IWD22: Nigerian women “breaking the bias” in the tech industry

Throwback to some 20 years ago, you will probably discover that only a handful of women leading at the top executive positions in major companies across industries. However, things are changing as the old standard is giving way to new norms, and today, there are a number of women leading in top positions, co-founding businesses and occupying apex seats in companies.

As the theme for this year’s International Women’s Day, ‘Break the bias’, women over time are beginning to prove that the female gender can achieve big dreams just like their counter gender without limitation.

Highlighted are some notable women in the tech space who in addition to leading the companies, have also been able to secure funds to scale their operation in the recent past.

Damilola Olokesusi

• Damilola is the Co-Founder and CEO of Shuttler, a transport and tech company start-up revolutionizing the way professionals and organizations commute in metropolitan cities like Lagos.
• Shuttler was founded in 2016 to solve problems of transportation by transforming the way people commute around the world through building a global partner network and connecting communities of Shuttlers.
• The company recently raised a $1.6 million seed round which it said it plans to use for scaling operations into other cities across Africa.

Odunayo Eweniyi

• Odunayo is a Co-founder and Chief Operations Officer PiggyVest, an online savings platform for personal savings and investment in West Africa. Similar to this, she also co-founded FirstCheck Africa, an angel fund for women entrepreneurs and PushCV.
• Piggyvest was founded in 2016 by Somto Ifezue, Odunayo Eweniyi and Joshua Chibueze who had the vision to make credit accessible to many Nigerians.
• Odunayo, alongside her colleagues, led Piggyvest to raise $1.1 million in 2018 to license acquisition, product development, as well as on additional marketing spending.

Yanmo Omorogbe

• Yanmo is the co-founder and Chief Operating Officer at Bamboo, a digital investment platform that gives Nigerians real-time access to trade assets on the U.S. stock exchanges using their mobile phones or computers.
• Yanmo founded Bamboo trading app alongside Richmond Bassey and the platform was launched in 2019 for Nigerians to trade shares of publicly traded American companies.
• The platform in January 2022 raised a $15 million Series A funding round to accelerate its growth across the African market.

Jessica Anuna

• Jessica Anuna is the Founder and CEO of Klasha, a technology company specialising in building software to power African commerce.
• The startup was founded in 2018 with an initial focus on making it easier for African consumers to buy products directly from global fashion retailers.
• Last year, the San Francisco-based cross-border technology company raised $2.4 million in seed funding to build technology infrastructure for cross-border commerce in Africa.

Tomilola Majekodunmi

• Tomilola is the co-founder and CEO, Bankly, a Nigerian fintech startup digitizing cash for the unbanked.
• The fintech was founded in 2018 by Tomilola Adejana Majekodunmi and Fredick Adams to digitizing the informal thrift collections system (Ajo or Esusu) in Nigeria.
• The company raised $2 million to further digitize their whole process of collating money, allowing these unbanked people to save using online and offline methods.

Affiong Williams

• Affiong Williams is the founder and CEO of Reel Fruit, a Nigerian company that processes and distributes locally grown fruits.
• ReelFruit was founded in 2012 to produce a wide range of healthy, dried fruit and nut snacks which was sold in schools, hotels, and retail supermarkets across the country.
• The premium dried fruit firm recognized for its high-quality healthy snacks last year raised a $3 million Series A investment to further expand its dried fruit production, develop new products, and grow exports by 10 times within a short period.