Unlocking Africa

Episode 240 with Beamlak Alemayehu, Founder and CEO of Medanit Digital Health, Ethiopia’s first integrated, multi channel digital healthcare access system connecting patients with doctors, medication and mental health services through a mobile application, website and low bandwidth call centre. Beamlak is a clinical nurse and social worker whose experience of long waiting times, misinformation, medicine shortages and fragmented healthcare services inspired her to build a more accessible and ...

Episode 239 with Shola Bamidele, Founder and CEO of Loom Rooms, a creative ecosystem helping African artists develop their craft, strengthen their identities and build sustainable businesses around their work. Based in Egbeda, Alimosho, outside Lagos’s traditional creative hubs, Loom Rooms was established to address one of the biggest weaknesses within Nigeria’s entertainment economy: the lack of structure surrounding creative talent. Through creative spaces, development pathways and a colla...

Episode 238 with Sander de Klerk, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of The Good Roll, a sustainable paper company building an integrated bamboo value chain between Ghana and global paper markets. The Good Roll began as a European consumer brand selling sustainable toilet paper and using part of its revenue to improve access to sanitation. It has since evolved into a much broader industrial business, processing Ghanaian bamboo into pulp for the global paper industry, tissue products for its...

Episode 237 with Lydie Murorunkwere, Founder and Managing Director of ML Corporate Services Ltd, Rwanda’s first locally owned licensed Trust and Company Service Provider, and Chairperson of the Rwanda Trust Companies Association. Over the past two decades, Lydie has worked with entrepreneurs, investors, family businesses and institutions across Africa, helping them establish governance, ownership and succession structures designed not only to support growth, but to endure. Her work challenge...

Episode 236 with Linda Latsko Lockhart, Founder and CEO of Global Give Back Circle, an organisation focused on expanding education, financial inclusion and pathways to dignified work for women and girls across Africa. Since 2006, Global Give Back Circle has supported more than 6,000 girls through tertiary education, engaged more than 4,000 mentors and built programmes across Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania and Ghana. At the centre of its economic empowerment work is HER Lab, a model designed...

Episode 235 with Houda Ghozzi, Founder and CEO of Open Startup, a pan African organisation focused on connecting African innovation with global opportunity through investment readiness, deep tech commercialisation, cross border partnerships and ecosystem development. Over the past decade, Open Startup has supported thousands of founders and startups across more than 20 African countries. Its latest focus is The Science Road, an initiative designed to help deep tech and research led ventures ...

Episode 234 with Madelaine Fourie, General Brand Manager at Sappi Verve, a business operating at the intersection of forestry, sustainable materials and global fashion value chains. Sappi Verve produces dissolving wood pulp from woodfibre, an essential raw material used to manufacture fibres such as viscose and lyocell that ultimately become the fabrics found in everyday clothing. From its forestry and manufacturing base in South Africa, Sappi forms part of a global textile supply chain that ...

Episode 231 with Amanda Etuk, Program Director at Cascador, an Africa focused platform supporting growth stage entrepreneurs with the leadership, networks, strategic partnerships and catalytic capital needed to build resilient, high impact businesses. Amanda works at the intersection of strategy and execution, helping founders navigate one of the most overlooked stages of African entrepreneurship. With experience spanning scaling startups, managing complex multimillion pound operations and b...

Episode 232 with Shain Shapiro, Founder and Executive Director of the Center for Music Ecosystems and one of the world's leading experts on music, public policy, and economic development. Through his work advising more than 130 cities and governments worldwide, Shain has helped reposition music from being viewed simply as entertainment to being recognised as a driver of investment, job creation, and long term economic growth. He is also one of the architects behind the Music Economy Developme...

Episode 231 with Daniel Yu, Founder of Africa Jobs Fund, a philanthropic venture builder focused on creating high productivity jobs across Sub Saharan Africa through export manufacturing and international labour mobility. Daniel is best known as the founder and former CEO of Wasoko, one of Africa's leading commerce and supply chain technology companies. After spending more than a decade building logistics infrastructure across multiple African markets, he has shifted his focus towards what h...