Africa's Rising Star Award

Co-Founder at Venture for Africa

Tobi Lafinhan has over 4 years of experience working in leading organisations across West Africa in a variety of industries, including tech. As the Co-founder of Venture for Africa, he created a fellowship program designed to fill talent gaps in Africa’s startup ecosystem – enabling top local and global fellows to access opportunities at leading startups in Africa. As the previous Head of Recruitment for MEST Africa – he led and managed recruitment processes and funnels across key Pan-African markets, recruiting promising software entrepreneurs and founders eventually backed by a $1 million seed fund, as well as supported international marketing and recruitment efforts for fellows and mentors into MEST Africa's Pan-African training program and incubators. 

Tobi is also involved in several podcasts – most recently the launch of the Connecting Africa podcast, tackling the biggest trends in African tech and interviewing local startups disrupting their industries. 

CEO & Co-Founder at Ada Animation

Joy is the founder of a pan-African Animation studio headquartered in Kenya that seeks to build a thriving industry in Africa that will create employment for the youth and catalyze wealth creation opportunities.

Ada Animation Bootcamp is a three-month hybrid programme that provides ambitious African animators with the necessary skills, tools, mentorship and a platform to create their own stories and earn from them. 

To bridge the gap of lack of mentorship and training, she has collaborated with renowned industry players as the mentors who train and network with the trainees to create a skilled workforce that will eventually collaborate in their international projects through Ada Animation’s capacity-building portal. Her desire is to have trained 18 animators in each of the 54 countries in Africa by the year 2025.