Kenya
Hilda Moraa is an award-winning entrepreneur, author, and trailblazer in Africa’s fintech ecosystem. With over 15 years of experience spanning fintech, regulation, innovation, and entrepreneurship, she has led transformative initiatives that continue to shape digital finance and inclusion across the continent. Before founding her current venture, Hilda worked with multinational supply chain firms such as Coca-Cola, where she drove innovation programs across Africa. She made history in 2015 when her first tech start-up achieved Kenya’s first recorded multi-million dollar exit — a milestone that inspired a new generation of entrepreneurs and tech innovators in the region. Today, Hilda serves as the Founder and CEO of Pezesha, a pioneering digital financial infrastructure company powering working capital and credit scoring for SMEs and financial institutions across Africa. Pezesha leverages over 500 million data points and has disbursed more than 500,000 SME loans, bridging the credit gap through scalable, data-driven lending solutions. Her leadership and impact have earned her global recognition, including being named a Bloomberg New Economy Catalyst in 2023, receiving the Forbes Woman Africa Tech & Innovation Award in 2024, and being appointed as the UNCTAD eTrade for Women Advocate for English-speaking Africa (2024–2025). She has also been a keynote speaker at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit in 2015 and is an alumna of the Obama Leaders Program (2019). Hilda holds a Business Information Technology degree from Strathmore University and remains a passionate advocate for East Africa’s tech and innovation ecosystem. She actively mentors young entrepreneurs, sharing lessons from her journey through her book, “A Kenyan Startup Journey: 10 Key Lessons I Learnt”, which she wrote at age 26 and is available for purchase on her website at hildamorara.com Celebrated across Africa as one of the leading fintech innovators and barrier-breakers, Hilda continues to inspire through her work in building inclusive financial systems and empowering underserved businesses. Having successfully raised over $3 million in funding, she has been profiled among Africa’s top female fintech leaders. To learn more about her journey and insights, visit hildamorara.com .
Personal inspiration and learnings from my 10+ years experiences in the Fintech & Innovation space, I founded Pezesha (Meaning Financial Enabler). Pezesha's mission is to solve the inequalities and current gaps in the financial sector by ensuring meaningful and responsible financial inclusion for the underserved MSMEs through a sustainable value chain ecosystem. Learn more about us here https://pezesha.com/ As the Founder, I am responsible for overall governance, strategy, innovations, talent acquisitions, resource management, partnerships and and implementing the organization's vision, mission, and overall direction. I am the Chief Execution Officer.
As a venture partner I will help Equitable Ventures to strengthen our portfolio, uncover new opportunities, and continue building with the most ambitious founders across the continent. Learn more about the press release here
I founded and setup the KE entrepreneurs virtual (whatsup) group in 2015 that has so far brought together more than 300+ East African entrepreneurs in the network. The objective of this group is to strengthen our ecosystem and spur peer learning from our entrepreneurial journeys to drive sustainable businesses and policies that shapes the future of our collective impact.
I was humbled to be selected as the winner of the Forbes Woman Africa, Tech & Innovation Award. This award is a testament of the work we do at Pezesha and my commitment to continue to lift up other young women to do better than me because I was here!