Dennis Maina: Building African Ad Technology For A Global Future

Africa’s digital economy is growing rapidly, but much of the technology powering it has been designed elsewhere. Dennis Maina, Founder and Managing Partner of Suss Ads, believes that needs to change. His vision is to build advertising technology that reflects the realities of African consumers and businesses while creating solutions capable of competing on a global stage.

In this interview, Maina explores why Africa needs technology built around its own markets, data and consumer behaviours; how AI could reshape digital advertising and business decision-making; and why privacy, trust and first-party data will become increasingly important. He also shares his perspective on scaling across diverse African markets, building world-class technology talent and balancing bold innovation with commercial discipline.

For Maina, the opportunity goes beyond advertising. It is about shifting Africa from being primarily a consumer of technology to becoming a place where technology is designed, built and exported to the world.

Q: What gap in the market something global platforms and existing African players weren’t solving made you decide to build Suss? What was the moment you knew this needed to exist?

A: My journey into advertising technology was unconventional. I grew up in Mukuru kwa Reuben, studied political science and began my career in research before moving into media and digital marketing. That path taught me to look at people, systems and markets before looking at technology. As I worked across African markets, I kept seeing the same contradiction: Africa was generating enormous consumer activity, yet many of the tools used to understand and reach African audiences had been designed somewhere else, around different realities.

For advertisers, the immediate problem was fragmentation. The major digital platforms operated as walled gardens: a client could see what was happening inside one platform, but not the full campaign or customer journey. Data, inventory, payments and reporting lived in separate systems. Local publishers and channels were often underrepresented, and when something went wrong, support could feel distant from the market and the moment.

The moment of conviction came when I realised that we were repeatedly solving the same problem manually for clients. We needed one place where an African business could plan, buy, measure and optimise media across channels, with local context and accountable support. If that infrastructure did not exist, we had to build it.

That is how Suss Ads began in 2021 – not simply as another agency, but as an effort to build advertising technology from Africa, for Africa, and eventually for the world. We started with programmatic advertising and expanded through integrations to create a more unified view of media. The larger vision is to ensure that African consumers, publishers and businesses are represented by technology that understands their realities, rather than being reduced to assumptions imported from elsewhere.

Q: Beyond the slogan, what tangible advantages does locally developed technology give enterprises operating on the continent and where have global platforms fallen short?

A: The advantage of locally developed technology is not geography alone; it is proximity to the problem. When the people building the product operate in the same markets as the people using it, feedback travels faster, context becomes product input and support becomes accountable.

That has tangible consequences. African enterprises operate across different currencies, payment habits, languages, regulations, levels of data availability and media ecosystems. A platform designed around credit cards, abundant datasets and centralised support will not automatically fit a market where mobile money is the preferred payment method, connectivity varies and a campaign may need to combine the open web, digital out-of-home, radio, connected television and messaging channels. Locally built technology can make those realities part of the architecture rather than treating them as exceptions.

At Suss Ads, one of our greatest strengths is reachable, responsive expertise. We do not measure success by how much a client spends; we measure it by whether the advertising works and whether the client can see, understand and improve the outcome. When a campaign encounters a problem, our team understands both the technology and the local market well enough to act quickly.

Global platforms have delivered extraordinary scale, but they can fall short when they treat Africa as one market or as an extension of a global playbook. Our approach is not to reject global technology. We connect it with African inventory, channels, payment systems and intelligence. The opportunity is to build the connective layer that gives enterprises global reach without losing local relevance.

Q: As AI reshapes industries, where do you see the biggest opportunities for African businesses to leverage it over the next five years?

A: The biggest opportunity is to turn Africa’s fragmented data into useful, timely decisions. Many businesses already hold valuable information across sales systems, customer-service records, mobile transactions, websites and campaign platforms, but that data is often inconsistent or disconnected. AI can help clean and organise it, identify patterns and surface insights that would take teams much longer to find manually.

The second opportunity is access. AI-powered customer service, search and business tools can work across international, local and vernacular languages, allowing enterprises to serve more people at a lower cost. For a continent with enormous linguistic diversity, that is not a cosmetic feature; it can determine who participates in the digital economy.

In advertising, AI will make planning, audience discovery, creative adaptation, optimisation and measurement faster. It can help businesses understand which customers they are reaching, what is driving performance and where resources are being wasted. At Suss Ads, we are building AI into the platform to surface audience intelligence, reduce manual work and help teams move from data to action more quickly.

However, AI is not a substitute for strategy, clean data or human judgement. The African businesses that gain the most will not be those that simply adopt the newest tool. They will be the ones that combine AI with strong governance, local context and clear commercial objectives. The goal is not automation for its own sake; it is better decisions, better customer experiences and measurable value.

Q: Scaling Across Markets. Expanding across African markets means navigating different regulations, payment ecosystems, languages, and consumer behaviours. What’s been your biggest lesson and the biggest misconception international providers bring with them?

A: My biggest lesson is simple: Africa is a portfolio of markets, not a single market. We may share continental ambition, but the way people pay, communicate, consume media, respond to brands and engage with regulation differs significantly from one country to another. The platform can be consistent; the execution must be local.

In Kenya, for example, mobile money is embedded in everyday commerce. In other markets, cards, bank transfers or different mobile-money ecosystems shape the customer journey. Some markets have rich consumer data; others are comparatively data-dark. Language, pricing, billing cycles, media availability and approval processes also change. Scaling therefore requires a modular product, strong local partnerships and teams that can adapt without losing sight of the wider objective.

The biggest misconception international providers bring is that a successful playbook can be copied across the continent with minor localisation. Translation is not the same as understanding. A campaign can be technically live and still be culturally, commercially or operationally wrong.

We address that by working as an extension of the client’s team. Before launch, we align on the consumer, the available data, the regulatory environment, the payment journey and the definition of success. During execution, we remain close enough to resolve issues quickly. The lesson is that scale in Africa does not come from forcing uniformity; it comes from building a strong core that can flex intelligently around each market.

Q: As third-party cookies disappear and privacy regulation evolves, how should African enterprises rethink their data strategies and where should first-party data and AI-powered analytics fit in?

A: African enterprises should stop treating privacy as a legal formality and start treating it as part of the customer experience. Trust is now infrastructure. A business must be able to explain what data it collects, why it needs it, how long it will retain it, who can access it and what value the customer receives in return.

The first step is compliance with the laws and regulators in every market of operation, including the necessary licences, lawful basis for processing, security controls and audit trails. The second is meaningful consent. Consent should be clear, specific and easy to withdraw, especially as channels such as WhatsApp become more important to business communication. The objective is not merely to avoid complaints or spam reports; it is to build a relationship in which the customer understands and trusts the exchange.

First-party data should sit at the centre of this strategy because it comes from a direct relationship with the customer. Used responsibly, it gives enterprises a reliable starting audience, improves relevance across the customer journey and reduces dependence on third-party identifiers. But ownership is not permission to overuse data. Businesses still need data minimisation, clear retention rules, strong access controls and disciplined governance.

AI-powered analytics comes after those foundations. AI can only produce useful insight when the underlying data is accurate, timely, representative and regularly cleaned. Poor data simply allows a business to make the wrong decision faster. The future will not belong to the company with the most data, but to the company with the cleanest consented signals and the discipline to turn them into customer value responsibly.

Q: Which sectors banking, insurance, telecoms, retail, gaming are seeing the greatest return from digital investment right now, and what do the winners have in common?

A: Banking, telecoms and gaming are currently among the sectors producing the clearest returns from digital investment, while retail is accelerating quickly. Insurance has significant potential, although longer decision cycles and legacy systems can make the return less immediate.

What separates the winners is not simply a larger media budget. It is the strength of their feedback loop. They connect advertising platforms to websites, apps and customer systems through pixels, server-to-server integrations and CRM data. That allows them to understand what happens after an impression or a click, improve targeting and optimise toward commercial outcomes.

The strongest organisations measure customer acquisition cost, activation, revenue, retention and lifetime value – not just reach, impressions or clicks. They also connect marketing with sales, product and customer service, so campaign insight changes the wider business rather than remaining inside a marketing dashboard.

Digital investment creates the greatest return when it becomes an operating capability, not a collection of channels. The winners learn faster: they capture the right signals, act on them quickly and continuously improve the customer journey.

Q: What’s the biggest leadership lesson you’ve learned scaling a technology company across multiple African markets, particularly around balancing innovation with commercial discipline?

A: The biggest lesson is that adaptability and discipline must coexist. The vision can remain constant, but client management, billing, product priorities and campaign execution must fit the realities of each market. A leadership team that is too rigid will miss the context; one that changes direction constantly will lose focus.

I have also learned that innovation is not the same as funding every interesting idea. In a technology company, there is always another feature, integration or market opportunity competing for attention. Each decision has to answer a few hard questions: What real problem are we solving? Is there evidence of demand? Does it strengthen our strategy? Can we deliver it well? Is there a credible route to sustainable commercial value?

Sometimes the most responsible decision is not ‘no’, but ‘not yet’. We test, measure and learn before committing more capital. We stop initiatives that are not creating value and double down on the ones that are. That discipline protects the team, the customer and the long-term vision.

Commercial discipline is not the enemy of innovation; it is what allows innovation to survive. My responsibility as a founder is to preserve the ambition to build what is next while ensuring that the business remains strong enough to keep building.

Q: Talent is one of Africa’s biggest challenges and opportunities. How do you attract and retain world-class engineering talent?

A: Africa does not lack talent; it often lacks enough environments in which talent can do ambitious work, receive meaningful ownership and see a clear path for growth. Attraction may begin with a role, but retention is shaped by the daily experience of the work.

World-class engineers expect competitive compensation, good tools and strong technical standards. They also want to solve meaningful problems, influence the product and understand how their work affects customers. Purpose is powerful, but it should never be used as a substitute for fair pay, benefits or professional development.

At Suss Ads, we are intentional about creating pathways at different levels. Internships give young people a chance to apply what they have learned to real products and learn from experienced colleagues. For more established talent, we aim to provide ownership, exposure across markets and the opportunity to help shape African technology rather than only implement decisions made elsewhere.

Retention ultimately comes down to culture and leadership: clarity of vision, honest communication, recognition, continuous learning and a workplace where people feel valued, involved and supported. The best people stay where they are challenged, trusted and able to grow. Our goal is to create work that engineers can be proud of and a company they can see themselves helping to build for the long term.

Q: If you could challenge every CIO and business leader in Africa to rethink one part of their digital transformation strategy, what would it be and why?

A: I would challenge every CIO and business leader to stop treating digital transformation as a technology-purchasing exercise. Buying more platforms does not transform a business if the customer journey remains fragmented, the data cannot be trusted and teams still make decisions in silos.

Start with the decisions the business needs to make and the experience the customer should have. Then ask: What data do we trust? Who owns it? Can our systems communicate? How does marketing connect to sales, service and revenue? How quickly can insight lead to action? That is where transformation becomes measurable.

I would also ask leaders to build for context, not fashion. Invest in interoperable systems, local capability and African talent. Demand that technology reflects the markets in which it will operate, and measure it against business outcomes rather than implementation milestones.

Africa should not only be a market where technology is deployed; it should be a place where technology is designed, built and exported. CIOs have the influence to accelerate that shift through the platforms they choose, the talent they develop and the problems they decide are worth solving.