Benjamin Fernandes

Founder & CEO, NALA

Benjamin Fernandes is a Tanzanian award-winning speaker and entrepreneur. Fernandes is the founder and CEO of NALA, one of East Africa’s largest consumer fintech companies. Their first domestic payments product grew to 250,000 customers in a year and now they are building a new cross-border money transfer app — which allows people to send and receive money from the UK to East Africa. NALA was the first East African company to be selected to go to Y-Combinator. NALA has also attracted investments from leading global VC funds such as Accel Partners. Fernandes holds an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business and an Exec Ed from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Prior to NALA, Fernandes used to be a national television personality in Tanzania then after that, worked at The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in the United States. In 2020, Fernandes was listed as the 15th Most Influential Tanzanian in the country.