Top 60 Young Entrepreneurs In Nigeria and Ghana – If their stories dont inspire you, nothing can

53. Mark Essien, Founder, Hotels.ng
Essien, 31, is the founder of Hotels.ng, Nigeria’s largest hotel – booking website. The online portal allows users from all over the world to book rooms from a selection of over 8,000 hotels. It has recently secured an investment of $1.2m from international investors EchoVC Pan-Africa Fund, a seed-stage technology fund, and Omidyar Network, the investment vehicle of eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. Mark, a hardware/software developer, studied Comp. Eng/Robotics in Germany. After his studies, he returned to Nigeria and founded Hotels.ng, the first startup to directly address the African hotel – booking market. His message to Nigerian aspiring business leaders and entrepreneurs is that they should explore as “The African business ecosystem is brimming with opportunities and you just need to find what works. However, not every market is a good one, so you need to be keen enough to spot the difference.”

54. Prince Nnamdi Ekeh, Founder, Yudala Prince Ekeh, 23 – year old founder and vice president of the composite retail platform has taken the e-commerce space by storm since the August 2015 launch of its online store. Yudala employs over 400 Nigerians on full – time basis. It plans to have Yudala store in every local government council by 2019, taking an estimated 10,000 Nigerians out of the labour market.

His company wrote its name and that of Nigeria in the history books on Thursday November 26th 2015 by successfully undertaking the world’s first e-commerce drone delivery to flag off its inaugural Black Friday sales. Apart from the innovative strategies, his Yudala Online is ushering in a revolution in customer experience and service. Google, at the end of last year, rated Yudala second best Air Peace among the top trending Nigerian brands in 2015. An Economics graduate of the University of Lancaster, Prince holds a certificate in International Business and Economics from Harvard as well. Also an alumnus of the prestigious Lagos Business School (LBS), Prince holds a firm belief that the youth hold the key to unlocking the full potential of the Nigerian economy and the only industry that will provide them with this opportunity is the ICT.

55. Bilikiss Adebiyi-Abiola , Nigerian – WeCyclers
Bilikiss Adebiyi-Abiola is co-founder of WeCyclers, a company giving low-income communities in developing countries a chance to capture value from waste and clean up their neighborhoods through an incentive-based recycling program.