Hassan Bourgi

Hassan Bourgi is the co-founder and CEO of Djamo, the Abidjan-based neobank he launched in 2020 alongside Régis Bamba to close the financial access gap across Francophone West Africa. Bourgi, of Lebanese origin, brings an unusual profile to African fintech: educated at La Trobe University, Montpellier Business School, and EADA Business School, he first founded Busportal in Peru in 2011 — an online bus-ticketing platform that expanded into Colombia and was acquired by Redbus (Naspers) in 2016. He moved to Côte d'Ivoire in 2019, and in 2020 co-founded Djamo, which became the first Ivorian startup ever accepted into Y Combinator (W21 batch). Djamo has since grown to more than one million customers, processed over $4.5 billion in transactions, served more than 10,000 SMEs, and raised $17 million in a 2025 round — the largest VC raise in Ivory Coast's history — led by Janngo Capital.

Bourgi's significance is structural: Francophone Africa's 300-plus million people have historically been among the world's most financially excluded, with limited access to bank accounts and no modern digital rails. Djamo offers Visa cards, savings accounts, peer-to-peer transfers, and merchant payment tools in a region where banking penetration remains chronically low. Its 55%-plus unbanked user base is a testament to what Bourgi has built — not a challenger bank for the already-banked, but a first bank for people who had none.