Unlocking Africa

Episode 242 with Nana Afoah Appiah Korang, Chief Investment Officer and Executive Board Director at Silverbacks Holdings, an alternative investment firm backing high growth companies across technology, sport, entertainment, fashion and the wider creative economy in Africa. Nana is an experienced private equity investor, entrepreneur and board director with expertise spanning deal origination, investment execution, portfolio management, fundraising and exits. She began her investment career at Goldman Sachs before joining Emerging Capital Partners, one of Africa’s largest private equity firms, where she served as a Director and senior investment professional. She is also the Founder and Executive Director of A...

Episode 241 with Funmilayo Ishola, Founder of Dehydrator Hub Agrifood Technology Limited, a Nigerian agrifood company tackling post harvest loss by transforming perishable produce into higher value, shelf stable ingredients. Using hybrid solar powered dehydration and a Processing as a Service model, Dehydrator Hub gives farmers and women led agribusinesses access to processing infrastructure without requiring them to invest in expensive equipment. The company also provides training, regulatory compliance support and market access to help entrepreneurs build commercially sustainable food businesses. Dehydrator Hub has rescued 65 tonnes of food from post harvest loss, helped participating farmers increase their...

Episode 240 with Beamlak Alemayehu, Founder and CEO of Medanit Digital Health, Ethiopia’s first integrated, multi channel digital healthcare access system connecting patients with doctors, medication and mental health services through a mobile application, website and low bandwidth call centre. Beamlak is a clinical nurse and social worker whose experience of long waiting times, misinformation, medicine shortages and fragmented healthcare services inspired her to build a more accessible and patient centred alternative. Medanit has registered more than 50,000 users across Ethiopia, delivered over 58,000 medications and facilitated more than 78,000 consultations and healthcare support interactions. Beamlak is a...

Episode 239 with Shola Bamidele, Founder and CEO of Loom Rooms, a creative ecosystem helping African artists develop their craft, strengthen their identities and build sustainable businesses around their work. Based in Egbeda, Alimosho, outside Lagos’s traditional creative hubs, Loom Rooms was established to address one of the biggest weaknesses within Nigeria’s entertainment economy: the lack of structure surrounding creative talent. Through creative spaces, development pathways and a collaborative community, the company connects artists with producers, engineers, designers and other professionals while helping them understand contracts, protect their intellectual property and develop lasting careers. In thi...

Episode 238 with Sander de Klerk, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of The Good Roll, a sustainable paper company building an integrated bamboo value chain between Ghana and global paper markets. The Good Roll began as a European consumer brand selling sustainable toilet paper and using part of its revenue to improve access to sanitation. It has since evolved into a much broader industrial business, processing Ghanaian bamboo into pulp for the global paper industry, tissue products for its consumer brand, and, from 2027, biochar and carbon credits produced from bamboo waste. The company generated more than €5.5 million in revenue in 2025 and has secured a $50 million long term pulp offtake agreement. Its pr...

Episode 237 with Lydie Murorunkwere, Founder and Managing Director of ML Corporate Services Ltd, Rwanda’s first locally owned licensed Trust and Company Service Provider, and Chairperson of the Rwanda Trust Companies Association. Over the past two decades, Lydie has worked with entrepreneurs, investors, family businesses and institutions across Africa, helping them establish governance, ownership and succession structures designed not only to support growth, but to endure. Her work challenges the idea that succession is simply a legal or technical process. Instead, she argues that it is fundamentally a human issue shaped by fear, family relationships, culture, responsibility and the willingness of founders to...

Episode 236 with Linda Lockhart, Founder and CEO of Global Give Back Circle, an organisation focused on expanding education, financial inclusion and pathways to dignified work for women and girls across Africa. Since 2006, Global Give Back Circle has supported more than 6,000 girls through tertiary education, engaged more than 4,000 mentors and built programmes across Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania and Ghana. At the centre of its economic empowerment work is HER Lab, a model designed around the realities facing young women in rural communities. Rather than treating education as the end goal, HER Lab connects vocational skills, mentorship and personal development with employment, entrepreneurship, financial i...

Episode 235 with Houda Ghozzi, Founder and CEO of Open Startup, a pan African organisation focused on connecting African innovation with global opportunity through investment readiness, deep tech commercialisation, cross border partnerships and ecosystem development. Over the past decade, Open Startup has supported thousands of founders and startups across more than 20 African countries. Its latest focus is The Science Road, an initiative designed to help deep tech and research led ventures make the difficult journey from scientific and technical development to market readiness, investment and global scale. This comes at a critical moment for the continent. Africa has more than 300 active deep tech startups t...

Episode 234 with Madelaine Fourie, General Brand Manager at Sappi Verve, a business operating at the intersection of forestry, sustainable materials and global fashion value chains. Sappi Verve produces dissolving wood pulp from woodfibre, an essential raw material used to manufacture fibres such as viscose and lyocell that ultimately become the fabrics found in everyday clothing. From its forestry and manufacturing base in South Africa, Sappi forms part of a global textile supply chain that connects African natural resources with fashion markets around the world. In this episode, Madelaine explains the hidden journey behind many of the clothes we wear and why the fashion supply chain often begins in a forest...

Episode 231 with Amanda Etuk, Program Director at Cascador, an Africa focused platform supporting growth stage entrepreneurs with the leadership, networks, strategic partnerships and catalytic capital needed to build resilient, high impact businesses. Amanda works at the intersection of strategy and execution, helping founders navigate one of the most overlooked stages of African entrepreneurship. With experience spanning scaling startups, managing complex multimillion pound operations and building ecosystem partnerships, she is focused on equipping entrepreneurs with the tools they need to grow sustainable businesses that create jobs and strengthen Africa's economy. Through Cascador, she works closely with f...