016: Samuel Gikandi – The CEO of Africa’s Leading Mobile Solutions Company Africa’s Talking

Young African Entrepreneur

Sam Gikandi is the CEO and co-founder of Africa’s Talking, a pan-African mobile technology company empowering developers across the continent. Prior to Africa’s Talking, Sam worked for Morgan Stanley, the investment bank, in the US and Hong Kong. In the Asia office, he helped build the high frequency trading platform and led a team trading hundreds of millions of dollars per day. In 2010, intrigued by the burgeoning tech scene in his home country of Kenya, he set up with a co-founder Africa’s Talking. While it started as a side hustle, two years later, Sam took on a full-time COO/CTO role in the company, developing the software developer-facing part of the business. As demand for business APIs in Kenya exploded with the strong growth of tech startups and mobile money payment solutions, Africa’s Talking software developer business took off. The company turned profitable after only 1 year of operations. Africa’s Talking helps the growing software developer community across the continent integrate into the telecoms infrastructure by simplifying the required processes and technologies. It offers APIs for short codes, payments, and communications, including bulk SMS, USSD, and voice. Africa’s Talking is in seven African markets with its hub based in Nairobi, Kenya. Last April, Sam and his team closed a $8.6mn fundraising round that was led by the IFC’s venture capital arm which Africa’s Talking will use to further its expansion, especially into Francophone West Africa. I thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with Sam who’s a real thought leader in Africa’s tech space. Make sure you listen to our entire chat. He explains why he’s bullish on Ethiopia, why capital is overrated in the early stages of a startup, and why he advocates sharpening your toolkit before diving headfirst into entrepreneurship. Without further ado, here’s my conversation with Sam Gikandi.