Nigerian fintech, Sudo Africa announced the appointment of Farida Kabir as its new Head of Growth.
Sudo Africa, which was launched in 2020, provides a card-issuing API to businesses and developers. Founded by Aminu Bakori and Kabir Shittu, the startup raised $3.7 million pre-seed funding in March, which they said was going to be deployed for growth and expansion into new markets.
Kabir is a growth and policy expert who has worked at the intersection of ICT and policy for over 6 years. Kabir started her career as a data analyst and technical support at medical organisations like the CDC, before working with OTRAC, a tech company that designs enterprise systems for the Nigerian healthcare sector. During her stint as CEO at OTRAC, the organisation did a $200,000 pre-seed raise to expand system operations in Nigeria and South Africa. Kabir transitioned to international development after her time at OTRAC and went on to manage a portfolio at the World Bank Group worth $430 million for the Nigeria Identification for Development (ID4D) project. She will be bringing her years of experience leading global teams to tackle growth at Sudo Africa.
In her first 100 days, Kabir will run internal diagnostics of Sudo Africa to determine the growth chart of the company.
“Since I announced my appointment, I’ve received a number of complaints and suggestions from users and I want to work on that. I would, first of all, do a mini diagnostics on the inside to determine where our gaps and lapses are. We need to be plugged into those holes before charting out our growth strategy. Our growth strategy is currently divided into two; growing the brand equity and growing in terms of revenue and customers,” Farida said.
As Head of Growth, Kabir is optimistic about contributing to the Sudo Africa’s growth trajectory. When asked what she was looking forward to the most, she revealed that it was growth.
“I want to look back at the end of the quarter and see exponential growth. I’m driven by numbers and I want to see that we secure those numbers.”
Kabir is also certain that her network and experience working across sub-Saharan Africa will prove useful in her new role. She plans to leverage her career experience to drive growth at Sufi Africa.
Kabir further asserted her excitement about bringing gender diversity to the leadership team—a trend that this report by Deloitte shows is happening across the global tech industry.