Dating : Meet Nneka Colleen Egbujiobi, Esq., An Attorney, CEO of Hello Africa, And Overall Superwoman

Today we’d like to introduce you to Nneka Colleen Egbujiobi, Esq.

Nneka Colleen, can you briefly walk us through your story — how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I have always been a social person, and I have always been a proud Nigerian who enjoyed interacting and celebrating African culture. When I moved to Los Angeles to embark on my legal career, after completing law school and obtaining my Wisconsin license, I found it challenging to learn about the African community, where our restaurants were, community events, churches, etc.

There wasn’t any sort of central hub for Africans like other Asian groups have, i.e., Chinatown Koreatown. One Friday night I was sitting at home and I was annoyed looking at my Instagram direct messages, I wasn’t intrigued by the messages I was receiving. I thought to myself, “why don’t I have any Nigerian men that I would actually want to get to know better messaging me.” It was a similar question many African men and women had previously stated to me as well. Being that there wasn’t anything already on the market to solve that problem, it was in that moment that I decided to create a platform where African men and women like myself could log-on and meet a vast amount of sophisticated and quality Africans that they could choose to interact with.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story — has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Building Hello Africa has been an extremely bumpy road. I am a lawyer by trade, so being that I do not have a technical background, the greatest challenge has been putting together our technical team and developers. It made me feel scared and insecure as I have had to really rely on others to build my product. I have had to learn so much about coding, development and the tech industry as a whole in such a short period of time. Luckily I have been blessed with an amazing Chief Product Officer, Christopher Nwakalo, who has been an invaluable asset. Chris leads our tech team and has been able to assist greatly in this realm.

Despite the challenges, I think Hello Africa has been able to overcome the challenges of vetting its technical team by not being afraid to take risks, and by giving new talent challenges and chances, and by also not being afraid to pull the plug when a situation just isn’t bringing us closer to our goals.

Please tell us about Hello Africa.
Hello Africa is a mobile dating application connecting the 18+ million Africans in the diaspora, with each other, Africa and to the world. Hello Africa is not just your typical dating app, it is about dating/connecting with the purpose of restoring and preserving African culture in a concrete way as other immigrant cultures have successfully done. (I.E., Chinese and Koreans have established Chinatown and Korea town respectively.)

The African culture really needed a modern platform uniting them, it is in fact overdue. I am a first-generation Nigerian-American. My parents immigrated to America in 1979. I grew up in Wisconsin where there was not a large African population, and being able to connect with Africans who have similar roots as me for dating, networking and other social purposes was difficult. Although I grew up in the United States, I was raised very culturally and traditionally as a Nigerian, much like many Africans raised abroad, which further fueled my desire to connect with others like me.

I have seen, experienced, and heard the struggles first hand of Africans in the diaspora yearning to find an African community, outside of Africa, and to meet a mate that shares similar cultural values. Because of this, I felt moved to create Hello Africa.

Hello Africa is about relationships and community building. The app works by requiring each user to first select their African “Heritage Country,” “Tribe,” and then select their African “Heritage(s) of Interest.” We do this in order to connect people with similar roots or those who have roots from the other 54 African countries on the continent. For instance, a Nigerian-American user who is from the Igbo Tribe can connect with a Rwandan Englander who is from the Hutu Tribe. Then, based on other search fields, including the user’s location settings, Hello Africa presents profiles of other African users in the database within a specified distance. If two users “swipe right” on each others’ profiles (in other words “like” each other), the users then match and can exchange text, voice messages and can even video chat.

As a company, it has been very rewarding to see successful connections being made. When you are building a product of course you believe that your vision will come to fruition, but nothing beats the confirmation of receiving emails from live users regarding successful dates or meet-ups they had due to your app. We hope to continue to make it easier to further and preserve African culture.

Hello Africa is the bridge that not only connects Africans living abroad but is also a way for the diaspora to connect more deeply with Africa itself!

Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
My favorite childhood memory would be one of my summer vacations to Nigeria with my mother and my sister. It is difficult to explain why it was so enjoyable, but I think during that specific trip, I think my sister and I really experienced the fullness of Nigeria.

Pricing:

• The app is free to download and is currently available on Google Play and the App Store.

Contact Info: