What does it take to build the digital backbone of a continent? In this episode, Michael Kimathi sits down with Samuel Gikandi, the Co-founder and CEO of Africa's Talking, to explore the life journey of scaling one of Africa’s most critical tech infrastructure companies.
An MIT graduate and former Morgan Stanley engineer, Samuel returned to Kenya to solve a massive problem: making it easy for developers to access mobile infrastructure. Today, Africa's Talking provides the APIs for SMS, USSD, Voice, and Payments that power thousands of startups and enterprises across 20+ African markets.
We deep-dive into the "Builder" mindset:
- Scaling Pan-African Tech: The challenges and triumphs of expanding from Kenya to a continental powerhouse.
- Developer First: Why building for the Developer Community is the key to unlocking Africa’s digital economy.
- From Wall Street to Nairobi: Lessons learned at MIT and in global finance applied to the African context.
- The API Revolution: How simplified access to Telecom Infrastructure drives innovation in Fintech, Logistics, and Agtech.
🎙️ Featured Leaders
- Samuel Gikandi (Guest): CEO of Africa's Talking, MIT Alumnus, and Tech Visionary.
Developer Community as a Service, Community as a Service, and Software Engineering as a Service.
Communication Platform as a Service
Empowering Developers to build, co-create, network and scale.
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
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