ALLIANCE4AI - Key Persons
Abdellah Mallek is the founder of Sylabs, a tech and entrepreneurship hub in Algiers, and works on empowering young Algerians who want to start their own businesses or gain new skills.
He is passionate about entrepreneurship and everything digital and works on projects to develop the startup mindest in Algeria.
Mallek cofounded Startup Weekend Algiers and BeMyApp Algeria and has a master in Mathematics applied to management and finance.
While his journey has just started, his achievements and impact are huge. Mallek has been named in the Forbes 30 under 30 list and as well he has been identified as one of the 100 most Influential Young Africans.
Job Titles:
- Education Chair ( Intern )
Job Titles:
- Advisor
- Advisor / Nigeria / USA
Angel Adelaja is a development consultant and serial Entrepreneur.
She is also Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Fresh Direct Produce, Agro-Allied Services & Co-Founder of WeFarmAfrica.org.
Oluwayimika Angel Adelaja is providing innovative solutions to the acute food shortage. Two of her businesses, We Farm Africa and Fresh Direct Produce, are bringing communities together with the help of agricultural technologies. Adelaja has pioneered stackable container farms that reduce the stress on land use and the need to import vegetables, in addition to helping urban populations gain access to high quality food. Adelaja's organic urban farms use less water and land than traditional farming methods and produce 15 times higher product yield.
Vertical farming and hydroponics, her innovative solutions to food shortage, aid in strengthening the agricultural value chain and create opportunities for Africans. Her projects are especially aimed at young people, with her personal mission to make agriculture fun for them taking centre stage. Adelaja is looking to onboard 10,000 youth in areas that cut across agriculture and urban farming, distribution, sales/marketing, ag-tech and automation, expand the business across Africa and position it to be a solution for high quality premium produce.
In her spare time, Adelaja focuses on developmental economics and empowering women.
She attended Temple University where she received her Bachelor's Degree. She has a PhD in Epidemiology from Michigan State University.
She has also served in numerous high-profile positions such as Special Assistant to the Senior Special Adviser to the President on Poverty Alleviation and National Coordinator and Consultant to the Senior Special Adviser to the President of Nigeria on Wealth Creation.
Job Titles:
- Policy / Ethics Chair Ambassador Zim
Job Titles:
- South Africa [4IRSA Commission, Dimension Data, Deviare
Brigitha Faustin is a Tanzanian Social & Business Entrepeneur.
She is the founder and managing director of OBRI Company, an agro-based company whose main businesses include edible oils manufacturing and fractionations under OBRI Brands. OBRI Company is a co-operative social enterprise that ensures that farmers and communities are supported by promoting economic opportunities for cooperatives organizations, farmer associations and communities through the innovative application of sound business practices.
She studied Education programming at the University Dar es Salaam and later went for master's degree in Co-operative and Community Development at the Sokoine University of Agriculture. While she started her company in 2013, she found it very challenging and exciting as the competition was very high in Tanzania because there were so many companies running a food manufacturing companies. Then she had the problem of weak policy implementation and lack of small business support.
Chika Madubuko is a bioengineer, entrepreneur.
She is the co-founder and CEO of Greymate Care, a digital platform established in 2016 that connects patients that need 24-hour care to an insured and professional caregiver.
Chinedu Azodoh is co-founder and CGO at MAX, a technology company building the infrastructure for last-mile mobility in Africa. Chinedu has always had a passion to change the African experience. Chinedu attended the Sloan School of Management in Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he graduated with a master's degree in finance. He also possesses a bachelor's degree in computer engineering and a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology.
Chinedu is a multi-award winner. He is a recipient of the Prestigious Lila Self Leadership Academy Scholarship - a $200,000 academic scholarship given to up to 4 first-year students at the Illinois Institute of Technology for exceptional leadership in the community and the classroom. In 2015, he was invited to the Plug and Play Startup Accelerator but decided to join the Techstars New York Accelerator Program. In 2017, he was admitted into the first XL Africa Program as one of a select 20 innovative companies across Africa leading growth and development. He was also admitted to the Alibaba eFounder Program, organized by Alibaba under the guidance of Jack Ma. In 2018, he was admitted into the Mastercard Startpath program and won the LAComotion Mobility Competition. He is a finalist for the 2019 Forbes Africa 30-under-30 in Business and Technology.
Cornelius holds a Bachelors Degree in Counselling Psychology, an Honours Degree in Applied Psychology and a Masters Degree in Research Psychology; he finally holds a Doctoral Degree in Psychological and Brain Sciences.
Cornelius worked in the retail sector for eight years whilst completing his Bachelors and Honours Degrees. He then shifted to the programme evaluation sector for three years whilst completing his Masters and Doctoral Degrees. Cornelius has evaluated several programmes for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), the United States President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), The Global Fund, the South African National AIDS Council (SANAC) and the Networking HIV/AIDS Community of South Africa (NACOSA). He has also mentored several UNISA interns who were completing their Masters Degrees in Research Psychology. Cornelius has guest lectured at tertiary institutions.
Cornelius is adept in various social research skills in quantitative research, qualitative research, mixed methods research and various data analysis methods. He is able to analyse data in multiple expert platforms such as SPSS and NVivo and the generic MS Excel and MS Word. His research interests are in Neuroscience, Community Health Psychology, Educational Psychology, Psychometrics, and Narrative and Constructivist research. Cornelius is also a skilled academic writer and has an exhaustive grasp on research ethics.
Cornelius is the co-developer of the Artificial Intelligence engine, Nebula, at The Pleiades Group. He specialises in the psychological development of AIs and is particularly interested in the formation of sentience. Nebula's core ability to reason abstractly is Cornelius' brainchild. He is passionate about the application of AI for social good.
Cornelius believes that it is important to work without compromising ones own morals and ethical standards. He sees himself as a hardworking intellectual who can easily adapt to his work environment. He is passionate about experiential learning and the transfer of knowledge through teaching either small or large groups of people. He is able to learn progressively during changes in his responsibilities in the working environment. He is introverted yet able to work with a diverse group of people. He takes joy in helping others to achieve self-actualisation. His strongest character trait is endurance as he has overcome many obstacles in his life.
His personal mantra is: "Failure is not an option".
Diana Wangari is an Entrepreneur & a renowned health Journalist.
She is the co-founder & CEO of a Nairobi-based health tech startup Checkups Medical Centre; a group of low-cost clinics that emphasizes rapid outpatient care. The clinics utilize in-house technology, iSikCure (an app the company launched) to provide rapid booking of consultation and last-mile distribution of drugs through its concierge drug delivery services in both urban and rural areas.
Dr Nick Bradshaw has 20+ years' experience working with digital collaboration technologies and is a successful entrepreneur with a passion about the transformative impact of IR4.0 technologies in Africa. He is Co-Founder of Cape Town based AI Media(AIMediaAfrica),creators of Africa's largest business focused AI conference & business expo "AIEXPOAFRICA" and Synapse Magazine - The Voice of African AI & Data Science. He is also Founder of Intele chat which focuses on conversational commerce technologies leveraging chat bots and artificial intelligence to augment the B2C B2B interface.
Dr Bradshaw is also the CEO of Cortex Logic, a company that helps customers operationalize real-world AI by unlocking the value from all available structured and unstructured data and supporting them through the change programme to deliver the step change and business advantage AI based technologies offer.
Dr. Agnes Kiragga is the Head of Statistics and Data Management Unit, and research scientist at the Infectious Diseases Institute (IDI) at the Makerere University College of Health Sciences (MakCHS).
She holds a PhD in Statistics with vast experience in HIV clinical research and use of advanced statistical methods.
With Uganda ranked 10th globally in HIV infection rates, she has taken it upon herself to tackle HIV in her country. She is combating the problem by creating risk profiles from a 300,000-strong HIV database at the University of Mekere in Kampala. Focusing on Ugandan women, she uses machine learning to analyze pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) retention rates among those who are at a high risk of getting the virus as well as anti-retroviral therapy retention for women who already have the disease.
She hopes to merge data science and machine learning methods to available "large data" and health records as to predict and prevent HIV among high-risk groups in Africa, especially adolescent girls and young women.
She was recently named by Quartz to be among the Quartz African Innovators 2019.
Job Titles:
- Community Chair ( Intern ) Rwanda
Emeka Okoye, A man who needs no introduction for his tremendous works. An Experienced software Engineer, Semantic web architect, Tech enthusiasts & Evangelist.
He co-founded Nigeria's Earliest Startup in 1996 (ngex.com) built Nigeria's first financial website (IBTC, 1996), built Nigeria's first Internet Banking app(1997), project lead for Nigeria's first e-commerce website(xeroxnigeria.com) in 2000, built Africa's app for crowdsourcing Election data(Revoda) in 2011, Semantic Architect for Africa's first knowledge graphs on films (mokolo, 2016) and Architect leaf ATM E-journal Management software (2012, active in 35 countries)
He founded (aOpenDataNG) , a citizen led Linked initiative for Nigeria to make Government data accessible to common folks & generate wealth from data, he also co-founded next2, a geo based topic driven social classified network & mobile Agriculture platform for emerging markets
He is the CEO/chief Architect of Cymantiks limited in Nigeria, a consultancy & solution providing company specialising in Semantic web, Artificial Intelligence, analytics & software development. They help turn Data into Information, which later translates to Knowledge.
He was listed among the 20 Most Influential Technology People in Africa by itnewsafrica.com (2013) and Top Global 20 Mobile Commerce and a lot more.
Eric Muli is a serial Entrepreneur & a visionary.
He is the cofounder of Odyssey Capital; a non-deposit-taking financial institution which provides financial products and services to individuals and businesses in the lower to middle income bracket in Kenya. The idea to venture into consumer financing came up when Muli and his co-founder Michael Maina learned that it was almost impossible for millions of Kenyans to afford essential technology like smart phones, television sets, refrigerators, and even electrical fixtures and fittings as Banks were not willing to take such a big risk with no guaranteed return on investment.
Realizing this was a big untapped market, Muli and his partner registered Odyssey Capital Limited and went straight to work. Today, the company has financed thousands of individuals through the Lipa Later product and disbursed over KES 100M in financing.
Job Titles:
- Founder of Women
- IT Expert
Ethel Delali Cofie is a Ghanian IT Expert, entrepreneur and consultant.
She is the CEO and Founder of EDEL Technology Consulting, a company that provides IT and software services as an enabler and catalyst for businesses to achieve their goals.
Ethel is also the founder of Women in Tech Africa, currently Africa's largest women in tech group with members in over 30 Africa countries and in the diaspora and growing. She is also the initiator of the 1st Pan African woman in tech meet up and was shortlisted for the UN GEM Tech Award for work supporting women in ICT. She is also the creator of women in tech week, a global event first held in 2016 to bring together women in technology. The first events brought together over 10,000 women virtually with physical events in Ghana, Nigeria, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Canada, Germany, Belgium and China.
She is a Mandela Fellow for President Obama's Young African Leaders initiative (YALI) with a wealth of technical and commercial skills acquired across a wide range of demanding roles and Over 12 years' experience working in the UK ,Ghana, Nigeria and Sierra Leone on projects like Bill and Melinda Gates funded Mobile Technology for Health project, the Ford Foundation's Election Monitoring project for Nigeria and as Head of Commercial Solutions for Vodafone conceptualizing, executing and working with teams to align Corporate strategy to IT strategy and to develop and manage creative technology solutions,
She currently sits on the Advisory Board for Ghana's Vice President, helping to design Digital
Getnet assefa is a computer scientist, a futurist, and a rational progressive. He is the founder and chief executive of iCog, the first artificial intelligence lab in Ethiopia.
Isaya Yunge is serial entrepreneur & unshakable optimist. He is also the founder of SomaApp Technologies company. SomaApp; a mobile app which is revolutionising how scholarships are offered in Africa.
Isaya and his team came up with the idea after seeing how many domestic and international scholarships go unclaimed each year because young people are simply unaware of them.
In 2006 Isaya was a chairperson of juniour council of the United Republic of Tanzania and spoke at G8 Summit. He won GSMA Mobile money Africa Hackathon as a best stratup in Africa in 2017.
He is a winner of Queens Young Leaders award and StartUp Turkey award as the best top three startups in the world.He was also selected on the list of Forbes 30 under 30 in 2018.
Abbot is a renowned software developer who isn't only co-directing a growing tech firm but has been doing so for years. The icing on the cake? She's just clocked 30 years earlier this month.
She Develops software and analyses data.she has developed backend systems, in a variety of languages, for a variety of sectors in the past couple of years but she now focuses on machine learning.
Abbott's passion for tech & ‘figuring out how things work' started at a young age. The fact that her mom was a software developer and her father a musician and sci-fi zealot meant Jade was raised in a tech-friendly environment valuable to applied creativity. This aided her decision to want to be a software developer at age 12.
Jean Bosco Nzeyimana is a Rwandan Entrepeneur & Visionary.
he is the C.E.O. and founder of Habona Ltd which currently has three products used as a source or renewable energy; briquettes, biogas, and bio-fertilizer. Briquettes are highly efficient and clean burning fuel that is used to replace charcoal. Their biogas system is a little more pricey, and requires two cows' worth of manure regularly. This system turns organic waste into usable biogas. The final product is their bio-fertilizer, which is freshly made fertilizer that helps local farmers. The soil boosts crop yield, as well as gives local farmers good soil to farm on as the local soil is very acidic. Habona also collects local waste and a waste plant. It's biofuels are believed to be currently used by as many as 1,500 households in Rwanda while employing up to 26 people on a permanent basis and nearly 50 more as casual workers.
Job Titles:
- Advisor on AI Datacenters / USA
Ken is a mobile commerce evangelist and career entrepreneur. He is also the co-founder and the group CEO of Cellulant, a leading multinational one-stop digital payments company. After working shortly for an Internet service provider (ISP), he co-founded his first venture in 1998, 3mice interactive, East Africa's first web development company. Ken and his two co-founders grew the business into a respected firm in the IT sector before it was acquired in 2000 by Africa Online. Convinced that mobile was the future, Ken co-founded Cellulant with his partner Bolaji Akinboro in 2002. Initially, Cellulant launched as a music ringtone business that saw musicians earn a share of the money paid by music-lovers to access their favorite songs. A few years later, on a quest for a better payments platform, Ken decided to pivot the business into digital payments. As Cellulant's founding CEO, Ken has led the company from an idea sketched on a serviette in 2002, to a reputable company in Africa with more than 350 employees across 11 markets. Ken remains unwavering in his pursuit of seeing Cellulant achieve its mission of connecting more than 500 million consumers across Africa with digital payment services that are relevant to their daily lives.
Leonida Mutuku is the founder of Intelipro, an African company that builds platforms for financial institutions and retail organizations. Intelipro aims to make data more accessible and useful to businesses and empower them to develop new financial products, targeted digital marketing strategies and optimised business operations. Leonida is also the project lead at Africa Open Data Network, a community of Africans, and friends of Africa, who believe in the continent's development agenda and how open data can help make it a reality. She is experienced in data science, designing and leading research projects, and implementing financial technologies. She obtained a Bachelors of Science (Hons) in Actuarial Science from University of Nairobi and a Masters in Business Analytics and Big Data from IE University in Madrid, Spain. She was privileged to be named one of Forbes Africa's Top 30 under 30 in 2018.
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder and CEO of Swvl
Mostafa Kandil, co-founder and CEO of Swvl, a mobile app that organizes convenient transportation routes around Egypt at reasonable prices, was recently featured in Forbes Middle Eastcommenting on the $8 million the company raised in its first round of venture capital financing. This is the largest round of funding for a tech startup in Egypt and one of the largest in the Middle East. Mostafa Kandil graduated from the American University in Cairo in 2015. A mere four years later his career CV boasts astonishing stops along the route of creating the Egypt-based transport app company Swvl (pronounced swivel). Originally trained as a petroleum engineer, Kandil was selected to participate in a Google programme at the age of 21 to learn about entrepreneurship and to network. He describes this as a "life-shaping" experience.
Moyinoluwa Adeyemi is a Software Engineer, Tech Enthusiast & Google Developer Expert.
She is a Software Developer focused on building for the Android Platform & is the first Google Certified Developer Expert in Nigeria.
She currently Works as a Software Engineer for @twitter.
Prior to that, moyin worked as an Android Developer at Zola Electric and before then, she was an Android Developer at Swifta Systems and Services.
She has created more than 7 mobile apps that provide innovative solutions to a host of problems. Her apps have tackled everything from tourism to education to social interactions. A long list that includes the famous android watch "Yoruba watch Faces" that tells the time In a Nigerian Local Dialect "Yoruba".
She studied Computer Science with Mathematics at Obafemi Awolowo University.
Moyin is very passionate about increasing the visibility of girls and women in technology. She started the first Women Techmakers group in Nigeria at her university in 2013. She also worked with a team to co-organizes the Google Developers Group in Lagos until Late last year.
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder of Nairobi Women Learning & Data
Muthoni is the Co-founder of Nairobi Women Learning & Data science, as well as an organising member of one of the largest AI focused conferences in Africa, Deep Learning Indaba.
She is also a Team leader at InstaDeep Kenya.
She is fervent about implementing world-class AI opportunities in Africa.
With a bachelor's degree in Actuarial science, she worked at Code For Africa's Storylab Academy, educating journalists in digital skills.
She is conversant with research data analytics, community and project management, & community growth hacking.
She is a brilliant mind with a bright vision for Africa.
Job Titles:
- South Africa [4IRSA Commission, Fiber Optics CEO
Job Titles:
- Software Engineer & Serial Entrepreneur
He is also the CEO of Flutterwave, a payments API that makes it easier for banks and businesses to process payments across Africa. The service allows consumers to pay for things in their local currency; Flutterwave takes care of integrating banks and payment-service providers into its platform so businesses don't have to take on the expense and burden.
Abebe is a computer Scientist with a strong interest in improving access to opportunitity for marginalised & disadvantaged communities.
She is the co-founder of Black in AI, A non profit organisation focused on increasing the presence & inclusion of black & African individuals in AI, as well as Mechanisms Design for social Good(MD4SG), a multi-institutional, interdisciplinary research initiative which she also co-founded and Co-organizes.
Abebe holds an M.S in computer science from Cornell, and M.A in Mathematics from university of Cambridge, and M.A and B.A in Mathematics from Harvad.
She is currently a junior fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows and a Ph.d candidate in computer science at Cornell university.
Her work has been covered by several prestige outlets like Forbes, the Boston globe and the Washington post.
Her research is deeply influenced by her upbringing in her hometown Of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where she lived until moving to the U.S in 2009
Job Titles:
- Ambassador Zimbabwe / Zimbabwe
Job Titles:
- Advisor on Government Relations / Nigeria / USA
Job Titles:
- Founder / CEO of GlobalX Investments Ltd / GlobalX Innovation Labs
Sylvia is Founder/CEO of GlobalX Investments Ltd/GlobalX Innovation Labs. GlobalX provides opportunities for children, developers & entrepreneurs to learn, innovate, and scale up their knowledge in hardware and emerging technologies. GlobalX focuses on SDGs 4 (Quality Education);5 (Gender Equality);8 (Decent Work & Economic Growth); 9 (Industry, Innovation & Infrastructure; 10 (Reduced Inequalities) and 17 (Partnerships for the goals).
She is passionate about empowering Women in Technology and Diversity & Inclusion matters in Africa and globally. She is Country Co-Founder/Chapter Lead (Kenya) for Women in Tech Africa (WiTA). WiTA won the United Nations EQUALS in Tech Award, Leadership Category in 2018. She is a 2014 TechWomen Fellow, an Initiative of the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. TechWomen empowers, connects and supports the next generation of women leaders in STEM from Africa, Central and South Asia, and the Middle East.
Sylvia is active in the global and Kenya's tech and entrepreneurship ecosystem. This earned her a special mention in the closing speech of the Global Entrepreneurship Summit 2015 by Maria Contreras-Sweet, former US Government's Lead Minister on Entrepreneurship and member of former President Obama's cabinet. She believes in sustainable solutions and is passionate about empowering startups and entrepreneurs to imagine, design and create a better world. She is a strong proponent of inclusion, social innovations and impact investment.
She is 2015-2017 Next Einstein Forum Ambassador-Kenya and a BMW Foundation Herbert Quandt Responsible Leader. She serves on WiTA's Operations Board and the Global Advisory Board for the India STEM Alliance.
Job Titles:
- Advisor on Storytelling / Ethiopia / USA