Gbenga Ajayi

Partner, Africa at QED Investors

Speaker

Gbenga Ajayi is a partner at QED Investors focusing on Africa and Middle East investments as part of the international team.

Gbenga has spent his career working across fintech/tech and Africa in a variety of roles from product development to growth to marketing to partnerships. He has had experience working across Africa, Europe and the U.S. markets. Prior to joining QED, Gbenga was co-founder of Kanza Ventures, a boutique seed investment and advisory firm focused on fintech in Africa.

Before that, Gbenga was product director for SMB growth at Wise (formerly TransferWise), a global cross-border remittance fintech. Prior to that, he was head of strategic partnerships at Revolut, Europe’s biggest neo-bank, managing teams responsible for product integrations such as Xero, Quickbooks and Expedia.

Previously, Gbenga spent six years at Google in a variety of roles from managing telecom industry partnerships and strategy in Africa to leading Google’s mobile app business and strategy with clients spread for different companies from banking to travel to e-commerce companies across Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa. He was also a product partnerships lead in Europe and Africa where he worked on localizing Google Search in Africa and launched Google Events Search in Germany, the U.K., Spain and France.

Gbenga is passionate about the tech ecosystem and mentors many founders, especially in Africa. He is a global advisory board member for Antler, a global startup accelerator, co-organizer for Stockholm Tech Fest and also a fellow of the Nigeria Leadership Initiative. Gbenga holds an MBA from London Business School and received his Bachelor of Science degree in economics from Obafemi Awolowo University in Nigeria.

Gbenga is fluent in both English and Yoruba and has a basic working knowledge of Swedish. He is based in London.