Okra Expands into Cloud Services, Targeting African Startups

Nigerian fintech company Okra, having raised $16.5 million in funding so far, is expanding its operations into cloud infrastructure.

Backed by TLcom, Okra aims to provide a cost-effective and reliable alternative to foreign cloud providers like AWS and Azure. 

This expansion comes as local startups seek to cut costs due to the rising inflation and high interest rates. 

Okra’s latest development is a change from its original focus on providing APIs that allow banks and financial service providers to access customer data. With this new cloud infrastructure, Okra seeks to support businesses in hosting data and running workloads efficiently. 

This expansion places Okra among a growing group of local cloud service providers in Nigeria, including Nobus Cloud Services, MainOne Cloud, Web4Africa, Galaxy Backbone, and Layer3 Cloud. 

These companies are rising to meet the demands of startups, large businesses, and government agencies looking for reliable cloud solutions.

Okra’s initial focus on open finance, where its APIs enabled third-party financial service providers to responsibly access bank information, faced challenges due to a relatively small market and significant competition. 

The fintech sector in Nigeria is also influenced by the Central Bank’s open banking regulations, adopted in March 2024. However, the absence of common data-sharing standards has limited the market for open finance APIs. Despite these challenges, Okra has been working to standardize banks’ APIs to improve the reliability of its services.

Okra is addressing the growing needs of Nigerian startups and other businesses for affordable and dependable cloud solutions.