Without Funds, Fear Or Favor
JIHAN ABASS, THE 26-YEAR-OLD FOUNDER and CEO of Lami, an insurance technology firm in Kenya, once had a chance conversation with a waiter at a restaurant in Nairobi who ruefully told her he did not have insurance. She then pondered the transformative power of access to insurance to those who never had it, and set up a platform democratizing financial services like insurance and creating a safety net for millions of small businesses and the working class in Africa.
A former commodities trader in London, she came to the space with finance experience and all the passion she needed to fuel the rocketship called entrepreneurship, but that was clearly not enough.
“There’s not a lot of other women to really talk to about issues that you’re facing [in Africa] when it comes to managing a team or even the
