The successful entrepreneur worked for Facebook's parent company Meta before starting his own company, which has quickly become one of Africa's unicorns.

Ham Serunjogi (photo) is a Ugandan economist and entrepreneur. He is the CEO and one of the co-founders of the fintech company Chipper Cash.

Founded in 2018 and based in San Francisco, Chipper Cash develops software for instant cross-border payments in Africa and Europe. It also develops solutions to help businesses and merchants process online and in-store payments.

It is "a lifestyle payment platform that started as a cross-border product. It is now a more holistic platform for people to not just send and receive money easily, but also do things like investing," Ham said in 2021.

The startup, which is available in seven countries, has more than 5 million users and more than 300,000 Visa cards issued.

Its CEO is, since May 2022, a member of the Grinnell College Board of Trustees. He entered the job market with internships at companies such as the cleantech accelerator Cleantech Open (2013), the edtech company Fullbridge (2014), and Meta (formerly Facebook) in 2015.

In 2016, he joined Facebook (now Meta) as a Client Manager responsible for building partner relationships with some of the largest advertisers in the UK.

Thanks to Chipper Cash, he made it to the international non-profit journalism organization Rest of World's 2022 list of the 100 Global Technology Change Makers of 2022.

A former competitive swimmer, Ham Serunjogi competed for several years and represented Uganda at the 2010 Youth Olympic Games in Singapore. He was also named the 2010-2011 Athlete of the Year by the Aga Khan Academy in Mombasa.

Melchior Koba