The first thing that caught my attention after landing in Accra wasn't a welcome banner. It was a warning. 

At the airport, digital screens cycled the same message on repeat: gold smuggling is a serious crime. It wasn't tucked away in a corner. It was impossible to miss—the kind of message you broadcast only when it reflects a real and persistent problem. 

At the time, it seemed like an interesting detail. By the end of the week, it had become the thread connecting everything I had experienced. 

I was in Ghana at the invitation of UNDP to serve as a judge at the Mobile Circularity Hackathon part of the Youth for Circularity 2030 initiative in Sierra Leone created by UNDP in partnership with Samsung, and in the context of the 6th African Youth SDGs Summit. Walking into a room filled with 20 teams of young innovators from across the continent, I realized I was the only startup founder on the judging panel—and almost certainly the youngest person holding a gavel. 

That wasn't intimidating. It felt like a responsibility. 

A few years ago, I was the person entering hackathons, pitching ideas and hoping someone in the room believed in them. Opportunities like this matter because they give young builders access to people who have walked the path before them. I knew what that kind of encouragement could mean. 

Today, I lead Fixa, a company that began with a simple question: What does it mean to be a worker in Africa if no system recognizes that you exist? 

Across the continent, millions of construction workers, factory employees, farm labourers and miners remain invisible to the formal financial system. They earn an income but lack the records that banks, insurers and lenders rely on. We started calling them "the linked-out." Our ambition was to become their LinkedIn. 

As we built the company, we realized the opportunity was much larger than employment records alone. 

Today, Fixa has digitized nearly 20,000 workers across Rwanda and enables employers to build verified employment histories through attendance and payroll data. Those records become something far more valuable than HR documentation: a trusted financial identity. Using nothing more than a feature, or 'dumb' phone, workers can access salary advances and insurance products that would otherwise be out of reach. So far, we've facilitated more than 40,000 salary advances worth over half a million dollars. 

We no longer think of ourselves as simply an HR platform or a fintech company. We're building infrastructure that allows banks, insurers and other financial institutions to reach one of Africa's largest underserved populations. 

That perspective made the hackathon especially meaningful. 

During the event, I learned a statistic that has stayed with me ever since: there can be up to 100 times more gold in a tonne of electronic waste than in a tonne of mined gold ore. According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), as much as 7 percent of the world's gold may already exist inside discarded electronics. 

And gold is only part of the story. 

Old phones also contain copper, cobalt, silver and rare earth minerals—valuable materials that often end up forgotten in drawers or discarded in landfills instead of being recovered and reused. 

Suddenly, that airport warning made more sense. 

We spend enormous effort protecting value beneath the ground, yet we often overlook the value already sitting in our homes. 

The global refurbished smartphone market is expected to surpass US$110 billion within the next few years, while billions of unused devices remain dormant. That represents an enormous economic opportunity—not only for global manufacturers but for African entrepreneurs capable of building businesses around repair, refurbishment, recycling and circular supply chains. 

Before judging began, I was unexpectedly invited to present Fixa's journey to all 20 teams. 

I didn't share the polished version founders often tell on conference stages. I spoke about the pivots, the wrong assumptions and the moments when things almost fell apart. 

Founders rarely learn from perfect stories. They learn from honest ones. 

Later, I mentored a team called DeviceDNA, whose platform assessed the health of used smartphones and recommended whether each device should be repaired, refurbished or recycled. 

The advice I gave them was simple. 

Your greatest competitive advantage isn't your technology. 

It's your context. 

No one can understand African consumers as deeply as local founders who have lived the problems themselves. Local knowledge isn't a limitation. It's intellectual property. It's a competitive moat. 

Use it.