How Techpoint changed Africa’s tech reporting landscape in 10 years
At exactly 00:01 on January 1, 2015, Techpoint Africa published its first article, marking the beginning of what would become one of Africa’s most influential tech media platforms.
Founded by Adewale Yusuf with a mission to simplify technology for the layman, Techpoint has transformed from a small Lagos-based blog to a continent-wide digital media powerhouse that has fundamentally reshaped how technology is reported, consumed, and perceived across Nigeria and beyond.
“I discovered a gap between emerging tech companies and their target audience,” recalls Yusuf. “The existing tech publications felt exclusive. Their voice wasn’t for everybody—it was just a few people focusing the conversation.”
The early days were characterised by resourcefulness and determination. Co-founder Múyìwá Mátùlúkò, who now serves as CEO, remembers joining in February 2015 when the company was still finding its footing. They operated without a formal office space, borrowed resources when needed, and pursued stories with relentless enthusiasm despite limited means.
“We were squatting at a friend’s office in Victoria Island,” Mátùlúkò shares, “We would work from there maybe once a week, while the rest of the week was spent working from home, or on the field chasing stories.”
This scrappy, entrepreneurial spirit would become a hallmark of Techpoint Africa’s approach to journalism. When traditional access was denied, they created alternative pathways to stories, building credibility through sheer persistence and quality reporting.
Techpoint Africa pioneered innovative formats that redefined tech journalism in Africa. Their office tour series, which included a behind-the-scenes look at Konga’s distribution centre(at the time) and a photo-tour of Jobberman’s office, became wildly popular. The high-quality photography, unprecedented in African tech journalism at the time, gave audiences a genuine glimpse into startup life beyond the usual press releases and announcements.
“I remember our server crashing after we released the office tour of Jobberman; the traffic was crazy,” Yusuf recalls. “For the first time, people could see what it looked like to work in an African tech company, rather than Google or Microsoft.”
This innovative approach resonated beyond Nigeria’s borders, attracting talent like Brenda Wangari from Kenya, who would eventually become Techpoint Africa’s first East Africa correspondent. Wangari was impressed by their distinctive storytelling style.
“It was just very different and no one else in the continent was doing that. They actually took it home; they made startups real,” she shares about joining in September 2015.
The pivotal moment came in August 2016 when Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg made a surprise visit to Nigeria. Despite not being invited to the main events, the Techpoint Africa team transformed this potential setback into a journalistic opportunity.
Rather than lamenting their exclusion, they produced comprehensive coverage, including a groundbreaking feature on Nigerians working at Facebook (at the time) that garnered international attention.
This episode exemplified what made Techpoint different, which was their ability to tell deeper stories that went beyond surface-level news. As Kola Aina, Founding Partner of Ventures Platform Fund, puts it, “Techpoint definitely was one of the platforms that I used for education to learn about the ecosystem.”
Perhaps Techpoint’s most distinctive innovation was taking their entire team on multi-week tours across Nigeria’s regions. Starting in 2016 with Northern Nigeria (Abuja, Kaduna, Jos), these tours uncovered tech stories far from Lagos, Nigeria.
The tours became an annual tradition. Following Northern Nigeria, Techpoint explored South-South and South-East in 2017, Southwest in 2018, and ventured continentally to Francophone West Africa, and Ethiopia, uncovering budding ecosystems and innovation hubs everywhere they went.
“We were able to show that tech wasn’t just a Lagos story or Yaba story,” reflects Mátùlúkò “It was a Nigerian story, it was an African story, and it was our job to tell it.”
By 2019, Techpoint had gone fully pan-African, changing their domain from .ng to .africa and extending their coverage to Ghana, Togo, Benin Republic, and beyond. They even began publishing in French to bridge the gap between Anglophone and Francophone tech ecosystems, addressing one of the major challenges to regional collaboration they had observed during their tours.
Beyond its publications, for which the company has experienced 600% traffic growth over the years, Techpoint ventured into events in 2017, recognising the need for physical spaces where the ecosystem could converge.
On May 29, 2017, they organised the maiden edition of Techpoint Inspired, which drew over 1,200 attendees. The following year, attendance surged to over 3,000 participants, establishing it as the largest technology conference in West Africa.
In January 2018, the company launched Techpoint Build, their startup and SME conference, hosting over 4,000 attendees at Landmark Event Centre in Lagos. The event featured the inaugural Pitch Storm competition, where startups competed for equity-free funding.
By 2019, Techpoint Build had evolved into a pan-African affair, with participants from multiple countries and the competition drawing startups from five African nations. Estate Intel emerged as the winner that year, taking home a $10,000 prize.
But Techpoint’s journey hasn’t been without significant challenges. The global pandemic in 2020 dealt a heavy blow to the company, particularly affecting their events business. When revenue dwindled drastically during the lockdown period, the entire team accepted a 50% pay cut rather than implement layoffs.
“Every single person on the team accepted a 50% pay cut, which wasn’t reversed until early Q4,” Mátùlúkò revealed in his 2021 New Year’s post. Despite these difficulties, they adapted quickly, transforming physical events into large-scale virtual experiences and launching new content initiatives like the Built in Africa podcast, which grew to an average of 90,000 downloads per week by December 2020.
The challenges didn’t end with the pandemic. October 2023 brought perhaps their greatest test yet.
“After wrapping up the Modern Workplace Conference and facing a dramatic revenue decline, I gathered my team in a private room to announce an impossible choice: implementing up to 70% salary cuts instead of layoffs,” Mátùlúkò shared in their 10th anniversary reflection.
While the eventual departure of some team members was inevitable, those who stayed demonstrated extraordinary commitment to Techpoint’s mission, allowing the company to continue operations even while functioning at 60% capacity well into 2024.
These periods of adversity forced Techpoint to rethink their approach to tech journalism, leading to innovations in their coverage and business model that ultimately strengthened the organisation.
Throughout its decade of existence, Techpoint’s achievements have been substantial: launching influential events, creating the Techpoint Innovation Tour, expanding pan-African coverage, developing bilingual content, and weathering economic storms while maintaining editorial excellence.
Their reports and features have helped numerous startups gain visibility and funding. Investors from around the world use Techpoint as a discovery medium for African innovations, with stories featured in Canadian and Silicon Valley investors’ newsletters.
“We are just getting started,” says Mátùlúkò, reflecting on their decade-long journey. “Our vision extends far beyond maintaining what we’ve built. We’re committing to quadruple our startup coverage in the next five years—not just in numbers, but in depth and impact.”
As Techpoint celebrates its 10th anniversary, its legacy stands clear: they’ve transformed tech reporting from an exclusive conversation to an accessible narrative that resonates with millions across Africa.
