ElevateHR Africa, a cloud-based HR management platform, has named Kennedy Nyabwala as its new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) following a successful early-stage funding round led by From Here Ventures. With a decade of experience in the African tech ecosystem, Nyabwala has worked for renowned tech companies in the region. Previously, he served as the Global Head of Logistics at MarketForce and was a co-founder of Bwala, one of Africa’s leading logistics startups. Nyabwala’s journey began as a product ambassador for OLX in Africa, quickly progressing to the role of Head of Insights for the continent. He later joined Copia Global as the Head of Strategy and Customer Growth before founding Bwala.

Mark Karake, co-founder and board chair of ElevateHR, expressed great enthusiasm for Nyabwala’s appointment, highlighting his proven track record in driving growth, innovation, and leadership in the tech sector. Karake believes Nyabwala’s expertise will be instrumental in propelling ElevateHR to new heights. The appointment of such talented individuals with relevant experience in the thriving Nairobi startup scene signals the growing strength of the ecosystem.

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ElevateHR, developed by a group of young Africans, is a modern HR system that operates on the cloud. Its aim is to seamlessly integrate various HR functions, providing a user-friendly approach for both administrators and employees. The platform offers modules for payroll, salary advance, leave management, performance management, and more. Nyabwala, upon his appointment, expressed astonishment at the prevalence of paper-based processes in many organizations, including personal details, time-off requests, performance evaluations, salary adjustments, and payroll changes. He believes ElevateHR can alleviate these bottlenecks, allowing HR teams to focus on their core responsibilities.

Common HR challenges faced by businesses include manual payroll processing using Excel, leave management, performance evaluations, onboarding, offboarding, and other labor-intensive tasks. According to recent data, HR professionals spend over 40 percent of their time on repetitive manual operations, which are time-consuming, inefficient, and costly.

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Charles Rapulu Udoh

Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer, who has several years of experience working in Africa’s burgeoning tech startup industry. He has closed multi-million dollar deals bordering on venture capital, private equity, intellectual property (trademark, patent or design, etc.), mergers and acquisitions, in countries such as in the Delaware, New York, UK, Singapore, British Virgin Islands, South Africa, Nigeria etc. He’s also a corporate governance and cross-border data privacy and tax expert. 
As an award-winning writer and researcher, he is passionate about telling the African startup story, and is one of the continent’s pioneers in this regard