In this episode, we sit down with Wale Akanbi, one of the co-founders of Aella. Aella became the first African lending fintech admitted to Y Combinator in 2017 and has since served over 2 million users across Nigeria and the Philippines.

Wale's journey, from teaching himself programming in Nigerian cyber cafes to building AI-powered financial inclusion tools, is a masterclass in persistence, vision, and purpose-driven entrepreneurship.

He's currently building solutions at the intersection of AI and blockchain to solve cross-border trust challenges.

What we cover:

• The pressure and lessons from being one of YC's first African lending fintech
• Why every engineer doubled as customer service for their first 500K users
• The evolution from rule-based credit scoring to AI models predicting "willingness to pay"
• Building cross-functional teams in the age of AI
• His current work at the intersection of AI and blockchain for cross-border trust
• Why helping people matters more than power, fame, or money

What do you do when you discover a $281 billion problem that global pharmaceutical companies can't solve? If you're Ayodeji Alaran, you leave your corporate job and build the solution from your house in Lagos.

In this episode, Ayodeji shares the remarkable journey from pharmacy school to founding PBR Life Sciences, now building one of Africa's largest healthcare datasets. This isn't just another startup story - it's a masterclass in strategic thinking, long-term vision, and the power of being an outlier.

What You'll Learn:

• The "precedence principle" he uses to hire only outliers for his team
• How PBR builds products customers actually want (hint: they never build based on their own ideas)
• Why he believes African businesses suffer from "short-sightedness"
• The difference between building AI models from scratch vs. adapting Western algorithms for African markets
• Why "your entrepreneurial life started way before you started entrepreneurship"

Ayodeji's philosophy that "every problem has a solution" isn't just optimism - it's the foundation for building solutions that could reshape how the world thinks about African healthcare.

Connect with Ayodeji on LinkedIn and follow PBR Life Sciences for updates on their expansion across Africa.

Bernard Laurendeau built Ethiopia's first licensed payment system operator, advised the Prime Minister's office on job creation, and now operates from Tokyo helping Japanese billions find their way into African markets. But he has a contrarian message: Africa needs to stop chasing sexy tech and focus on boring infrastructure first.

In this conversation, we explore:

• Why he respects unknown Lagos entrepreneurs more than Mark Zuckerberg
• How Ethiopia needs 10,000 new jobs daily to avoid catastrophe

• Why aid has been "market disrupting" for African development
• The difference between being a cultural chameleon and having real cultural intelligence
• His journey from management consultant to fintech CEO and back
• Why African entrepreneurs are the "Indiana Jones and MacGyvers" of business

Bernard shares candid insights about building in hostile environments, the importance of patient capital, and why African leaders need to become more comfortable with power. His unique perspective as someone who's navigated Ethiopian, French, American, and Japanese business cultures offers invaluable lessons for anyone interested in emerging markets.