African innovators are calling for inclusive artificial intelligence (AI) systems and hyper-local fintech platforms to drive real development across the continent—arguing that imported technologies often miss the mark in solving local challenges.
Entrepreneurs like Nkem Okocha and Dr Olubayo Adekanmbi, who are championing grassroots innovations across finance and health sectors, say that bottom-up, culturally-aware technology is key to improving the lives of underserved populations across Africa.
They spoke on Wednesday at The Future of Progress: Africa in Motion, a Lagos event hosted by Africa.com, where panel moderator Lehlé Baldé, media entrepreneur and financial inclusion advocate, steers a conversation focused on how Africa can build tech that speaks the language of its people—literally and figuratively.
Today, Mamamoni boasts 3,000 female agents and a waiting list of over 30,000 women. “Imagine what we could do with $1 million. Imagine the possibilities with $2 million,” she says, pointing to funding support received from the Tony Elumelu Foundation, the US Consulate General in Lagos, and the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Fintech for the forgotten: Mamamoni scales grassroots finance
Founder and CEO of Mamamoni, Nkem Okocha, says her fintech solution was born out of necessity. “After training women in skills like baking and soap making, eight out of ten came back saying they had no money to buy materials,” she tells the audience.
In response, Okocha built a progressive web app tailored for low-end smartphones to provide microloans to women otherwise excluded from formal financial systems. But tech alone wasn’t enough.
“For women without devices, we engaged local leaders in their communities,” she says. These female agents help others transact, onboard new users—including those limited by cultural or religious constraints—and earn commission doing so.
“We don’t say low-income women,” she adds. “We say no-income women.” Yet, she explains, these same women are “churning out billions of transactions” through the Mamamoni platform.
Trust is everything, Okocha stresses. “We go into communities that have been excluded, sometimes places with no roads. We show up by boat, or we trek in. That’s how they know you care.”
Transparency, too, is non-negotiable. “If we say it’s one percent, it’s one percent,” she says. Mamamoni supports users in Yoruba, Hausa, and Pidgin, sharing explainer videos in languages women can understand.
Today, Mamamoni boasts 3,000 female agents and a waiting list of over 30,000 women. “Imagine what we could do with $1 million. Imagine the possibilities with $2 million,” she says, pointing to funding support received from the Tony Elumelu Foundation, the US Consulate General in Lagos, and the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
AI with an accent: Building data systems that understand Africa
Dr Olubayo Adekanmbi, CEO of Data Science Nigeria and co-founder of EqualyzAI, is on a mission to decolonise artificial intelligence by rooting it in African languages, values, and realities.
“AI is about people, not technology,” he says. “If it will serve us, it must understand us—our language, our culture, our value system.”
He says that African countries must build artificial intelligence models that reflect local languages and values. “AI is about people, not about technology,” he says. “If AI will serve the people, it must understand the people, the richness of their language, their culture, their epistemology, their value system.”
According to Adekanmbi, most global AI models fail when applied to Africa. “Over 90 percent don’t work for African contexts, and more than 95 percent of our languages aren’t fully digitised,” he notes.
For AI to be useful on the continent, it must be “localised, context-aware and built by the people,” he insists.
He references a Gates Foundation-backed education tool that creates learning content in local languages to demystify complex science topics. “Imagine photosynthesis or osmosis explained with images kids see every day,” he says. The aim is not just education, but relevance.
During the COVID-19 lockdown, his team created an SMS-based learning platform for eight million Nigerian children with no internet, laptops, or smartphones. “We used AI to simplify lessons into bite-sized quizzes delivered via SMS—adaptive, interactive, and fully accessible.”
For Adekanmbi, simplicity and localisation unlock scale. “Use what people already have to deliver what they need,” he says. “It’s in balancing both that we achieve meaningful innovation.”
Partnerships that power progress
Both tech leaders underscore the value of collaboration in scaling impact.
Mamamoni’s partnerships with state governments and peer networks are pivotal, Okocha says. “We’ve empowered women through state-led initiatives and even do peer-to-peer lending with other entrepreneurs.”
Adekanmbi shares how, during the pandemic, his team built Nigeria’s National Epidemiological Model by leveraging telecoms data to map low-income communities. “We didn’t have the data we needed, but we used what we had—network clustering data—to understand community spread,” he says.
He highlights the Gates Foundation’s ongoing efforts to build speech data in Nigerian languages—progress he believes is vital to making AI work for Africa.
“Now we have the talent, and the ecosystem is emerging,” Adekanmbi concludes. “Let’s build AI models that are fair, accountable, and that can equalise opportunity—so no one is left behind.”
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