With just 22 per cent of the total number
of engineering and technology university graduates each year in Nigeria,
according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Nigerian women have
started to take charge of the critical technology sector.
THISDAY checks reveal that at least 10
individuals top the log of women in Nigeria and Africa doing wonders in the
tech industry.
In sub-Saharan Africa, women constitute
only 30 per cent of professionals in the tech sector. Checks revealed that only
12 per cent of global fintech founders and co-founders were women, and only six
per cent of fintechs had female chief executive officers (CEOs).
The industry has experienced a high influx
of women breaking grounds and leveraging financial technology (Fintech).
According to the Fintech Association of
Nigeria, foreign investors account for some 57 per cent of funding for Fintechs
in the country. Furthermore, by increasing smartphone penetration, the
association estimates that revenues in the space will reach $543 million this
year.
Although not having a fair share in the
tech industry, Nigerian women are making genuine impact globally. In this
report, THISDAY unveils 10 of these young women who are shattering the
proverbial glass ceiling and making their marks in the world of technology and
innovation. Though this list is by no means exhaustive, it provides a guide for
an excursion into the fast changing dynamics of women rising.
Chipper Cash
Seun Runsewe is a Senior Product Manager at
Africa’s newest unicorn, Chipper Cash, which is now worth $2 billion. Before
Chipper Cash, Seun was Vice President of Growth at Softcom, where she was
leading efforts to deliver growth to Nigerian entrepreneurs through their
digital bank, Eyowo.
Prior to Softcom, she was the director of
product at Opera-backed payments startup, OPay. She built and beta-launched
Switch by Sterling Bank, a multi-currency digital bank, making her the youngest
banking CEO in Africa. Before building Switch, she was an early member and the
business lead at Paystack (a Y-Combinator-backed online payments company
acquired by Stripe for $200 million).
Seun started her career as a management consultant and the project coordinator of Project Africa, KPMG’s initiative to push the frontiers of financial services in Africa across banking, payments and financial risk management. In 2019 and 2021, she was recognised by The Future Project as an honouree of #YTech100 for being one of the brightest and best Nigerian technocrats.
CrowdyVest
Tope Omotolani is the co-founder and CEO of
Crowdyvest, an impact-driven community focused on creating interdependence
between individuals and businesses. It provides an all-in-one financial
solution geared towards achieving financial freedom while facilitating impactful
growth in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Under
Tope’s leadership, Crowdyvest has raised over $35 million through savings and
investment for multiple businesses from a community of over 100,000 members in
over a year.
She is one of the co-founders of
Farmcrowdy, Nigeria’s First Digital Agricultural Platform that launched in
November 2016. Her first role was Product Development & Sales, and in four
months, she grew to become the VP of operations, and in one year, she became
the COO. As Chief Operations Officer (COO) of Farmcrowdy, she coordinated all
farm operations across over 14 states with over 25,000 farmers. In 2019, she
became the managing director of Crowdyvest, formerly a sister company to
Farmcrowdy, before being bought over by investors led by Temitope in March
2021.
Tope is listed as one of the “Top Female Founders in Africa” who raised $2.5 million for Farmcrowdy. She won the “Emerging Fintech CEO of the year” award at the Annual Global Business Outlook Awards 2021.
UnStack
Adora Nwodo is a software engineer
currently building Mixed Reality on the Cloud. In 2018, she created
adorahack.com, sharing articles on software engineering, productivity and
career growth. The next year, she created a YouTube channel called AdoraHack,
where she shares stories on tech and her experience as a software engineer.
She is the co-founder of unStack Africa, an
open source-based conference for tech talents in Africa and beyond, focusing on
hands-on workshops and world-class talks that empower people to learn by doing.
She is also Vice President of the Nigerian chapter for the VRAR Association,
where she’s focused on getting people excited about building Mixed Reality
technologies in the region.
In February 2021, Adora won the Young CISO
Network Excellence in Disruptive Technology, Cloud and Embedded Device Security
Award for her work in building and advocating for Disruptive Technology on the
Cloud.
In October 2021, she released her first book, “Cloud Engineering for Beginners,” which introduces people to the concept of cloud computing, viable career paths in cloud engineering, and how to navigate a cloud engineering career. She is also a published author, public speaker, and tech content creator.
Bamboo
Yanmo Omorogbe is the co-founder and COO of
Bamboo. Yanmo leads growth and operations as the COO of Bamboo. It is a digital
investment platform that gives Nigerians real-time access to buy, sell or hold
assets traded on the US stock exchange from their mobile phones or computers.
According to Omorogbe, the goal is to enable investing across Africa, making it
simple and easy for Africans in the diaspora to invest back home.
Omorogbe is the operational backbone of a
business turning ordinary Nigerians into global investors. With Bamboo, the
average Nigerian can become a shareholder in the technology companies they use
every day like Twitter, Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook.
She is dedicated to facilitating the continued growth of organisations she has found herself. An alumna of Chemical Engineering from Imperial College, London, she was previously an assistant to the Nigerian Minister of Power, Works and Housing. She then returned to the private sector as part of the Transaction and Asset Management teams at African Infrastructure Investment Managers (AIIM), one of Africa’s largest infrastructure private equity fund managers.
Binance
Damilola Odufuwa is a tech executive and
women’s rights advocate whose work intersects cryptocurrency, communications,
and women’s rights. She currently leads Public Relations and Communications for
Africa at Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange.
Odufuwa is the co-founder and CEO of
Backdrop, an app and social network that lets people find and share beautiful
spaces worldwide. She is also the co-founder of the FeministCoalition, an
advocacy group made up of young Nigerian feminists championing equality for
women in the Nigerian society, with a core focus on education, financial
freedom, and representation of women in public office.
In recognition of her work, Odufuwa has
been listed as one of the Bloomberg50, a record of people changing the global
business landscape, one of the “12 Women Leaders That Changed The World In
2020” by Vogue and one of the TIME100 Next 2021.
As a result of her work in the blockchain industry, Odufuwa was also listed as one of “Six Women At The Forefront Of West Africa’s Tech Boom” by Vogue and one of the “Rising Women In Crypto” by Fintech Times and Wirex.
HerVest
A certified financial education instructor
and a member of the Personal Finance Speakers Association (USA), Solape is the
founder and CEO of HerVest, a women-focused and inclusive fintech platform for
the underserved and excluded women in Africa. HerVest enables women to
participate in savings, impact investments and credit, particularly for
smallholder women farmers in Nigeria.
As a financial feminist, Solape is pro SDG5
and SDG10 who believes in achieving gender equality and reducing inequality
through financial literacy, technology, and access to capital.
In September 2021, Solape’s led HerVest was
chosen from thousands of applicants to present at the world’s number one
startup launch competition at TechCrunch Disrupt. Besides, HerVest is the only
Nigerian startup selected to pitch alongside 19 other global stars.
Solape is the Nigeria chapter director of
Women in Tech Global, an international organisation with a double mission: to
close the gender gap and help women embrace technology, present in over 100
countries with growing members of over 70,000.
For over 12 years, Solape has worked on Nigerian’s top financial brands, including Skye Bank, Sterling Bank, Wema Bank, Leadway Assurance, and FCMB, before waltzing to the client-side of communications at Meristem, a leading investment firm, as the head of corporate and marketing communications.
PiggyVest
Ibukun Akinola is an entrepreneur and
finance lead with over seven years of experience in the Nigerian tech space.
She leads the customer finance team at Piggyvest, one of Africa’s foremost
financial technology companies. She oversees support, compliance, dispute
resolution and processor partnerships.
Ibukun’s entrepreneurial journey started in
2014 when, along with her co-founders, she started PushCV, an online
recruitment platform to bridge the gap between job seekers and employers of
labour. Other products in their catalogue include 500Dishes, 99Staff and
Frontdesk.ng.
In 2016, PiggyBank.ng, an online savings
platform aimed at democratising savings, was launched. In 2019, the product
morphed into Piggyvest, adding micro-investment options to the platform, making
most investment instruments accessible and affordable to over two million users
who have savings in millions of naira.
Ibukun is an advocate for advancing gender
equality and women’s rights.
Shuttlers
Damilola Olokesusi is the co-founder and
CEO of Nigeria’s leading transport-driven transportation startup, Shuttlers.
The company is revolutionising how professionals and organisations commute in
the ever-busy Lagos and Abuja metropolis.
The Shuttlers platform enables
professionals and organisations to share rides in decent buses to and from
work. With Shuttlers, users book trips along fixed routes at 60-80 per cent
lower rates than other ride-hailing services. Shuttlers operates a “no surge
during peak hours or bad weather” pricing, the first of its kind in Africa.
Damilola is a “Forbes30under30 (2019)
Recipient for Technology”, and was selected by the UK government for a
technology exchange in 2020. She has garnered accolades, such as The Digital
& Tech Award at the Women in Africa Contest in Morocco in 2017 and the
Award for the Best Idea at the Aso Villa Demo Day. Under her leadership,
Shuttlers raised a $1.6 million seed funding, announcing plans to expand into
more African metropolitan cities.
In 2020, she launched an initiative called
Shemoves Shuttles, an all-female shuttle service (sponsored by Ford Motors
Company) that has impacted 600+ female professionals by turning their commute
time to learning time. Damilola is poised to continue to lead innovation in the
technology and transportation sectors and other sectors in Nigeria and around
the world.
tix.africa
Agusto is the CEO and a co-founder of
tix.africa, a self-service ticketing platform for event organisers to list,
manage, and collect payment for live and virtual events.
The platform makes it easy for organisers
to create and monetise live or virtual events, create customisable event pages,
and secure payment collection via Paystack. It also gives guests a seamless way
to book and attend live occasions.
The team is working on developing a native
virtual meeting space for its users. As part of its new development, it will
also enable them to store balances in a digital wallet, which can be
transferred between events for payments on the company’s RFID wristbands — a
product regular attendees of the EatDrinkLagos festival will be familiar with.
She is a self-taught user interface
designer, a passionate event organiser, and co-founder of Eat Drink Lagos. The
endeavour that started as a good blog has grown into the go-to bible for
inhabitants and visitors deciding where to eat and drink in Lagos.
Herconomy
Ifedayo Durosinmi-Etti is the founder and
CEO of Herconomy, a female-focused fintech startup dedicated to creating
financial resources for women.
Herconomy is Nigeria’s first digital
platform of female entrepreneurs and professionals focusing on empowering women
and connecting women to each other and opportunities, such as grants,
fellowships, scholarships, jobs, and much more. She is also an author,
entrepreneur and young global leader with over 10 years of management and
leadership experience working in the fashion, marketing and manufacturing, and,
most recently, the tech industry.
She was recently appointed as a Youth
Advisory Group Member for Solutions for Youth Employment (S4YE), a global
coalition formed by the World Bank to provide catalytic support to employment
and productive work for 150 million youths by 2030. She was also named a Peace
Scholar by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Durosinmi-Etti has recently broken several
glass ceilings by being part of the Africa Startup Initiative (ASIP)
Accelerator Programme and becoming the first recruitment partner in Nigeria
with Amazon.
In 2019, she was listed as one of the 52
women who made an impact.