKinsey in France, India and the US for 7 years where he was focusing on retail and e-commerce and he holds a Master’s Degree in Business Administration from HEC Business School, France.
Jeremy currently has 3 jobs that is one of them being Co-CEO & founder Jumia at Jumia Group, Founder and Managing Director at Africa Internet Holding, and Managing Director Africa Internet Group at Rocket Internet. Jeremy Hodara has had 4 past jobs including Senior Engagement Manager at McKinsey & Company.
7. Timothy Rimbui
Timothy Rimbui who is commonly known as Ennovator is a Kenyan song writer, record producer and a sound engineer who has offered his skillful hand to very many powerful artists in Kenya and East Africa at large, he has often been regarded as the leading music producer in Kenya.
He is creative, innovative and unique in regards to music production. He obtained his first music encounter when he was an assistant engineer at Rough Cuts productions. He later moved to Samawati as a sound engineer, from there he went to Kora Award winner, Eric wainaina to form Enkare music studio and a production company till to date.
8. Christopher Pruijsen
Chris is the youngest-ever President of Oxford Entrepreneurs when he attended the University of Oxford, where he matriculated at age 17.
He co-founded AMPION across Africa and the Middle East (formerly StartupBus Africa) after having co-founded Founderbus UK in 2012. AMPION is organising 4 Venture Bus hackathons across 16 African countries with 160 innovators in 2013, after which the top 20% of ventures will be incubated for 6 months as part of a Pan-African Fellowship programme.
Chris is co-founder and CEO of Sterio.me, which reinforces learning with interactive and pre-recorded audio lessons – accessible via any type of phone – no Internet or smartphone required.
The Sterio.me technology enables learning across literacy, language and data/device barriers.
Sterio.me started on StartupBus Africa ('13) and was honoured as Finalist at Harvard Africa Business Conference, MIT Africa Innovate, MLOVE, World Summit Award (education and runners-up “African Content Award”), World Technology Award (education),
9. Barbara Mallinson
She is the chief executive Officer of Obami which is a digital learning solutions company. She has been officially recognized by CNN, Forbes, Business Insider and Financial mail not only as a one of the good and top entrepreneurs in Africa but also a business woman.
Additionally UNESCO pointed out her as one of the 21 leading people changing the world. Barbara has a number of advisory roles on boards of a number of companies and she is among South Africa’s leading Information and Technology experts and leading (first) in regards to the feminine gender. Barbara is based in South Africa but trust me her learning, technology and social entrepreneurial ideas are felt across the globe.
10. Alpesh Patel
Patel is the chief executive officer of oju Africa which was founded in 2012 in Nigeria and is also piece of Mi-Group International which is Africa’s first centric Emoticon provider. Alpesh Patel has done his best to avail apple on panel Apple to diversify its range of emoticons.
Final word
Africa refuses to be left behind as far as technology is concerned. Innovators and inventors keep coming up with new ways to make everything easier.