Africa’s Talking, a go-to platform that helps developers in Africa bring their ideas to life by providing SMS, USSD, Voice, Airtime and mobile payments infrastructure through easy-to-use APIs, has appointed Bilha Ndirangu as its Chief Executive Officer to drive the company’s vision and open new doors through strategic partnerships.
Prior to joining AT, Bilha was a senior project manager at Dalberg Global Development advisors in its Nairobi office where she advised varied clients including national governments, multilaterals, foundations and private sector companies. Her projects spanned multiple sectors ranging from technology, agriculture and energy. As the first employee of the Dalberg Nairobi office, she also helped grow the office from one consultant to a team of forty consultants advising clients across Africa.
She was recently accepted in the Endeavor Network; a network that supports and mentors entrepreneurs who have demonstrated a potential for rapid scale and expansion of their business.
Fresh from a series A financing round led by IFC in mid 2018, the firm now aims to expand to reach more software developers in Africa but also creates an environment that we can offer mentorship so that they succeed and scale across the continent.
Africa’s Talking new Africa’s Talking Group aims to create a vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem for Africa through equipping developers and businesses with what they need to be successful. ATG will house two companies, Africa’s Talking and Africa’s Talking Labs (AT Labs), that will lower the barriers for access to communications, payments and cloud infrastructure to software developers and businesses across Africa as well as provide an environment where it can co-create value with partners within its network and accelerate the path to market for technology startups.
Africa’s Talking’s next frontier is to expand its reach to all 54 countries in Africa, creating partnerships and impacting developer communities. So as to effectively achieve this, Bilha Ndirangu, who was Chief Commercial Officer, Africa’s Talking, steps up to be CEO, Africa’s Talking. Her experience in building organisations by creating partnerships with different stakeholders and scaling them to new markets will be valuable here.
Samuel Gikandi
Samuel Gikandi, previous CEO and co-founder of Africa’s Talking will be CEO, AT Labs to equip more people with skills involved in creating profitable businesses with as little hurdles as possible. AT Labs will help startups in growing to fully-fledged businesses across Africa.
AT Labs works on validating startup ideas and helping them grow to fully-fledged businesses easily by providing mentorship, infrastructure and work space.
Samuel has a Bachelors and Master’s Degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After graduating from MIT, Samuel worked for 6 years as a Software Developer and Trading Strategist in Morgan Stanley’s New York and Hong Kong offices. Samuel was involved in building the trading infrastructure across Morgan Stanley’s global equities business. He also helped establish and grow the High-Frequency Trading desk for the Systematic Trading group in Asia.
