The latest discussion from Condia | Stories on Tech and Startups in Africa highlights Chikodi Ukaiwe, also known as Mr. Salad and the CEO of Salad Africa, detailing his transformation from a highly distracted university student into a key disruptor within the African tech ecosystem. Ukaiwe's story, as featured on the platform, showcases his instrumental roles at Jumia and Konga and his subsequent move to solve SME financing challenges.
Ukaiwe grew up in a multicultural, close-knit, "pro Nigeria" home, where his parents were both pastors and academicians, raising him in a "house full of alphas" who expected him to be a "change maker". Despite this foundation, he admitted he was "by far the most troublesome" and "very distracted" upon entering university at 16, focusing primarily on "girls and PlayStation". This focus shifted by his second year, influenced by forward-thinking classmates, including Shaolan Ezra Pistache and Chama of Rev now formerly Pay, who have since become major figures in the startup world. His mother, an academician, strongly influenced his choice to study Computer Science, anticipating its future importance, despite his preference for Chemical Engineering.
Ukaiwe's professional start was unexpected. After failing to secure a UK visa "five to six times", he turned his focus to Nigeria, completing his National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) in Maiduguri, which provided a "very good experience" and exposed him to a different side of Nigeria. Driven to "make as much money as possible," he entered the banking sector in 2007. He quickly became exceptional in the IT department, working at the "forefront of what is now called fintech" by deploying ATM machines and focusing on IT security. However, he was unhappy with the rigid, systemic nature of corporate banking.
A pivotal, career-defining rejection occurred when the new head of IT at his former bank, after he returned with his Masters in IT security, "threw [his] CV on the floor" during an interview. This rejection fueled his resolve: "I am going to disrupt all of this", leading him to turn down big institutions.
He entered the nascent startup world through his then-girlfriend (now wife), who worked at a company that merged to become Jumia Nigeria. Despite finding the young founders wearing shorts and the lack of a sign board strange, he was hired to lead partnerships—specifically because he wore a jacket, which the founders believed meant "people take me seriously". Ukaiwe was instrumental in launching J-Force to overcome the "huge trust deficit" in e-commerce at the time, with the teams he led eventually responsible for approximately "60% of Jumia’s GMV".
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His search for greater economic impact led him to Konga in 2014. The move was complicated by the fierce "junior conga rivalry": he had to be "snuck in through the back" and blinds were drawn so Jumia wouldn't hear he was meeting founder Sim Shaga. Sim’s vision for "ecosystem building"—enabling delivery and payments to "turbocharge the economy"—appealed directly to Ukaiwe’s core value of sustainability. At Konga, he had the freedom to build businesses, including establishing the marketplace and, most notably, building the B2B e-commerce infrastructure that managed large corporate orders, even fulfilling an order for "300 cows" to multiple recipients. He also integrated banks to provide financing to merchants through purchase orders, creating a full ecosystem.
After Konga’s acquisition in 2018, the 2020 lockdown prompted a reflection on the need to make a "huge difference". This led to his first startup, Show Love, initially a non-profit idea to help neighborhood kiosks by allowing customers to prepay using gift card technology. The concept quickly raised $300,000 based on his "track record".
The business pivoted after observing large corporates buying gift cards for employees who then immediately sought to cash them out, revealing a problem: the lack of liquidity between pay cycles. This gap led to Salad Africa, initially an Earned Wage Access (EWA) service using USSD to ping salary data and provide up to 50% of accrued salary at a transaction fee but zero interest. After joining the Techstars program, which aligns with his "give first" ethos, Ukaiwe pivoted the company to focus on small businesses (SMEs). He recognized that SMEs are the "single most important entity aside government" for economic growth, and their main issue is financing.
Today, Salad provides B2B SAS platforms with APIs to originate lending experiences within their apps, pulling proprietary data to qualify businesses for loans and partnering with multiple banks for financing. The company is solving the SME financing problem by acting as a trusted intermediary, seamlessly connecting borrowers and institutional lenders and collecting money directly from the source.
Ukaiwe, who is very passionate about his three daughters, asserts that a founder is like an athlete and must be "mentally emotionally and physically fit" to perform, advocating that rest should be scheduled as an activity. His hiring approach is deliberate and patient, focusing on bringing in people who complement his strengths and weaknesses and align with his core values.
