After more than a decade in medical aesthetics and more than 10,000 aesthetic procedures, Nigerian skincare expert Abby Bakare identified a problem beyond the treatment room: helping clients achieve results was only half the battle. The bigger challenge was helping them maintain those results at home.

For years, Abby Bakare had watched people walk into her Abuja clinic with concerns ranging from acne and hyperpigmentation to premature ageing, uneven texture and other skin conditions. She had built her expertise around helping them address those concerns, using medical aesthetics and increasingly sophisticated treatment options.

But there was a recurring problem.

A patient could leave the treatment room with visibly improved skin, yet maintaining that progress once she returned home was often more difficult.

The products available to her were not always effective. Some were too harsh. Others were not sufficiently suited to melanin-rich or sensitive skin. And without a consistent home-care routine, the results of professional treatment could be difficult to sustain.

For Abby, this was more than a skincare frustration. It was a gap in the market.

That realisation eventually led to the creation of Flawless Skin by Abby, a luxury skincare brand designed to bring the expertise and results of professional aesthetics into people’s everyday routines.

From finance to skin

Abby’s path into aesthetics was not an obvious one.

Before building her name in medical aesthetics, she began her professional career in accounting and finance. She studied at Clark Atlanta University, where she earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and subsequently worked as a financial analyst at British Petroleum.

It was during this period that her own search for solutions to her skin concerns began to change the direction of her career.

Her interest in skin health developed into deeper research, training and eventually a professional commitment to aesthetics. What began as a personal pursuit soon became the foundation of a business dedicated to helping others feel more confident in their skin.

Today, Abby Bakare is the founder and CEO of Flawless Aesthetic Center in Abuja, a medical aesthetics practice that has treated thousands of clients. The centre’s professional affiliations include membership of the American Med Spa Association (AmSpa), a US-based professional organisation serving medical spa professionals.

The centre’s current operations are built around a team of globally trained professionals, with the practice reporting more than 10,000 aesthetic procedures performed and nearly 200 advanced procedures each month.

The practice itself serves a diverse clientele, including men and women, with treatments tailored to individual skin concerns and goals. Its approach recognises that skin needs are not confined to one gender or one stage of life, but vary from person to person.

But the clinic did more than establish Abby as an aesthetics practitioner. It gave her something perhaps even more valuable: years of direct observation of what her clients actually needed.

Seeing the gap beyond the clinic

The idea behind Flawless Skin by Abby grew out of that experience.

Abby noticed that her patients often loved the results they achieved through professional treatments, but struggled to replicate the same level of care at home.

The distinction was important.

Professional treatments could begin the transformation, but daily skincare was what helped sustain it.

“Consistency at home determines long-term results,” is how the brand now describes the insight that shaped its creation.

This became the philosophy behind Flawless Skin by Abby. Rather than treating professional skincare and everyday skincare as separate experiences, Abby wanted to connect the two.

The result is a collection positioned around clinical expertise, science-backed formulations and luxury, with products designed to address common concerns including acne, hyperpigmentation, sensitive skin, hydration and the visible signs of aging.

Importantly, the brand is not built around a single skin type, gender or beauty concern. Its range is structured to support different skin needs, from beginners looking to establish a routine to consumers seeking more targeted solutions for concerns such as acne, hyperpigmentation, sensitivity, radiance and age-related changes.

Building a skincare line from years of clinical experience meant translating what Abby had learned in the treatment room into products people could use consistently at home.

To do this, she worked with top U.S. cosmetic chemists and laboratories to develop formulations informed by her experience treating patients. The brand describes its formulations as developed using dermatology-led principles and built around medically relevant active ingredients.

The collection was officially launched at a private dinner in Lagos in July 2025, bringing together beauty insiders, tastemakers and members of the media. The launch introduced a targeted range addressing four persistent concerns: acne, hyperpigmentation, early signs of ageing and sensitive skin.

The range includes products such as the Vitamin C + Ferulic Acid Serum, Pure Retinol Complex, Brightening Complex, Brightening SPF 30 Moisturizer and BPO 5% Lotion, alongside targeted collections for acne, hyperpigmentation, sensitive skin and anti-aging.

The brand’s wider collection is similarly organised around different skincare needs and levels of experience. From foundational routines such as Glow Start, Youth Start and Clear Start to more advanced options, the range allows consumers to build routines according to their individual concerns and skincare goals. Where appropriate, products can also be incorporated into the routines of teenagers and younger consumers, with age and individual skin needs taken into consideration.

The formulations are built around active ingredients such as salicylic acid, niacinamide, vitamin C, ferulic acid, retinol and botanical antioxidants, with the stated goal of addressing specific skin concerns while supporting the skin barrier.

That distinction is central to Abby’s approach.

Flawless Skin by Abby’s philosophy is not that people need an endless number of products. Rather, the brand positions skincare as something that should be intentional, consistent and effective.

“Flawless isn’t about perfection; it’s about confidence, care, and consistency,” Abby says.

More than another beauty brand

Launching another skincare line into an increasingly crowded beauty market is one thing. Building one around a genuine clinical insight is a different proposition.

Abby’s advantage is the years of direct contact with the people she hopes to serve.

Her work has exposed her to the realities of skin concerns beyond the polished before-and-after images often associated with the beauty industry. It has shown her what clients ask for, what treatments can achieve and, perhaps most importantly, what happens between appointments.

That experience is now informing a brand intended to become part of that space between professional treatments.

Flawless Skin by Abby describes itself as the bridge between clinical transformation and everyday care, allowing clients to continue supporting their skin after leaving the treatment room.

The proposition also comes at a time when African beauty entrepreneurs are increasingly building brands around locally relevant consumer needs, while competing on quality, formulation and experience.

For Abby, the opportunity is not simply to create another Nigerian skincare label. It is to use the knowledge accumulated through years of medical aesthetics to build a brand around the needs of the diverse people she has spent her career treating.

The ambition extends beyond Nigeria. At the July 2025 launch, the brand described its next focus as putting clinically sound, expertly formulated skincare into the hands of everyday consumers “across Africa and beyond.”

Building confidence through skincare

For Abby, the business ultimately extends beyond products.

Her work has always been connected to the relationship between skin and confidence. The brand’s founder story describes her belief that when people feel good in their skin, they show up differently in the world.

That philosophy gives the business a broader purpose.

Skincare becomes more than the pursuit of a particular complexion or the correction of a particular concern. It becomes an act of consistency and self-care: a way for people to become more intentional about their skin and, by extension, how they feel about themselves.

This is particularly significant in a market where conversations around beauty, aging, pigmentation and skin tone can be complicated by unrealistic standards and a proliferation of products promising quick results.

Abby’s response has been to build around expertise, education and consistency.

Her clinic provided the foundation. Her patients provided the insight. And Flawless Skin by Abby is the next expression of that experience.

The ambition now goes beyond helping one patient at a time.

It is about making effective, sophisticated skincare accessible to more women and establishing a brand capable of carrying African skincare needs into a much larger global conversation.

After more than a decade of working directly with skin, Abby is betting that the next chapter of her journey does not have to remain inside the treatment room.

The knowledge accumulated there can now travel home with her clients to their bathroom shelves, into their daily routines and, ultimately, into the way more people approach caring for their skin.

For Abby, that may be what “flawless” really means: not perfection, but the confidence that comes from understanding your skin, caring for it consistently and having products designed to support that journey.

Learn how Hadija Jabiri started a business that exports Tanzania’s agricultural produce to Europe and beyond. Our new book, How we made it in Africa II: Real stories of entrepreneurs turning opportunity into profit, is available here.

French entrepreneur Grégoire Schwebig is the founder of AfricaWorks, which operates co-working spaces in seven cities across six African countries. He spoke to How we made it in Africa editor-in-chief Jaco Maritz about his journey as an entrepreneur.

Topics discussed during the interview include:

• The trick to a successful co-working space

• How he started AfricaWorks

• How African markets differ when it comes to co-working

• The biggest surprises – things that turned out differently from what he expected

• Why he wants to open a co-working space in Guinea

Read more

PARTNER CONTENT

When Christopher Nash arrived in Zanzibar in 2021, he was not expecting to build a village. The visit was intended as time with family, not a business venture. But Kendwa had other plans for him, and he returned to London with an idea he could not set aside.

Five years later, he is building Liyongo, a 60-villa residential development on the Zanzibari coast.

On arrival, he experienced the fascination anyone would upon seeing Kendwa Beach for the first time: its white sand, turquoise water, and a landscape drawing growing international attention. Yet he also identified something conspicuously absent from that picture.

Beachfront resorts were charging $400 a night, often walled off from the village next door, while the community that made the place worth visiting saw almost none of that revenue. The two economies existed side by side without connection: guests received a polished experience largely disconnected from the place itself, and locals lived alongside a growing tourism industry without necessarily sharing in its benefits.

Nash wanted to reverse that dynamic, to build something in which visitors genuinely learned from the place they were visiting, and in which the local community benefited from the hospitality development, rather than existing at its margins.

The main challenge was trust.

The caution wasn’t unfamiliarity with Africa, as many of the people considering the project already had capital working across the continent. It was unfamiliarity with Zanzibar in particular: a semi-autonomous jurisdiction with its own land law, distinct from mainland Tanzania, and its own set of reference points that even experienced regional investors hadn’t yet had reason to learn.

Nash knew he needed to design a model around Zanzibar itself, rather than importing a template developed elsewhere and expecting Kendwa to conform to it. Instead of trying to convince people the investment was safe, he would build that assurance into the structure itself.

That became the foundation of Liyongo: individually titled ownership, professional management as a single operation, and a legal framework Zanzibar already recognises for this category of property.

A team with deep local perspective and years of experience in the market shaped every part of the project. The villas are built from local, sustainable materials, with a local contractor already engaged, and the ownership and investment model has been crafted and adapted to the market by advisors who have worked in the area for decades.

Zanzibar’s route to foreign property ownership is not freehold land, but long-term leasehold title. Under the Condominium Act, this can be structured as a 99-year lease through renewable 33-year terms. Liyongo follows that framework: each villa is individually titled to its owner, rather than bundled into a fund or company share.

From there, professional management takes over. Each villa enters a single rental pool on handover and is operated centrally, rather than left to 60 individual owners managing bookings independently from abroad. Revenue is distributed to owners quarterly, with operations overseen by a team with decades of regional experience.

In that sense, the structure guarantees a title investors actually hold, an operation professionals actually run, and a revenue mechanism that pays out on a fixed schedule rather than on individual initiative.

However, that was only half of the mission: Liyongo needed to be made for Kendwa, with Kendwa.

Success for the investor and success for the community could not be treated as competing claims on the same capital. They needed to be the same outcome, built into the same business.

Liyongo built its relationship with the village’s Sheha – its local leader – before drawing up the architecture, using that partnership to shape its community initiatives from the outset. The result: a commitment to provide freshwater wells, school equipment and educational support for local teachers, training and employment pathways for Zanzibaris, community clean-up initiatives, and a platform for local artisans and producers to sell their own work. The project aims to build each of these solutions into the development itself, not add them alongside it as a separate goodwill programme.

Nash states the operating principle plainly: “We’re not there to enforce solutions. We’re just there to serve the local community as best we can with what they suggest.”

Liyongo is currently in what the team refers to as the Founder’s Release, with pricing finalised and published across all five villa typologies, the contractor engaged, and site preparation underway ahead of a targeted handover in Autumn 2028.

The opportunity, in Nash’s assessment, extends beyond the projected returns, though the underlying figures are sound: the team’s conservative modelling puts average annual returns at 13 to 14 percent over five years, with payback within seven and a half years, based on assumptions deliberately left unstretched.

In a market where investors, whether based on the continent or beyond it, are still determining how – and how confidently – to participate in Zanzibar’s growth, Nash’s proposition is direct: the investment succeeds when the place itself succeeds.

He believes it can be done. The task was proving it through the structure, not merely the pitch.

Herve Tuyishime started his own business with a simple ambition: to build a better life for himself and his family. A few years later, that same ambition cost them their home.

He had launched Paniel Meat Processing (PMP), a pork sausage venture based in Rwanda, with a bank loan. However, Tuyishime entered the industry with no experience, leaving him and his team to learn on the job. This led to costly mistakes that slowed the business down and made meeting the loan repayments a constant struggle.

Eventually, the bank moved in to recover its money. The collateral Tuyishime had offered was his family home, the place they all lived. “It was almost the only asset we had in the country,” he says. The loss was devastating. In 2016, the family packed up and moved to a rented property elsewhere in the capital, Kigali. His mother and siblings were upset, yet they continued to support him.

Despite the setback, Tuyishime pressed on. Once the loan was off the books – albeit at the cost of losing the house – the business began to stabilise and slowly grow. Today, PMP is one of Rwanda’s largest meat producers, and Tuyishime has also built a transport and logistics company that has become even larger than his original venture.

In 2022, the family moved into a new home, reclaiming what was lost.

At the end of 2024, PMP went public on the Stock Exchange of Mauritius.

Read about his remarkable entrepreneurship journey in our new book How we made it in Africa II: books.howwemadeitinafrica.com/

Partner content: Africa’s Business Heroes

From more than 24,000 applications across all 54 African countries, ten founders have emerged as the 2026 Africa’s Business Heroes Top 10.

A defining moment in Nairobi

Following two days of live Semi-Final pitches in Nairobi on 21–22 August, the finalists were selected from a competitive Top 20 by a distinguished judging panel. They were assessed on business strength, leadership, innovation, impact, growth potential and ability to scale.

The Top 10 represent Egypt, Kenya, Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Benin and Côte d’Ivoire, with businesses spanning agriculture, healthcare, manufacturing, enterprise technology, climate technology and education.

A snapshot of Africa’s builders

• Essential sectors lead. Agriculture and healthcare each account for 30% of the cohort.

• Women are strongly represented. Women entrepreneurs make up 40% of the Top 10.

• A new generation is scaling. The average founder age is 35 years.

• Solutions are rooted in local realities. Many finalists are building close to the communities and markets they serve.

Meet the 2026 Africa’s Business Heroes Top 10

These ten entrepreneurs will represent the breadth, ambition and practical problem-solving shaping Africa’s business landscape at the Grand Finale.

1. Salma Tammam – REME-D Company for Laboratory Equipment and Chemicals (Egypt · Healthcare)

2. Ahmed Shaaban – Simplex for Software Development and Industrial Solutions (Egypt · Manufacturing)

3. Kelvin Umechukwu – Bumpa (Nigeria · Enterprise)

4. Naom Monari – Bena Care Limited (Kenya · HealthTech)

5. Louisa Gathecha – Bottle Logistics East Africa Ltd (Kenya · Industrial)

6. Samson Fentaye – Thur Biotech Manufacturing Plc (Ethiopia · Agritech)

7. Jess Roussos – BluLever Education Pty Ltd (South Africa · EdTech)

8. Joseph Paul – Dawa Mkononi (Tanzania · HealthTech)

9. Gildas Zodome – BIO PHYTO (Benin · Agritech)

10. Appessika Adanin Laurent Koffi – GREEN AGRO VALLEY CI (Côte d’Ivoire · Agritech)

“I started applying to ABH four years ago, and this is the first time I have made it past the application stage. Going through the financials section of the ABH application pushed me to take a much deeper look at the model, and today, it reflects not only my conviction in the business, but also its potential for growth.

— Naom Monari, Founder and CEO, Bena Care | ABH 2026 Top 10 Finalist

Next stop: Kigali

1–2 December 2026 · Kigali, Rwanda · US$1.5 million in grant funding

The Top 10 will compete at the 2026 ABH Grand Finale for their share of US$1.5 million in grant funding. The Grand Prize winner will receive US$300,000, followed by US$250,000 for the first runner-up and US$150,000 for the second runner-up. Each of the remaining seven finalists will receive US$100,000.

An additional US$100,000 will support global immersion training. Beyond the grants, finalists gain access to mentorship, training, global exposure and the wider ABH Community of entrepreneurs, investors, business leaders and mentors.

Why this cohort matters

The 2026 Top 10 show what African entrepreneurship looks like when commercial ambition is closely connected to everyday challenges. Their businesses are improving food systems, expanding access to healthcare, strengthening manufacturing, building digital infrastructure and creating practical pathways to jobs and growth.

africabusinessheroes.org

Alan, the French health insurance company with footballer Kylian Mbappé as an investor, today announced the completion of its acquisition of Tanel, a Senegal-based digital health company founded in 2021 by Mouhamed Ndoye and Makhtar Diop.

The transaction also provides an exit for Tanel’s founders and investors, including Ventures Platform and AAIC Investment.

Tanel was launched in 2021 to address the challenge of managing employee health coverage through fragmented, largely paper-based systems. Today, Tanel provides businesses with digital tools to manage employee health coverage while giving employees and individuals simpler access to care and greater visibility over their coverage. Operating across Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire, the company serves approximately 70,000 members across more than 400 companies and connects users to a network of over 1,200 pharmacies and healthcare providers.

Ventures Platform spoke with Ndoye and Diop about the five-year journey that brought Tanel to this point. They reflect on distinguishing market signals from noise, staying anchored to their mission as the company evolved, recognising when joining forces with a larger company could accelerate that mission, and what building for longevity looks like in a market with no established playbook.

‍You chose to build Tanel from Senegal, in a sector as complex as healthcare and across markets that don’t always receive the same attention as Anglophone Africa. How did being close to the market shape your understanding of the problems worth solving, and influence the way you chose to build for them?

Being close to the market was critical to our success, but not in the way people might expect. Yes, we learned from what was happening in Anglophone Africa: Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, where the health tech ecosystem is more mature. But proximity to Senegal taught us something more valuable: the specific constraints of Francophone African markets.

We saw firsthand why certain solutions worked elsewhere and failed here. We understood that trust wasn’t built through marketing, but through relationships. We learned that digital payment adoption was slower, so we had to design differently. We saw that informal employment was the norm, not the exception, which shaped how we thought about employee benefits from day one.

But here’s what being on the ground really gave us: humility. We couldn’t pretend to know the market from a spreadsheet or a quarterly visit. We had to sit in hot offices with broken fans and actually understand what pharmacy owners needed, what employers faced, what patients could afford. That closeness forced us to build something real, not something theoretical.

‍Tanel evolved significantly from where it began. Looking back, how did you distinguish between a signal that the market was asking you to change and the noise that every young company encounters?

We tried five different business models: primary care, prescription delivery, pharmacy software, non-pharmaceutical distribution, and finally employee health benefits. Each one felt like the answer at the time. Each one failed in ways that taught us something crucial.

The signal versus noise distinction came down to one thing: unit economics. When our pharmacy software business wasn’t working, we had data. When prescription delivery didn’t scale, the numbers told us why. We refused to ignore the math, even when the story was compelling.

What we truly refused to compromise on was the mission itself: making healthcare access simple and affordable in Africa. We could change the product, the model, the customer. But we couldn’t compromise on unit economics because that determined whether the solution was actually scalable or just a subsidy masquerading as a business.

The breakthrough came when we realised: employers don’t just need health coverage, they need partners who keep their employees and their families healthy.

Every pivot was painful, but each one was non-negotiable. We either changed or we died.

‍What did building Tanel teach you about creating infrastructure in markets where the systems around you are still being built?

We saw it as a blank canvas, which sounds romantic until you realise there are no guardrails. No playbook. No precedent.

The reason certain healthcare opportunities stay untouched in emerging markets isn’t because they’re impossible. It’s because they require patience, capital, and focus – three things most startups don’t have. A pharmacy software company can fail in 18 months and pivot. Building healthcare infrastructure can take five years before you see traction.

What we learned the hard way is that you can’t optimise for speed in healthcare. You have to optimise for trust. That meant:

• Regulators in Senegal had never seen a company like us. We had to educate them, not fight them.

• Employers thought health insurance was a commodity. We had to show them it could be strategic.

• Patients had been burned before. We had to consistently deliver, not just promise.

We were grateful for patient investors and customers who let us build the core product without demanding revenue targets every quarter. That patience created space for relationships to form, trust to build, and systems to evolve.

The key insight: you’re not just building a company, you’re building infrastructure that the market didn’t know it needed.

‍Alan first invested in Tanel in 2024. As the relationship developed, when did you begin to see that joining forces could accelerate what you were building? What made Alan the right partner, and what did you want to preserve as you considered this next chapter?

We didn’t consciously think “we’re building for acquisition”. That would have been a mistake. We were building to solve a problem. But by 2023, something shifted.

Alan invested in us during our seed round in 2024 and every conversation reinforced the same insight: Alan had evolved from being a traditional health insurer into something more interesting. A health prevention company. That aligned perfectly with what we were trying to do.

What changed in our thinking: we realised we didn’t need to do everything ourselves. Alan had distribution, capital, regulatory relationships, and technology infrastructure. What they needed was our understanding of African markets and our proven ability to build health insurance products that work in emerging markets.

This realisation changed which problems we focused on. We doubled down on product-market fit in Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire. We didn’t try to expand to 15 countries simultaneously. We didn’t try to build every possible health service. We focused.

What didn’t change: our commitment to unit economics, to our mission, and to understanding our customer deeply. Those weren’t compromises we made for Alan. Those were the foundation of why Alan was interested in the first place.

The decision to partner with Alan wasn’t about giving up control. It was about recognising that building healthcare infrastructure at scale requires resources and networks that a startup, however great, can’t build alone.

Now that Tanel is entering a new chapter with Alan, what do you understand about building for longevity that you didn’t understand when you started, and what would you tell an African founder who wants to build something that can eventually create options beyond a fundraising round?

When we started Tanel, we thought longevity was about having the best idea and executing it perfectly. We learned it’s about something more fundamental: refusing to die and staying curious.

In our first five years, we faced moments where Tanel probably should have shut down. The pharmacy software business wasn’t working. Distribution was hard. Fundraising was exhausting. But we kept going. Not because we were stubborn, but because every failure taught us something.

We’d tell African founders three things:

First: Patience compounds more than most people realise. People overestimate what they can build in one year and underestimate what they can build in ten years. We spent three years on business models that didn’t work. Those years felt like failure. But they created the foundation for the models that did.

Second: Never let your company die. There’s a difference between a company that’s struggling and a company that’s dead. A struggling company can pivot, adapt, and find traction. A dead company can’t. We chose to stay alive even when we didn’t know what we were doing.

Third: Send monthly investor updates. As a founder, you need to have something keeping you accountable and we found that the monthly investor update was what we needed to fulfil that need while also giving us an opportunity to write about the very business we were building.

Our integration with Alan is still early, but long-term building requires three things: patience (don’t rush), focus (don’t try to do everything), and resources (you need capital and talent). For African founders, the addition is this: stay curious. When we started, we genuinely didn’t know what we were doing. We still don’t. But that curiosity, that willingness to learn, to talk to customers, to let the market teach us, that’s what kept us building.

Build something real. It might take longer than you expect. But it creates options.

This interview was first published by Ventures Platform.

American investor Finn Walker is the managing partner of Heron Partners, which invests in companies listed on African stock exchanges.

One of the key reasons Walker is bullish on Africa is the continent’s young and fast-growing population. Africa’s population is projected to reach around 2.5 billion by 2050, up from roughly 1.6 billion today – meaning more than a quarter of humanity will be African. It is also a young continent. The number of working-age people (20 to 64 years) is set to nearly double, from 883 million in 2024 to 1.6 billion in 2050.

“We are going to see a very significant increase in the number of people living in Africa … while the rest of the developed world is figuring out how to manage a rapidly aging population,” Walker says.

Heron Partners also seeks to capitalise on misperceptions about the continent. “The world not only inaccurately perceives Africa, but it’s a negative inaccurate perception, which oftentimes leads to persistent mispricings across markets,” he says.

He points, for instance, to the risk of nationalisation – a fear commonly cited by investors. Yet Walker sees no actual trend of listed companies being nationalised in sub-Saharan Africa.

“All investing carries risk, but in Africa you’re disproportionately compensated for risk because of that misperception,” he notes.

Walker doesn’t regard his portfolio as more vulnerable than markets like the US.

“A lot of investors in the US stock market are taking pretty massive risks that AI ends up being massively world-changing and everything we hope it to be – which it may be. But on the off chance that it isn’t, I don’t necessarily see how the stock market today can keep up with the valuations we’re seeing. One analogy I like to use is that for Heron’s portfolio to see a 40% drawdown, we would need simultaneous total-loss events across multiple countries. We would need countries of 150 million people to wake up one morning and stop buying soft drinks and beer and using their mobile phones. For the United States to see a 40% drawdown, all we need to do is have global stocks revert to their long-term valuation averages.”

Read/watch our full interview with Finn Walker: The 23-year-old American running an Africa-focused investment firm

Our new book, How we made it in Africa II: Real stories of entrepreneurs turning opportunity into profit, is available here. The book was recently shortlisted for the Business Council for Africa (BCA) African Business Book of the Year Awards 2026.

At just 23, American Finn Walker is already running his own investment firm, Heron Partners, which invests in companies listed on African stock exchanges. Jaco Maritz, editor-in-chief of How we made it in Africa, spoke to Walker to find out more.

Topics discussed during the interview include:

• What attracted him to African equities

• Capitalising on misperceptions about the continent

• Why the fund holds a position in Zimbabwe

• How he picks his investments

• Are African stocks riskier than the US market?

Read more

In a recent interview with How we made it in Africa, Ibrahim Sagna, executive chairman of investment firm Silverbacks Holdings, revealed the five things he looks for when investing in a company.

1. Second-time founders. The firm has had the most success with people who are not running their first company. “We haven’t been lucky ever with first-time founders,” Sagna says.

2. Growth. It looks for companies posting year-on-year growth of at least 60% for three years.

3. Customers turned investors. Silverbacks sees it as an important signal when a company’s clients take a stake in it. Moove is one example. A vehicle supply partner for Uber since its early days, it saw Uber come in as a shareholder in 2024 as part of a $100 million funding round. At OmniRetail, food giant Flour Mills of Nigeria made the same shift from customer to investor.

4. Hard currency earnings. Silverbacks is wary of taking on too much exposure to African currencies. For foreign investors, who typically measure returns in US dollars, a rapid depreciation of the kind seen in Egypt, Nigeria and Ghana can wipe out investment gains. The firm therefore looks for companies that collect at least 30% of their income in hard currency.

5. Global ambitions. Finally, it wants founders who have stated an intention to take their companies worldwide.

We highlight five entrepreneurs building businesses in West Africa across sectors ranging from retail and footwear manufacturing to fitness.

1. Ghana: From side hustle to 16 stores – a retail entrepreneur’s story

In 2012, Charles Antwi-Boahen was scraping by as a commission-only salesman at an air-conditioning company in Accra, often struggling to cover his own transport costs. Noticing that customers kept asking for split air conditioners – a product his employer didn’t sell – he cut a referral deal with local appliance distributor Electroland. That side hustle became Kab-Fam, an electronics and home appliance retailer that today operates 16 stores across Ghana. Read the full story >>

2. The story of a Made-in-Nigeria footwear company

Yinka Atunde founded Nigerian footwear manufacturer Yikodeen in 2016, after travelling to Italy and China to learn the craft of shoemaking. Yikodeen began by making fashion shoes but has since carved out a niche in industrial safety boots and footwear for the security services. Read the full story >>

3. The man behind Nigeria’s answer to the UFC – meet ‘Dana Black’

Maxwell Kalu is the founder of African Warriors Fighting Championship (AWFC), a business he pitches as “Africa’s UFC” – but rooted in something uniquely Nigerian. AWFC organises and promotes Dambe, a centuries-old boxing style from northern Nigeria. Kalu wants to turn the traditional sport into a global business. Read the full story >>

4. Exporting cashew nuts from West Africa to Europe: CEO shares her story

Salma Seetaroo is the CEO and co-founder of Cashew Coast, a cashew nut processor and exporter based in Côte d’Ivoire. She spoke to How we made it in Africa about how she built the business, along with the global trends and opportunities driving demand for the lucrative nut. Read the full story >>

5. Nigeria: Businessman seizes opportunity in fitness industry

When Foluso Ogunwale launched iFitness in Nigeria in 2015, banks and other financiers were sceptical, doubting the market was big enough to support the venture. He pushed past that scepticism and the financing challenges to build iFitness into a chain of gyms across Nigeria, filling a gap for affordable, conveniently located fitness centres. Read the full story >>

Partner Content: Africa’s Business Heroes

The Africa’s Business Heroes (ABH) Prize Competition, a philanthropic initiative of Alibaba Philanthropy, has announced the 20 entrepreneurs who will advance to its 2026 Semi-Final, taking place in Nairobi, Kenya, on 21–22 August.

The Top 20 were selected from an expanded Top 100 cohort drawn from more than 24,000 applications across all 54 African countries. Candidates advanced through three-person judging-panel interviews that assessed leadership, innovation, impact, scalability and commercial strength. The process was reinforced by on-the-ground visits to every company advancing to the Semi-Final and comprehensive due diligence conducted by PlusVC, allowing ABH to test the written applications against the businesses, teams and communities behind them. The selected 20 entrepreneurs will now compete for 10 places in the ABH semi-final.

Together, the ABH 2026 Top 20 cohort represents 12 African countries and 11 sectors, with 8 women entrepreneurs accounting for 40% of the cohort. Collectively, their businesses generated approximately US$85 million in 2025 and span diverse sectors including agriculture and agritech, healthcare, manufacturing, climate technology, financial services, education, energy, and technology.

Site visits reveal the people and purpose behind the businesses

Site visits are central to ABH’s approach because they reveal what even a strong application or pitch can miss: whether a founder has earned trust, whether a team can execute under pressure, and whether demand is real. That context matters in African markets, where sophisticated businesses are often underestimated because their strengths are not always visible through conventional investment filters. By combining interviews and due diligence with on-the-ground observation, ABH does more than identify compelling storytellers; it surfaces entrepreneurs with the operational depth, community legitimacy and resilience to build lasting enterprises. The platform then helps close the gap between proven local capability and the capital, networks and visibility required to scale it.

Building global connections through Hangzhou, China

The second edition of ABH’s Hangzhou learning and market-access trip will take place in China from 14-18 September, extending the program’s support well beyond the competition stage. Approximately 40 participants from more than 10 African countries are expected to join, including primarily 2024 and 2025 Top 10 Heroes, alongside other alumni, selected entrepreneurs, judges and participants from the Alibaba Digital Lion program. The trip reflects a central part of ABH’s value: giving entrepreneurs the opportunity to step outside their immediate operating environments, learn from a leading technology and commerce ecosystem, exchange ideas with peers and return home with new inspiration, practical knowledge and a broader sense of what their businesses can become.

A return to Nairobi

The 2026 Semi-Final marks ABH’s return to Nairobi, the city that hosted the program’s very first Semi-Final. The return carries both symbolic and practical significance. Nairobi has developed into one of Africa’s most dynamic centers for technology, entrepreneurship and investment, bringing together ambitious founders, established businesses, universities, innovation hubs, development institutions and a growing community of local and international investors.

This year’s event will welcome a larger investor audience, giving participating entrepreneurs more opportunities to engage directly with funders and strategic partners from across Africa and beyond. Their presence reflects a broader ambition for the Semi-Final: to serve not only as a competition, but also as a marketplace for ideas, relationships and capital through which investable African businesses can be discovered, understood and supported.

Join Africa’s leading entrepreneurs, investors and ecosystem builders in Nairobi for two days of live pitches, insights and connection. Register to attend the 2026 ABH Semi-Final.

Experienced judges bring investor, operator and alumni perspectives

The Top 20 will present before a distinguished judging panel:

• Kome Oruade-Etim, Global Program Manager for Acumen Angels and former West Africa Lead for Acumen Academy, brings extensive experience supporting purpose-driven leaders and early-stage enterprises addressing complex social challenges.

• Wandia Gichuru, Co-founder and CEO of Vivo Fashion Group, brings the perspective of an entrepreneur who has built and scaled one of East Africa’s most recognizable fashion businesses.

• Thomas Njeru, Co-founder and CEO of Pula Advisors and a 2023 ABH Top Three finalist, returns as a judge. Having stood on the ABH stage as a finalist, he understands the entrepreneurial journey, the pressure of the competition, and the qualities required to translate a compelling vision into a scalable enterprise.

• Jason Pau, Executive Director (International) at the Jack Ma Foundation, who co-founded and has actively led the ABH program for the last 7 years.

Meet the 2026 Top 20 Heroes

1. Farah Emara – FreshSource (Egypt) – AgriTech

2. Nour El-Assal – Tagaddod (Egypt) – Renewable Energy

3. Salma Tammam – REME-D (Egypt) – Healthcare

4. Ahmed Shaaban – Simplex (Egypt) – Manufacturing

5. Affiong Williams – Reelfruit (Nigeria) – Manufacturing

6. Kelvin Umechukwu – Bumpa (Nigeria) – Enterprise / SaaS

7. Ikechukwu Anoke – Zuri Health Ltd (Kenya) – HealthTech

8. Naom Monari – Bena Care Limited (Kenya) – HealthTech

9. Joseph Mungai – AceleAfrica Limited (Kenya) – Energy

10. Louisa Gathecha – Bottle Logistics East Africa Ltd (Kenya) – Industrial (ClimateTech)

11. Meriem Benabad – Z.6 or Z.SYS INC (Morocco) – Retail (FMCG) – Marketplace

12. Nidal Tafah – MIRRIAH (Morocco) – AgriTech

13. Samson Fentaye – Thur Biotech Manufacturing Plc (Ethiopia) – AgriTech

14. Jess Roussos – BluLever Education Pty Ltd (South Africa) – EdTech

15. David Kamugundu – eFiche Ltd (Rwanda) – HealthTech

16. Joseph Paul – Dawa Mkononi (Tanzania) – HealthTech

17. Gildas Zodome – Bio Phyto (Benin) – Agritech

18. Appessika Adanin Laurent Koffi – Green Agro Valley (Côte d’Ivoire) – Agritech

19. Hagasata Rakotoson – Solidis S.A (Madagascar) – FinTech

20. Rodney Kofi Kyei – Crux Global Limited (Ghana) – Media and Entertainment

Learn how Kenyan entrepreneurs Leonard and Emily Mcharo achieved financial freedom by their forties, in our new book How we made it in Africa II. The paperback and ebook versions are available here.

Swahili Honey is the retail brand of Central Park Bees, a Tanzanian business based in Dodoma that aggregates, processes and sells honey sourced from a network of rural smallholder beekeepers. How we made it in Africa editor-in-chief Jaco Maritz spoke to co-founder and CFO Christopher Kadendula to find out more.

Topics discussed during the interview include:

• The basics of beekeeping

• How the business was started

• Finding international clients

• Entrepreneurship lessons learnt

• Agribusiness opportunities in Tanzania and beyond

Read more

Interview with Wandia Gichuru
CO-FOUNDER & CEO, VIVO FASHION GROUP

Lives in: Nairobi

“I don’t come from a fashion background, so I tend to approach things purely from a business perspective,” says Wandia Gichuru, founder and CEO of Vivo Fashion Group, a Kenyan clothing manufacturer and retailer.

“We try to focus on what the market wants. We work backwards – starting from a price point we think will work and then calculate whether we can produce the garment within that price,” she explains.

Vivo currently operates twenty-nine stores across Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda, and also owns the e-commerce marketplace ShopZetu. While the company aims to cater for women of all ages, Gichuru says the average Vivo customer is in her early forties.

She notes that over 90% of clothing available in East Africa is imported, meaning much of it is not designed with local consumers in mind. Vivo’s collections, by contrast, are created specifically for African women – in terms of size, fit and style preferences. Gichuru says this involves “understanding what women here feel good wearing – which parts of their body they’re happy to show off, which ones they are not – what colours they feel good in”.

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Entrepreneur Seun Rasheed is the founder of SOUK Farms, which supplies Rwandan-grown produce – including avocados, chillies and beans – to supermarkets in Europe and the Middle East. The company sources its produce both from its own farms and from about 2,000 smallholder farmers in Rwanda.

Of Rwanda’s 10 largest agricultural exporters when SOUK Farms was founded in 2019, only four are still operating, according to Rasheed – evidence of how difficult the industry can be.

Rasheed describes the business as highly cash-intensive, both in terms of infrastructure and working capital. Customers typically pay between 30 and 90 days after receiving their orders, but most of the company’s expenses must be settled much sooner.

“You can’t tell a smallholder farmer, ‘Wait for 30 days before you get paid,’” he says. Farmers generally expect payment the day after their produce is collected. Airlines typically require payment upfront or within seven days, while packaging suppliers are paid in advance and farm workers at the end of each week.

This leaves SOUK Farms carrying most of its costs well before the corresponding revenue arrives.

The trade-off between wholesale and retail

Wholesaling has relatively low barriers to entry. “You can start exporting to the Middle East today without any major certifications, as an example,” he says.

However, exporters often have limited power in the wholesale market. A buyer may reject a shipment on quality grounds and refuse payment, while sudden price declines can force suppliers to accept less than the agreed amount.

“When wholesale prices crash, your client will come back to you and say, ‘Sorry, I can’t pay the agreed price … I can only pay this much – take it or leave it,’” Rasheed explains. “That’s why you see a huge turnover of exporters because all it takes is to lose out on one big shipment and your business is bankrupt.”

Although SOUK Farms began by selling through wholesalers, the goal was always to supply retailers abroad directly. The vast majority of its sales now go to supermarket chains in Europe and the Middle East, including Morrisons and Co-op in the UK and Edeka in Germany.

Retailers offer better margins and are more predictable counterparties. Securing them as customers, however, takes considerably longer and comes with more demanding requirements. Rasheed puts the timeframe at “about two to three years between initial contact with the retailer to actually getting your product on the shelves”.

Part of the reason is that retailers conduct more extensive compliance checks and verification than wholesalers. Suppliers must also obtain numerous certifications, which are expensive to maintain. Rasheed says SOUK Farms spends more than $50,000 a year on certifications.

Watch/read our full in-depth interview with Seun Rasheed: Nigerian creates business exporting avocados and chillies from Rwanda to European supermarkets

Richard Okello, co-founder of African investment firm Sango Capital, sees strong potential across a variety of sectors.

Okello is particularly keen on African retail. “The transformation from unorganised retail to organised retail is underway,” he notes.

One of Sango’s standout investments has been Sundry Markets, the parent company of Marketsquare, a Nigerian supermarket chain founded by entrepreneur Ebele Enunwa. (Our first book tells the in-depth story of how Enunwa built his business. It is available here).

Despite the steady rise of air-conditioned malls and modern grocery chains, roughly 90% of retail transactions in Nigeria still flow through informal channels – a vibrant ecosystem of roadside stalls, open-air markets, and hawkers weaving through gridlocked traffic.

Yet, as Okello notes, a growing number of Nigerians increasingly prefer the convenience of organised retail over haggling at informal markets. Anticipating that shift paid off: Sango partially exited its stake in Sundry Markets a few years ago, securing what Okello describes as a “very high” dollar multiple on the investment.

He additionally sees significant upside in fast food, an industry propelled by rapid urbanisation.

Private healthcare presents another promising avenue, from pharmacies to clinics dealing with conditions like diabetes and high blood pressure. “As African wealth rises, those diseases move in and you have to have service providers for them,” he explains.

Okello is also upbeat about the technology sector across both early and growth stages. He points to platforms addressing online education, digital payments, and the onboarding of unbanked small traders into the formal financial system as attractive areas.

Read/watch our full interview with Richard Okello: How to build a $1bn African investment firm

Five entrepreneurs tapping into Africa's agribusiness potential, from farming chickens in Rwanda and growing moringa in Uganda to exporting dried hibiscus flowers from Nigeria.

1. Nigerian creates business exporting avocados and chillies from Rwanda to European supermarkets

Nigerian-born Seun Rasheed was working for oil giant Shell in Qatar when a holiday to Rwanda set him on a different path. Seven years later, his company SOUK Farms supplies Rwandan-grown avocados, chillies and beans to supermarkets in Europe and the Middle East. Read more

2. Tearing up the business plan to build Rwanda’s largest chicken farm

When Shumei Lam first visited Rwanda in 2011, chicken was considered a luxury that most Rwandans could only afford on special occasions. Read more

3. Building an agribusiness venture in Africa – The tough road to success

Teddy Ruge runs a moringa-growing and processing business in Uganda – but his journey has been anything but smooth, navigating halted contracts, geopolitical fallout, and other unexpected challenges. Read more

4. Malawi: Entrepreneur unlocks agribusiness opportunities

Ziweto Enterprises started with a chain of agrovet stores – essentially pharmacies for livestock – and has since expanded into animal feed production, with plans to enter the poultry sector. Read more

5. Businessman turns Nigerian superfood into a global export business

Timi Oke is the co-founder and CEO of AgroEknor, a company exporting dried hibiscus flowers grown in Nigeria to global markets. Read more

Learn how Kenyan entrepreneurs Leonard and Emily Mcharo achieved financial freedom by their forties, in our new book How we made it in Africa II. The paperback and ebook versions are available here.

Ibrahim Sagna spent more than two decades in finance, including at the African Export-Import Bank and the Africa Finance Corporation, before co-founding Silverbacks Holdings, a firm that invests in technology, entertainment, sport and the creative industries. How we made it in Africa editor-in-chief Jaco Maritz spoke to Sagna about the firm’s origins and how it picks its investments.

Topics discussed during the interview include:

• The backstory to the founding of Silverbacks

• Why it doesn’t directly invest in early-stage companies

• What it looks for in an investment

• How it decides when to exit

• Why Sagna hosts his own podcast

• Whether ordinary people should invest in startups

Read more

For many people, Somalia is synonymous with war and political instability. However, Jon Bellish, the executive director of Shuraako Capital – a firm that finances Somali companies says the country offers several business opportunities. In a recent interview with How we made it in Africa, he identified solar energy, fishing, and the local manufacturing of imported consumer goods as three promising areas for investment.

According to Bellish, solar energy is one of the region’s biggest investment opportunities. “Somalis pay more for electricity than anybody in the world,” he says. “They pay between 70 cents and one dollar per kilowatt hour, which is like 10 times what we pay in the United States.”

He also points to fishing as a promising sector. Somalia has the longest coastline in mainland Africa, but its waters remain underfished. Bellish attributes this to insecurity and fragmented governance, which have affected fishing licensing.

“There is an opportunity for companies to come in and to process fish, particularly tuna, onshore. Or even better, to catch it, flash freeze it, kind of sashimi grade, and export to East Asia and Europe,” he says. “We need to up our game in terms of the health and safety certification. We have some companies that have the technical ability to do this, but because the certification regimes aren’t there, they’re kind of stuck selling to these Omani cartels who are … slapping a Made in Oman sticker on it and then re-exporting at 10 or sometimes even 15x what the Somali companies are selling it for. And that gap, that 10 to 15x margin, sort of illustrates the potential in the fishing sector.”

Manufacturing items locally to replace foreign imports represents another investment option. “The country imports 90-something percent [...] of the goods that are there,” Bellish notes.

One company already pursuing this is Al-Hayaat Personal Care, which Shuraako has backed. It manufactures and sells shampoos and laundry detergents in the Somaliland market, offering a lower-cost, locally manufactured alternative to imported products. Its founder launched the company after moving back from Canada.

For domestic manufacturing to really take off, Bellish says there needs to be regulatory reform in terms of industrial policy. “They have a regulatory system that is by traders and for traders,” he says. “And traders want the opposite from government that domestic manufacturers want.”

Watch/read our full interview with Jon Bellish – Doing business in Somalia: unpacking the realities on the ground

Learn how Kenyan entrepreneurs Leonard and Emily Mcharo achieved financial freedom by their forties, in our new book How we made it in Africa II. The paperback and ebook versions are available here.

American-born entrepreneur Daniel Yu’s most recent venture is the Africa Jobs Fund, which seeks to invest in companies that can create jobs at scale for Africans and raise incomes. It focuses on two areas: international labour mobility and export manufacturing.

He previously founded Wasoko, a multimillion-dollar company that connects informal retailers in East Africa with suppliers of consumer goods. After raising $145 million and merging Wasoko with Egypt-based MaxAB in 2024, he stepped away from day-to-day involvement in the business last year.

Yu spoke to How we made it in Africa editor-in-chief Jaco Maritz about the business opportunities in helping Africans find work abroad and exporting African-made products. The conversation also touched on how he got Wasoko off the ground, and his advice for young people entering today’s AI-threatened jobs market.

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One Saturday in 2010, Gbola Lawson was knocking on the doors of small brick-and-mortar stores in Lagos – Nigeria’s megacity of roughly seventeen million people – trying to persuade shopkeepers to place cookies on their shelves. Although he held a full-time job in banking, he was helping his girlfriend, Debby (now his wife), grow the retail footprint of her fledgling one-person cookie business, Fastizers.

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