Ex-Goldman Sachs Banker Builds AI for African Startups

After walking away from Goldman Sachs in 2021, Moore Dagogo-Hart had no interest in playing it safe. He wanted to build something that would put African tech on the map.

His first startup failed when Apple pulled his crypto wallet from the App Store, followed by a market crash in 2022. But instead of giving up or crawling back to Wall Street, Dagogo-Hart doubled down and launched Zap Africa, a crypto exchange that quickly scaled to over 50,000 users.

That success taught him something crucial about African businesses. Every day, his customer support team drowned in repetitive questions while customers waited hours for basic answers.

So Dagogo-Hart decided to solve it. He founded Cognito Systems and built Martha AI, an artificial intelligence customer support platform that responds to customers in seconds and integrates into any business in just 60 seconds.

Martha AI handles everything from answering common questions to managing support tickets, freeing human teams to focus on complex customer needs. The system trained on thousands of real customer conversations, so it actually sounds human instead of robotic.

But here's what makes it different from Western AI tools. Martha AI uses local models like YarnGPT that understand African languages and context far better than ChatGPT or other mainstream platforms.

Cognito Systems is now working with startups across fintech, healthcare, education, and real estate. Dagogo-Hart targets early-stage companies still figuring out how to operate efficiently as they grow.

The Ripple Effect: While Big Tech companies focus on AI for wealthy markets, Cognito Systems is ensuring African businesses get the same cutting-edge tools. When African startups can automate repetitive work, they free up resources to innovate and create jobs. When AI understands local languages and contexts, it serves communities that have been ignored by global tech giants.

Dagogo-Hart isn't stopping at customer support. His vision is for Martha AI to eventually assist finance teams, legal departments, and developers across every part of a business.

For him, this is about more than building a profitable company. It's about making sure Africa participates in the AI revolution as a creator, not just a consumer.

From Wall Street banker to African tech builder, Dagogo-Hart is proving that the next wave of global innovation can come from anywhere.