Silicon Mountain: the complete record

Online. mambenanje.com · njorku.com · buyam.co · mambe-churchill-nanje · facebook.com/mambenanje · @mambenanje · afrovisiongroup.com

Background. Born in September 1985 and raised in Douala, Mambe Churchill Nanje went to Government Bilingual Primary School Sodiko and Presbyterian High School Kumba. He took a Diploma in Computer Repairs and Maintenance at Trustech Institute of Technology, Buea, then one of the only formal computing programmes in Anglophone Cameroon. He began teaching programming there, and turned to entrepreneurship at 19.

PassGCE, 2006. With Fua Tse, Tata Cyril and others, he co-founded PassGCE, Cameroon’s first online GCE results platform. The government ordered it shut for publishing results without authorisation. The team didn’t fold. They regrouped as AfroVisioN Group and built websites for local businesses. Many people date the start of Silicon Mountain to this moment.

Companies

• AfroVisioN Group Limited (2006 to present, founder and president). Web, mobile and enterprise software, with more than 500 clients around the world. It is one of the oldest IT outsourcing companies in Buea, and its office is open to young developers who want to learn to code for free. afrovisiongroup.com
• Njorku (2011 to present, founder and CEO). Africa’s first job search engine, now in more than 15 African countries. It has served more than 500,000 professionals and indexed over 2M job opportunities from more than 50K employers. It was named among the Forbes Top 20 African Startups (2011) and FastCompany’s Most Innovative Companies in Africa (2017). Its target: to serve 350 million Sub-Saharan youths by 2025.
• Buyam HQ (concept 2014, platform 2021 to present; co-founder and CTO). A three-sided marketplace that connects merchants with independent resellers who have customer networks online and offline. It is Cameroon’s answer to hyper-local e-commerce. buyam.co

Awards. JCI named him Most Outstanding Young Entrepreneur in Buea in 2009, and in Cameroon in 2011. In 2016 he was a Vodafone Jump Youth Brand Ambassador and the subject of a France 24 “The Observers” documentary, and he has been featured on TRACE TV. He blogs at mambenanje.com about African e-commerce, hyper-local commerce models and the challenges of building tech companies in Africa.

Online. fua-tse-a117aa4b · activspaces.com

Background. Fua Tse grew up in Bamenda, NW Cameroon. A teenage addiction to video games turned into a need to know how they were built, and that set him on the road to software engineering. He earned a BSc in Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of Buea (2005–2009). His peers, Otto Akama among them, thought him the most skilled coder at UB in those years, and he set the standard that inspired a generation.

AfroVisioN and PassGCE. While still a student he joined Mambe Churchill’s AfroVisioN Group as a junior developer. He led development of PharmaPro, a pharmacy retail management system that came to dominate in Anglophone Cameroon. His technical ability gave the founding group real credibility. He was at the core of PassGCE and of its rebranding as AfroVisioN.

Companies

• ActivSpaces (2010 to present, co-founder). The African Centre for Technology, Innovation and Ventures, co-founded with Valery Colong, Bill Zimmerman, Ebot Tabi and Otto Akama. It is Cameroon’s first and most prominent tech incubator, now in Buea, Douala and Bangangté. Rebecca Enonchong is its chairman.
• Zinger Automation (formerly Zinger Systems) (2011 to present, co-founder and lead engineer). Full-stack web, mobile and desktop software development. The company started out in incubation at ActivSpaces, was funded according to Tracxn, and recently rebranded as Zinger Automation. Fua has also worked as an engineer at Healthlane (Y Combinator W20) and VC4Africa. His LinkedIn title is Lead Engineer at ZINGER AUTOMATION.

Online. activspaces.com

The name before the name. Valery Colong is one of the few people who used the term “Silicon Mountain” informally as early as 2005, before Rebecca Enonchong coined it publicly in 2013. He used it to describe the ICT revolution under way in the Southwest Region. He met Churchill Nanje in the Computer Science department at UB, and the two became the intellectual core of AfroVisioN before Colong helped launch ActivSpaces.

ActivSpaces and the crisis years. During the 2017–2019 Anglophone crisis he was the most visible public face of ActivSpaces. He spoke frankly to international media, AFP and AP among them, about the hub’s decline from 10 active startups in the main hall to just one. His interviews were widely cited in major international publications. He warned he might close if the violence continued, and turned ActivSpaces towards youth coding training to survive.

Current role

• ActivSpaces, software developer (2010 to present). He has moved from Buea to Douala, and ZoomInfo lists him as a Software Developer at ActivSpaces, Douala. He was previously CEO of Agro-Hub, a startup incubated at ActivSpaces that connected farmers to markets. He remains one of the most important keepers of Silicon Mountain’s institutional memory.

Online. ebottabi · F6S: ebottabi1

Background. Ebot Tabi was one of the five original founders of ActivSpaces in 2010. Little is public about his education, but his career is easy to follow. After helping to found Cameroon’s first tech incubator he changed course completely and became an engineer at Two Sigma, one of the world’s premier quantitative hedge funds. That puts him in a small group of Silicon Mountain alumni working at the top of global finance technology.

Career. From ActivSpaces (2010) he went to Two Sigma as a quantitative hedge fund engineer, then joined the Techstars Summer 2022 cohort as CEO of Voyance, and became CTO of Omniscience. He is also listed at DXC Technology as an Operational Specialist in Ashburn, Virginia. On LinkedIn he writes about AI’s future for African developers, multilingual NLP and AI democratisation in emerging markets.

Current ventures

• Voyance (Techstars S’22) (2022 to present, CEO). An AI and data startup, selected for the Summer 2022 cohort of Techstars, one of the most competitive startup accelerators in the world. voyancehq.com
• Omniscience (current, CTO). An advanced AI and data platform. He holds the role alongside his post at Voyance, and the two complement each other rather than compete.

On African AI. On LinkedIn he argues that African developers are well placed to lead GenAI. His reasons: many speak 3–5 languages natively, an advantage in NLP; constraint drives creativity; the developer population is young (60% of Africa is under 25); and there are untapped voice markets in indigenous languages such as isiXhosa, Yoruba and Swahili. He is one of the few Silicon Mountain originals now working at the frontier of global AI.

Online. appstech.com · @africatechie · rebeccaenonchong · Medium: @africatechie

Naming the movement. Rebecca Enonchong coined “Silicon Mountain” publicly at BarCamp Cameroon, held at the Catholic University Institute of Buea, in 2013. The name had circulated informally since around 2005–2011, but her using it at a major event made it stick. Born in Cameroon, she has been based in the Washington DC metro area for decades. She holds a BS in Sciences and an MS in Economics from the Catholic University of America. At 15 she sold newspapers door to door in the US; at 17 she was a manager at the same company.

Companies. She founded AppsTech in Bethesda MD in 1999, with no startup capital. It is a Global Oracle Platinum Partner with clients in more than 40 countries. She also co-founded I/O Spaces, an inclusive co-working space in Silver Spring, Maryland, to make up for the lack of inclusive tech infrastructure in the DC metro area.

Boards

• ActivSpaces: board chair, supporting 3 hubs in Cameroon.
• AfriLabs Foundation: trustee and chair emeritus. AfriLabs counts more than 370 innovation centres in 52 African countries and has supported more than 1M entrepreneurs.
• Other boards: WHO Foundation (vice chair), International Chamber of Commerce, VC4Africa, US Exim Bank SAAC, UNECA Center for Digital Excellence, Djibouti Telecom, African Business Angels Network (ABAN; co-founder and vice president) and Cameroon Angels Network (co-founder).

Awards. She is a WEF Global Leader for Tomorrow (Davos) and was named among the Forbes Top 10 Female Tech Founders in Africa (2014). NewAfrican listed her as a Most Influential African in 2014, 2016 and 2017, and Jeune Afrique put her in its Top 50 Most Influential Women in 2017. She was among the World’s Most Influential Africans in 2018 and 2019. Enterprise Africa named her African Entrepreneur of the Year in 2001, she was an African Digital Woman finalist in 2013, and Business Insider made her Female African Leader of the Year in 2022. She has spoken at TEDxEuston.

Online. madeinbuea.com · ottopaulakama

Background. Otto Akama enrolled at UB in 2007 to study Mathematics. There he first heard of Fua Tse as the best coder in the department, and began seeking out tech communities. He dropped Mathematics and later earned a B.Eng in Computer and Communications Engineering from University College of Technology Buea, not the University of Buea like most of his peers. He learned to code mostly in cyber cafes, fixing hardware for free in exchange for internet time.

Community leadership. In 2013 he co-founded GDG Buea with Isaac Kamga, Nyah Check and Tah Teche. As Community Development Specialist at ActivSpaces he led the first Silicon Mountain Conference (2015) and the second (2016). He also co-founded iSolutions Web Services, Molyko.info and Skademy. During the 2017–2019 crisis he was the Silicon Mountain voice international media turned to most: AFP, AP and Quartz Africa all quoted him at length. In 2019 he received the Oroko Entrepreneurship Honorary Award.

Company

• Makonjo Media (2017 to present, founder and CEO). A digital media and technology company working in web design, mobile app development, digital marketing, branding and content creation. In 2019, with US-based TekCitadel LLC, it launched two coding bootcamps for STEM graduates: a PHP Web Development Bootcamp and a Frontend Web Development Bootcamp. Its mission is to “build tools and platforms that promote honest and progressive conversations.”

Other ventures. He co-founded LCMTours (tourism tech) and Yopisode (media), and is Editor in Chief of Afro Hustler, Silicon Mountain’s main tech blog. Through the crisis he chose Buea, returning after stints in Douala and Yaoundé. “I realized that I loved Buea a little more than I loved the Internet.”

Online. @ekwogefee · fritz-ekwoge-ekwoge · feeperfect.com

Background. Fritz Ekwoge Ekwoge is a graduate of École Nationale Supérieure Polytechnique, Yaoundé (ENSPY). A senior software engineer, he has worked in banking, telecommunications, energy, web development, SEO and technology for breweries. TechCabal and other sources name him, alongside the AfroVision founders, as one of the early figures who shaped Silicon Mountain’s culture.

FeePerfect and Feem. FeePerfect, founded in 2010, made Feem, an app for sharing files over local WiFi on Android, iOS, Windows, Linux and macOS. It needs no internet: files move over the LAN at high speed. Feem passed 100,000 downloads on Google Play in its first year and went on to be used across Africa, America, Europe and beyond. Tracxn records it as funded by ActivSpaces. According to MarketScreener, he is chairman of FeePerfect AG, a Swiss company.

Current role

• Fintech Ltd / Interstellar (April 2017 to present, CTO). As chief technology officer at Fintech Ltd he led development of Interstellar, a fintech platform for Cameroon. TheOrg.com lists this as his main role, alongside his continued ownership of FeePerfect, which is still an active company incorporated in Switzerland.

Online. derick-alangi · x-savitar (Wikitech) · Wikimedia Diff Blog · Wikitech: X-Savitar

The GSoC milestone. In 2015, as a Computer Science student at UB, Derick found out that Wikimedia took part in Google Summer of Code. Within months he had submitted more than 25 patches to the MediaWiki codebase. He was selected, and became Wikimedia’s first African participant in Google Summer of Code. After completing the programme he mentored teenagers in Google Code-In for two years running (2015, 2016). It put Silicon Mountain on the global open-source map.

Current role. He has contributed to the Wikimedia movement for more than 9 years and is now a Senior Software Engineer at the Wikimedia Foundation. He works on Platform Engineering, shipping patches that improve MediaWiki tooling and APIs. He studied Open Source Technology Management at Brandeis University, co-founded Wikimedia Cameroon, and has attended WikiIndaba, the African Wikimedia conference, in several years.

Community work. He mentors at GDG Buea’s Elite Programmers Club, going into universities to code with students. He co-founded the Climate Justice Map project and is active on the pywikibot and pocketlang open-source projects. In March 2024 he was sharing job openings on LinkedIn for Wikipedia’s Abstract Wikipedia project, a multilingual AI knowledge-equity initiative. His Wikitech username is X-Savitar, his IRC handle is xSavitar, and he uses the same handle on GitHub.

Online. madeinbuea.com (community)

Story. Nyah Check was enrolled in a Biochemistry programme at the University of Buea when the AfroVision founders inspired him to take up programming. He dropped out, on conviction, to code full time, and later re-enrolled at UB for a degree in Computer Engineering. In 2013 he co-founded GDG Buea with Isaac Kamga, Otto Akama and Tah Teche. Through the crisis years he was one of the most outspoken and candid voices on how the community held on. In a single year, the GDG communities he helped build sent more than 11 students from Cameroon to Google Summer of Code.

Online. zouix.com (Limbe)

Background. Zou Bruno holds a BSc in Geographic and Cartographic Sciences from the University of Buea. For several months he presented Geographica, a weather forecast programme, on Chariot FM radio, an unusual mix of geography and tech media. He speaks English, French and Spanish, and in Silicon Mountain he is known as an “ethical hacker”. He won a 2018 ICT Award for his car security project.

Built during the shutdown. When the internet was cut in 2017, most founders left. Zou Bruno stayed and built Zoomed, a car-tracking application using SMS that needs no internet at all. It became a celebrated example of creativity born of the crisis. Otto Akama cited it directly: “These sessions even led Zuo Bruno to invent a technology that tracks cars with SMS.”

Current ventures

• Zouix (founded with his spouse; based in Limbe, Cameroon). A multinational tracking company offering offensive information security solutions and SMS-based tracking systems. Its SoT (SMS of Things) lets non-smart devices connect to each other over SMS, a breakthrough where connectivity is poor.
• AISCON (Africa Information Security Conference) (founder and CEO). A platform for cybersecurity awareness and discussion of information security across Africa. He also built gcehelper.com to help Cameroonian students prepare for the GCE Board Examinations.

Online. nzometiah-nervis · nzometia.nervis · nervtek.cc

Background. Nzometiah Nervis Tetsop comes from Bamenda, NW Cameroon and attended GTHS Molyko Buea and GTHS Bamenda. Next came a Bachelor of Engineering in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Buea, then a Master’s in Power Systems Engineering, also at UB, with a spell as Vice-President of the Faculty of Engineering and Technology Student Association (FETSA). Before founding Nervtek, Nzometiah volunteered on New Generation Technologies’ ICT4KIDS programme.

Awards. In 2019 Nzometiah won 1st Prize in the ASPY National Engineering Project Competition and a $6,000 African Leadership Bridge scholarship. In 2020 came the Presidential ICT Award of Cameroon ($27,000), as its youngest ever winner, for the e-Waste 3D Printer, a 3D printer built from recycled electronics. Other honours: 40 Under 40 Honoree, Cameroon Achievers Magazine (2021, 2022); TGFIA 2021 Innovation of the Year; the 9th Future Africa Leaders Awards Star Prize ($35,000) in Lagos; and the MIT Legatum Center Foundry Fellowship.

Nervtek

• Nervtek (2018 to present, founder and CEO, nervtek.cc). A youth-led social enterprise with 3 flagship programmes: Nervtek Education, Nervtek Makerspace and Nervtek Community. It teaches coding, drone technology, machine learning, cyber safety, 3D printing, electronics, robotics and VR. It started with 9 students in Buea in 2018 and now trains about 90 a year. Its partners include UNDP Cameroon (2021, 2024), GIZ and the Cameroonian Ministry of Posts. The team includes Njita Arnaud (Program Manager & STEM Educator), Asobo Joyce Megvie (Director, Nervtek Education) and Leku Tita (Community Lead).

2025: Liberia. In July–August 2025 Nervtek ran a Holiday Tech Camp at the University of Liberia’s Fendall Campus, organised with UNDP Liberia. It was the first technology camp of its kind in Liberia. The camp took 60 students (36 girls, 24 boys) aged 7–17 through coding, drones, ML, cyber safety, climate tech, 3D printing, robotics and VR. The UNDP Resident Representative attended the opening, and the Liberian Observer and Global News Network Liberia reported on it in July 2025.

Online. esamemondoa.me · esamemondoa · Medium: @esamemondoa · zitofinancial.cm

Background. Esame Mondoa Junior grew up in Muyuka, in rural SW Cameroon, where 90% of businesses were informal. His first business was selling chin-chin at local football competitions. After moving to Buea for university he taught himself web development, coding, graphic design and video editing. He earned a Depet I in ICT from HTTTC Kumba (ENSET Kumba). His first startup, JoyFreelancer, failed, and the lessons from it led to Zito.

ZITO Group products. Zitopay is an online payment platform that accepts MTN Mobile Money, Orange Money, Express Union, Visa and Mastercard, and has more than 17,000 users. Zitocard is a prepaid VISA card, topped up with mobile money and usable worldwide. NitroSMS is a bulk SMS service, Knight.cm a project promotion platform, Zito Financial CU a cooperative credit union for wealth management, and Give Cameroon an online fundraising platform. The group won a “Fastest Growing FINTECH Institution” award.

Current status

• ZITO Group / Zito Financial (2015 to present, founder and general manager / Directeur). A Cameroon-based fintech, founded in 2015, which launched its first product in January 2018. RocketReach lists him as Managing Director, Zito Financial Company, and his LinkedIn title is Directeur @ ZITO Group. He has been featured on MANAGING AFRICA TV and blogs at esamemondoa.me. He also chairs Esame’s Foundation, a non-profit working on poverty alleviation, and is a community leader, teacher and mentor in Silicon Mountain.

Online. TechWomen Profile · Obama Leaders Africa 2019 · F6S: mparafaith

Background. Mpara Faith Muwar is from the North West Region of Cameroon and holds a BSc in Computer Engineering from the University of Buea. Her research includes a novel algorithm for secure GSM communication using hybrid RSA and symmetric cryptography. After her undergraduate studies she co-founded NGT with Mr. Olouge Eya. In 2017 she was named one of the 50 Most Influential Young Cameroonians.

Awards. She was a TechWomen 2017 Fellow on the US State Dept programme, mentored at Synopsys, and won the Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurship Award 2018. She also received a Bertelsmann Data Science Challenge Scholarship, reached the semi-finals of the GIST Tech-I Competition with NGT, and joined Obama Foundation Leaders Africa in 2019. She has been an OWSD member since 2016. She used a Pass-It-On Award to train 62 students in open-source contribution.

Current ventures

• New Generation Technologies (NGT) Ltd (co-founder and operations manager). An educational technology and IT solutions company. Its web-based school records management has been used for hundreds of thousands of students, and it provides IT solutions for schools, hospitals, businesses and NGOs. On X/Twitter it is ngtltd_tech.
• ICT4KIDS (founder, since 2018). Launched in Buea in 2018, it trains children aged 5–18 in computing, programming, game development, graphic design and critical thinking, and ties tech to global citizenship and leadership. The plan is to expand nationwide through trained facilitators.

Online. daisy-nkweteyim · largeapps.dev (book)

Silicon Mountain roots. At the University of Buea, Daisy Nkweteyim founded and led the WAAW STEM Cell, a student initiative to increase female representation in STEM fields. Her team ran monthly hands-on science outreach in secondary schools, reaching more than 100 students. Several Silicon Mountain sources list her with Nyah Check and the GDG wave as a “frontrunner of the Silicon Mountain revolution.” She also received the Pass-It-On Award, and used it to train 62 students in open-source contribution.

Current role. She is now a Software Engineer at Amazon. With Addy Osmani, Google Chrome engineering lead, she co-wrote “Building Large Scale Web Apps”. The book went to #1 bestseller on Leanpub across all categories and topped Lulu’s engineering category; its website is largeapps.dev. On LinkedIn she argues for a cybersecurity culture in tech organisations. Her most recent posts (2024) cover React architecture, cybersecurity and Satya Nadella’s “security above all” directive at Microsoft.

Online. mountainhub.africa · ayuketta · ayuk-etta-79357684

Background. Ayuk Etta Akum, the last of 15 children, earned a B.Eng in Computer Software Engineering, University of Buea (2010–2014). He started out at Diligent Bilingual Foundation setting up computer labs (2010), joined ActivSpaces as a software engineer (2013) and co-founded Skylabase (2015), which makes software for banks, credit unions and microfinance institutions. He joined the fintech Kuelap as a partner and became its Managing Director for Africa (2019). He also lists a certification in Creative Problem Solving from the University of Minnesota.

MountainHub. He founded MountainHub to fill what he saw as a critical gap: a venture grooming platform and creativity playground for Cameroon’s rising tech generation. The aim is to act as a co-founder, not just an incubator, working with innovators to turn ideas into high-growth companies. He has run national innovation weeks across all 10 regions of Cameroon and been featured on AFIME, an entrepreneurship TV show in Cameroon.

Portfolio

• MountainHub (founder and CEO; Buea and Yaoundé). A leading digital innovation hub in Cameroon, doing venture building, incubation and acceleration. It organises the Bamenda Green Hackathon and a national innovation tour across 10 Cameroon regions, and has more than 1,580 Facebook followers. mountainhub.africa
• Iknite Studio (CEO; Africa’s Impact Venture Studio). It validates, builds and scales AI-powered fintech and SaaS startups for SMEs, and offers innovation consulting to corporations and government.
• CITSCM, Cameroon International Tech Summit (founder). The largest gathering of tech and innovation experts, government officials and innovation hubs in Cameroon and the Central African Sub-Region.
• Mountain Angel Network (president). An investment vehicle that backs technology projects in Cameroon and beyond, and builds a culture of angel investing among local business leaders.

Online. bermond-yange-16382144

Background. Bermond Yange started as a graphic designer at Unique Printers in Buea, managing advertising creatives and production. He moved into UX/UI design for Silicon Mountain startups and freelanced for clients worldwide on Upwork/Odesk. He co-founded Colorfluid Creative Agency, which makes animation, motion graphics and advertising campaigns for Silicon Mountain companies. He has been part of CITSCM innovation tours in Garoua and Sangmelima (North and South regions). He also does illustration and book design, and created the cover for “My First Period Junior” by Royalty World Cameroon.

Current role. He is now based at Plug and Play Tech Center, Silicon Valley (the world’s most active tech accelerator), working as Product, UX and Visual Designer at Solver AI. It is a big step, from designing for Buea startups to core designer at an AI company in California, but he still takes part in MountainHub and CITSCM activities. His LinkedIn posts document 3AM hackathon nights across Cameroon and team lunches at Plug and Play.

Online. digitalrenter.com · fongohmartin · dev.to/bosz

Background. Fongoh Martin Tayong is a Software Engineering graduate of the University of Buea and has been active in Silicon Mountain’s developer community since about 2016. He ranks 10th by contributions on GitHub’s silicon-mountain users tracker. His skills include TypeScript, Laravel, React, React Native, Python, Django and ML/AI. He volunteers with student clubs including Elite Programmers Club and Google Developer Circle Buea, and mentors on Tech Chantier’s RRN programme (React/React Native training).

How Digital Renter began. In 2016 he was struck by a real dispute between a tenant and landlord over an unreceipted rent payment. It showed him the problem: managing property by hand in Cameroon was unreliable, opaque and prone to conflict. He built Digital Renter, Cameroon’s first comprehensive real estate management platform, and nearly abandoned it 3–5 times but kept going. His aim is for it to become “the eBay for real estate” in Africa.

Current ventures

• Digital Renter (2016 to present, founder and CEO, digitalrenter.com). One platform for real estate agencies, landlords, caretakers and tenants, with property listings, digital rental contracts, payment recording, receipt generation and reports. Buyam Stories covered it in episodes 10 and 11. In its early years it was one of ActivSpaces’ tenants.
• Farm Master (MountainHub) (co-founder and CTO). An agritech platform from the MountainHub community. He has also judged pitch contests at MountainHub Buea events, as MountainHub’s LinkedIn shows.

Online. effansasimonbalemba · @EngSimonBalemba · about.me/simonbalemba

Background. Simon Balemba Effansa went to close to five secondary schools, an unsettled start that built resilience. He won a scholarship to University College of Technology Buea (B.Eng, Computer and Communications Engineering) and also holds an Executive MBA in IT and Project Management from Federal University of Technology Owerri, Nigeria. He is a certified career counsellor, a certified entrepreneurship instructor (ILO SIYB Master Trainer) and a business process consultant.

Career. ZoomInfo records positions at Zixtech HUB, Healthy Lifestyle Foundation (HELIF), Immersion Hub, Iknite Studio, Iknite Space, MOCU Official, Bohikor (as CEO), MountainHub, Earldom Group (US), Akwajobs, Jongo Hub (as executive director), Opuvia, Market Trends International (Lagos), Makonjo Media, Skademy and Gulf-Field University Institute of Petroleum. He is also a board member of FasterCapital, which is based in Dubai, and of the School of Logistics and Petroleum Port Harcourt, and a co-founder of SOPEL Oil & Gas (Nigeria).

Now

• Fluide Group (current, founder and group CEO; Mont Royal, Quebec, Canada). His new venture, after a recent move to Canada. ZoomInfo gives Mont Royal, Quebec as his base, though his recent LinkedIn posts place him in the Douala metro area.
• Afrik Jobs (co-founder and vice-chair). A career platform helping Africans reach world-class learning and jobs. It was his most recent Silicon Mountain-adjacent role before Fluide.

Bill Zimmerman was an American Peace Corps volunteer stationed in Cameroon in 2009. His meeting with Fua Tse and Valery Colong led directly to ActivSpaces. He wrote the first blog post profiling Buea’s tech community, on 27months.com (now offline), and in the comments people began trying to name what was happening. The name they arrived at was “Silicon Mountain.” He helped popularise it at the first VC4Africa Meetup in Cameroon (2011). He now lives in the US, and the VC4Africa partner connection came through him.

Isaac Kamga co-founded GDG Buea in 2013 with Otto Akama, Nyah Check and Tah Teche, and gave the keynote on community spirit at the first Silicon Mountain Conference (2015). His theme was community cohesion as Silicon Mountain’s competitive advantage. Under his leadership GDG Buea was among the first African groups to take part in Google Summer of Code (2013), contributing to BRL-CAD, OpenMRS and GNOME. He also led UB student recruitment for the Google Cloud Developers Challenge and Google Open Day.

Tah Teche was the fourth co-founder of GDG Buea (2013), part of the core group that organised the developer events, hackathons and Google programmes outreach behind the sharp growth in Silicon Mountain’s developer population at the University of Buea. Less is on the public record about Tah Teche than about the other three GDG founders, but every historical account of GDG Buea’s founding includes the name.

Tata Cyril co-founded PassGCE in 2006 with Mambe Churchill, Fua Tse and others, and so was part of the moment that started it all. TechCabal’s Silicon Mountain history article records the role, as does another of the sources behind this record. Little has appeared online since, which suggests an early step back from public tech activity.

In 2008 Njie Litumbe Nara and Quincy Kwende founded Wasamundi.com, Cameroon’s first Yelp-like service for local business reviews and ratings. It was one of Silicon Mountain’s earliest startups after PassGCE/AfroVision, and was set up to use Google’s Prediction API for ML-enhanced local business discovery. Wasamundi became a case study in building hyperlocal digital tools for Cameroon, and madeinbuea.com wrote about it in 2015.

Otto Isong founded AkwaJobs, a job listings platform aimed at local employment in the Cameroon market, and is one of the most quoted optimists about Silicon Mountain’s future. TechCabal’s 2018 history article quoted him: “Every ecosystem needs three main components — market, capital and talent. At Silicon Mountain, though we start building for local markets, we mostly see our products expanding to the rest of Africa. So Africa is our market. We have a strategic advantage for that.”

MountainHub’s founders page lists Amin Jefferson as CEO of Iknite Studio, MountainHub’s impact venture studio. Amin Jefferson is a regular at MountainHub events, including the Bamenda Green Hackathon and the regional innovation tours, is part of the team taking MountainHub beyond Buea, and works closely with Ayuk Etta and Bermond Yange on CITSCM. mountainhub.africa

David Awono is co-founder and CEO of Kamerlingua, a language technology startup building tools for Cameroonian and African languages. As demand grows for AI and NLP in under-resourced African languages such as Fulfulde, Bassa, Duala and Ewondo, Kamerlingua has a niche of its own. MountainHub lists David Awono on its founders page at mountainhub.africa.

Akah Harvey N.L founded AFTA Wallet, a fintech and digital wallet product for Cameroon and the wider African market. It is affiliated with MountainHub and belongs to a new wave of Silicon Mountain fintech builders working on top of mobile money. mountainhub.africa

Ngwang Dieudonne founded The Institute of Integrity Building, which works where entrepreneurship, ethics and capacity-building meet. It appears on MountainHub’s founders page at mountainhub.africa, a sign that MountainHub’s idea of entrepreneurship takes in social and values-based work as well as pure technology. Little else about the founder is public.

MBAS Samuel founded Heldis, a startup working close to digital health within the MountainHub community. MountainHub lists the founder at mountainhub.africa; little else is public.

Dr. Kunu Patience is a medical doctor turned tech entrepreneur, and Managing Director of Helif, a health technology company within MountainHub. Doctors who bring clinical knowledge to the design of digital health products matter more and more in African healthtech. Beyond the MountainHub listing, little else is public. mountainhub.africa

Agbor Franklen A founded Aleigro, one of the fintech and agritech-adjacent startups coming through MountainHub’s incubation. MountainHub lists the founder at mountainhub.africa; little else is public.

Sama Tanya founded Bequadi, a Silicon Mountain tech blog and community resource. TechCabal’s 2018 history article quoted the founder: “Before Silicon Mountain, Cameroon never had a thriving group of young tech innovators.” Sama Tanya was one of the early commentators who helped record and shape the community’s story. bequadi.com

Lewis Ngwa holds a BSc in Software Engineering (Vice Chancellor Prize for Technological Innovation, UB 2014), an MEng (UB 2017) and an MSc in Computer Science from Maharishi International University. He worked at JPMorgan Chase & Co, then at Ford Motor Company in Detroit. He co-founded Go-Groups, which built the Go-Students apps for the University of Buea and the University of Bamenda (registration, results, fees) and the transport app Paywaka. He received Presidential University Grants in 2011, 2012 and 2013, and the Presidential Prize for Excellence in 2017.

Feem is one of Silicon Mountain’s most globally successful products. It runs on Android, iOS, Windows, Linux and Mac, works over the LAN only, and offers encrypted and resumable transfers and self-destructing chat messages. ActivSpaces funded it, and MarketScreener lists FeePerfect AG in Switzerland. Fritz Ekwoge is @ekwogefee on X/Twitter, and is currently CTO at Fintech Ltd, building the Interstellar platform in Cameroon.