Samrawit Fikru, founder and CEO of RIDE, driving a taxi in Addis Ababa on January, 21, 2026. Photo: bird story agency.
Only a few people have braved the lions den of African ridehail startups and won. A standout is an Ethiopian founder who not only navigated a tough startup world but also a country whose playing field was heavily stacked against her. Sedate cups of tea in her quiet office in the country’s capital now belie a cut-throat sector in a roaring economy.
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As the capital of a country with one of the highest economic growth rates in the world, Addis Ababa can be a difficult commute. Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said in February that the country’s economy would grow by 10.2 percent in the fiscal year and with the capital’s population expected to pass 5.5 million people this year, that means a lot of cars and a lot of traffic.
For Samrawit Fikru, this level of economic growth was clearly a massive opportunity. First, however, she had to overcome some deeply entrenched prejudices.
It all started when the future founder of RIDE, a hailing platform, felt unsafe riding home after dark. Before 2014, the lack of trackable transport dictated many urban women’s lives, deciding when they could leave home and how late they could stay out.
Samrawit felt this vulnerability personally.
“I didn’t know the driver. I didn’t know the owner of the cars. If something happened to me, my family couldn’t trust anything because there is no system,” she explained, seated in the plush offices of the company’s Addis Ababa headquarters.
Samrawit’s journey from a solo coder to founder was based on a technological gamble that has since changed the city’s social and economic fabric.
Dr. Selam Aklilu a chiropractic doctor since 1988. who returned home to launch her own private clinic in Ethiopia after 13 years of practice in the US, explained.
“The first day I used the RIDE app, and the driver came and picked me up, I was so excited. The fact that it was available in Addis, I was extremely excited,” she said.
Over the years, Selam has become more than just a loyal customer; she and Samrawit are now close friends.
Today, Samrawit Fikru begins her day with a quiet ritual, drinking a cup of coffee poured from a jebena, a traditional Ethiopian clay pot. It is a moment of relative calm before she begins steering a business that helps thousands of commuters navigate rush hour in Addis Ababa every day.
In 2014, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) recorded Ethiopia’s internet penetration at 1.9 percent. While global investors perceived a digital desert, the data revealed a different narrative to Fikru; data coverage was sparse at the time, but mobile signals reached over 80 percent of the country.
Samrawit designed a system that worked via SMS, with a dedicated call center. This allowed users without smartphones or data plans to book transport. It made the service accessible to the general public, not just the tech-savvy elite.
“Starting it with SMS, people were doubting whether it was going to be functional or not,” she recalled.
“International players came to study the market, but unfortunately, they said it’s not ready for us to jump in here because network infrastructure was low.” Samrawit explained.
She pitched to 300 potential investors, and every single one of them said no. Some even doubted she had developed the system herself. Then, an Ethiopian diaspora investor showed interest.
“One person from Canada emailed me back. He came to Ethiopia, and I pitched the idea to him. He loved it and said, ‘I am investing in you, not the product,’” she said.
However, even with the support of an investor, her founder’s journey remained a difficult one. That was particularly the case because she was a woman founder. To protect the company’s growth from gender bias, she made the difficult choice to conceal her identity.
“For a long time, I was hiding myself as just a regular employee for my company,” she said.
Today, Samrawit’s parent company, Hybrid Designs, employs 500 permanent staff. While the 130,000 drivers on the platform are still predominantly male, the brain of the operation is definitively led by women. This includes the code, the logistics, and the 24/7 customer support.
Samrawit said she recruits women for these roles to provide professional entry points into the tech and logistics sectors, which has traditionally been male-dominated in Ethiopia.
Taxi driver Hana Legese operates in Addis using the RIDE platform.
“Previously, I was just like many mothers, completely dependent on my husband. Now I am also a good contributor in my home,” she said.
Tilahun Yitayew, another driver, started his cab business after he retired. “I was dependent on a monthly salary, but my income in the last six years is much better than what I earned over the past 39 years of employment. This is mine,” he said.
Samrawit also mentioned that her impact can be seen in the national budget, where her company pays one billion Ethiopian birr (about $6.37 million) in taxes every year. This contribution reflects Ethiopia’s own economic path.
Samrawit’s success is a testament to the power of African hyper-local innovation over international blueprints. She has proved that female-led tech ventures are essential to the continent’s growth. “After all this challenge, just being here, leading RIDE, it makes me really happy,” she explained.
bird story agency
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