Ovamba’s Viola Llewellyn to be first African female founder to speak at Slush

Finnish tech innovation conference Slush has announced that Viola Llewellyn — the co-founder and president of Cameroon-based fintech startup Ovamba — is among the confirmed speakers at this year’s event.

The tw0-day conference kicks off tomorrow in Helsinki, Finland and is expected to draw about 20 000 attendants and will also be streamed live. This will be the first time that Slush will have a female African tech founder on its central stage.

The founder will discuss how her startup aims to improve financial accessibility in Africa as well as the importance of financial services in emerging markets.

“This is epic. Ovamba has worked hard to open the doors to financial inclusion,” Llewellyn (pictured above) said in a statement to Ventureburn.

“Our recent collaboration with Microsoft to develop an African language driven chatbot is one of many innovations that will achieve this aim. Being at Slush to showcase this is a fantastic opportunity for the world to see Africa very differently,” she added.

Viola Llewellyn is set to be the first female African tech founder to speak at the Slush Central Stage since it started in 2008

Llewellyn will be joined on stage by Solaris Bank co-founder Marko Wenthin and cryptocurrency expert Andreas Antonopoulos for a discussion on the democratisation of financial services.

Previous speakers at the annual gathering include Spotify founder Daniel Ek, Indiegogo co-founder Danae Ringelmann and Acumen Fund CEO Jacqueline Novogratz.

Founded in 2013 by Llewellyn and Marvin Cole, Ovamba set up operations in Douala Cameroon in 2014. Last year the startup won the African FinTech Award in the Lending and Finance category.

The startup is set to generate $3.5-million in revenue this year and is looking to expand to Ghana, Senegal and Sudan.

Featured image: Ovamba co-founder and president Viola Llewellyn (Supplied)