Ruth Iselema is the founder & CEO of Bitmama Inc., a fintech company with two flagship products, Changera and Bitmama.
Bitmama is a highly-secure crypto-fiat exchange that allows traders to buy and sell Bitcoin, Ethereum and other digital assets in Africa, Changera is a solution that makes cross-border payments easy and efficient for businesses and individuals.
Ruth Iselema is one of the few female leaders in Africa’s blockchain space. Prior to founding Bitmama, Ruth consulted for other leading global exchanges and blockchain protocols on their product strategy and market entry into Africa.
Ruth graduated as a Pharmacist from Central University Accra, Ghana and forayed into entrepreneurship back in 2013 when the African blockchain and fintech landscape were quite nascent. Crypto traders relied on social media like WhatsApp and Telegram to exchange coins despite associated risks and the process of conducting cross-border remittances proved very rigid for individuals and businesses.
In 2016, she was inspired to build solutions that address both challenges in parallel. This led to the birth of Bitmama Inc. In 2018, Bitmama emerged one of the startups selected for the inaugural Greenhouse Lab female accelerator by Venture Garden Group. Since then, the company has joined other accelerators and programs like LSETF, Seedstars and Startup Germany.
With over 6+ years of blockchain experience, Ruth leads a distributed global team of 25+ at Bitmama spread across Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya. Fondly called the Bitmama of Africa’s blockchain space, Ruth has also been recognized as one top 20 individuals shaping Africa’s blockchain space by leading media such as CryptoAssetBuyer and received other recognition from the German and Austrian Missions in Africa.
