Best Tayo Akinyemi Podcasts (2025)

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Goodbye for now, Trajectory Africa 1:25:39

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17d ago1:25:39

1:25:39

The Trajectory Africa, is a "pop-up" podcast designed to explore the first principles of VC and tech entrepreneurship in Africa, as they emerge in real time. After a nearly four year run, the journey has come to an end. This conversation with Andile Masuku, Co-Founder and Producer of African Tech Roundup (ATRU) and Tayo Akinyemi, Host and Producer …

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First Principles: Towards a Thesis on Digital Commerce & Logistics 1:12:01

23d ago1:12:01

1:12:01

This episode of The Trajectory Africa features Lydia Idem, Chief Operating Officer of LoftyInc Capital and Managing Director of FM Capital Group. We discuss what “point B” looks like for digital commerce on Africa’s S-curve, why asset-heavy models are more necessary than investors like to admit, why venture debt may be a missing ingredient in Afric…

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Leta: Why AI Compounds Logistics Efficiency at Scale 56:01

30d ago56:01

56:01

This episode of The Trajectory Africa features Nick Joshi, Founder and CEO of Leta, a startup that uses AI to optimize delivery routes, track shipments in real time, streamline payments, and provide businesses with shipping insights. We discussed how the first generation of logistics players paved the way for evolution in the space, how Leta optimi…

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Logistics for Trade: Why Paps is Building End-to-End Infrastructure 1:02:31

1M ago1:02:31

1:02:31

This episode of The Trajectory Africa features Bamba Lo, CEO and Co-founder of Paps, a technology-enabled logistics company operating across Francophone Africa. He explains how Paps delivers across the value chain— from freight and customs clearance to warehousing and last-mile delivery, while owning less than 1% of the vehicles in its network. Bam…

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Inefficiency the Income Thief: Lori and the Financial Story of African Logistics 1:12:12

1M ago1:12:12

1:12:12

The cost of moving goods across Africa remains one of the continent's toughest economic challenges. With logistics accounting for up to 75% of the price of goods—compared to just 9% in the US—solving transport inefficiency could be key to boosting affordability for African consumers. In this episode of The Trajectory Africa, I'm chatting with Jean-…

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Reflections on Sote: A Business Model for Freight Forwarding 1:02:34

2M ago1:02:34

1:02:34

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 infrastructure company, breaks down the fundamentals of logistics in Africa. He explains the relationship between the size of an economy and its trade volume, and the role of a freight forwa…

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Talking to Trade: How Chpter Helps Businesses Sell Socially 1:05:58

2M ago1:05:58

1:05:58

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 serve buyers where they already are, on social media platforms such as WhatsApp and Instagram. Chpter enables them to respond instantly to customers, transforming DMs into sales. Mark a…

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All in One: How Bumpa Aggregates Digital Services for BizOpps 47:30

2M ago47:30

47:30

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, inventory and sales management, and customer engagement. Kelvin explains how Bumpa helps businesses by aggregating and integrating functions like inventory and order management, payme…

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The Full Stack Experience: Dukka's BizOpps Ecosystem for Merchants 55:38

2M ago55:38

55:38

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 integrates payments, inventory management, sales tracking, and business intelligence into a single platform. Keturah explains how she built Dukka with merchants in mind, leaned into creatin…

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B2B E-Commerce to Fintech: How Chari is Charting a Path to Profitability 47:13

3M ago47:13

47:13

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-speaking Africa, explains how fintech and digital commerce came together inside his company. He shares Chari's journey supporting traditional shopkeepers in Morocco, the financial infrastruc…

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Asset Efficiency in B2B E-commerce: Maad’s Journey to Single Market Scale 1:20:48

3M ago1:20:48

1:20:48

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 FMCG brands and retailers in Senegal, share how they think about asset efficiency as a way to own assets strategically, once demand is assured. Maad embraces the reality (and the challen…

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Premium "Informal" Retailers: How Sarafu Captures Value in B2B E-commerce 1:04:06

3M ago1:04:06

1:04:06

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 his approach to running a digital commerce business—focusing on delivering premium service to customers who are willing to pay, running data-driven operations, and turning cost center…

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The “Banana” Company: How Twiga Made the "Impossible" Repeatable 1:41:25

3M ago1:41:25

1:41:25

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 days of trapped working capital and high spoilage into ready-to-sell product. He also shares how Twiga balanced standardizing production while growing its retail universe, the critic…

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Africa's S Curves: A Case for Realistic Optimism 1:06:24

4M ago1:06:24

1:06:24

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 continent take longer, but are also characterized by dramatic adoption and big impacts on informal markets due to improvements in productivity and cost structures. We talk through…

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The Engine of African Venture: A Return to First Principles (Digital Commerce & Logistics) 1:51

4M ago1:51

1:51

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 and investability in sectors that drive African VC opportunities. The eleven episodes of Part I were focused on fintech, exploring fintech’s subsectors—from market opportunities to b…

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Finding Fintech's Future: Towards a Thesis on Investing in Africa 1:32:39

10M ago1:32:39

1:32:39

The Trajectory Africa’s first principles series was inspired by a desire to understand the drivers and assumptions underlying investable opportunities in key sectors hypothesized to be the engine of African VC, starting with fintech. Across 11 episodes, we explored the opportunities for, and limits of, ubiquitous digitalization and the role of fint…

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Building the "Boring" Stuff: Infrastructure for Money Movement & Trade 1:14:39

11M ago1:14:39

1:14:39

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 the risks of digitalizing one part of a system (distributed solar energy, for example) without considering where the barriers and effects might materialize (think missing payment rails…

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Captain MAX: Democratizing Access to Electric Vehicles 1:23:42

11M ago1:23:42

1:23:42

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 financial services, arguing that every company should be a fintech company. Because as long as financial inclusion is a huge problem, every company should be able to offer financial ser…

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Save Now, Buy Later: A Culturally-relevant Approach to Consumption? 57:04

12M ago57:04

57:04

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 lending to consumer savings, but as an antidote to a consumer lending model called buy now, pay later, or BNPL. BNPL emerged as a global trend in the wake of COVID-19 and the tough macroec…

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Banking on Social Intelligence: A Community Model for Microbusiness Lending 1:02:38

12M ago1:02:38

1:02:38

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 generation of retail consumers of financial services. In this episode, we’ll hear how Femi Iromini, Co-Founder and CEO of Moni, and his team, have created a community lending model f…

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Banking Africa's Ambitious: Anatomy of a Partner-Powered Neobank 1:19:50

1y ago1:19:50

1:19:50

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, although a path to profitability is emerging. Also in 2022, Tech Cabal’s reporting on Kuda Bank’s NPLs (non-performing loans) sparked a discussion about what levels make sense for com…

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B2B Payments: Unseating Cash through Value Chain Integration 1:04:47

1y ago1:04:47

1:04:47

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 businesses. We’re diving deep into the world of digitizing financial operations, from payables and expense management to reconciliation and reporting. Africa’s $1.5T B2B payments market repr…

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Thinking Differently: A Case for Venture Building in African VC 1:14:32

1y ago1:14:32

1:14:32

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, impact-focused, alternative investment company. David has spent the last 7 years creating a model to engineer and invest in problem solving, impact creating, high growth SMEs. In the p…

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Cross Border Payments and the Alchemy of Price and Volatility 59:03

1y ago59:03

59:03

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 corporate treasuries in emerging markets. He’ll help us understand the mechanics of cross-border payments, why they're so expensive in Africa, how to improve price transparency and manage vol…

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A Wordline Playbook for Africa: from Payments Infrastructure to Solutions 1:06:34

1y ago1:06:34

1:06:34

On the previous episode of The Trajectory Africa, Wiza Jalakasi, Africa Market Development Director at EBANX suggested that infrastructure-building consumer payments businesses create value because of the sheer number of payment methods available, from mobile money to bank transfers and cards. With all these options, businesses taking consumer paym…

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The Hard Thing about (Consumer) Payments in Africa 1:03:47

1y ago1:03:47

1:03:47

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. He’ll shed some light on why building payment rails in Africa is deceptively hard work—from why some payment methods work better in some places than others to whether infrastructure-…

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Beyond Fintech? On building financial systems in Africa 59:33

1+ y ago59:33

59:33

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 exploration of fintech by stepping back to understand the system(s) that fintech creates and operates in. For that, we’re chatting with Samora Kariuki, Founder of the Frontier Fintech new…

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Long arm with no mouth: The physical limits of Africa's digital economy 1:09:55

1+ y ago1:09:55

1:09:55

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 what powers fundamental value creation and investability in sectors that drive the bulk of African VC opportunities. Part 1 is focused on fintech, and this episode with Abraham Augustine…

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The Engine of African Venture: A Return to First Principles 3:10

1+ y ago3:10

3:10

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 and investability in sectors that drive African VC opportunities. The first part is focused on fintech, starting from the premise that digitizing African economies is the African inv…

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Le ou La: Rightsizing Complexity when (Venture) Building in Francophone Africa 1:02:23

2+ y ago1:02:23

1:02:23

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 and The Trajectory Africa. For this episode, we have two guests: Birame Sock and Madji Sock. Birame Sock is a technology expert with over 20 years of experience as a tech entrepreneu…

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Popping Cristal: On How to Tap Unmet Need in Francophone Markets 55:32

2+ y ago55:32

55:32

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 Trajectory Africa. This episode’s guest is Tijan Watt. Tijan is a Co-Founder and General Partner of Wuri Ventures, a pan-African venture capital fund focused on pre-seed and seed opportunities…

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On Our Own?: Growing Francophone Startup Champions 49:44

2+ y ago49:44

49:44

Welcome to Episode 2 of Dans les Coulisses, a series exploring VC and tech entrepreneurship in Francophone Africa, brought to you by Impact Hub Dakar and The Trajectory Africa. Impact Hub Dakar is a Dakar-based incubator that supports early stage startups in Senegal, with a mission to help investors meet scalable, early stage startups in Francophon…

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The Trajectory Africa Rewind: Principles for Understanding African Venture 1:08:02

3y ago1:08:02

1:08:02

Welcome to The Trajectory Africa: Rewind, the summary episode for the Trajectory Africa, a "pop-up" podcast series exploring the trajectory, or pathway, of venture capital and startup formation in Africa. Over the course of 11 episodes, the series has explored: the key characteristics of African markets; the opportunities presented by digital comme…

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Tracing Roots: The Role of LPs in African Venture Ecosystem(s) 1:02:07

3y ago1:02:07

1:02:07

Welcome to Track 11 of The Trajectory Africa, a podcast series exploring the trajectory, or pathway, of venture capital and startup formation in Africa. This episode’s guest artist is Babacar Seck. Babacar is an investor passionate about projects that drive inclusive development, from education to healthcare and financial services. As a senior inve…

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Listening with Empathy: Fundraising beyond Spreadsheets 1:08:43

3y ago1:08:43

1:08:43

Welcome to Track 10 of The Trajectory Africa, a podcast series exploring the trajectory, or pathway, of venture capital and startup formation in Africa. This episode’s guest artist is Danai Musandu. Danai is a Senior Investor Relations Associate at HPE Growth, where she leads and supports the public and investor relations function, with a focus on …

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Breaking Boundaries: Building Wealth & Community through African VC 51:51

3+ y ago51:51

51:51

Welcome to Track 9 of The Trajectory Africa, a podcast series exploring the trajectory, or pathway, of venture capital and startup formation in Africa. This episode’s guest artist is Adenike Sheriff. Adenike is the Co-founder of Future Africa, a fund manager that invests early in mission driven founders solving hard problems for large markets. Prio…

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Fun with VC Math: Designing Funds & Exits in Africa 1:00:21

3+ y ago1:00:21

1:00:21

Welcome to Track 8 of The Trajectory Africa, a podcast series exploring the trajectory, or pathway, of venture capital and startup formation in Africa. This episode’s guest artist is Eghosa Omoigui. Eghosa is the founder and Managing General Partner of EchoVC Partners, a seed and early-stage technology venture capital firm investing in underreprese…

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Perception vs. Reality: How Fintech is Driving Africa's Digital Economy 59:10

3+ y ago59:10

59:10

Barbara Iyayi is an entrepreneur and investor with over 16 years of experience in venture capital, growth equity, and financial services. She has founded, invested in, scaled and advised, fintech and financial services companies globally. Currently, Barbara is the CEO & Founding Partner of Unicorn Growth Capital, an early-stage VC firm investing in…

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If You Build It, They Will Come: Creating a Lending Ecosystem for African SMEs 42:40

3+ y ago42:40

42:40

Welcome to Track 6 of The Trajectory Africa, a podcast series exploring the trajectory, or pathway, of venture capital and startup formation in Africa. This episode’s guest artist is Hilda Moraa. Hilda is the Founder & CEO of Pezesha, a holistic digital financial infrastructure powering embedded finance to SMEs and institutions across Africa. She i…

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No Enterprise Left Behind: The Role of SMEs in Africa's Venture Landscape 1:08:58

3+ y ago1:08:58

1:08:58

Welcome to Track 5 of The Trajectory Africa, a podcast series exploring the trajectory, or pathway, of venture capital and startup formation in Africa. This episode’s guest artist is Kuhle Mnisi. Kuhle is a Principal at Secha Capital, which she joined to marry her finance skill with a deep passion for impact. Prior to joining Secha, Kuhle worked as…

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One Step at a Time: Sizing Consumer Markets & Enabling Consumption in Nigeria 1:16:19

4y ago1:16:19

1:16:19

Welcome to Track 4 of The Trajectory Africa, a podcast series exploring the trajectory, or pathway, of venture capital and startup formation in Africa. This episode’s guest artist is Abieyuwa Obaseki, a consultant at Stears Data, a division of Stears Business. Stears’ mission is to make it easy for anyone anywhere in the world to access high qualit…

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Hold the C.R.E.A.M.: Decoding Consumer Markets & Digital Commerce in Africa 55:55

4y ago55:55

55:55

Welcome to Track 3 of The Trajectory Africa, a podcast series exploring the trajectory, or pathway, of venture capital and startup formation in Africa. Jake is a Co-founder of the DFS Lab, an early-stage investor and accelerator that supports entrepreneurs to refine, grow, and launch digital commerce ventures in Africa. He is formerly a Deputy Dire…

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We Can Solve It Ourselves: The Case for African Startup Success 1:06:46

4y ago1:06:46

1:06:46

Welcome to Track 2 of The Trajectory Africa, a podcast series exploring the trajectory, or pathway, of venture capital and startup formation in Africa. It’s inspired by the concept of a mixtape, in which each episode, or “track” will feature a conversation with a “guest artist”. There is also a soundtrack for inspiration provided by (DJ) Saphir Esm…

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Don't Start a Fund? Kinyungu's New Take on Chasing Outliers 55:49

4y ago55:49

55:49

Welcome to Track 1, the inaugural episode of The Trajectory Africa, a podcast series exploring the trajectory, or pathway, of venture capital and startup formation in Africa. With the unique African landscape—market characteristics, business environment, goals, and culture—as a starting point, The Trajectory Africa aims to pinpoint a destination fo…

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Welcome to The Trajectory: Africa! 5:28

4y ago5:28

5:28

This is a brief introduction to The Trajectory Africa, a podcast series exploring the trajectory, or pathway, of venture capital and startup formation in Africa. With the unique African landscape—market characteristics, business environment, goals, and culture—as a starting point, The Trajectory Africa aims to pinpoint a destination for African tec…