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Richard Maponya
Born
South Africa. Under apartheid, Black traders in townships were limited by law in what and where they could sell. Maponya started with a milk delivery round in Soweto in the 1950s, built a chain of shops and petrol stations despite repeated licence refusals, and spent decades trying to get permission for a shopping centre where Soweto residents could shop without travelling to white areas. Maponya Mall finally opened in 2007. He died in 2020.
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Herman Mashaba
Born
South Africa. In 1985, with partners, Mashaba launched Black Like Me, hair-care products made for Black South Africans at a time when the big brands ignored them, selling through salons and hawkers in the townships. Its factory was burned down in 1993, and the business recovered. He later went into politics as mayor of Johannesburg, which is a separate record; the business story is about serving a market others overlooked.
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Raymond Ackerman (businessman)
Born
South Africa. Fired by another chain, Ackerman bought four small Pick n Pay stores in Cape Town in 1967 and built them into a national grocer by casting himself as the consumer's champion: he fought state-controlled prices, famously selling bread below the fixed price, and campaigned against restrictions on what supermarkets could sell. He also opposed apartheid labour practices within the business. He died in 2023.
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James Mwangi
Kenya. When Mwangi joined Equity Building Society in the early 1990s it was technically insolvent. He turned it into Equity Bank by doing what Kenya's established banks would not: opening accounts with tiny minimum balances for farmers, traders and the poor, sending mobile banking vans to rural areas and later using agents in shops. It grew into one of East Africa's largest banks by customer numbers, and he has led it for decades.
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Manu Chandaria
Born
Kenya. Chandaria built the family trading business his father started in Nairobi into the Comcraft Group, which makes steel, aluminium and plastic goods, from roofing sheets to household utensils, for Kenyan and East African buyers who previously relied on imports. Local manufacturing of everyday materials is unglamorous, but it is how many households roofed their homes, and he is also known as one of Kenya's leading philanthropists.
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Juliana Rotich
Kenya. Rotich co-founded Ushahidi, open-source software for crowd-mapping reports during Kenya's 2008 post-election violence, then BRCK in 2013, a rugged internet router with its own battery built for places where power cuts and patchy networks are normal. BRCK later moved into free public Wi-Fi on Nairobi's matatu minibuses. Designing hardware around local infrastructure rather than importing it is the point.
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Said Salim Bakhresa
Tanzania. Bakhresa left school young and started selling food in Dar es Salaam, then built Bakhresa Group around everyday staples under the Azam name: wheat flour, ice cream, soft drinks and bottled water priced for Tanzanian households. He added fast ferries between Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar and Azam TV, a cheap pay-television service that shows local football. It is a business built almost entirely on mass, local consumption.
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Mohammed Dewji
Born
Tanzania. Dewji took over his family's trading business, MeTL, in the late 1990s and expanded into manufacturing by buying factories privatised by the state: textiles, edible oils, soap, and drinks such as Mo Cola, sold cheaply across Tanzania. It became one of the country's largest private employers. He was kidnapped in Dar es Salaam in 2018 and released after nine days, a reminder of the risks of high-profile wealth.
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Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu
Ethiopia. Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu founded soleRebels in 2004 in Zenebework, the Addis Ababa neighbourhood where she grew up, to give local artisans steady, well-paid work. The shoes use soles cut from recycled tyres, a technique long used in Ethiopian selate and barabasso footwear, with hand-spun local cotton uppers. It shows a business turning an existing local craft into skilled jobs rather than replacing it.
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Mike Adenuga
Born
Nigeria. Adenuga launched Globacom in 2003, and Glo undercut the incumbents by introducing per-second billing to Nigeria, so callers paid for the seconds they used rather than whole minutes. For millions of prepaid customers on tight budgets that changed what a phone call cost, and rivals had to follow. Glo grew into one of Nigeria's largest networks, with operations in Ghana and Benin.
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Jason Njoku
Born
Nigeria. Njoku founded iROKOtv in 2011 after noticing that Nollywood films, hugely popular across Africa and the diaspora, were mostly watched on pirated discs and uploads. He licensed films from producers and streamed them legally, paying the industry for its work. iROKO went on to produce its own Nollywood titles. It is a business built on a local film culture that global platforms had largely ignored.
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Tayo Oviosu
Born
Nigeria. Oviosu founded Paga in 2009 to let Nigerians without bank accounts send money and pay bills through a phone and a network of local agents, often small shopkeepers. In a country where cash dominated and bank branches were scarce outside cities, that solved an everyday problem. Paga grew to millions of users and later expanded into Ethiopia.
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Patrick Awuah Jr.
Ghana. Awuah left a career at Microsoft to found Ashesi University in Accra in 2002, a private, non-profit university meant to train ethical, practical leaders for Ghana's own economy rather than graduates who leave. It runs an honour code, requires community service, and funds scholarships for a large share of students. Building a university is an unusual business, but it addressed a gap employers felt directly.
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Divine Ndhlukula
Born
Zimbabwe. Ndhlukula started SECURICO in 1998 from her cottage in Harare with a few guards, entering a security industry dominated by men. She grew it into one of Zimbabwe's largest security firms, with thousands of staff, and made a point of hiring and training women as guards. It met steady demand from homes and businesses during years of economic hardship.
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Miloud Chaabi
Morocco. Chaabi, a shepherd's son who started as a labourer, built Ynna Holding into a group spanning construction materials, affordable housing and the Aswak Assalam supermarket chain, which kept prices low for Moroccan shoppers. His housing projects targeted families on modest incomes. He died in 2016, and his group remains one of Morocco's best-known family businesses.
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