Jerry Mwenda

As the Founder and CEO of Hokela Interactive Africa, We've built the company around a simple belief: Africa doesn't have a shortage of talent—it has a shortage of connection.

Across the continent, millions of young people are ready to work, and thousands of businesses need work done on the ground: in markets, shops, and retail corridors too fragmented for any one company to reach alone. Hokela connects the two.

Through our "Agents on Demand" model, we recruit, train, and deploy young people to carry out essential commercial work, including retail audits, market research, merchandising, brand activations, and field sales. Businesses gain on-the-ground execution in places data alone cannot reach, while young people gain income, practical experience, and a verifiable track record.
To date, Hokela has deployed more than 25,000 agents and mapped over 300,000 retail touchpoints across four countries. We have turned work that was once informal into structured, paid, professional opportunities backed by technology that drives operational efficiency.

But the numbers are only half the story. We didn't build Hokela simply to grow a company. We built it around one self-reinforcing idea: business growth creates work, and work creates opportunity. Every client we win is another door a young person can step through.

That's the kind of entrepreneurship I believe Africa needs — commercially strong, and measured by how many people it lifts along the way. A vote for this nomination is a vote for a model built to prove that Africa's greatest untapped resource is its young people, and that the smartest thing a business can do is put them to work.