Meet The Two Ghanaians, Kofi & Nii Who Were Listed In Forbes Under 30 Tech Entrepreneurs In Africa

Two Ghanaian Tech Entrepreneurs, Kofi Genfi & Nii Osae Osae Dade have made it into the list of Forbes Africa’s Under 30. Kofi Genfi and Nii Osae Dade all 24 are owners of a budding Software company known as Cyst, located in East Legon, Accra.

Recall, www.ghbase.com shared an article about how 3 friends from high school teamed up to start a company that is growing to be Africa’s most promising software company and like we had published in that article, we were not exaggerating at all. Indeed the owners of the company who are all under age 30 have done lots of works and they each deserve a pat on the back for their efforts in changing the narrative when it comes to tech in Ghana.

I promised to follow their trail and keep you updated on what they do and interestingly, I was happy when I learned that, they have been mentioned by Forbes Africa as one of the young tech entrepreneurs with innovative businesses shaping their society.

Kofi Genfi, co-founder of CYST
Kofi Genfi is Co-Founder of CYST and Director Of Business Strategy

Now every year, Forbes Africa releases a list of 30 game changers all under the age of 30 across Africa. This year’s own happens to be the 4th edition and Forbes decided to increase the number to 90, by selecting 30 people from 3 major categories. For this year, 30 people were selected under Business, another 30 from technology and another 30 from creative. And every single person chosen must be under the age of 30.

The 2018 FORBES AFRICA Under 30 is our authentic and most definitive list of Africa’s most promising young change-makers. This year is our fourth edition of the list and for the first time, inspired by the growing number of young men and women entrepreneurs, we have expanded it to bring you 30 game-changers, all under the age of 30, in each the three sectors – business, technology and creative. The 90 in total are challenging conventions and rewriting the rules for the next generation of entrepreneurs, creatives and tech gurus.

Kofi Genfi and his business partner Nii Osae Osae Dade are in the Under 30 Technology list and the only Ghanaians who made it into that list. It would be recalled that Sarkodie was also part of the Under 30 list within the Creative category and the only Ghanaian entertainer in that list.

Nii Osae Osae Dade
Nii Osae Osae Dade is a co-founder of CYST and Director Of Software Engineering

Kofi and Nii’s company, CYST has a launched their flagship product, MAZZUMA, a mobile payments platform that allows you to send money from your mobile money to any other mobile money wallet, buy airtime, pay bills and more all by just using the app. That’s not all, recently they made changes to what the app can do and now they have the MAZZUMA Tokens ( I would stress more on that in another article).

Their official website for MAZZUMA describes it as:

Mazzuma is a mobile money payment system that utilizes a distributed secure infrastructure and cryptocurrency to enable seamless payments. The Mazzuma token (MAZ) will be the key payment medium in the Mazzuma ecosystem.

Transactions made on the Mazzuma platform are instantaneous and free of transaction fees. This is going to revolutionarise the payment industry with instant cross-border payments.

It’s such a big deal to be listed in Forbes Africa’s Under 30 as it sends a signal that, you are doing something great and others have noticed the great work you are doing.

Portions of the piece written about them on the Official Forbes Africa website reads:

“This duo founded CYST, a software innovation company that specializes in artificial intelligence to create technology solutions in 2013. CYST has a research arm called CYST Research Institute, which focuses on artificial intelligence-based research and development such as natural language processing. In partnership with the telecommunications companies, CYST has access to over 15 million subscribers through its platforms. They count MTN Ghana, Vodafone Ghana, AirtelTigo Ghana, Unity Link and Data Protection Commission among their affiliates. It means over 15 million subscribers through its platforms.”

At age 24, the duo is doing a lot and we are excited for them and happier because their innovation and hard work are equally showcasing the great talent Ghana has especially in the technology industry.

In a short phone call interview with www.ghbase.com, Kofi Genfi told us how excited they are at the office and disclosed that this acknowledgment on Forbes has even motivated them to do more for Ghana and Africa.

It’s exhilarating to see one of your own up there, doing their best and getting noticed by the rest of the world. Thumbs up to Kofi and Nii and all the guys at CYST who are doing their best. Congratulations from us at www.ghbase.com

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To get in touch with the writer, send an email to chris@ghbase.com