Africa’s creator economy is growing rapidly, but for many creators, turning influence and expertise into sustainable income remains difficult. Global platforms were largely built around payment systems such as PayPal and Stripe that do not work reliably across much of the continent, leaving creators to depend on fragmented tools to connect with paying audiences.
It is this gap that Andrew Kibe, a technology leader with experience building digital and financial infrastructure across Africa, is seeking to address with Inner Circle, a platform designed to help creators monetise their expertise through paid sessions, subscriptions, priority messages and group experiences.
Founded in May 2026 and already serving creators across eight African markets, Inner Circle is betting that the next chapter of Africa’s creator economy will be built on infrastructure designed for Africa from the start.
TechMoran caught up with Kibe and this is what he told us.
When was Inner Circle founded and what inspired you to do this?
Inner Circle was founded in May 2026 by Andrew Kibe and a small founding team based in Nairobi, Kenya. I am a seasoned technology leader and engineer with over two decades of experience shaping Africa’s digital and financial ecosystems. As Group CTO at 4G Capital, a leading African neobank, I steered the company’s technology vision and infrastructure, contributing to its growth and successful fundraising of over $23.1 million.
Previously, I was instrumental in the rise of TopUp Mama, driving its tech strategy and execution as the company scaled rapidly to $4.8 million in sales within 18 months and raised over $2.7 million in funding. Most recently, as CTO at Lemonade, one of Kenya’s mobile payment platforms, I led engineering for cross-border payment rails across multiple African markets. My career reflects a rare blend of technical depth, strategic leadership, and a proven track record of building scalable systems that power real impact across Africa’s emerging markets.
The inspiration for Inner Circle came from a simple observation: Africa has an enormous creator economy comprised of musicians, coaches, entrepreneurs, doctors, lawyers, fitness experts but almost none of the monetisation infrastructure that exists in the West works reliably for them. Platforms like Patreon and Cameo require PayPal or Stripe, both of which are either unavailable or unreliable across most of Africa.
African creators were giving away their expertise for free on Instagram and TikTok with no way to convert it to income. Inner Circle was built to fix that.
Is the company bootstrapped or venture capital funded?
Inner Circle is currently bootstrapped and founder-funded. We made a deliberate decision to build and validate the model with real creators and real revenue before raising external capital. The platform is live, processing real transactions, and growing organically. We are open to strategic conversations with investors who understand the African creator economy and the payments infrastructure required to serve it.
How many registered users so far?
Inner Circle has 109 active vetted creators on the platform across Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia, Senegal and Benin, with over 2,000 registered fans. We are selective, every creator is reviewed and approved personally. We are not a marketplace where anyone can sign up. This keeps quality high and protects fans from wasting money on creators who are not serious about their time. So far, more than 600 sessions have been handled through the platform, giving people the opportunity to have direct, paid conversations with experts they already follow or want to learn from.
How does the revenue-sharing model work between Inner Circle and creators?
Creators keep 90% of every transaction, sessions, subscriptions, priority DMs, paid questions, and group rooms. Inner Circle takes 10%. This is the best split in the industry. Cameo takes 25%. Patreon takes up to 12% plus payment processing fees that can push the effective take to 20%+ in practice. Intro.co takes 20% on every booking. Passes.com takes between 15–20% depending on the creator’s tier. On Inner Circle, a creator charging KES 1,500 for a session receives KES 1,350 directly to their mobile wallet, same day. There are no monthly fees, no setup costs, and no minimum earnings threshold to receive a payout.
Which countries are officially supported?
Inner Circle currently supports Kenya (KES), Nigeria (NGN), Ghana (GHS), Uganda (UGX), Tanzania (TZS), Zambia (ZMW), Senegal (XOF) and Benin (XOF), 8 markets across East, West and Southern Africa. Payments are processed via mobile money and bank in each market. We are actively expanding and have the infrastructure to add new African markets rapidly.
What differentiates Inner Circle from similar platforms? Why should African creators choose it over these existing alternatives?
Most platforms serving African creators are either global tools that barely work in Africa such as Patreon, Cameo, Calendly + PayPal or local solutions that solve one problem booking or payments but not both together.
Inner Circle is the only platform built end-to-end for African creators that combines:
1. Native mobile money & bank payments — M-Pesa, MTN MoMo, Airtel Money and others, with no card required
2. Multiple income streams in one place — 1-on-1 sessions, subscriptions, priority DMs, paid questions, and live group rooms
3. Same-day payouts — directly to mobile money, and bank account
4. Built-in video — sessions happen on Inner Circle, not a third-party tool the creator has to manage separately
5. Multi-market from day one — a Kenyan creator can receive a booking from a fan in Nigeria, Ghana or Uganda and get paid in their local currency
The closest local comparison would be assembling Calendly + M-Pesa PayBill + Zoom + WhatsApp Business but Inner Circle replaces all of that with one link.
What safeguards are in place to protect creators and users against fraud, abuse or chargebacks?
Several layers of protection are built into the platform:
● Creator vetting — every creator is manually reviewed and approved before going live.
Fans know they are booking a real person, not a ghost account.
● No-show protection — if a creator misses a session without notice, the fan isautomatically refunded in full. If the fan misses, the creator is still paid.
● Payments via regulated infrastructure — all payments go through LemonadePayments,a crossborder payments platform. Funds are not held on our platform.
● Session recording consent — sessions happen on our inhouse powered videoinfrastructure with clear consent flows.
● Dispute resolution — fans can flag sessions and our team reviews attendance datafrom the video platform to resolve disputes objectively.
● Refund channels — every market has a configured refund channel. Refunds areprocessed back to the original payment channel within 24 hours.
What is the roadmap for Inner Circle over the next 12 months?
Our priorities over the next 12 months:
1. Market expansion — South Africa (ZAR) and Egypt (EGP) are next. We are in conversations with payment partners for both markets.
2. Strategic Partnerships — working with talent management agencies, media houses, and creator networks across Africa to bring established talent onto Inner Circle with managed profiles, dedicated booking support, and co-marketing. This includes partnerships with platforms like Aktivate to tap into their existing roster of verified African creators and give them a direct monetisation channel.
3. Fan communities — giving creators a space to host their subscribers beyond individual sessions.
4. Creator storefront — enabling creators to sell digital products directly through their Inner Circle profile — templates, guides, presets, courses, and downloadable content — giving fans a way to buy from their favourite creators without booking a live session, and giving creators a passive income stream alongside their session earnings.
5. Creator discovery — improving how fans find the right creator through intent-based search and category browsing.
6. Group rooms at scale — enabling creators to host paid live sessions with up to 1,000 participants.
7. Referral and gifting — letting fans gift sessions to others, and rewarding fans who bring new creators or fans to the platform.
8. Low-bandwidth mode — optimising the video experience for users on 3G connections across Africa.
9. Mobile apps — native iOS and Android apps for both creators and fans.
10.Creator Analytics Dashboard — giving creators deeper insight into their earnings, fan behaviour, session completion rates, and subscription churn so they can make smarter decisions about their content and pricing.
11.Verified creator programme — a structured tier system that rewards top-performing creators with higher visibility, lower platform fees, and promotional support from Inner Circle.
12.Localised content and onboarding — onboarding flows, support, and creator resources in Swahili, Yoruba, Twi and French to serve our expanding francophone West African markets (Senegal, Benin, and Côte d’Ivoire).
13.Brand partnerships — enabling brands to sponsor creators directly through the platform, opening a new revenue stream for creators beyond fan payments.
Payments are broken in Africa despite thousands of fintech platforms. How do you aim to fix this?
This is the core problem Inner Circle was built to solve, and it shaped every infrastructure decision we made from day one. Let’s be clear about what is actually broken. The problem is that global platforms were never designed for African payment infrastructure. They assume Stripe, PayPal, or a Visa card, none of which work reliably across most of Africa. When PayPal cuts off users or Stripe declines African cards, creators lose access to their income overnight. That is not a payment problem. That is a dependency problem.
Inner Circle was built to eliminate that dependency entirely. Our entire payment infrastructure runs on African mobile money and bank rails through Lemonade, a payments platform operating across more than 8 African markets. We have no Stripe integration. No PayPal dependency. No exposure to the decisions of Western payment companies.
Our approach in practice:
● Same-day payouts — creators receive their earnings directly to M-Pesa, MTN MoMo,Airtel Money, or a bank account on the same day a session completes. No 3–5 day delays, no minimum balance to unlock a withdrawal.
● Transparent, low fees — 1.5% collection fee on KES transactions with a flat KES 20payout fee. No hidden charges, no percentage taken on withdrawals.
● True multi-currency — a creator in Nairobi can receive a booking from a fan in Lagos,Accra, or Kampala. Each party pays and gets paid in their local currency. No manual conversion, no wire transfers, no friction.
The broader challenge across Africa is infrastructure fragmentation — every country has different rails, different regulators, and different mobile money operators. Most platforms treat this as a reason not to expand. We treat it as The Opportunity. By building on Lemonade’s unified infrastructure, we can add a new African market in days, not months. A creator on Inner Circle today has access to fans across 8 countries. Within 12 months, that number will be significantly higher.
The payments problem in Africa is not unsolvable. It just requires building with Africa in mind from the start, not retrofitting a Western product for a market it was never designed for. That is exactly what we did.