(Agence Ecofin) – This former executive at MTN was recognized a few days ago by the international non-profit tech-focused journalism organization, Rest of World, as one of the 100 world leaders in Tech. .
Dare Okoudjou (photo) is a Beninese entrepreneur operating in fintech in Africa. He is the founder and CEO of MFS Africa, the largest mobile money interoperability center on the continent. It connects nearly 320 million mobile wallets to give financial service providers greater reach for their products to unbanked and underbanked populations.
Holder of a scientific master’s degree in telecom engineering obtained in 1999 from Télécom Paris, and a master’s degree in Business Administration from Insead Business School in France in 2005, Dare Okoudjou founded MFS Africa in 2009 with the ambition of facilitating payments to Africans across the world. Although he began his professional career at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) as a telecommunications consultant, he draws part of his experience from the three years spent at MTN, where he developed its mobile payment strategy and led its implementation in 21 countries in Africa and the Middle East.
« If you log into any mobile wallet somewhere in the world, starting with Africa, that should be enough to transact with anyone else. This is the great mission of the company“, he explains.
To achieve its vision, in November 2021 it raised USD 100 million in a Series C funding round. The financing raised in equity from investors such as AfricInvest FIVE, Goodwell Investments, LUN Partners CommerzVentures, Allan Gray Ventures, Endeavor Catalyst, Endeavor Harvest or even ShoreCap III, with a loan provided by Lendable and Norsad, is invested in the expansion of activities to new territories in Africa.
In 2017, MSF Africa was listed among the 10 most innovative companies in the world by Fast Company. In 2020, Okoudjou Dare was recognized by the Endeavor Entrepreneur Network as one of the world’s high impact entrepreneurs. In 2021, he was a recipient of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Legatum Fellowship alongside 12 other African high-impact business developers.