Communiqué 62: Techpoint is building Africa’s Industry Dive
In its first decade, Techpoint cemented itself as the definitive voice of Africa’s tech ecosystem. Now, it seeks to extend that influence into Africa’s broader business landscape.
1. Old employees, new directions
In September last year, Emmanuel Paul received a call from Múyìwá Mátùlúkò, his former boss, asking him to return to his previous company. It had only been nine months since he left his job as managing editor of Techpoint Africa, one of the continent’s leading tech publications, for a storytelling role at fintech unicorn Moniepoint.
At Moniepoint, Paul had helped develop some of the company’s most important communication efforts. But by the time the call ended, he knew his time at Moniepoint would be short-lived. Mátùlúkò had made him an offer he could not refuse: return with the industry experience he had gathered at Moniepoint to lead the company’s new finance publication.
Paul had played an important role in Techpoint’s first decade, rising through the ranks from an internship program to leading the newsroom. Now, for the next decade, he would once again play a key role in executing the company’s editorial strategy.
After his notice period expired at Moniepoint, Paul resumed as the managing editor of Finance in Africa, one of the two publications Techpoint’s new parent company, Businessfront, was launching.
2. Not just another tech blog
Before the unicorns, the multi-million dollar fundraises with sky-high valuations, and the sold-out conferences, Nigeria’s tech ecosystem consisted mostly of true believers. Adewale Yusuf was one of them. What he lacked in coding talent, he made up for in enthusiasm, photography, and writing, attending events at the ecosystem watering hole, CcHub, and taking pictures and writing stories about those events for tech publications like the now-defunct Otekbits.
Adewale began to develop a growing discontent with the way tech was covered. The few available publications at the time wrote about tech with an insider’s voice, excluding a lot of people who were not familiar with the industry language. “The voice was not for everybody. The conversation was focused on a few people,” Adewale said in a documentary.
On January 1, 2015, he launched Techpoint.ng to solve this problem. Odunayo Eweniyi, Piggyvest’s COO, and Daniel Orubo, Zikoko’s editor-in-chief, were some of the first employees. A month later, Múyìwá Mátùlúkò, a journalist who had been the first employee at TechCabal, joined Yusuf as his co-founder.
Techpoint’s founding thesis was to make tech mainstream, and it did that by humanizing stories, first with its office tours of popular companies like Andela, Jobberman, and Seamfix. With the videos and picture tours, Nigerians began to see tech startups as real businesses, not just hobbies. Additionally, content series like “How I Work” and “Expert and African” helped highlight key players in the burgeoning ecosystem.
One year after its founding, Techpoint had gained some traction, but two events helped the publication find its place in the tech ecosystem. The first was Mark Zuckerberg’s visit to Nigeria in 2016 to familiarize himself with the country’s tech ecosystem. Techpoint’s coverage of the visit established the publication as a reliable source for tech news and analysis.
The second event was the Techpoint Innovation Tour, a cross-country trip by the entire team to cover stories beyond the Lagos tech bubble. After the tour, the publication began to actively spotlight other parts of Nigeria and Africa. In 2018, Techpoint.ng became Techpoint.Africa, reflecting a new editorial focus. In 2020, after leading the company for five years, Yusuf handed over the reins to Mátùlúkò, leaving the company to launch the edtech startup AltSchool.
3. Building Africa’s Industry Dive
For the most part, Techpoint has been bootstrapped by its co-founders, raising only $65,000 in angel investment between 2016 and 2019. Revenue came from a mix of sources, including Adewale’s photography gigs in the early days, advertising, and later on, event sponsorships.
In 2017, the company held its first event, Techpoint Inspired, a conference hosting conversations on the trends affecting the ecosystem. 2018 brought Techpoint Build, a conference targeted at startups, featuring pitch competitions and product showcases. Quarterly town halls rounded out the rest of its event offerings.
In 2022, Techpoint began to niche down its event offerings, launching The Fintech Summit and then the Techpoint Africa Blockchain Summit. These events were still directly related to the audiences Techpoint served. Then, in 2023, it hosted the Modern Workplace Africa conference, a conference targeted at the HR industry. It was a mistake.
“We were trying to test this niche idea, and we wanted to test it with HR, but somehow people just thought it was your normal tech event, and we did not reach the audience we were trying to reach, so it wasn’t profitable,” Mátùlúkò told Communiqué. In 2024, Techpoint put its events business on hold, focusing instead on the publishing and intelligence arms.
The Modern Workplace Africa misstep was one of several factors that changed Techpoint’s trajectory. Another was the 2024 Food and Beverage West Africa Exhibition, an event for the FMCG industry, which Muyiwa attended.
Several foreign brands and investors came to that event looking to do business but were clueless about the Nigerian FMCG industry. “A lot of people are looking to do business in Nigeria and Africa, and they don’t have enough information. They don't know how to meet the right people to help connect them to these spaces,” Mátùlúkò told Communiqué.
Businessfront, Techpoint’s new parent company, wants to solve this problem with a suite of publications targeted at several business sectors on the continent. It is starting with two new publications alongside Techpoint: Energy in Africa, which, as the name suggests, covers the continent’s energy sector and is led by energy analyst Cyrus Ademola, and Finance in Africa, led by Emmanuel Paul.
In implementing this strategy, Businessfront will borrow heavily from the Industry Dive playbook.
4. Industry deep dives
Industry Dive was launched in 2012 as a B2B publication covering sectors like construction, education, marketing, utilities, and waste. It now has over 13 million readers across 25 industries, from biopharma to banking.
Industry Dive offers extremely niche publications, resulting in a highly engaged audience that can be easily monetized. In 2020, while most digital media companies were reeling from the pandemic, Industry Dive made $60 million in revenue, with a 30% ($18 million) profit margin. According to CEO Sean Griffey, “When budgets get real tight for folks, being able to generate real demand for partners is key.”
In 2022, British publishing, business intelligence, and exhibitions group Informa acquired Industry Dive for $530 million.
Businessfront wants to run that playbook in Africa. It is starting with three sectors—tech, energy, and finance—but plans to launch 20 publications across sectors like FMCG, health, construction, and real estate by 2030. In choosing which sectors to launch publications in, the company considers five criteria:
It must be largely offline or being disrupted by technology: Bringing online an industry that is largely offline makes it more accessible, especially to people looking to do business in Africa. If it’s being disrupted by technology, there’s already a demand for new information from industry players who don’t want to be replaced or left behind.
It must be heavily regulated: Regulated industries have constantly changing laws, creating a need for industry players to stay updated. These industries also tend to have professional organizations that can be leveraged for business opportunities.
There must be a “starving” market: There should be significant unmet needs or problems with few existing solutions. Alternatively, even if the market is stable, it should have the financial capacity to support new entrants.
There must be existing competition: Competition validates the market and reduces the risk of entering an unproven industry.
The industry must be growing: Growth ensures long-term success and sustainability. For example, in the energy industry oil is in decline, but renewable energy sectors are on the rise and there is a growing market in Africa for it.
Techpoint turned ten years old in January 2025. In its first decade, it cemented itself as the definitive voice of Africa’s technology ecosystem, chronicling the industry’s evolution from niche curiosity to mainstream force.
Now, in its second decade, Businessfront (the new parent company) seeks to extend that influence beyond tech and into the broader African business landscape. With its new ambitious expansion plans, the company aims to be as indispensable to Africa’s business world as it once was to its tech ecosystem. Whether covering FMCG, or energy, its goal remains the same: to make complex industries accessible, insightful, and, above all, essential reading for those shaping Africa’s future.