Fara Ashiru, co-founder and CEO of Nigerian open-finance startup Okra, has recently joined UK-based Kernel, which builds custom AI agents for revenue operations. The move raises significant questions about the future of Okra, which recently pivoted to cloud services amidst a challenging regulatory and competitive landscape.
Her departure follows a period of significant change at Okra, which she co-founded in 2019 with David Peterside. Peterside, the former chief operating officer, left the company in 2022, leaving Ashiru to solely helm the venture.
Under her leadership as both CEO and CTO, Ashiru expanded the engineering team to 40 and secured $16.5 million in funding from prominent investors, including Susa Ventures, Base10 Partners, and TLcom Capital.
However, Okra faced headwinds. The company previously discontinued three of its core open-finance products—Balance, Income, and Transaction—which were designed to assess creditworthiness for lenders. An employee familiar with the matter stated that retaining the products “did not make any business sense.”
The decision came as Okra found itself trailing key competitors in the open banking space. Rivals Mono and Stitch have raised over $17.6 million and $52 million, respectively. The slow pace of open banking regulations from Nigeria’s central bank, which were only assented to in 2025, further complicated the operating environment.
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In response to these challenges, Okra ventured into cloud infrastructure in July 2024, aiming to provide data hosting and workload management for businesses. This move placed it in competition with local providers such as Nobus Cloud Services, MainOne Cloud, and Web4Africa. The African cloud space could be quite competitive, but the market is large enough with potential customers willing to spend on dependable services.
At Kernel, Ashiru is expected to leverage her more than five years of experience in building payment APIs and driving revenue growth. As the new head of engineering, she will be tasked with replicating her successes at Okra while maintaining a lean team.
The leadership team at Okra, which includes Head of People Bodunrin Akinola, Senior Financial Analyst Gbenga Oyedele, Business Development Lead Abiodun Oni, Customer Success Lead Dayo Fasan, and Senior Legal Counsel Habib Akinpelu, had been reporting directly to Ashiru. With her exit, the strategic direction of the TLcom-backed startup and the viability of its recent cloud pivot remain uncertain.
*This is a developing story
