Okra Co‑founder Fara Ashiru Jituboh Quits to Join British Startup Kernel

By Aduragbemi Omiyale

The co-founder of a Nigerian open finance platform, Okra, Ms Fara Ashiru Jituboh, has left the company to pitch tent with a United Kingdom-based start-up firm, Kernel.

She left Okra fintech in May 2025 as the chief executive of operating officer, and is now with Kernel as the Head of Engineering.

Her exit from the organisation followed the shutting down of operations of Okra in May 2025 shortly after the launch of its in‑house cloud infrastructure product, Nebula.

Nebula was introduced to the market in October 2024 to cushion the rising cloud costs due to the devaluation of the Naira at the foreign exchange (FX) market.

Okra only operated for five years after it was established in 2019 by Ms Jituboh and Mr David Peterside, pioneering open finance in Africa.

The firm built Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) designed to allow users to securely connect their bank accounts to third‑party apps

During its existence, a total of $16.5 million was raised by the company, with $1 million secured in pre‑seed from TLcom Capital and a further $3.5 million led by Susa Ventures.

As of the time of filing this report, Business Post observed that the website of Okra is still operational, though access to its Blog section was not possible.

Okra was formed to digitize financial services for Africa as financial institutions, for many years, have built barriers around consumer data and the way money moves around the world.

It came up with its open banking system to break down these barriers, enabling secure and scalable access to financial data and payments.

The organisation provided the infrastructure layer that powers the next wave of financial innovation by unlocking the power of open banking, connecting to thousands of banks using a secure open API, removing the complexity and enabling seamless access to financial information and payment infrastructure.