👨🏿‍🚀TechCabal Daily – Documenting Africa’s builders

The TechCabal Builders’ List is the answer to a simple question: “When we’re chronicling the year 2025 in African tech, who should we mention?” This list is filled with people from different sectors of the ecosystem, who did their jobs (and more).

Who is a Builder? A Builder is someone whose work meaningfully pushes the ecosystem forward.

The Builders’ list is divided into five categories: the operators, the innovators, the enablers, the keepers, and the connectors. Each category plays a unique role in the ecosystem; the innovators who conceptualise products;

The Operators – who make the systems run smoothly;

The Enablers – who unlock capital, policy, and access;

The Connectors – who move ideas across industries;

and The Keepers – who preserve trust, memory, and continuity within the ecosystem.

The Builders’ List means different things to different facets of the ecosystem. For us at TechCabal, the Builders’ List is an archive of the people who made consequential contributions to the African technology ecosystem this year.

How do you decide the Builders?

As evidenced above, Africa’s tech ecosystem had a stronger year than 2024, making the selection of the 2025 Builders cohort a demanding process. The list originally had over 600 names spanning all 54 countries, but by sheer grit, determination, and an inordinate amount of research, this list was reduced to 50 people.

Each builder on the list has defined 2025 tech in their own way; from Femi Aluko, whose Chowdeck has redefined how Nigerians and Africans think about food delivery in this part of the world, to Salima Bah, whose work has increased international bandwidth capacity in Sierra Leone from 90 gigabits per second (Gbps) to over 500 Gbps, laying the foundation for startups scaling.

Making the list has given the TechCabal newsroom a new way of seeing the African tech ecosystem; each person we added to the list offered a perspective on the ecosystem that we believe paints a bigger picture 

There’s still a lot of work to be done in covering the ecosystem, especially for the people who work behind the scenes.

This first edition of The Builders’ List is the beginning of our annual commitment to telling more stories about the ecosystem.

As you dig into the list, we want you to think about all the different ways that African tech is now different from where it was at the beginning of the year.

Editor’s note: We said the Builders’ List would go live yesterday. It didn’t. We held publication to resolve technical glitches. Stick around on our website and across our social channels, and be the first to know when it drops.

Chowdeck, a Nigerian food-delivery (and groceries, airtime, bill-payments, and somehow, event ticketing) startup, has entered a new (and exclusive) partnership with GoLemon, a grocery delivery startup, to supply groceries to Chowdeck’s dark stores and offer same-day delivery to users through its app.

How will it work? Chowdeck will continue to run its instant-delivery network and manage its dark stores, while GoLemon handles sourcing and quality control, and keeps its own platform focused on next-day delivery and bigger shop baskets.

Why are they doing this? Both companies say the partnership mirrors how Nigerians shop for groceries: a mix of big, planned monthly baskets and frequent top-ups for perishables and forgotten essentials. According to internal estimates shared by Chowdeck and GoLemon, less than 0.5% of Nigeria’s grocery spend happens online today, but as much as three out of four digital grocery orders could flow through their combined platforms with this partnership. For Chowdeck, GoLemon reduces the operational drag of grocery sourcing at scale, and for GoLemon, it’s instant access to Chowdeck’s demand and users.

What’s Chowdeck up to? Although Chowdeck has said this isn’t an acquisition play, nor is it a pivot, it looks like a network effects play. After raising $9 million in August to build 500 dark stores by 2026 and integrating Mira’s financing tools in its delivery ecosystem after acquiring the restaurant point-of-sale (PoS) startup in June, Chowdeck is outsourcing part of its grocery layer to widen its moat and edge closer to a super app-style utility, without carrying the full grocery load. Competitors like Glovo and Oya Now mostly do either delivery or sourcing, but Chowdeck is trying to own demand in both verticals.

Airtel Money users in Kenya can now pay for Showmax subscriptions directly from their mobile wallets, thanks to a new integration between MultiChoice’s streaming platform and the telecom-backed mobile money operator (MMO).

Why are they doing this? It’s a strategic change. During the festive spike in streaming from users being at home, removing card requirements and third-party gateways makes it easy for mobile-first users to activate or renew entertainment plans without friction.

How will it work? Airtel Money now appears as a checkout option across Showmax plans, with payments authorised instantly with a PIN. This would bring Showmax closer to where Kenyan consumers already spend and transact. For Airtel Money, it’s a strategic way to attract and retain users. In September, it crossed 10.3% market share in Kenya’s mobile money ecosystem, chipping at M-Pesa’s dominance as Safaricom’s share slipped below 90%. If Airtel Money can build scale and ubiquity through regular subscriptions from Showmax’s Kenyan customers—estimated to be in several tens of thousands since its African market records 2.1 million subscribers—the challenger could do serious further damage to M-PESA’s decades-long grip on mobile money.

Why does it matter? Kenya’s pay-TV and streaming market is heating up again. New data from the Communications Authority of Kenya (CAK) as of Q1 2025/26 showed MultiChoice driving a rebound in pay-TV subscriptions in Kenya, helped by football and local content. Across the region, telecom-backed MMOs already integrate with streaming services as Safaricom’s M-PESA supports recurring payments for YouTube Premium and Spotify, while MTN MoMo enables similar integrations in West and Central Africa. With wallets becoming default payment rails, platforms that make it easy to pay will win share in pay-TV and streaming.