Before going into digital entrepreneurship eight years ago, he built a solid professional experience in several fields, including energy, health, and banking. He is now contributing the lessons learned for digital inclusion both in and outside his native country. 

Martin Stimela (photo) is a Botswanan entrepreneur and CEO of Brastorne Enterprises, an event tech company he co-founded in 2013. 

Through Brastorne Enterprises, he developed three solutions that promote the digital inclusion of rural populations, who mostly cannot afford smartphones.  The first solution is USSD mAgri, which allows farmers to sell their products and services nationwide, as well as access agricultural/market information, and short-term financing. 

The second solution is Vuka USSD, a social network that enables “users on both low-end phones and smartphones to create profiles, add friends, create groups, chat & send in-person messages, group chats or broadcast messages.” 

Then there is Mpotsa, a “question/answer platform that aims to provide users with information on almost everything” and receive valuable alerts.

“We literally enable the underserved to connect without the need for data plans. In simple sense, we’ve got technology that allows you to either use voice prompts or use a technology called USSD, which is mainly used for mobile money transactions here in Africa. It’s literally just text strings. But using that, you can actually connect to the internet, fetch data, and dumb it down, and bring it back, which is quite crucial to people who don’t have access,” Martin explained during a Stanford Graduate School of Business Grit and Growth podcast in 2021. 

Currently, he is the Vice President of the Southern African chapter of the Stanford Seed program sponsored by the Stanford University Graduate School of Business. In 2019, he took part in the Alibaba eFounders Fellowship program that “provides first-hand exposure to ecommerce and digital innovations, and access to business leaders.” His professional career started in 2004, when he was recruited, as a business analyst, by British energy company E.ON UK. He later joined Lloyds Banking Group as a transformation project manager before his appointment, as project manager, by energy company RWE npower. 

In 2011, he was hired by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as the director of informatics. In 2012, Martin Stimela became the Chief Technology and Operations Officer of the Health Systems Strengthening Society. Then, the following year, he was appointed CEO of CIRA Energy. Concurrently, he kicked off his entrepreneurial journey with Brastorne Enterprises. In 2015, he was appointed executive director for enterprise support at the Botswana Savings Bank.

In Botswana, his company already claims more than 1 million users, “with 350k monthly users, and over 40% of active feature phone users on the Orange network.” In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, it claims over 800,000 users since its launch in May 2021. In September 2022, it was selected as one of the 60 African startups that will participate in the Google for Startups Black Founders Fund 2022.

Melchior Koba