Iyinola “E” Aboyeji
Eyebrows were raised in Nigerian tech circles and other parts on the continent, when press releases in June by Forbes, WSJ, INC and CNET announced funding for a Nigerian tech start-up, Andela, without any mention of Iyin “E” Aboyeji, its co-founder.
Nigerian bloggers, on their art, set about attempting to set the record straight, some were especially upset of the description of Andela as a ‘New York-based start-up ’.
According to Ventures Africa, Iyin “E” Aboyeji is a 23-year-old Nigerian and law graduate from the University of Waterloo two hours west of Toronto, Canada. Popularly referred to as “E”, he is also a serial entrepreneur with two previous start-ups, Bookneto and Fora.co, an online pan-African platform that distributes tertiary and professional educational material.
Inc Magazine reports the story thus:
Johnson is the CEO of Andela, a start-up that is based partly in New York City, partly in Nairobi, Kenya, and partly in Lagos, Nigeria. Andela’s mission is to discover talented software engineers from all corners of Africa and give them the training necessary to program at a world-class level
Similarly, Forbes Magazine, in their article, used an image that depicts the common Western stereotype of Africa – the familiar benevolent white donor/giver with the African recipient smiling gratefully at the camera. Like other reports on the issue, it deliberately failed to acknowledge the name or image of the co-founder, Aboyeji, rather it focused on the company’s American CEO, Jeremy Johnson and some images of African students that are being trained.
Actually, Andela was incorporated in Lagos and New York, but its operations are predominantly in Lagos and, more recently, also in Nairobi. Nigerians were upset about the way Lagos was relegated to the background and even mentored after Nairobi in some reports.
Nigerians were shocked over Aboyeji’s omission in Andela’s global media announcement.
Aboyeji explained his blog the misunderstandings between Lagos and New York:
“Many people have asked why the parent company is based in the U.S. The truth is that while it is possible to build a global company from Nigeria, it is very very difficult. While I have faith that this will improve, Nigeria is still a notoriously difficult place to operate and invest in from a legal point of view. So, since it has always been more important to us to change the world than to make a political point, we incorporated Andela in the U.S.”
“It is important for my story to be told to inspire other Nigerian founders who can multiply this success. As Andela, we can always do a better job of highlighting our roots in Lagos, clarifying the role of our global hub in the U.S., and making sure our story is told correctly. I care very deeply about that, which is also why I am writing this. It is tough to make sure the press, across multiple countries, tells the entire story from our point of view in 500 words or 30-second clips.”
History of Andela
When Aboyeji cold-emailed Jeremy Johnson in 2012 to seek his thoughts on an educational start-up based in Lagos, his aggressive pursuit of Johnson’s advice and mentorship eventually culminated to a one-on-one meeting. “Within 10 minutes of meeting him, my response was ‘You know what, you actually are just an awesome human being. You clearly care about your mission and about making an impact through education. And sure I’m busy, but I’m happy to help with whatever I can’,” Johnson said.
Andela was later co-founded by a team including Aboyeji and chief executive Jeremy Johnson, although the original vision to create a training platform for coders as well as an outsourcing firm for the software developers they train – belong to Aboyeji.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, found the idea particularly attractive such that it became their first major investment through their Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
Aboyeji said he is sad to scale back his role with Andela but will retain an advisory role.
The birth of Flutterwave
Aboyeji, is now starting a new start-up by the name of Flutterwave, a digital payments infrastructure platform that will help in aggregating the various payment methods for merchants, banks, and money transfer operators across Africa.
Indeed, online payments has been one of the great hurdles for Africa’s promising e-commerce market and Aboyeji, 25, with his experience in education and technology training, believes solving the online payments headache for business transactions across the Africa could unlock billions of dollars in value.
“We see it as connecting Africa to the global economy,” Aboyeji told Quartz before announcing his plans publicly. Aboyeji argues that some of the world’s largest fast-growing digital companies like Uber and Airbnb have had to de-prioritize their expansion plans in Africa because of the difficulty of receiving payments in many countries across the continent. He found out, Based on his own experience with Andela, that one of the challenges was being able to ensure outsourced developers could easily receive payment in their countries without Andela incorporating in each country.
Aboyeji hopes Flutterwave will help fix these problems.
“Despite all the entrepreneurial spirit and expertise in Lagos, businesses still have trouble conducting transactions that are an afterthought in most of the world,” Aboyeji wrote in an email to his Andela team. “It’s a problem that is prohibitive to the future growth of the continent, and one that I felt I could no longer ignore. So I decided to do something about it.” He said.
Flutterwave has reportedly received undisclosed seed funding from Silicon Valley’s Y Combinator, South Africa’s CRE VC, and VCFintech, a Little Rock, Arkansas based accelerator.
Presently, the company has operations in San Francisco, Lagos, and Accra. The founding team has experience in working with pan-African banks as well as leading tech firms including PayPal and Google Wallet.
Presently, the Flutterwave platform is live in just Nigeria and Ghana
