Over his decades in the international business world, he has launched many ventures but, through DizzitUp, the most recent one, he wants to leave a strong social impact on the African population.
Solofo Rafenombolatiana (photo) is a Malagasy telecom engineer and entrepreneur. He is also the co-founder and CEO of DizzitUp, a startup founded in 2018, in Togo.
The said startup offers an international marketplace through which Africans, wherever they are, can finance, sell and buy essential renewable energy, food, health, education, tech, and financial products and services anywhere on the continent.
The marketplace was initially built to facilitate access to energy and financial services. In 2021, during an interview with French media Paris Singularity, its CEO explained that the idea germinated in mid-2017, when he noticed that Mada, a small village where he has been a teacher, still had no access to electricity thirty years after he left.
For the businessman, now in his fifties, poor access to energy and financial services is hampering development in Africa. So, apart from its energy-as-a-service business, DizzitUp also developed a decentralized and secure digital infrastructure based on blockchain and stablecoin for instant transfers and payments. The infrastructure allows users to pay or send funds anywhere in the world without being burdened by any constraints.
On October 28, 2022, Solofo Rafenombolatiana was honored, in Lome, Togo, for DizzitUp, which was among the six finalists of the fifth Ecobank Fintech Challenge. Nevertheless, DizzitUp is just one of the many ventures launched by the serial entrepreneur.
In 2000, in Paris, he founded Mobiligense SA, a SaaS mobile value-added services editor and operator. Eight years later, he launched Beezbox SAS, a Paris-based social customer relationship management service provider. In 2014, he also founded Sunny Live Music, a jazz concerts and festivals organizer.
He started his international professional career in 1986, working as a sales support engineer for Wang France. Two years later, he joined Hewlett-Packard as a sales and marketing manager.
After a stint, between 1997 and 2000, as the vice president and general manager at Bull Information Systems, he founded his first company. Concurrently, from 2003 to 2004, he was the vice president and director of Technicolor’s (formerly knowns as Thomson) mobility business unit. Between 2011 and 2013, he was the marketing and digital media director of AFM-Telethon, a French non-profit organization against muscular dystrophy.
Melchior Koba
