An Interview with Mkono's Head of Tech, Soulemane Diaoune

Recently, we had a talk with  Soulemane Diaoune, Mkono's Head of Tech. He shared with us his experience with Mkono and discussed his ambitions for his role within the team.

Soulemane Diaoune

The Profile of a Mkono Software Engineer

Soulemane, 26 years old, was born in the United States. Growing up, he spent time in many countries such as Guinea and Saudi Arabia, before establishing in Canada where he studied computer science at Concordia University. During that time, he became involved in numerous development projects, interning at Spiria for one summer, before moving to California. There, he began working as a backend developer at Beyond One, a start-up focused on augmented reality experiences. As he puts it, "At 21 years old, this experience was my first exposure to working in Silicon Valley."

Following Beyond One shutting down after a year of operation, Soulemane went on to work as a software engineer at Medable, a health care startup providing a "global platform for decentralized clinical trials." In September, after 2 years, he officially left Medable to establish his own company, Braincap, an end-to-end audio and video dubbing service platform for podcasters. 

Getting Involved with Mkono

In 2020, Soulemane was introduced to Mkono by Olivier, one of the non-profit's co-founders. Seeing that the organization's mission aligns well with his personal goal to work on technology innovation in Africa, he jumped on the opportunity of becoming an Ally. Two years later, he became Mkono's Head of Tech. Ever since, Soulemane has been leading the development of Chombo, Mkono's internal software.

During our talk, Soulemane expressed his excitement about his new role as Head of Tech. He highlighted his desire to build, code, and work within a team of dedicated and enthusiastic engineers. When asked what he hoped to accomplish at Mkono, he responded, "to build a bug-free application!" Indeed, having Chombo implemented would not only mean a centralized platform for daily operations, but also a solid base layer application that can be used by developers for later expansion. Currently, the engineering team at Mkono is developing the first part of Chombo, the mentorship tracker. However, Soulemane plans to drive the build of the loans tracker, the second part of Chombo, for the end of this year.

"Chombo is our internal software serving two purposes. The first one is for our success officers to  perform operations related to mentorship sessions. Chombo allows them to track their different sessions with the various entrepreneurs Mkono work with. As such, they can move from using an Excel sheet to using a software that is flexible where all their activities are streamlined. The second purpose is the loan application which is the part of Chombo that deals with third-party users that are not part of the organization. Having this component will allow Mkono to directly process loans to entrepreneurs directly through our platform."

The Benefits of Being a Volunteer

Working with Mkono means working within a team from all sorts of different backgrounds. It also means having the opportunity to interact with people and communities abroad. That was one aspect of Mkono that Soulemane enjoyed most when he was an Ally. 

"As an Ally, while talking with entrepreneurs, it was great seeing how much people make the most with what they have and how they have a lot of grit to accomplish with less. Compared to North America, these entrepreneurs have different resources at their disposition and they make the most out of them to build context-specific applications for their environment. This truly shows how technology is used differently in different parts of the world."

Needless to say, Soulemane’s role as Head of Technology is crucial to the success and expansion of Mkono. So, keep an eye out for more Chombo news!

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• Explore the different volunteering roles at Mkono here.
• Check out our latest interview with Anita Ly, one of Mkono’s software engineers here.
• ​​A brand new Mawazo article is out! Here’s the link.