Endeavor

BOLAJI AKINBORO Kenya, Cellulant If I could spend the rest of my life solving one problem, it would be improving household incomes of Africans at the middle/bottom of the pyramid through the organization of the agriculture value chain with technology that ensures access to finance, markets and information. One motto I live by is that Africans are responsible for developing Africa; this is my relentless pursuit. I am focused, not only on building a company that creates shareholder wealth; but one that has an impact on people's lives. I call it doing good and making money at the same time. In my 20s, I sold Procter & Gamble products – Diapers & Candies - out of a van, as I was one of the early pioneers of Procter and Gamble Nigeria & Ghana. My team and I would travel from one end of Lagos and Accra to another, determined to meet our sales targets, ensure customer product uptake and most importantly, learning how to build a business. It helped that as a kid, I was that boy that sold candies to my classmates & friends in the railway compound neighborhood to make some spare cash. I transitioned from a for-profit to a non-profit social business environment with the African Virtual University (AVU), which was a completely different paradigm as I worked on providing mathematics and science degree programs to youths, women & teachers across 15 countries. This prepared me for my role as Country Director at Plan International where I lived in Malawi & Tanzania, and worked in a few other East African countries. We raised millions of dollars in funding to change the lives of children and communities. A number of times, we had to deliver food, water & vaccines to children in a remote part of Malawi & Tanzania. During the rainy season floods, our vehicles would be literally overrun by the rivers and considering that I don't know how to swim, this was hazardous work. This experience definitely prepared me for the work Cellulant had to do in Afghanistan, to design a program with the government to help farmers grow more wheat rather than opium. I have had an adventurous career. In 2001 when my friend Ken Njoroge and I decided to kick-off Cellulant, all these experiences were brought into play to build the company. It enabled us develop a reliable, scalable and in-demand product that brings payment and commerce together in order to support wealth creation across the continent. We have achieved this goal with Tingg & Mula. In my current position of Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer Nigeria, I am responsible for the global and domestic growth of the company. We have implemented the largest social impact program on the African continent – the Growth Enhancement Support Scheme (GES) through which we used our payment platform to disburse agriculture subsidies for inputs worth over USD$1bn to more than 17million rural farmers. This experience cemented our footprint in the Nigeria and sharpened our ability to use financial technology to power financial and economic inclusion at the each level of society; from the top to the bottom of the pyramid. I believe in the democratization of payments. Cellulant's office spread across 11 African countries has enabled us provide payments and transfers services to individuals, Governments and corporate clients that span over 34 countries. Its amazing how far we have come from plotting our business plan on a serviette over dinner to building a Pan-African company by Africans for the world.

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