Kingsley Ezeani

Kingsley Ezeani graduated from the Harvard Kennedy School in 2022 with a Master’s in Public Administration and is a graduate of the University of Oxford’s Said Business School where he earned his MBA. He is a co-founder of CashEx, a startup that aims to solve the problem of high remittance fees experienced by African migrants in the UK and the US.

Kingsley has 12 years of experience driving growth for digital businesses. Before CashEx, Kingsley founded Techhive Africa, a digital media company whose portfolio platforms have over 5 million social media followers and have partnered with the BBC to fight misinformation in Nigeria. He is a recipient of multiple awards including The Future Awards Africa Prize for New Media and the YTech100 award for leaders in technology in Nigeria. He was also selected as a mentor to entrepreneurs vying for $1 Million in the Africa Entrepreneurship Award 2018. In 2019, Kingsley was recognized by the Obama Foundation as an African Leader due to his work and he joined leaders from 45 African Countries in the Obama Foundation Leaders: Africa program in South Africa.

The current systems for remittances from Africa are overpriced and grossly inadequate, with few to no systems beyond traditional banks with high transfer fees for reverse remittance from Africa to the UK and US.

As a Cheng Fellow, Kingsley and his team focused on solving this problem by building a mobile currency exchange that leverages AI to match transactions and ensure remittance costs are kept low. In January 2021, the venture received grant funding from the UK government via Innovate UK due to its potential to reduce inequality for African migrants and meet UN SDG 10.c.