Nada Shaheen on Building Africa’s Innovation Future with Corporate Venture Capital

In this episode of Born to Disrupt, hosts Mark Walker and Simon Hardie sit down with Nada Shaheen, the first woman to lead a corporate venture capital fund in Africa and a pivotal force advancing startup collaboration across Egypt and the wider continent. Nada shares her remarkable journey from working across Egypt’s startup ecosystem to building and scaling the corporate venture capital division for GB Corp, one of Egypt and Africa’s most influential automotive groups.

The conversation explores the real challenges and opportunities of CVC in emerging markets, highlighting the early resistance she faced from corporate leadership, the cultural and language barriers between corporates and startups, and the tactical approach she used to win trust, demonstrate value, and drive commercial outcomes.

Nada explains how she shifted corporate mindsets by aligning innovation strategy with business priorities, creating commercial integration pilots, and using measurable success data to prove the strategic and financial ROI of startup collaboration. She also dives into how CVC can serve as both a market-entry tool and R&D engine, particularly in complex, diverse regions like Africa where markets, regulations, and cultural norms vary significantly.

A key theme throughout is Africa’s mobility revolution. Nada discusses Egypt’s ambition to lead locally manufactured electric vehicles, the growing opportunity for autonomous mobility solutions, and how GB Corp is building bridges between African markets and global innovators by co-investing with local VCs, scouting across borders, and enabling technology transfer into the continent.

Closing the episode, Nada reflects on her proudest milestones, including securing her organisation’s first unicorn fintech investment and witnessing the cultural shift where internal teams now actively request startup partnerships, proving the success and necessity of CVC for Africa’s economic and innovation future.

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We hope you you enjoy the discussion, we certainly did! Thanks for joining Mark & Simon on the show Nada.