The Real Reason Banks Keep Saying No | ft. Christabel Ojuok (Nesti)

The Real Reason Banks Keep Saying No | ft. Christabel Ojuok (Nesti)

On this episode of "After Hours, in partnership with Tanqueray Africa," we speak with Christabel Ojuok, co-founder of Nesti, about what it actually takes to build credit access for the 86% of Kenyans the mortgage system was never built for. Nesti started as a property and mortgage marketplace, matching customers with affordable home loans and vetted properties, cutting house-hunting from months to minutes. Then a pattern emerged: salaried customers sailed through, while gig workers and entrepreneurs, despite affording the exact same repayments, got buried in documentation and rejected. The problem wasn't affordability. It was that the system couldn't read their income. In this conversation, Christabel talks about what it took to walk away from a working marketplace model and rebuild around a harder problem, why she left seven years of structured corporate life at Knight Frank for the chaos of building in a startup, and what she's learned sitting across the table from prospective buyers who keep hitting the same wall. She breaks down the "rent score," an alternative credit profile built entirely from consistent rent payments, and why she believes that data is just as reliable as a payslip. She gets into the chicken-and-egg problem of building trust with banks before you have scale, the real reason real estate has been slower than almost any other industry to adopt tech, and the single belief about who "deserves" to own a home that she's trying to dismantle: that it was ever meant to be reserved for people earning a fixed salary in the first place. To keep up with Christabel Ojuok , Check out her linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christabelojuok/Check out Nesti: https://nesti.africa/ __________________________________________________________________Join Alice as she explores the world of tech and shares impactful stories with guests on My Tech Story Africa!Subscribe to our podcast, drop a like, comment, and hit the notification bell to stay updated with our latest content.Don't forget to spread the word! Sharing is caring! 🌟Follow us on social media:📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mytechstoryafrica💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/my-tech-story-africa♪ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mytechstoryafricaJoin our community: [https://www.mtsafrica.co/join]Interested in being a guest on the podcast? Apply here: https://forms.gle/ffAniezzFHoEvhPY7

Collective Funding vs. Foreign Aid:Which Works? Ft. Jermaine Craig

On this episode of "After Hours, in partnership with Tanqueray Africa," we speak with Jermaine Craig, founder of Kwanda, about what it actually takes to build a collective fundraising model that survives contact with reality.Kwanda launched in February 2020 with a simple premise , pooling small monthly contributions from the African diaspora to fund social entrepreneurs on the continent. Then COVID hit and George Floyd's death sent thousands of people looking for ways to support Black communities, and Kwanda went from 200 members to 2,000 in three weeks. Two years later, he shut it down.In this conversation, Jermaine talks about what actually happened in the room when he decided to close Kwanda, why that relief didn't last, and what made him rebuild it smaller, simpler, and far more honest the second time around.He breaks down the difference between funding that comes with a savior complex and funding that comes with dignity, why transparency was the single word his community kept repeating back to him, and how a doctor named Tolani turned unused buildings into community clinics that have now treated over 8,000 patients in Nigeria on Kwanda's funding alone.He also gets into the uncomfortable 80% gap between what people say they'll commit to and what they actually do, why speed matters more than scale when deciding what to fund, and what he'd tell any diasporan who wants to come back and "fix" things on the continent without doing the work of listening first. To keep up with Jermaine Craig , Check out her linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jermainecraig/Check out Kwanda:https://kwanda.co/ __________________________________________________________________Join Alice as she explores the world of tech and shares impactful stories with guests on My Tech Story Africa!Subscribe to our podcast, drop a like, comment, and hit the notification bell to stay updated with our latest content.Don't forget to spread the word! Sharing is caring! 🌟Follow us on social media:📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mytechstoryafrica💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/my-tech-story-africa♪ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mytechstoryafricaJoin our community: [https://www.mtsafrica.co/join]Interested in being a guest on the podcast? Apply here: https://forms.gle/ffAniezzFHoEvhPY7

The Legal Reality of Scaling Businesses Across Fragmented African Markets ft. Mbula Nzuki

On this episode of "After Hours, in partnership with Tanqueray Africa," we speak with Mbula Nzuki, founder and managing partner of MN Legal, and convener of the MNL Africa Leadership Circle, about what it actually takes to build a law firm from scratch, do business across a fragmented continent, and create the kind of rooms where Africa's story gets written by Africans.Seven years ago, she built MN Legal around the things traditional law firms weren't offering: agility, tech-enablement, short turnaround times, and the freedom to operate across locations.That work, advising startups and businesses looking to scale across Africa, kept surfacing the same friction. Different legal systems, different regulations, wildly different costs ,sometimes the gap between a few hundred dollars and tens of thousands, just to set up in a new market. That frustration became the seed for the MNL Africa Leadership Circle.The Circle isn't a conference. It's a curated convening of senior business leaders, policymakers, investors, founders, and innovators built around one goal: real, documented outcomes. Every working group feeds into a white paper, because Mbula believes it's unforgivable to gather that much brilliance in one room and let it evaporate. The policy suggestions, the cross-continental conversations, the hard insights , all on record, so Africa's narrative gets shaped from the inside out.The conversation also gets into the legal questions that keep her sharp: AI, deepfakes, blockchain , not approached with fear, but with the urgency of someone who knows the law is always playing catch-up and that the gap can't stay open for long.Her read on Africa right now? The continent is awake. Young founders are building, populations are holding leaders accountable, and the ask has shifted from aid to equal partnership. Africa is the now and the future, and the people shaping it are already in the room.The MNL Africa Leadership Circle takes place on the 18th and 19th of June at Villa Rosa Kempinski, Nairobi. Visit https://mnlafrica.com/ for more details To keep up with Mbula Nzuki , Check out her linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mbulanzuki/Check out MN Legal :https://www.mnlegal.net/__________________________________________________________________Join Alice as she explores the world of tech and shares impactful stories with guests on My Tech Story Africa!Subscribe to our podcast, drop a like, comment, and hit the notification bell to stay updated with our latest content.Don't forget to spread the word! Sharing is caring! 🌟Follow us on social media:📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mytechstoryafrica💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/my-tech-story-africa♪ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mytechstoryafricaJoin our community: [https://www.mtsafrica.co/join]Interested in being a guest on the podcast? Apply here: https://forms.gle/ffAniezzFHoEvhPY7

The Silent Identity War Locking Out the New Market

In a world where digital platforms are becoming the gateway to services, opportunities, and economic participation, businesses need to know exactly who they're dealing with. But when verification systems are too slow, too complex, or simply not built for African realities, real people get locked out and real businesses lose customers. Alice heads to the Africa Tech Summit 2026 to gain first-hand insight into how companies are rethinking digital identity and trust for African markets, where documentation is inconsistent, device quality varies, and the stakes of getting verification wrong , in either direction, are high. She speaks with Deji Amund, Strategic Partnerships Lead at MetaMap, and Agnes Anyango, Sales Executive at Kagoo, two companies working at the intersection of identity verification and AI-powered business intelligence. MetaMap is helping businesses verify users faster and smarter, building flexible flows that reduce friction for legitimate users while keeping bad actors out.  Kagoo is leveraging AI to help businesses understand their customers more deeply, from financial health reporting to demand forecasting, so they can make better decisions and grow with confidence. Together, they make the case that the real infrastructure challenge in Africa's digital economy isn't just about building products , it's about building systems that understand the people using them, in the real conditions they live in. __________________________________________________________________Join Alice as she explores the world of tech and shares impactful stories with guests on My Tech Story Africa!Subscribe to our podcast, drop a like, comment, and hit the notification bell to stay updated with our latest content.Don't forget to spread the word! Sharing is caring! 🌟Follow us on social media:📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mytechstoryafrica💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/my-tech-story-africa♪ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mytechstoryafricaJoin our community: [https://www.mtsafrica.co/join]Interested in being a guest on the podcast? Apply here: https://forms.gle/ffAniezzFHoEvhPY7

The Invisible Infrastructure Behind Every Payment

In a world where digital payments have become part of how money moves every day, small merchants, roadside stores and growing businesses depend on transactions that simply work.But when systems go down, networks fail and payment infrastructure can't keep up with demand , who's doing the work to keep commerce moving?Alice heads to the Africa Tech Summit 2026 to gain firsthand insight into how the builders behind Africa’s payment infrastructure are tackling challenges around reliability, scale, and fragmentation on the ground.She speaks with Bemigho Awala, Communications Professional at Moniepoint, and Obinna Michael, Account Executive at Pawapay,two companies operating at the infrastructure layer of Africa’s payments ecosystem.Moniepoint is powering payments for businesses on the ground, helping merchants accept transactions, access credit, and grow with confidence. Pawapay is connecting mobile money systems across more than 20 African markets, so businesses can accept payments without the complexity of integrating every provider individually.Together, they make the case that the real fintech revolution isn't just about flashy products it's about building systems that work quietly, consistently, and at scale.To keep up with Bemigho Awala , Check out his linkedin:https://www.linkedin.com/in/bemigho-awalaCheck out Moniepoint :https://moniepoint.com/To keep up with Obinna Michael , Check out his linkedin:https://www.linkedin.com/in/obinna-awuzudike/Check out Pawa Pay:https://www.pawapay.io/__________________________________________________________________Join Alice as she explores the world of tech and shares impactful stories with guests on My Tech Story Africa!Subscribe to our podcast, drop a like, comment, and hit the notification bell to stay updated with our latest content.Don't forget to spread the word! Sharing is caring! 🌟Follow us on social media:📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mytechstoryafrica💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/my-tech-story-africa♪ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mytechstoryafricaJoin our community: [https://www.mtsafrica.co/join]Interested in being a guest on the podcast? Apply here: https://forms.gle/ffAniezzFHoEvhPY7