Mark Karake - Afrikan Heroes

Kenya-based ElevateHR Africa Secures Funding and Appoints Kennedy Nyabwala as CEO

May 20, 2023

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.

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.

ElevateHR Africa ElevateHR Africa

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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

How Kenyan Startup Attracted Silicon Backing of Valley Entrepreneurs

September 26, 2020

Evidence has emerged on how Kenyan based innovative startup was able to attract the backing of Silicon valley entrepreneurs such as Slack’s Stewart Butterfield, Box’s Aaron Levie and Craig Newmark of Craigslist all of whom provided donations to the Nairobi-based Impact Africa Network to help it absorb more people into its 12-month Innovation Fellowship programme. Impact Africa Network is a non-profit startup studio on a mission to ensure young talented Africans can participate in the digital transformation of Africa as creators and owners.

Mark Karake, CEO of Impact Africa Network

The organisation’s rigorous 12-month Innovation Fellowship gives talented college graduates the opportunity to work on well-vetted ideas with likeminded peers under the guidance of a strong leadership team and mentor network. The goal is to expand entrepreneurial capacity while at the same time develop fundamentally-sound early-stage startups. Impact Africa Network has now announced support from a number of Silicon Valley tech leaders, namely Slack chief executive officer (CEO) Stewart Butterfield, Box CEO Aaron Levie, and Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist.

The three entrepreneurs have joined the organisation’s 100 Founders’ Challenge, with their donations to be used to provide more young people with access to the fellowship programme. Since its inception in January 2019, Impact Africa Network has provided Innovation Fellowship opportunities to 40 young Africans, and played a part in the formation of STEM education startup Jenga School.

“When we launched Impact Africa Network I had no doubt that impact-oriented tech leaders in Silicon Valley and beyond would not hesitate to support the work we are doing. They are uniquely positioned to understand how critical support is to the development of young innovators early in their career. Most of them benefited from similar support when they were coming through the ranks,” said Mark Karake, CEO of Impact Africa Network.

Newmark said he chose to support the programme in order to stimulate Silicon Valley-style entrepreneurialism, in the best sense of that, in Africa. “It’s important because it creates employment and opens doors for advancement in careers and wealth creation,” he said.

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry