Celebrating the Inaugural African Diaspora Impact & Innovation Awards
Dear Friends,
During the Third Annual African Diaspora Investment Symposium, we celebrated "Builders of Africa's Future" through an awards ceremony honoring the best-in-class, established African businesses and a presentation of early-stage businesses that highlight the future of Diasporan Africa innovation. A curated list of African Diaspora entrepreneurs showcased their startups to ADIS participants. Startups were selected based on the criteria of innovation, uniqueness, growth potential, and impact potential on the continent.
The ADIS platform provided a unique stage for the entrepreneurs to promote their venture, attract potential customers, and drum up investor and partner interest. We are pleased to announce the 2018 awardees of the inaugural African Diaspora Impact & Innovation Awards.
Special thanks goes to Twum Djin of Goodwater Capital and Marsha Wulff of LoftyInc for curating the session and the Miller Center for Entrepreneurship for mentoring the awardees.
The African Diaspora Network believes in action over words and has proven this over the past seven years by forming partnerships, building a network of networks, and fostering collaboration that has led to on-the-ground results. ADN has a first-mover advantage in that we are the first organization to bring together a network of Africa-focused entrepreneurs, investors, academics, nonprofit organizations and corporations. ADN’s tangible results have cemented it as a trusted partner that provides real value despite operating with a small team of volunteers and near-zero outside funding.
The African Diaspora Investment Symposium opened my eyes and gave me a different perspective about the future of Africa. I have always looked forward to do something positive in Africa but I did not know where to start as I have been gone for over ten years. Therefore, I walked into this meeting with lots of questions but my questions were completely addressed. The successful stories that were shared gave me more than enough information and most importantly, I came out motivated than ever. Without a doubt, this, could not have been possible without the extraordinary efforts of Almaz and her team. Thank you. Frank Bashumika, RN BSN,MPH (c)
Innovation & Impact Awards on Finance & Investment
Marsha Wulff
Founder & Managing Partner, LoftyInc Afropreneurs Fund
Marsha Wulff is capital raising for the Loftyinc Afropreneurs Fund, which she co-established with a distinguished Nigerian team. Having worked twenty years with African diaspora and impact investments, her background includes portfolio management, board governance, corporate communications and private equity investments.
Maya Horgan Famadou
Founder & Managing Partner, Ingressive Capital
Maya Horgan Famodu is a venture capital investor and entrepreneur. She founded Ingressive Capital, a $5 Million venture fund focused on early stage African tech, and Ingressive, a tech integration company that provides market entry services and tech research for corporates and investors, and operates their Africa strategy over time.
Builders of Africa's Future Awardees
Akin Jones Co-Founder & CEO, Aella Credit
Akin Jones held key investment banking roles in Africa & North America. Working with Technology/M&A Investment Banking Teams at Primera Africa, Wachovia Securities, BGL Investment Bank, SunTrust Robinson Humphrey and UBS.
Louison Mbombo
Co-Founder & President, SOLIDARIEDADDE NA MOKILI
Louison was born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and studied Entrepreneurship in Stiftung Entrepreneurship (Germany). He has been active in helping youth-led startups around the world. Mr. Louison Mbombo lives in Brazil where he works as Global Partnership Manager at the Afro-Brazilian Chamber of Commerce AFROCHAMBER
Belinda Ilenge Lofone
Co-Founder, SOLIDARIEDADDE NA MOKILI
Belinda was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo. She has over a decade of experience advising executives and business leaders in auditing, risk management, compliance, and corporate governance. Belinda earned her MBA from Dallas Baptist University and resides in Irving, Texas.
Wawira Njiru
Founder & Executive Director, Food for Education
Wawira founded Food for Education in 2012 while doing her Nutrition and food sciences degree at the University of South Australia. She has been recognized as a Spark* International Changemaker 2012, Transform Nutrition 'Nutrition champion' 2013 and a Hunger Free Ambassador.
Yasmin Kumi
Founder & Managing Director, Africa Foresight Group
Yasmin Kumi founded AFG in 2015 to follow her passion of fostering local economic value creation in Africa. She is a Ghanaian/German senior business consultant with extensive working experience in the consumer goods and financial services sector, the research of family business groups and agriculture in African markets.
Abolade Lawal (Bola) Co-Founder & CEO, ScholarX
Bola is a Social Entrepreneur who co-founded ScholarX due to his passion for human capital development in Africa. The ScholarX app was recently nominated by Apps Africa as Best App in West Africa. Prior to ScholarX, he worked as a Business Analyst with companies such as ConocoPhillips, Accenture and Shell.
Peter Kegode CEO, Nishati Koffee
Peter is an international agribusiness consultant with over 25 years of experience with Africa coffee value chain, coffee retail and institutional development initiatives. Peter has consulted for Coffee Research foundation, Kenya, coffee Board of Kenya, Kenya Coffee Producers Association, Kenya Cooperative Coffee Exporters Ltd, African Fine Coffee Association.
Curtis Vanderpuije Co-Founder & CEO, expressPay
Curtis is co-founder and CEO of expressPay, a leading fintech company in Ghana enabling real-time money transfer and seamless consumer – merchant payments. Curtis has a wealth of payments and management experience having spent several years at Visa Inc. and Bain & Company prior to starting expressPay.
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Ugwem Eneyo Co-Founder & CEO, Solstice Energy Solutions
Ugwem I. Eneyo is the co-founder and CEO of Solstice Energy Solutions, a start-up company specializing IoT and software to connect & intelligently manage distributed energy resources in emerging markets. Ms. Eneyo’s Nigerian heritage created a strong passion for addressing the challenges and opportunities across the African continent..
Dena Montague Co-Founder, Energie Rich
Dena Montague is the Co-Founder of ÉnergieRich a social enterprise working with engineers and entrepreneurs in Africa and the African Diaspora to develop sustainable, innovative clean energy solutions for low-income communities. ÉnergieRich was launched with Burkina Faso based co-founder, Boureima Kabre, who is a leader in advancing solar access for rural communities in West Africa.
A special thank you to Twum Djin of Goodwater Capital and Marsha Wulff of LoftyInc for curating the session and the Miller Center for Entrepreneurship for mentoring the awardees.
Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship, Santa Clara University
Khepri Biosciences and Khepri Innovations
African Business Angel Network
USAID
Chanzo Capital
Draper Dark Flow (DDF)
Afrobytes
African Technology Foundation
SpeedUp Africa
Silicon Valley Forum
The Black Chamber of Silicon Valley
BlessedCoffee
US Africa Diaspora Business Council
Musoni Kenya Ltd.
World Bank
Africa Foresight Group
CRE Venture Capital
Moya Technologies, Inc.
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Leverage Science, LLC
Fission Strategy
Sahel Leadership Program, The OASIS Initiative
ENVenture
Skoll Foundation
United Nations Development Programme
Stanford Angels & Entrepreneurs
PG Impact Investments
University of California, Davis
Overseas Private Investment Corporation
Groupe Ndoum
Ernst & Young
HOW TO JOIN THE NEW ONLINE ADN NETWORK
We are excited to announce the launch of this online networking platform crafted for community-building and knowledge-sharing. The ADN online network is distinct from other networking sites, in that we do not collect membership data for marketing purposes. As a registered member, you will have full access to a unique communication tool developed to enable productive relationships and expedite action.
