Africa’s digital economy is growing rapidly, but much of the technology powering it has been designed elsewhere. Dennis Maina, Founder and Managing Partner of Suss Ads, believes that needs to change. His vision is to build advertising technology that reflects the realities of African consumers and businesses while creating solutions capable of competing on a global stage.In this interview, Maina explores why Africa needs technology built around its own markets, data and consumer behaviours; how AI could reshape digital advertising and business decision-making; and why privacy, trust and first-party data will become increasingly important. He also shares his perspective on scaling across diverse African markets, building world-class technology talent and balancing bold innovation with commercial discipline.For Maina, the opportunity goes beyond advertising. It is about shifting Africa from being primarily a consumer of technology to becoming a place where technology is designed, built and exported to the world.Q: What gap in the market something global platforms and existing African players weren’t solving made you decide to build Suss? What was the moment you knew this needed to exist?A: My journey into advertising technology was unconventional. I grew up in Mukuru kwa Reuben, studied political science and began my career in research before moving into media and digital marketing. That path taught me to look at people, systems and markets before looking at technology. As I worked across African markets, I kept seeing the same contradiction: Africa was generating enormous consumer activity, yet many of the tools used to understand and reach African audiences had been designed somewhere else, around different realities.For advertisers, the immediate problem was fragmentation. The major digital platforms operated as walled gardens: a client could see what was happening inside one platform, but not the full campaign or customer journey. Data, inventory, payments and reporting lived in separate systems. Local publishers and channels were often underrepresented, and when something went wrong, support could feel distant from the market and the moment.The moment of conviction came when I realised that we were repeatedly solving the same problem manually for clients. We needed one place where an African business could plan, buy, measure and optimise media across channels, with local context and accountable support. If that infrastructure did not exist, we had to build it.That is how Suss Ads began in 2021 – not simply as another agency, but as an effort to build advertising technology from Africa, for Africa, and eventually for the world. We started with programmatic advertising and expanded through integrations to create a more unified view of media. The larger vision is to ensure that African consumers, publishers and businesses are represented by technology that understands their realities, rather than being reduced to assumptions imported from elsewhere.Q: Beyond the slogan, what tangible advantages does locally developed technology give enterprises operating on the continent and where have global platforms fallen short?A: The advantage of locally developed technology is not geography alone; it is proximity to the problem. When the people building the product operate in the same markets as the people using it, feedback travels faster, context becomes product input and support becomes accountable.That has tangible consequences. African enterprises operate across different currencies, payment habits, languages, regulations, levels of data availability and media ecosystems. A platform designed around credit cards, abundant datasets and centralised support will not automatically fit a market where mobile money is the preferred payment method, connectivity varies and a campaign may need to combine the open web, digital out-of-home, radio, connected television and messaging channels. Locally built technology can make those realities part of the architecture rather than treating them as exceptions.At Suss Ads, one of our greatest strengths is reachable, responsive expertise. We do not measure success by how much a client spends; we measure it by whether the advertising works and whether the client can see, understand and improve the outcome. When a campaign encounters a problem, our team understands both the technology and the local market well enough to act quickly.Global platforms have delivered extraordinary scale, but they can fall short when they treat Africa as one market or as an extension of a global playbook. Our approach is not to reject global technology. We connect it with African inventory, channels, payment systems and intelligence. The opportunity is to build the connective layer that gives enterprises global reach without losing local relevance.Q: As AI reshapes industries, where do you see the biggest opportunities for African businesses to leverage it over the next five years?
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