Five years.
One obsession.
I've been trying to fix rewards in Africa since 2020. This is the honest version of that story — the pivots, the paperwork, the late nights, and why I'm still here.
A pen. Really?
My dad's generation got a shiny pen and a handshake when they did something great at work. I watched companies in Nigeria hand out generic gifts that meant nothing — cash bonuses that evaporated, branded mugs that collected dust. Nobody felt seen.
I couldn't stop thinking about it. So in November 2020, I registered Qart Systems Limited with the CAC and wrote the first line of what would become Africa's rewards infrastructure.
The first company was called Qart. The vision hasn't changed.
The launch post. Day 1.
Making it real.
Before there was a product, there was paperwork. I remember scanning the CAC registration document and emailing it over — "Qart App signed" in the subject line. That email became the founding artifact.
It sounds small. But there's something about making a company legal that shifts something inside you. This was no longer an idea. This was a commitment.
Wed, Nov 18, 2020. The day Qart became a legal entity.
The CAC registration email. Nov 18, 2020.
Gift cards, cakes, drones — and a big idea.
The early product was raw but the thinking was sharp. Qart let companies send curated gifts — local experiences, tech gear, hampers — to employees with a click. No more phoning vendors, no more lost vouchers, no more gifts that sat in a drawer.
I built the first sales deck. Sourced the first merchants. Wrote the copy myself. There were nights I wasn't sure anyone would care. But I kept going because I knew the problem was real.
The original platform had gift cards, apparel, swag, electronics, trophies, cakes, and travel. Sound familiar?
The Qart sales deck. Every category hand-sourced.
CodeLN said yes.
Before there were dashboards or an API, there was one company willing to take a chance on an unproven idea. CodeLN became Qart's very first paying customer — the moment the vision stopped being a pitch deck and became a real business.
We packed and shipped their gift boxes ourselves, wrote the thank-you notes by hand, and embroidered their team's name onto the products inside. It wasn't glamorous. It was real. And it taught us everything about what it actually takes to deliver a meaningful gift.
CodeLN — Qart's first customer, and the reason we kept going.
The CodeLN order. Our very first sale.
Qart → RibiRewards.
Years of building taught me what the market actually needed. It wasn't just gifting software — it was infrastructure. HR platforms needed an API. Global companies needed a way to reward African employees without painful logistics. The real problem was deeper than I'd first imagined.
So I rebuilt. Same mission. Better architecture. RibiRewards was born from everything Qart taught me about what it takes to deliver a meaningful gift across Africa.
The pivot wasn't a failure. It was the product learning to walk.
10 countries. growing number of vendors.
Nigeria. Kenya. Ghana. South Africa. Egypt. And growing. We expanded to cover 10+ African countries with a network of over 1,000 vetted vendors — local restaurants, spas, tech retailers, artisans.
Then we launched the API. Now any HR platform in the world can plug into Africa's reward network with a single integration. What started as a hunch in 2020 is now infrastructure.
Every vendor is vetted. Every reward is trackable. Every employee deserves this.
Every box, packed by hand for CodeLN.
Long before RibiRewards had a platform, we had a promise to keep to one company. Here's what that first order actually looked like.
Still day 1 energy.
Much bigger infrastructure.
Five years in, I still wake up thinking about how to make rewards more meaningful for African workers. The company name changed. The obsession didn't.