This blurb is to be worked on

Sam Epee-Bounya, Moderator

Chijioke Dozie is the CEO of online consumer finance platform OneFi  and Carbon (formerly Paylater), the digital financial services company, which after being founded in 2016 has been downloaded by over 2.1 million users. OneFi, the first African fintech company to receive a credit rating, had produced Carbon which is currently Nigeria's leading digital financial services platform that empowers individuals and businesses with access to credit, simple payments solutions, high-yield investment opportunities and easy-to-use tools for personal financial management. They are a global company of over 90 employees with operations in Nigeria, England and Kenya.

Prior to co-founding Carbon with his brother Ngozi, Chijioke sourced direct investment opportunities for the International Finance Corporation [IFC] and Zephyr Management LP. He also holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School, an MSc in Risk Management from the University of Reading and a BA in Economics from University of East Anglia.

Olugbenga Agboola, CEO Flutterwave

.Joe leads the finance and research teams at GiveDirectly, a non-profit focused on delivering cash to people who need it, no strings attached. Prior to heading GiveDirectly’s finance function, Joe spent 3 years managing operations for GiveDirectly in Kenya and Uganda. GiveDirectly is the first - and largest - international NGO focused on sending money directly to the world’s poorest, no strings attached. Since 2009, they've delivered over $140 million in cash directly into the hands of over 130,000 people. The company aims to reshape charitable giving, making direct cash transfers the benchmark against which to evaluate other approaches - and more importantly - to give beneficiaries the ability to choose how their aid dollars get spent.

GiveDirectly works across seven countries in Africa including Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Malawi, Morocco, Liberia, and the DRC. In Kenya, the company is leading the world’s largest and longest-term experiment to date studying the effects of a universal basic income. The company has also worked deliver cash to refugee populations in Uganda and to urban youth in Mathare, Kenya. Recently, the company has expanded their work to the US, applying our model to disaster relief and recovery efforts.

Joe joined GiveDirectly after working in the research and trading departments of Bridgewater Associates. He holds a B.A. in Economics from Dartmouth College.

Carol Caruso, Co-Founder & CEO Bloom Impact

Seun Runsewe is the Director of Product at Opera-backed payments startup OPay. OPay has raised ~USD170m in funding in the last year and has over 250,000 agents in Nigeria - the largest agent network in the country. 

Prior to OPay, she built and beta-launched Switch by Sterling Bank, a digital bank for the Nigerian middle class and Nigerians in the Diaspora, making her the youngest banking CEO in Africa at the time. Before building Switch, she was the Business Lead at Paystack, a Y-Combinator backed online payments company. 

She has a Bachelor's degree in Business Administration from Covenant University and is professionally certified in Digital Marketing, Enterprise Resource Planning and Technology Project Management. In 2019, she was recognized by The Future Project as an honoree of #YTech100 for being one of the brightest and best Nigerian technocrats. Seun Runsewe cares deeply about building digital products that enable the aspirational nature of Africans.


 

Saad Sheikh, Principal of Investments TLG Capital

Nicolai Eddy, COO NALA

More panelist announcements to come!