Maurice Juma
Kenyan entrepreneur Maurice Juma has turned a knack for algorithms into one of East Africa’s most influential ad-tech engines. Armed with a mathematics and computer science degree from Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, he first co-founded Nano Digital, an early picture-and-video SMS service that foreshadowed the mobile data boom. In 2017 he poured a personal investment of KSh 9 million into launching MediaPal, a programmatic-advertising platform that marries big-data modeling with real-time bidding to place the right ad on the right screen at the right moment. Today MediaPal analyses billions of impressions a month and powers campaigns for Coca-Cola, Safaricom, UNHCR, and dozens of fast-moving African start-ups, giving brands up to 40 percent savings on customer acquisition costs while opening fresh revenue streams for local publishers.
Recognized in 2022 on Business Daily’s Top 40 Under 40 list, Juma mentors young developers through Nairobi’s ad-tech boot camps and lobbies policymakers for privacy frameworks that balance innovation with consumer trust. Having expanded MediaPal’s footprint to ten Sub-Saharan markets, he is now layering artificial-intelligence insights onto the platform and exploring carbon-offset tagging so advertisers can track the environmental footprint of each campaign. His north star remains constant: prove that world-class digital marketing solutions can be coded and scaled on Kenyan soil.