Aboyeji, Iyinoluwa

Impact on the world

Aboyeji co-founded Andela in 2014, a talent network placing African software engineers with global companies that attracted investment from Mark Zuckerberg's Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Google Ventures, and SoftBank and became one of Africa's first unicorns; he then co-founded Flutterwave in 2016, building payment infrastructure that has since processed billions of dollars for merchants across the continent and connected African businesses to global card networks including Visa and Mastercard. After stepping back from day-to-day operations at both companies, he founded Future Africa in 2019, a venture platform that has invested in more than 100 African startups across healthtech, cleantech, and education technology, effectively functioning as one of the continent's most influential early-stage funders; he was awarded Nigeria's Officer of the Order of the Niger in 2022 for his contributions to technology and entrepreneurship.

Life & background

Born March 28, 1991, in Lagos, Nigeria, to reverend parents, Aboyeji attended Loyola Jesuit College before studying international development and legal studies at Columbia International College, the University of Waterloo, and St. Jerome's University in Canada. At 19 he co-founded Bookneto, a social e-learning platform later acquired by a Canadian innovation center, before returning to Nigeria to co-found Andela in 2014 and Flutterwave in 2016. He has served as deputy director-general for a Nigerian presidential campaign, on Nigeria's federal digital-employability advisory committee, and was named to New African magazine's “100 Most Influential Africans” and Forbes' “30 Under 30” for enterprise technology.

Sources

1. Forbes; London Tech Week; Business Elites Africa