All Episodes
Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 in total
Reflections on Sote: A Business Model for Freight Forwarding
On this episode of The Trajectory Africa, Samora Kariuki, CEO and Founder of Frontier Fintech and former Director at Sote, a digital logistics and supply chain infrast...

Talking to Trade: How Chpter Helps Businesses Sell Socially
In this episode of The Trajectory Africa, Mark Kiarie, Co-founder and CEO of Chpter, explains conversational commerce and how his company uses AI to help businesses se...

All in One: How Bumpa Aggregates Digital Services for BizOpps
This episode of The Trajectory Africa features Kelvin Umechukwu, Founder and CEO of Bumpa, a company that provides sellers with the tools needed for digital commerce, ...

The Full Stack Experience: Dukka's BizOpps Ecosystem for Merchants
This episode of The Trajectory Africa features Keturah Ovio, CEO of Dukka, a company that’s changing how small businesses operate in Nigeria (and beyond). Dukka integr...

B2B E-Commerce to Fintech: How Chari is Charting a Path to Profitability
In this episode of The Trajectory Africa, Ismael Belkhayat, CEO and founder of Chari, a b2b e-commerce and fintech platform for traditional retailers in French-speakin...

Asset Efficiency in B2B E-commerce: Maad’s Journey to Single Market Scale
In this episode of The Trajectory Africa’s series on digital commerce and logistics, Sidy Niang and Jessica Long, Co-founders of Maad, a retail platform connecting FMC...

Premium "Informal" Retailers: How Sarafu Captures Value in B2B E-commerce
This episode of The Trajectory Africa features Firas Ahmad, CEO of Sarafu, a B2B e-commerce platform, and AzamPay, a payments platform, both in Tanzania. Firas shares ...

The “Banana” Company: How Twiga Made the "Impossible" Repeatable
On this episode of The Trajectory Africa, Kikonde Mwatela, former COO of Twiga, talks about how it tackled a fundamental problem in Kenya's banana supply chain—turning...

Africa's S Curves: A Case for Realistic Optimism
In this episode of The Trajectory Africa, DFS Lab General Partner Stephen Deng introduces "Africa's S-curves," a framework that explains why technology transitions on ...

The Engine of African Venture: A Return to First Principles (Digital Commerce & Logistics)
The Trajectory Africa’s second series, The Engine of African Venture: A Return to First Principles, is a two-part exploration of what powers fundamental value creation...

Finding Fintech's Future: Towards a Thesis on Investing in Africa
The Trajectory Africa’s first principles series was inspired by a desire to understand the drivers and assumptions underlying investable opportunities in key sectors h...

Building the "Boring" Stuff: Infrastructure for Money Movement & Trade
In Episode 1 of this series, Abraham Augustine, Research Partner of trendsAf and Comms and Programs Lead at Norrsken warned against “long arm, no mouth” syndrome and t...

Captain MAX: Democratizing Access to Electric Vehicles
Back in Episode 7 of Trajectory Africa’s first series, Barbara Iyayi, CEO & Founding Partner of Unicorn Growth Capital made a strong statement about the ubiquity of fi...

Save Now, Buy Later: A Culturally-relevant Approach to Consumption?
In the previous episode of The Trajectory Africa, we explored the art and science of community lending to microbusinesses. In this episode, we turn from business lendi...

Banking on Social Intelligence: A Community Model for Microbusiness Lending
In the previous episode of the Trajectory Africa, we heard from Kiiru Muhoya and Judith Bogonko at Fingo about the importance of cultivating Africa’s youth as the next...

Banking Africa's Ambitious: Anatomy of a Partner-Powered Neobank
According to research by global consultancy Simon-Kucher in 2022, fewer than 5% of neobanks were profitable. A recent update suggests that most are still loss-makers, ...

B2B Payments: Unseating Cash through Value Chain Integration
This episode of The Trajectory Africa features Yele Oyekola, Co-founder and CEO of Duplo, a company on a mission to streamline financial operations for African busines...

Thinking Differently: A Case for Venture Building in African VC
On this special episode of The Trajectory Africa, we’re featuring “someone you should know”—David Ogundeko, Founder and Chief Vision Officer for Funema, a last-mile, i...

Cross Border Payments and the Alchemy of Price and Volatility
On this episode of The Trajectory Africa, we’re talking to Ola Oyetayo, Co-Founder and CEO of Verto, the first "all in one" cross-border payments platform for corporat...

A Wordline Playbook for Africa: from Payments Infrastructure to Solutions
On the previous episode of The Trajectory Africa, Wiza Jalakasi, Africa Market Development Director at EBANX suggested that infrastructure-building consumer payments b...

The Hard Thing about (Consumer) Payments in Africa
On this episode of The Trajectory Africa, we’ll hear from Wiza Jalakasi, Director for Africa Market Development at EBanx, a payments processor headquartered in Brazil....

Beyond Fintech? On building financial systems in Africa
On this episode of The Trajectory Africa’s current series, "The Engine of African Venture: A Return to First Principles", we’re laying the foundation for a deeper expl...

Long arm with no mouth: The physical limits of Africa's digital economy
This is the first episode of Part 1 of a new series on The Trajectory Africa —The Engine of African Venture, A Return to First Principles. This series will explore wha...

The Engine of African Venture: A Return to First Principles
The Trajectory Africa’s second series, The Engine of African Venture: A Return to First Principles, is a two-part exploration of what powers fundamental value creation...

Le ou La: Rightsizing Complexity when (Venture) Building in Francophone Africa
Welcome to Episode 5, the next to last of Dans les Coulisses, a series exploring VC and tech entrepreneurship in Francophone Africa, brought to you by Impact Hub Dakar...

Popping Cristal: On How to Tap Unmet Need in Francophone Markets
Welcome to Episode 4 of Dans les Coulisses, a series exploring VC and tech entrepreneurship in Francophone Africa, brought to you by Impact Hub Dakar and The Trajector...

On Our Own?: Growing Francophone Startup Champions
In this conversation with founder, investor, and ecosystem builder, Omar Cissé, we discuss VC opportunities in Francophone markets, key characteristics of Francophone ...

The Trajectory Africa Rewind: Principles for Understanding African Venture
Welcome to The Trajectory Africa: Rewind, the summary episode for the Trajectory Africa, a podcast series exploring the trajectory, or pathway, of venture capital and ...

Tracing Roots: The Role of LPs in African Venture Ecosystem(s)
In this episode, Babacar Seck and I discuss how he started his career in venture capital and private equity, Proparco’s distinct characteristics as an LP and how it ev...

Listening with Empathy: Fundraising beyond Spreadsheets
In this episode, I speak with Danai Musandu about how she got into VC/PE, the fundraising process and how it differs by LP type, what LPs look for when they evaluate f...
