January 22, 2021
By: James Kamara-Manneh
AL Hassan Hafiz Bakarr-Kanu Sr. is a Sierra Leonean born and bred. He attended the Sierra Leone Sierra Leone Grammar school, and later moved to America for further studies and career pathway discovery.
He is the founder and CEO of Technology company called TechFrica which he developed and started in 1998 at age 21. During his college days, he decided to create nightlife events for the African community.
His first company was called Mama Africa Productions in 1998 and thereafter he transitioned to establishing Club Mama Africa, which was in 2002 rebranded as Club Afrik.
In 2005, he wanted to give a voice to the African community and decided to start a media company called African Radio the BIG Voice of Africa.
His intention was to showcase Sierra Leone and African music and talents on air. This was because of the low attention that such artist products were receiving in the international arena.
In 2007 to 2012, he created over 20 franchise stations representing most of African, Europe and Asia countries. In 2014 technology was becoming very popular, he decided to create a tech company and Techfrica was acknowledged.
With Techfrica his desire was to use technology to combat the issues faced by Africans in the entertainment industry.
During his tenure as a Disc joker (DJ) he was opportune to have worked with many foreign and local artist, therefore he decided to create a solution for them as many complained that there were no better platforms to showcase their talents.
As he strove to achieve his dreams, in 2014 audiofrica was born to be a platform for African artists and music. It was a money making avenue for the African artistes.
Around 2017 and 2018, he created other platforms that will give African an edge to compete as it ensure means of uploading music and videos to wider global audience. This was the birth of Videoafrica.
Kanu was eager for more exploits and could not rest on his trail of laurels. On 5th January, 2021, he broached his innovative package in a Facebook post that went viral. He has created and had lunched an app call ‘Supfrica’. The app became known to Sierra Leonean when Salone Messenger breaks the silence on social media.
Today, the app has reached over 19,000+ downloads on Google Play Store; making it the fastest app made by a Sierra Leonean to climax that far. It is the much talked-about app in Sierra Leone and amazingly rated number 1 on Google Play Store Top Free Apps; leading the world’s top messaging apps like WhatsApp, Messenger, Facebook, Telegram, We Chat, etc.
The messaging app, Supfrica, comprises of the following features:
- Supfrica voice call and video call is faster, cheaper, and audible.
- You can forward messages to more than 20 contacts at once, unlike WhatsApp.
- With Supfrica, you can create a Supfrica group and add an unlimited number of contacts to your group, unlike WhatsApp
- With Supfrica, you can use 2G, 3G, and 4G perfectly without scrambling when calling voice and video calls.
This is the time to embrace our own. It is proudly a Sierra Leonean innovation.
