Viola Llewellyn: Building Sharia-compliant fintech products

Viola Llewellyn is the president and co-founder of Ovamba Solutions, a fintech startup working on financing products for the trade and commodities sectors in Africa and other developing markets. Ovamba works as an ecosystem that helps African businesses with short-term financing and enables sharia-compliant funding structures.

We discuss the origin story of Ovamba, how it got its first users and funding, and the meeting of its co-founders - Viola and Marvin Cole. Viola shares her valuable insights into the intricacies of financing the commodities market in Africa and building unique data sets that are based on inventory and asset movement in relation to people.

We also talk about who the customers of Ovamba are - from banks in Africa to international institutions looking to finance projects on the continent. Viola shares her plans for the future of Ovamba, including possible expansion to other regions like the Middle East or Latin America.

Viola and Greg speak on the importance of blockchain technology, tokenization, and cryptocurrency in streamlining the growth and movement of assets and commodities in emerging markets. Viola also shares her thoughts on the situation of black female entrepreneurs and on making the startup ecosystem more inclusive.