Idris Bello ’11

Idris Bello ’11

What inspires you to remain so engaged with Rice?

Rice played a pivotal role in shaping the course of my career, and that has been the greatest inspiration for staying engaged. When I enrolled at Rice University for my MBA in 2009, I had (or thought I had) a clear plan for my career. I was on the high-performer track at Chevron USA, where I worked, and I could see myself climbing the executive rungs quickly once the MBA was over. But little did I know how much that career path would change over the next few years.

Through a chance lunch meeting at Rice, I got acquainted with Professor Marc Epstein, an expert in microfinance and the use of commercial models, to improve health and promote development in impoverished regions of the world. He taught a course on “Commercializing Technologies in Developing Countries," where teams of MBA and undergraduate engineering students developed business plans for global health technologies and then traveled to Rwanda, where they undertook field research for their business plans. I volunteered to help expand the program to Nigeria. During this field research, I became exposed to the opportunities that entrepreneurship offered to vastly improve conditions in the part of the world where I came from.

Participating in that learning experience thus began a 180-degree career turn dedicated to enhancing African lives by developing and deploying attractive platforms for innovation-driven investments in education, technology, and healthcare on the African continent.

How have you grown/changed in your Rice journey since receiving the award?

Upon completing my Rice MBA, I left Chevron to try my hands at two unsuccessful startups. This work led me to play a pioneering role in establishing one of Africa's earliest technology accelerators, the Wennovation Hub, and an innovation development outfit, LoftyInc Partners in Lagos, Nigeria, and ultimately playing a key role in pioneering the evolution of the venture capital industry on the African continent.

I trademarked the term "Afropreneur" over a decade ago (shortly after attending Rice) with the firm conviction that the African continent sorely lacked enough billion-dollar companies required to create economic opportunities at scale.

In 2012, I was profiled by CNN as a man on a mission to shape Africa by nurturing Afropreneurs, bright, independent and tech-savvy entrepreneurs using creative thinking and the power of innovation to take over Africa's economic destiny.

Today, the Wennovation Hub has expanded to four cities and has trained over 6,000 entrepreneurs with a combined valuation of over $200m. The Afropreneurs Angel Syndicate I founded after leaving Rice is now one of the fastest-growing angel investment networks focused on the booming African early-stage venture space. It has invested over $3.1 million into 67 startups in the last decade. This portfolio includes several impactful startups, such as Andela — the Chan-Zuckerberg funded talent accelerator and Flutterwave — ranked in 2020 as the most valuable African startup within the Ycombinator portfolio. In 2020 alone, despite the pandemic, we reviewed over 100 deals and finalized direct investments into 17 companies while partially exiting one company.

I am currently the Founding Partner of LoftyInc Afropreneurs Fund, a leading African early-stage venture fund. I am responsible for fundraising, sourcing, screening, investment decisions, and post-investment portfolio management.

Idris’s advice:

Focus on three things: developing deep intellectual curiosity, cultivating long-term relationships, and building solid convictions about your life's mission. As famous therapist Esther Perel says on the importance of relationships: "Life will present you with unexpected opportunities, and you won't always know in advance which the important moments are. Above all, it's the quality of your relationships that will determine the quality of your life. Invest in your connections, even those that seem inconsequential."

What’s next for you?

I am currently focused on mobilizing venture capital to drive increasing prosperity and income for entrepreneurs in Africa and supporting under-served, minority entrepreneurs in the U.S. In addition, just as a course at Rice inspired my life's mission, I am currently working with another Rice alumna, Dr. Deepa P. Ramachandran ’10 and the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen to co-create a co-mentorship/partnership between students at Rice and the Wennovation makerspace in the form of a design course, where Rice students are partnered with students in another region or country. Together they identify an existing need (from either region) and formulate a solution, which includes the design, bill of materials, and the beginnings of a prototype (simulated or actual build) as per their proposal.