RSS Amplifier

Podcast

African Tech Roundup Podcast

The essential guide to Africa's technology, entrepreneurship, and innovation ecosystems. Since 2015, co-founders Andile Masuku and Musa Kalenga have convened the continent's most influential voices — from startup founders and investors to policymakers and tech leaders — delivering bold, pan-African insights with a global perspective. Whether you're building, investing, or leading in African tech, this is where the conversation happens.

africantechroundup.comSource feed ↗10 episodes

Live Last read · last published · next check

Latest episodes

Saves to your Listen queue, to pick up on another day or another device.

Nikolai Barnwell: Why PawaPay bet on mobile money over cards, and stayed out of the fintech boom

Episode overview: Nikolai Barnwell has been resident in Kenya since 2009, and he watched the African mobile money story arrive in real time. Fresh out of university, he joined the early Africa-focused fund 88mph as a programme manager, helping build what is now Nairobi Garage , and got a front-row seat to roughly 50 investments over five years. Most went nowhere. The ones that did, betting…

Play

Russell Southwood: An outsider's take on 25 years of Africa's digital story

Episode overview: Russell Southwood has been watching Africa's digital story unfold since 2000, when the number of people involved in the continent's internet could be counted in the hundreds. Armed with yellow pages and a willingness to show up unannounced at ISP offices across Kenya, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Uganda, he began documenting what he saw in a weekly email newsletter that would, over…

Play

Seyi Ebenezer of Payaza: Bookkeeping is the new black

Episode overview: Seyi Ebenezer didn't come to fintech from a hackathon or an accelerator. He came from KPMG's audit desks and Access Bank's corporate finance floors. These are environments where the numbers had to add up before anyone was allowed to dream out loud. That training shows in everything about how he has built Payaza , from claims of launching profitably with a single gas station…

Play

Natasha Blycha of Stirling & Rose / Nooriam / LexChip: Why AI without law is just code without conscience

Episode overview: Natasha Blycha's path into emerging technology law started in an unlikely place. As a gap-year volunteer teaching English and economics at a school outside Gweru, Zimbabwe, circa 2000, she was simultaneously working for a small rural law firm on constitutional questions — an experience she credits with shaping the questions that have driven her career since. In conversation with…

Play

Prince Nwadeyi of SAG Ventures: Building solutions corporates need but won't execute themselves

Episode overview: Prince Nwadeyi spent years providing market research that unlocked South Africa's R600 billion (~USD 34.4 billion) informal economy for blue-chip clients. The likes of Swiss Re, Liberty, NASPERS all wanted the insights. Few wanted the execution risk. In conversation with Andile Masuku, Nwadeyi explains why his holding company SAG Ventures stopped selling insights and started…

Play

April Long of Pyxis: Why serving bulk traders beats saving SMEs in Africa-China trade

Episode overview: April Long spent two years fighting reality. The co-founder and CEO of "Afro-Asia Cross-border payment infrastructure" startup Pyxis was so determined to serve Africa's small merchants - the "bottom of the pyramid" she'd read about in Harvard Business Review - that she nearly bankrupted her fintech ignoring the bulk traders actually driving Africa-China trade. In conversation…

Play

Andrew Hall of Paratus Namibia: Building Networks Serving Small Populations Across Vast Distances

Episode overview: Andrew Hall faces a unique challenge: building profitable telecommunications infrastructure across one of Africa's largest countries with one of its smallest populations. As managing director of Paratus Namibia, Hall oversees operations spanning vast distances where traditional business models struggle to pencil out. Andile Masuku invites Hall to share on the realities of…

Play

East Meets Africa: Bernard Laurendeau on Curating African Opportunity For Japanese Investors

Episode overview: Bernard Laurendeau has a mission: to stop African business leaders from asking for "patient capital." The Ethiopian-French management consultant, now operating from Tokyo, believes this standard pitch fundamentally misunderstands how global investment works and fails African markets. It's a contrarian stance from someone who's spent 15 years advising Fortune 50 clients and…

Play

World-class Design: Guidione Machava on Why 'African Designer' Is a Limiting Label

Episode overview: Guidione Machava has a confession: he's tired of being called an "African designer." The Mozambican product designer, now based in France and fresh from stints at Shopify and Paris-based 23point5, reckons that geographic qualifiers automatically strip away a third of your professional value before you've even started. It's a provocative stance from someone who's built his career…

Play

Strategy Diaries: Wabo Majavu on Balancing Commercial Success with Digital Inclusion

Episode overview: In this conversation, South African strategist Wabo Majavu, executive strategy and business operations leader at Africa Data Centres, unpacks how technical expertise at organisations like MTN and Intelsat laid the foundation for her distinctive approach to strategic leadership and digital activism. From building radar applications at the CSIR to optimising cellular networks…

Play