africa-tech
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Sanifu
Sanifu (formerly Patika, YC S22) is a Nairobi-based company whose AI reads sales orders arriving by email, WhatsApp, PDF and even handwritten notes, then enters them straight into a manufacturer's ERP system. It cuts order-processing time from 5-10 minutes to under 30 seconds and targets the roughly 180,000 manufacturers and distributors across Africa still keying orders in by hand.
Telerivet
Telerivet is a cloud communications platform that lets organizations send, automate, and orchestrate messages across SMS, WhatsApp, Voice, USSD, Viber and more - in any market, including the places bigger providers ignore. Born from a Peace Corps insight in Tanzania that most people have a phone but not the internet, it now powers enterprises, governments, NGOs and universities across 150+ countries with a drag-and-drop rules engine, APIs, and a phone-as-gateway model that reaches customers where the network is thin.
Mwalimu Karisa
Mwalimu Karisa is an executive at Kong Inc., the San Francisco-based API connectivity company behind the Kong Gateway and Konnect platform. Originally from Kilifi County on Kenya's coast, Karisa's path ran through an exchange program in Iowa and onto the front lines of global API and AI infrastructure. Kong serves enterprises managing critical API traffic across cloud, hybrid, and on-premise environments, with over $424 million raised and a $2 billion valuation. Before entering the technology sector, Karisa was publicly recognized for community development work in his home village, raising funds for clean water access and healthcare infrastructure in coastal Kenya.
Noureddine Tayebi
Noureddine Tayebi is the founder and CEO of Yassir, North Africa's most valuable tech startup and the leading super app for francophone Africa. Born in Algiers in 1977, he earned a PhD in electrical engineering from Stanford University after completing a master's degree at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He spent eight years at Intel in Silicon Valley accumulating over 50 patents before founding InSense, a nano-motion sensor startup acquired by Mojo Vision in 2018. In 2017, he co-founded Yassir, which has grown to serve 8 million+ users across 45 cities in six countries, offering ride-hailing, food delivery, grocery delivery, and fintech services. Yassir has raised $193.25 million in total, including a historic $150M Series B led by Mary Meeker's BOND, cementing Tayebi's position as a defining figure in Africa's digital economy.