africa-fintech
(2)
Abuzar Royesh
Abuzar Royesh is the founder and CEO of Pastel (DataServe AI), a U.S.- and Nigeria-based company building agentic AI software that helps regional, mid-tier, and community banks automate onboarding, compliance, fraud detection, and anti-money-laundering work. Born in Afghanistan and educated at Tufts and Stanford, where he was a Knight-Hennessy Scholar, he is a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree. He is also the founder and board chair of the 30 Birds Foundation, which evacuated more than 450 Afghans, mainly schoolgirls, after the 2021 Taliban takeover.
Iain Usiri
Iain Usiri is the co-founder and CEO of Ramani, a Tanzanian fintech building financial infrastructure for Africa's consumer-packaged-goods supply chains. A Stanford computer science graduate and former Salesforce product manager, he gave up his US immigration status and flew home one-way in 2019 to start the company with his brother Calvin and friend Martin Kibet. Ramani gives micro distribution centers free point-of-sale and inventory software, then monetizes through lending - and in 2022 raised a $32M Series A led by Flexcap Ventures after passing through Y Combinator's W20 batch.