"Isidore is a brilliant entrepreneur who I have been keeping tabs on for a while. The conversations leading to this were entirely organic as Treepz and Stabus innovated public transportation using technology. Our combined expertise would make a greater impact and help us discover new consumer insights."

"As it is, M-Pesa works amazingly well in Kenya but it cannot work in Nigeria. Our goal is to make it easy for you in Lagos to sell to somebody in Kenya, they pay with M-Pesa and it comes to your account in Nigeria here or you send money to your supplier in Kenya and they receive it seamlessly. That’s our goal, to make it simple to accept payments globally."

"Our ambition at Treepz is to build the largest shared mobility platform on the African continent, starting with West Africa."

"We shouldn't just observe the wonderful entrepreneurs, we need to move ahead systematically," Itskov said in an interview. "We are really at the time when technology can affect human evolution. I want us to shape the future, bring it up for public discussion, and avoid any scenario that could damage humanity."

"In 23 months, we have been able to complete 490,000+ rides and register over 960 vehicles on our platform. We plan to double these numbers with our Nigerian and Ghana operations, then replicate our existing model across 6 other African cities."

"We are facing the time where the unconscious evolution period has almost finished, and we come to the new era, a new period of controlled evolution"

"Autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot." In other words, they'll have the tech for implanting the human brain into the robot. By 2035, a human should be able to upload their brain into a robot, and by 2045 our bodies will be replaced with holograms. When this happens, Itskov says we will become "a new species"

"There are no necessary connections with the acquisition of Stabus Ghana, which will now be known as Treepz Ghana. But after a successful seed round, we immediately started thinking of how scaleable the indigenous name Plentywaka would be around Africa and the rest of the world."

"When we started the company, our goal was to build a superhighway infrastructure for payments in Africa; our goal has not changed. We believe very strongly in enterprise payments, in ensuring that you build best-in-class technology and infrastructure for top-range merchants across Africa – both local and global."

"We are like the civic infrastructure for Nigeria. We build stuff and people build on top of that."

"We also track public projects, for which we have a platform called Traackr. Then we also have institutional support. We help public institutions, media, society build and do civic products."

"We work with four major categories of people. One is digitally active citizens."

"Connect with people that can add value to you, connect with people that can take you to your promise, share notes with them, get encouragement from them."

"Unless you really are in the industry, there is no one to look up to in technology."

"Our goal in the end is to see the quality of life of citizens improve through efficient service delivery. We majorly work in five key areas. One is on budget access and research. The team will break down the budget into basics, and simplify it, and make sure everyone can understand it."

"We’re more on the side of citizens and individuals than institutions, definitely. We see ourselves as a platform. Even though we’ve been a long advocate, we increasingly see ourselves as a platform. That we build solutions, data, civic infrastructure."

"Parents have an expectation of what you should be — if you’re a good student, you’re a doctor, you’re not an engineer or in the computer science field... They haven’t seen any female being in STEM and being successful."

"Teaching young girls coding and seeing them become confident and inspired reminded me of how I felt when I started coding."

"The biggest thing we have in Africa is a young generation. So if we train the young generation in tech, we’ll be able to build something that is everlasting."

"But the sad thing is, even if they want to, they won’t be able to apply it after they finish their high school education."

"And citizens cannot act on the basis of that infrastructure. So take action and do what they’re supposed to do. That’s what it means for us.."

"More than that, it’s about equipping kids to cope in the 21st century,It’s about problem solving, analytical thinking and self-learning, as well as digital literacy. It means understanding how the internet works, how to get information from it, how to identify wrong and false information, how to keep your privacy and make sure your data is not being used. We think these are really important lessons, especially in this day and age."

"Ethiopia’s youth have no lack of ideas, energy or ambition,but they can’t fulfil their potential alone. What we see in Ethiopia is a lack of co-creation centres where like-minded people can come together and create and innovate."

"My aim is to democratize technology."

"The girls get the coding education but also other skills and the necessary knowledge to keep themselves away from problems – or at least be aware enough to report them."

"It doesn’t matter if you went to a great university – what matters is if you have a computer, access to the internet and the drive to achieve."

"My sincere interest is to see a Nigeria that grows and optimises resources for the benefits of all Nigerians."

"My loyalty to the good cause of our nation, Nigeria compelled me to accept the call to provide technical skills and this experience has more than strengthened it."

"We started to fight, they heavily beat me, broke my nose, and tore my jacket."

"Niklas and I are entreprenuers at heart, and eBay understands that. I am still at Skype and I think that is where I spend most of my time. On The Venice Project we have tried to build a management team that will take care of things."

"Since the first day, it was a story of fighting injustice. That is what really motivates me, because in my life, I had a lot of injustices."

"Kazaa and Skype were based on a piece of technology called the “Global Index.” Skype basically built a communication layer on top of that. That technology has evolved since then, and the Venice Project, is built on that global index and we have developed a P2P video streaming layer on top of that core technology"

"There are similarities though. Audigent at its core is a programmatic advertising company. They use innovative tech to improve the way online ads reach people, resulting in improved performance and engagement. Originally, Audigent was doing this in partnership with the three major record labels (Warner, Sony and Universal), which created a new revenue source for the music business. Revenue derived 100% from data as opposed to music, streaming, or touring."

"We are building an ad-based system, and it is close to the television model. We will do revenue share with the content providers. With our system, people can be targeted with the right kind of ads. We are respecting the copyrights. We will reveal more details about the technology soon"

"And if some of them achieve success, we have a good chance to invent a new kind of tech entrepreneurship that changes the trajectory of modern capitalism. This is my goal."

"When people have a clearer understanding of artificial intelligence, they can better protect themselves instead of relying on laws to do so alone — laws must be there to support it, but individuals must also be well educated about this phenomenon."

"To sum it up: in the North, people are scared of losing their jobs because of AI. In our case, we are creating more jobs with it."

"For me, the journey was Film, then Tech and Venture Capital, then back to Film."

"Most of the time, civil society organizations tend to narrowly focus on policing the government. However, the digital economy is so robust that the people we need to police are beyond the government — as most of the time the government does not have the capability to use technology."

"A lot of the young people are digital natives and of course you still find a lot of vulnerable young people, but the slightly older folks are the ones who are the most vulnerable."

"I went to school at Savannah College of Art and Design in 1999 to study film production. Then when I got out of college one of my first jobs was working on Tyler Perry’s first movie “Diary of Mad Black Woman.” I ended up working at his company for a few years. Then in 2008 I left the film industry to pursue tech, founding successful companies like Audigent"

"I think now they understand the value of the quality of the education that’s provided, and the enabling environment for entrepreneurs in Ethiopia. It’s a struggle every day, but we have seen a lot of progress."

"Building tech companies is about identifying problems, engineering solutions, and executing strategies that lead to different, scalable outcomes. What do I mean by scalable? Meaning the solution must be repeatable for the greatest number of customers without having to change small details."

"When we choose where we should go, the main criteria is if there is injustice."

"Technology is becoming a major part of nearly all that we do as humans. We are beginning to see how it is facilitating access to services and increasing productivity: many businesses are now completely relying on it."

"Our size will become a major part of us being able to invest in startups, and the longer we stay invested the more we will start to see significant returns and exits."

"Technology inspires you. Having that feeling of freedom and being able to do something gives you that sense of accomplishment and that sense of accomplishment drives you to do more things that you love, more things that excite you."

"The boys imagine more, they want to do something that’s big and inspired, the girls they really want to help their community from the core."

"Who can solve the problem of a female if she cannot tell you the problem, and find her own solution?"

"Having an example of farmers being able to livestream their products and thus selling directly to consumers is very inspiring."