Oftentimes, ideas are born to address challenges. What were the early challenges you faced, and what opportunity did you see in the market?
I began building NALA in 2017. It wasn’t a smooth ride, I built, failed, rebuilt, and failed again. In April 2018, we launched a USSD-based app to help users manage mobile money more efficiently. It didn’t do so well. But we hit number one on the Play Store in Tanzania, and then we received a cease and desist letter from the country’s largest telecom operator that wanted us to shut down, accusing us of stealing customer PINs. Around the same time, I was called in by the central bank to explain how our technology worked. It was a deeply frustrating moment, especially as a young innovator, just 24 or 25 at the time, trying to solve real problems.
