Kippa names Duke Ekezie-Joseph as President

Kippa, the fast-growing fintech startup offering digital business and financial management solutions for SMEs in Africa, today announces that co-Founder and Chief Growth Officer (CGO) Duke Ekezie-Joseph has assumed the role of President.

As President of Kippa, Duke will take full ownership of Kippa’s internal operations including the marketing, product, finance, operations, and HR teams. The change in Duke’s role was made to meet the needs of Kippa’s rapidly expanding customer base. As of today 4th May 2022, Kippa has over 350,000 SMEs in its network.

Duke’s transition to President comes after the launch of its latest products this year, a digital payments solution ‘Kippa Payments’, and a business registration service ‘Kippa Start’. Kippa was founded in June 2021 to offer its flagship mobile bookkeeping product for SMEs in Africa. Five months later, the company raised a pre-seed round of $3.2 million led by Target Global. Duke continues to sit on the executive team of Kippa, alongside CEO Kennedy Ekezie-Joseph and CTO Jephtah Chidozie-Uche.

Prior to the transition of his role to President, Duke was CGO of Kippa where he was responsible for acquiring and retaining users, building Kippa’s products, and leading on product initiatives.

Before launching Kippa, Duke founded Africave, a profitable talent acquisition agency that matched global teams with African software engineering talent. Duke also worked in the Strategy team at TikTok, supporting the firm’s expansion into the African market, and as a Business Development Analyst at Releaf, a sustainable palm oil processing firm. Duke holds a BA in Policy and Administration from the University of Calabar.

Duke Ekezie-Joseph, co-Founder and President of Kippa, said that “when we founded Kippa, I was exclusively focused on leading the product team to acquire and retain users. Kippa has grown quickly and in order to maintain this momentum, it is important that we continuously evolve our offering to best meet the needs of our clients.”

As co-Founder, Duke said “I understand our vision and strategy, and as CGO, I built a strong understanding of our people and our customers. I hope to contextualise both of these important aspects in my new role as President to help Kippa reach its targets. An overarching goal is to build a company that people want to work in. I believe in a people-first culture of transparency, accountability, and openness. I want every single member of Kippa to be valued, comfortable and ensure that their talent is nurtured to drive our ambitious company forward through innovation.”

Duke’s passion lies in entrepreneurship and innovation, which he has demonstrated through various social enterprise initiatives to teach these skills to young and vulnerable people.

Whilst studying, Duke held the position of Programmes Director at the Calabar Youth Council for Women’s Rights, with a focus on the FemGuide Initiative. Here, he helped direct the empowerment of young and disadvantaged girls towards becoming entrepreneurs and innovators through a scalable and intensive leadership programme.

Duke was made a Nigerian Youth Peace Ambassador (2018) for his charitable work. He was also an Ambassador for Tile.org for one year, the world's largest conversation series, where he established an African chapter to enable youths in his community to have access to entrepreneurs and innovators.

About Kippa

Founded in June 2021, Kippa is a disruptive fintech startup based in Nigeria. The team is on a mission to unlock socio-economic prosperity in sub-Saharan Africa by helping SMEs grow their business and embrace financial inclusion.

The company provides digital business and financial management solutions for African SMEs, starting with a simple-to-use mobile bookkeeping app, which helps African SMEs keep track of their daily revenue and spending transactions, create invoices and receipts, manage inventory, and see how their companies fluctuate over time recover; ultimately helping merchants to recover debts three times faster.

To date (1 April, 2022) Kippa has 50+ employees across 3 countries and over 350,000 SMEs in its network. In 2021, the startup raised $3.2 million pre-seed.