By Onyinye Ndupu
Tope Awotona | Calendly
Among global drivers of tech are many Nigerians whose innovations are changing lives. While some are helping tech giants like Google, Facebook, and Apple to develop fantastic products, others are creating own applications, putting their country on the technology map. Here are 9 of them.
Awotona is the founder of the scheduling powerhouse, Calendly. In 2014, he flew to wartime Ukraine because he needed a Kyiv company to help him build the infrastructure behind his scheduling software company. Just four years after building this, it turned profitable, as Calendly is now worth $3 billion.
- Maya Horgan Famodu | Ingressive Capital
Maya Horgan Famodu is the youngest Black woman to launch a tech fund in Sub-Saharan Africa, and the first solo woman to raise a tech fund in Nigeria. In 2014, when she moved to Lagos with little investing experience, she built her own path launching Ingressive Advisory, which provided market entry services and tech research for corporates and investors.
She launched Ingressive Capital in 2017 to invest directly in tech startups across Africa.
- Jessica O Matthews | Uncharted Power
Jessica O. Matthews, a US-based Nigerian founded Uncharted Power. At 19, she co-created the SOCCKET, an energy-generating soccer ball. Matthews also launched Uncharted Play to expand her product line into energy-producing jump ropes and skateboards. In 2016, she rebranded her startup as Uncharted Power and raised $7 million, the largest Series A ever raised by a Black female founder at the time.
- Ime Archibong | Innovator at Facebook
Currently Head of New Product Experimentation at Facebook, Ime Archibong joined the firm in 2010. Archibong served as Facebook’s Vice President of Product Partnerships, where he established the global team that manages strategic partnerships to align with Facebook’s mission, product, and business strategy. He was part of the team that set the foundation for Internet.org, a Facebook initiative to get people online in emerging markets like Africa.
- Aniedi Udo-Obong | Google Nigeria
As Google Nigeria’s Program Manager, Udo-Obong has provided international opportunities for other Nigerian developers and technical talents. He regularly comes across entrepreneurs overflowing with ideas in his role at Google—role that includes building relationships with developers to boost the sector across Africa.
Udo-Obong is involved with the planning and execution of the Google DevFest events in Nigeria.
- Dara Oladosu | Developer at Twitter
While out on his “listening and learning tour” in Africa, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey alongside other prominent Twitter executives met with Nigeria’s tech community members. They discussed an app Oladosu had built—-‘Quoted Replies’, a Twitter-based bot that helps users collate quoted replies to tweets. While Oladosu wasn’t on the initial invite list for the event, he secured a last-minute invitation to meet the famous Twitter boss.
After the meeting, Dorsey, clearly impressed with his app, invited Oladosu to join Twitter. In a video from the event, Twitter’s Product Lead said the team wanted to implement Quoted Replies on Twitter as a feature and would like Oladosu to join the team to enhance it.
- Adepeju Jaiyeoba | Mothers Delivery Kit
Jaiyeoba is a lawyer who eventually became the founder of Mother’s Delivery Kit, which creates low-cost healthcare options and delivery kits containing necessary sterile supplies for expectant mothers in Nigeria. She also runs a social venture, the Brown Button Foundation, which produces the delivery kits used at childbirth in Nigeria and Africa at large. The mission is to eradicate maternal and infant deaths in Nigeria and promote women’s sexual and reproductive rights.
- Abasi Ene-Obong | 54gene
Abasi Ene-Obong is working to further genomic research with a pan-African biobank. He is on a mission to “spur a biotech revolution” on the continent, analyzing data that can advance discovery and drug development. He launched 54Gene in 2019, a private, Lagos-based genomics lab, which is named after the 54 countries that comprise the African continent. Ene-Obong aims to develop treatments for kidney disease, prostate cancer, breast cancer, sickle cell disease, malaria, and other diseases that affect Black people in disproportionate numbers.
- Shola Akinlade & Ezra Olubi | Paystack
October 2020 was a big year for this dynamic duo: At $200 million, US-based firm Stripe acquired Paystack co-owned by the pair who were schoolmates at Nigeria’s Babcock University. That acquisition deal remains Nigeria’s largest to date. Paystack is a payments startup that helps merchants accept payments from their customers and is one of several payment companies that have disrupted the Nigerian fintech space.
