23-Year-Old Coder Solves Africa's Hidden Business Problem

If you've ever scrolled through Instagram wondering which local tailor takes bookings or which caterer delivers to your area, you've hit the invisible business problem.

Across Africa, countless established businesses operate entirely on social media without websites. They serve loyal customers beautifully but stay hidden from anyone searching online. A talented jeweler might have 10,000 Instagram followers yet never appear when someone nearby searches for jewelry.

Jayaike Ndu recognized this gap because he lived it. The 23-year-old Irish-born Nigerian watched thriving businesses around him succeed offline while remaining completely undiscoverable to new customers trying to find them.

His solution is Tend, a discovery platform that connects with Instagram to surface local businesses based on what people actually need. Users describe what they're looking for in plain language and Tend analyzes public Instagram content including posts and Stories to deliver relevant results.

The platform pulls real-time updates too. If a salon just posted about open appointment slots or a restaurant announced a weekend special, Tend surfaces that current information to people searching right then.

Businesses can connect their Instagram accounts in under two minutes to create a full storefront. The platform handles bookings, payments, event tickets, and check-ins without requiring a separate website. Listing products and services costs nothing with zero commission on sales, while event ticketing carries just a 1% fee.

Ndu brings serious technical credentials to the challenge. He taught himself coding at 13 and became the first Nigerian to win Google's global Code-In competition in 2019. He interned three times at Google's Zurich office before turning his engineering skills toward a problem affecting millions of African entrepreneurs.

The Ripple Effect

Tend doesn't ask businesses to abandon Instagram or WhatsApp where they've built their audiences. Instead, it makes their existing social presence finally searchable and bookable. That means the seamstress who's been excellent for years can suddenly reach the neighbor who's been desperately searching for her services. Local commerce gets connected without forcing anyone to rebuild from scratch.

The businesses powering African commerce were always there, doing great work and serving their communities. Now people searching for exactly what they offer can actually find them.