Line of Sight Podcast · Don Heider PhD, Brigit Helms PhD

From Vision to Venture: Mina Shahid’s Path to Inclusive Finance

·48 min·2 clips

Mina Shahid says impact investment is often "very small money" compared with the capital needed to build a big company.

1. Line of Sight Podcast presents Mina Shahid and Numida as a story about inclusive finance for micro and small businesses. 2. Karen Rundy interviews Mina Shahid, who is Numida's CEO and co-founder, and her role matters because she describes the company's strategy and expansion. 3. The episode asks how Numida can help businesses in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, and beyond access financial services that work for them. 4. Shahid says Numida builds financial services for micro and small businesses, with working capital financing as the primary product. 5. She explains that Numida operates through a mobile app and currently serves Uganda and Kenya, with Tanzania and Rwanda planned later in the year. 6. Shahid says the name Numida comes from the Latin name for guinea fowl, which she first thought about while living in Ghana. 7. She describes rural Ghana birds with clipped wings and links that image to small businesses in Africa that cannot access the right financial services. 8. Shahid says the logo is a flying Numida, which matches the company's mission to help businesses fly. 9. She identifies herself as Egyptian and Canadian and calls herself a proud Pan-Africanist. 10. Shahid says her career began in West Africa, where she started a business in Ghana and later worked in Uganda after a 2010 period with USAID. 11. She says market research in 2015 led Numida to Uganda because the country had a large market of financially excluded micro and small businesses. 12. Shahid says Engineers Without Borders was the catalyst that changed her path away from mechanical engineering and toward Africa-based work. 13. She recounts her first placement in western Zambia, where she traveled alone to Mangu, saw elephants on the road, and lived with a host family without running water or sanitation. 14. Shahid says that experience showed her the resilience of people and the importance of community in rural African settings. 15. She says she would have gone into business, consulting, or finance if family pressure had not pushed her to finish engineering. 16. Shahid says Numida's team is about 145 people across Uganda, Kenya, and South Africa, and she describes CEO work as managing investor, client, and staff expectations. 17. She says her leadership style has become more serious as Numida has shifted from a family feeling toward a results-driven culture. 18. The conversation is an interview with detailed back-and-forth, practical examples, and a mix of candid and diplomatic answers. 19. People interested in African startups, financial inclusion, and founder journeys will get the most from this episode. 20. Listeners looking for a purely technical fintech tutorial may skip it.

As heard by us

A grounded founder story about building financial services for underserved businesses.

Mina Shahid's conversation draws a clean line between mission and machinery, asking what inclusive finance looks like when small businesses need tools that actually work.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Hear how Mina Shahid built Numida to help small businesses in Africa access financial services that work for them.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Line of Sight Podcast