Some personal news: After years reporting on startups and VCs across Africa and, more recently, the Middle East, one thing’s become clear: The best insights never make it into the article. So I’m bringing some of those conversations to light with The Upside Podcast podcast, where I

💸 “Even after we raised $600K, the year after that, we still never got paid.” That’s the part of startup life you don’t see in the headlines. 🎙️ In this unfiltered moment on The Upside Podcast, Kabiyesi 👑 opens up about what it really took to build LemFi: 💰 Founders went

Stories like these is why I will not rest until we are free. What is all this?? I’m so pissed. THIS IS NOT NORMAL. Something has to change.

🚨 NEW: Egypt’s Nawy, the largest proptech in Africa, raises $52M led by Partech to take on MENA. 🏠 1 million customers 📈 $1.4B in GMV 🤝 3,000 brokerages 💰 $75M raised in total (incl. $23M debt) Listen, share and subscribe on The Upside Podcast: open.spotify.com/episode/6pG79P…

NEW 🚨: Everyone told Tosin Eniolorunda he was late to agency banking in 2019. OPay. Paga. Kudi. “This thing is everywhere,” his team said when he sent his team to scout the market. They built Moniepoint Group at #Money20/20EU anyway. The market expanded. Moniepoint is now a billion-dollar fintech.

NEW🚨: Everyone told Tosin Eniolorunda he was late to agency banking in 2019. Yet, he built Moniepoint Group into a billion-dollar fintech. Now he wants to do it again—this time with remittances and MonieWorld by Moniepoint 🇬🇧💸🇳🇬 Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/40VEqM… YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=0ucMgu…

While India/SEA investors are getting a reality check on the myth of power law in EMs, MENA investors are leaning towards more modest outcomes. A $200-300m valuation exit is more realistic for the region, says Plus VC’s Hasan Haider on The Upside Podcast kristieneo.substack.com/p/a-good-exit-…

🎙️New episode on The Upside Podcast A solo founder. A bedroom in Ethiopia. Got into YC. Beka built Better Auth, an open-source auth framework with: ✅ 150K+ weekly downloads ⭐️ 15,000+ GitHub stars 💬 6K+ devs in its Discord community Just raised $5M from Y Combinator,

🎙️New episode on The Upside Podcast I had Chowdeck CEO Femi Aluko and osarumen, author of Foodpod (a series on technology eating food), on to discuss Nigeria’s food delivery ecosystem — and ChowdeckNG at the center of it. Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/75FfAV… YouTube:

Chowdeck CEO Femi Aluko explains how local context informs company strategy "Food delivery in Nigeria used to be a niche product for rich people But for the average Nigerian, nobody eats pizza everyday" Read more ➜ afridigest.substack.com/p/how-chowdeck… [Vid src: tage/The Upside Podcast]

🎙️Last week ChowdeckNG announced a $9M Series A - and I had Femi Aluko and osarumen on The Upside Podcast: Osarumen: Do you think 200 million Nigerians will order food online? Femi: We think it's going to get to as high as 60 million. YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=bwp6lu… Spotify:

🎙️Last week, ChowdeckNG announced a $9M Series A - and we had Femi Aluko and osarumen on the show. Osarumen: Do you think 200 million Nigerians will order food online? Femi: We think it's going to get to as high as 60 million. Listen on YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=bwp6lu…