Nigerian fintech startup Okra, once hailed as a trailblazer in Africa’s open banking movement, has officially shut down operations after raising more than $16 million in funding.
The closure also marks the end of Nebula, its cloud services platform, which had aimed to provide cost-effective cloud infrastructure amid Nigeria’s rising tech expenses.
Co-founder and former CEO/CTO Fara Ashiru Jituboh confirmed the company’s closure in a statement to Techpoint Africa. According to her LinkedIn profile, as seen by Tekedia, Fara exited Okra in May 2025 and has since taken on a new role as Head of Engineering at UK-based startup Kernel.
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“The company made the decision to wind down operations in May,” she said. “It was an incredible journey; we built impactful technology, worked with some of the biggest brands across the continent, and helped pioneer open banking in Africa. I’m proud to have worked alongside some of the smartest and most talented people. I’m deeply grateful for the community, customers, investors, and team who supported us over the past five years.”
From Pioneering Open Banking in Africa to Sudden Exit
Founded in 2019 by Fara Ashiru Jituboh and David Peterside, Okra offered a platform that allowed secure, real-time access to financial data and payment processing, connecting bank accounts to third-party applications.
Its services included identity verification, income verification, account balance information, transaction data analysis, and financial account authentication, primarily serving sectors like lending, personal finance, digital banking, remittance, and business finance.
The fintech gained significant attention for building APIs that allowed users to connect their bank accounts to third-party apps securely. Its core pitch “one API” for all financial data positioned the company at the forefront of Africa’s open finance revolution.
Okra focused on providing open finance APIs to enable businesses and developers to build personalized digital financial services. By integrating with major Nigerian banks and fintech platforms like Renmoney, Branch, Bamboo, and AIICO Insurance, the startup rapidly scaled usage of its API, which saw a 175% increase in early 2020.
In the same year, it raised $1 million in pre-seed funding from TLcom Capital and followed up with a $3.5 million seed round led by Susa Ventures. Its total funding eventually exceeded $16.5 million, suggesting additional capital inflows post-seed.
Okra Shutdown Highlights Several Challenges
Despite early success, Okra’s momentum waned under a combination of market and operational pressures.
Rising Infrastructure cost: Rising infrastructure costs impacted Okra, forcing the startup to reconsider its priorities, by entering the cloud services business with the launch of Nebula.
Okra’s pivot to Nebula, a cloud infrastructure product, aimed to address these issues by offering a cheaper, local alternative to manage compute and storage needs. However, the high capital expenditure required to scale Nebula, coupled with insufficient demand for Okra’s open finance APIs, strained the company’s finances.
“One thing we realised as everybody was being impacted by forex, devaluation, and just the general economic climate was that, outside our people costs, we were spending the majority of our earnings on infrastructure costs,” CEO, Fara Ashiru Jituboh noted.
Competitive Pressure:
Okra operated in Nigeria’s rapidly growing open banking sector, competing with other API-driven fintechs like Mono, OnePipe, and Stitch. These competitors offered similar services, such as financial data aggregation and payment processing, often at competitive pricing or with differentiated features.
Currency Pressures: The naira’s devaluation in 2023–24 inflated dollar-denominated cloud costs, straining Okra’s finances.
While its end came abruptly, Okra’s impact on Africa’s fintech ecosystem remains significant. The company was instrumental in promoting open finance infrastructure across the continent, supporting developers in building digital-first financial products and experiences. The shutdown marks the end of a five-year journey for the startup, which aimed to unify financial data access through a single API.