Artificial intelligence has rapidly become synonymous with transformative technological progress, marking one of the most significant leaps forward in the last 50 years. Its ability to enhance productivity, elevate ecosystem value, and offer innovative solutions with unparalleled processing speeds continues to entice investors. With the growing attention of AI, we have noticed a deliberate commitment from founders within our portfolio to try to leverage off of it and increase the value to their companies.
This next generation of AI will reshape every software category and every business, including our own.
Sayta Nadella - CEO, Microsoft
We took a look into our portfolio and interviewed a handful of founders across various sectors to gain insights into how they're integrating AI into their daily business operations and their future plans for incorporating it into their product offerings. From B2B and B2C to SaaS and Fintech, we explore how four founders leverage AI to improve operational efficiency and enhance the value of core product offerings.
Feyikemi “FK” Abudu is the founder of Unpacked Limited - a plastics collection, recycling and raw materials production business operating in Nigeria. Within her business sector, a key opportunity for artificial intelligence to increase their value-add lies within increasing their accuracy and efficiency within their sorting lines. For her, AI in Africa needs tailor-made solutions to suit the nuances of the African startup ecosystem.
“African markets require scrappier solutions. I've seen some cool use cases from Western markets that leverage AI and Robotics to automate factories and production lines. The African solution can't require millions of dollars in automation investments but can augment humans to be more efficient and precise. I expect to see African companies developing AI tools and products that cost less but can do more.”
Feyikemi Abudu - CEO, Unpacked
There's no denying the potential for B2C businesses to leverage artificial intelligence, especially given the sheer volume of data they manage at any given time. This necessitates utilizing data to derive deeper insights from customers and stakeholders alike.
Take, for instance, Affinity Africa, a fintech company in Ghana dedicated to serving the underbanked and unbanked populations in a region with approximately 34 million individuals. (worldpopulationreview) In 2022, they secured a license to operate savings and loans from the Bank of Ghana—an unprecedented achievement in that category in almost a decade (Innovation Spark). Leveraging artificial intelligence, they create personalized banking experiences that are not only efficient and user-friendly but also essential for capturing crucial data and establishing a data repository for the sector's benefit.
We use AI to improve our efficacy, giving our customers and agents a better user experience - freeing up time to do more important things. We also see it as a way to manage risk (fraud/compliance as well as credit), which will only get stronger over time as we collect more data and onboard more customers.
Tarek Mouganie - Founder, Affinity Africa
We also had the opportunity to converse with Kabir Shittu from Sudo Africa, an open API platform empowering businesses to integrate robust financial functionalities into their products such as accounts, cards and payments. Like Tarek of Affinity, Kabir emphasized the value of artificial intelligence not only in transaction monitoring, reconciliation, and enhancement but also in fraud prevention.
In the midst of what some term the "dark age of fraud," banks and financial institutions face an urgent need to adopt more sophisticated methods for detecting and preventing fraud. Criminals are becoming increasingly clever at adopting artificial intelligence into their schemes. Simply put, robust anti-fraud measures are now a necessity for every financial service operator. As the EU and other nations expedite the adoption of AI regulations to combat fraud, African countries must also prioritize safeguarding their customers from fraudulent activities. This urgency is made clear by the sheer number of cross border transactions made in African systems collectively processed roughly $1.2 trillion worth of transactions from 2022 to 2023 alone. (currency research)
Kenfield is the co-Founder and CEO of Tappi - an SaaS business, based in Kenya and Nigeria, designed for small businesses in Africa to increase sales, find customers and build relationships In their daily operations, generative AI is used not only to edit pictures for marketing assets, it is used for generating human-like responses to customer reviews.
“AI can help automate and improve the often tedious marketing and upselling tasks by actually doing some of the manual work involved, which is a huge win”
Ken Griffith - Co-Founder, CEO, Tappi
AI presents a pathway to accelerated progress in addressing social, financial, and economic challenges across the African continent. A 2022 report by Kora (finextra) listed 2,400 AI-focused companies in Africa, with 40% founded in the last five years.
Our founders across various sectors are embracing AI to enhance productivity, efficiency, and value-add in their businesses. From the need for tailor-made AI solutions suited to Africa's unique startup landscape, to revolutionizing fintech operations and financial functionalities integration and even automating marketing tasks.
Artificial Intelligence has the potential to aid solutions in addressing social, financial, and economic challenges. At Resilience 17, we understand that the future success of companies in Africa lies in their ability to harness the power of AI as the possibilities for growth and impact are limitless, heralding a new era of progress and prosperity.
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