Tech Personality of The Week

This week’s tech personality is the cofounder and President of Kippa, Duke Ekezie-Joseph. Kippa is a Nigerian fintech platform that’s digitising Africa’s MSME sector. Kippa, which initially focused on digital bookkeeping services, now provides a variety of business, financial management, and payment solutions for African MSMEs.

In 2021, the firm hauled in $3.2 million in pre-seed funding.

Kippa also received a ‘super-agent’ banking licence from the Central Bank of Nigeria that allows its merchants to offer a full suite of agent financial services to end customers and enables Kippa to integrate with national switches and provide B2B services to other fintechs.

Mobile phone and WhatsApp-friendly, Kippa targets small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), providing them with free, easy-to-use accounting software. Kippa then looks at potential financing opportunities and makes revenue by taking commission fees and earning interest by lending companies working capital.

To run smoother business operations and help Kippa transition into its next phase, Duke has been appointed as president of Kippa. As president, he will take full ownership of Kippa’s internal operations, including the marketing, product, finance, operations, and HR teams.

Serving previously as COO in charge of growth and business development, Duke has hands-on business development experience and is the mastermind of an operation. He had a short stint working at KPMG, Citibank and also an internship at TikTok alongside his brother and current Kippa CEO, Kennedy EkezieJoseph, where they were amongst the first three Africans to work with TikTok on their expansion into Africa. Duke also worked as a development expert at Y Combinator-backed startup, Releaf.