Who Got Hired?

We're excited to introduce "Who Got Hired", your monthly snapshot of key leadership and people changes in top African startups across diverse sectors and regions.

With this, you gain insights into industry dynamics, market shifts and talent trends, as well as identify emerging opportunities and growth areas within the startup ecosystem.

Spotlight Companies for the Month

This month, we're spotlighting companies including Onafriq , Flutterwave , OPay and FairMoney .

These fintechs have seen significant leadership changes, with a focus on areas such as Global Expansion Strategy, Compliance and Regulatory Focus, Digital Marketing, Sales, and Operational Leadership Reinforcement.

Here are key insights from two of these companies:

Company: Flutterwave

• Geographical Expansion: Flutterwave has been expanding its presence beyond Nigeria to other African countries (e.g., Cote d'Ivoire ????, Senegal ????, Cameroon ????, Kenya ????) and globally (e.g., USA ????, UK ????, India ????). This indicates a strategic focus on penetrating new markets and scaling operations internationally.
• Emphasis on Engineering, Operations, and Finance: Flutterwave looks to be significantly investing in its Engineering, Operations, and Finance functions as indicated by the distribution of its publicly available job openings. Despite this focus on Engineering (~30% of job openings), it also maintains a high current headcount in this area (~18%), indicating a strong emphasis on technological development. In the last year, Flutterwave has hired 12 experienced senior engineers, half of whom have between 6 - 10 years of experience.
• Growth in Legal Function: The data also reveals that the Legal function has seen the most growth in headcount (~+35%) over the past year, suggesting an increased focus on compliance and regulatory affairs. There have also been multiple roles dedicated to risk assessment, “decisioning”, and enterprise risk management.
• Decline in Product Management: Product Management on the other hand has seen the most decline in headcount (~-15%), which could indicate a strategic shift or restructuring within the company.
• Other insights: Flutterwave has promoted key personnel to strategic roles, recognizing their deep expertise in areas critical to fintech like Compliance and Risk. Promotions have also spanned core departments like Product Marketing and Customer Experience.

Company: OPay

• Department Distribution: Opay's strategic focus is evident in its large Sales and Business Development department, demonstrating a commitment to market expansion and client relationships. However, publicly available data suggests a significantly small Engineering department (~2%)* compared to other fintech companies operating at Opay’s scale.
• Growth Trends: The engineering team looks to have experienced the most significant growth over the past year, at about 30%.
• Sales and Marketing: Both Sales and Business Development and Marketing have also seen substantial growth, at ~18% and ~14% respectively. This could signal an ongoing effort to broaden the company's market presence.
• Other insights: There is a major trend of Opay employees moving to competing fintechs, notably Moniepoint (~19 in the last year) and PalmPay (~41 in the last 2 years, primarily mid-level managers, and one director).

*As per information available on Linkedin, out of Opay's extensive workforce of over 2,500 employees, a relatively small fraction - just about 110 - hold designations in the realms of "Engineering", "Software", or "Development".

Dive into the rest of the data with our snapshot graphic on all four spotlight companies provided below.

Also, keep your eyes peeled for our regular monthly updates that offer insights into the latest trends and strategic manoeuvres moulding the future of technology and innovation in Africa.

A look at our methodology

To compile this information, we curated an expansive list of over 100 startups from various sectors and regions, focusing on active companies to maintain current and relevant data within the ecosystem. For a select group of these companies, we conducted a deeper investigation into their public profiles and available online data to identify significant changes in employee count, new hires, and job openings.?

We have curated a list of startups spanning various sectors and regions, reflecting the vibrant landscape of innovation across fast-growing markets. These startups operate in diverse industries, including Fintech / Financial Services, Retail, Insurance, Education, and Healthcare, among others, underscoring the breadth of innovation and opportunity within the ecosystem.

We've gathered and analyzed this data from various public sources such as company websites, employee LinkedIn profiles, and industry reports. While we've done our best to verify this information, self-reported data can sometimes be inaccurate. Therefore, while our report gives a broad view of trends based mostly on online data, it's important to keep in mind that there might be limitations.?

We're open to feedback and updates from the startup community and encourage anyone with access to relevant data or more accurate information to reach out to us. Moving forward, our objective for future editions is to enhance the accuracy of our findings by integrating direct feedback from the companies featured, thereby improving the reliability and depth of our analysis.        

About VFA

Venture for Africa is a talent management and acceleration firm that aims to help experienced, global and local non-tech talent upskill for, gain context in, and access open roles in the African startup ecosystem.

For talent, we offer streamlined access to relevant bootcamp programs, mentorship, open roles and advisory opportunities at startups hiring now.

For startups, we provide fast access to experienced, relevant talent, a platform to enable them to hit the ground running, and tailored fractional or advisory options suited to startup needs.