Loyola Jesuit College is a private Catholic secondary boarding school, located in Gidan Mangoro, Abuja, Nigeria. The school was founded by the Society of Jesus on October 2, 1996, and is named after the Society's founder, St. Ignatius of Loyola. The school has consistently ranked at the top of Nigerian schools in the WAEC exams.
Techstars is a pre-seed investor that provides access to capital, mentorship, and other support for early-stage entrepreneurs. It was founded in 2006 in Boulder, Colorado. As of January 2024, the company had accepted over 4,100 companies into its accelerator programs with a combined market capitalization of $106bn USD. Techstars operates accelerator programs in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Oceania.
Richard William Costolo is an American businessman. He was the CEO of Twitter, Inc. from 2010 to 2015; he also served as the COO before becoming CEO.
Angela Benton is an American businesswoman. Benton founded NewME (acquired), the first startup accelerator for minorities globally in 2011. She is a pioneer of diversity and one of the most important African-Americans in the technology industry. She has helped minority-led tech companies raise over $47 million in venture capital funding.
Mustafa Suleyman is a British artificial intelligence (AI) entrepreneur. He is the CEO of Microsoft AI, and the co-founder and former head of applied AI at DeepMind, an AI company acquired by Google. After leaving DeepMind, he co-founded Inflection AI, a machine learning and generative AI company, in 2022.
Andela is an American global job placement network for software developers. Andela focuses on sustainable careers, connecting technologists with long-term engagements, access to international roles, competitive compensation, and career coaching through the Andela Learning Community.
Zhang Yiming is a Chinese internet entrepreneur. He founded ByteDance in 2012, developed the news aggregator Toutiao and the video sharing platform Douyin. In March 2024, Zhang's personal wealth was estimated at US$40.2 billion, according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index, making him the second-richest person in China, after Zhong Shanshan. On November 4, 2021, Zhang stepped down as CEO of ByteDance, completing a leadership handover announced in May 2021. According to Reuters, Zhang maintains over 50 percent of ByteDance's voting rights.
Jeremy Johnson is a technology entrepreneur and the co-founder and CEO of Andela, a US company based in Africa that connects talented African software developers with foreign companies, like Upwork. He is also the President of Strategic Initiatives at 2U, an educational technology company.
Onyeka Akumah is a technology entrepreneur with a focus on transportation, agriculture, real estate, and media sectors. He is popularly known as the founder of Treepz Inc. Prior to founding his company in 2019, Onyeka Akumah was the CEO of Farmcrowdy. He is credited to have been involved in the success of various tech and e-commerce companies in Africa where he held positions and contributed to their growths.
Mohammed Ibrahim Jega, an indigen of Jega, Kebbi State is a Nigerian entrepreneur and technology startup founder. He is better known as the chief business development officer at the online payment processing gateway VoguePay.
The Harambe Entrepreneur Alliance is a US-based business network for African entrepreneurs that provides funding, university scholarships and a support ecosystem. The Alliance was founded by Okendo Lewis-Gayle and is supported by Cisco and the Oppenheimer Generations Foundation, amongst others. Members of the Harambe Alliance have raised over $500 million from Google Ventures, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and Alibaba to support their ventures.
Flutterwave is an American fintech company that provides a payment infrastructure for global merchants and payment service providers across the continent.
Olugbenga Agboola is a Nigerian software engineer and entrepreneur. He is the CEO and co-founder of Flutterwave.
Shola Akinlade is a Nigerian software engineer and entrepreneur. He is the co-founder and CEO of Paystack, the company that he founded with Ezra Olubi. Paystack was acquired by Stripe in 2020 for $200m.
Yele Bademosi is a Nigerian entrepreneur. He is the co-founder and former CEO of Bundle which he founded in August 2019. He was also a former director at Binance Labs. He also founded tech start-up Nestcoin, a company that focuses on creating Web3 applications and investing in other startups with similar interests.
Ifeanyi Ossai Nwabuonwu Idriss, known as Ifeanyi Ossai is an Ambassador of Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) and Founder of CribMD, a Digital health consultation platform.
Blessing Abeng is a Nigerian entrepreneur and co-founder of Disha, now acquired by Flutterwave. She is one of the founders of Ingressive for Good (I4G), a tech non-profit organization. In 2022, she won the African Achiever Award of the year and in 2023, she was listed in the "Forbes Africa’s 30 Under 30".
Adesuwa Okunbo Rhodes is the Founder and CEO of Aruwa Capital Management.
Itana is a Nigeria-based company building the first Digital Free Zone in Africa. It enables businesses to operate and function in Nigeria, and Africa without being physically present in the country. The name "Itana" is derived from the word "Itanna" which means "kindling of a fire" in Yoruba language. Itana is currently in its beta stage and plans to go live in the first quarter of 2024.
Felix Manford is a Ghanaian business executive. He is the co-founder and CEO of Tendo, a Ghanaian e-commerce company founded in 2021, operates in Africa with a strong base in Ghana and Nigeria. Prior to this, Felix had served at Goldman Sachs UK working in the Global Investment Research division in UK, in 2018.
