Podcasts · Pure Digital Passion with Moses Kemibaro

Episode 184 - Reinventing Brands Globally at Africa Online, Kodak, & Celtel: The Making of Tito Alai | Part 2

11 Jul 2026 · 1 h 01 min · Episode 184

Part 1 of my conversation with Tito Alai ended just as he was leaving Unilever and joining Africa Online.

Part 2 begins at that exact inflection point.

After almost a decade in one of the world’s most sophisticated consumer-goods organizations, Tito deliberately moved into a young African internet business because he wanted a genuinely new learning curve.

Africa Online was scaling across several markets at a time when the internet itself was still unfamiliar to most consumers and organisations on the continent. Tito explains what it meant to take the consumer understanding, organizational discipline and brand-management principles he had learned at Unilever and apply them inside a startup environment.

The conversation has special personal resonance for me because Africa Online is also where I began my career. We revisit the company’s “My World, My Provider” era, the need to create consistency across countries and the importance of presenting one coherent narrative to customers, employees and investors.

Tito then takes us into Eastman Kodak. He first managed consumer imaging across roughly 90 countries covering Africa, the Middle East and Central Europe before being appointed to lead the film category across Western Europe.

His assignment was simple to describe but difficult to execute: find growth in a mature category. Tito explains why that meant taking market share from competitors—and how Kodak was already confronting the early strategic challenge of digital photography.

The final chapter introduces Mo Ibrahim and the vision that became Celtel. Tito describes joining a group that believed Africans deserved mobile technology as good as anything available elsewhere, and we begin exploring how the company developed market-specific innovations rather than treating Africa as an afterthought.

The discussion includes the origins of Me2U and Celpay, as well as the commercial problem that eventually produced One Network: why should crossing an African border suddenly make a phone call dramatically more expensive?

This is a conversation about reinvention, disruption, storytelling and the power of building from the realities of the consumer.

Time Stamps

• 00:00 Welcome back and where Part 1 ended • 01:29 Leaving Unilever and joining Africa Online • 04:43 Why Tito deliberately chose a startup and a new industry • 12:18 What Unilever experience brought to Africa Online • 16:13 How do you market the internet before people understand it? • 17:28 Unifying Africa Online across multiple countries • 19:34 The big idea, the investor narrative and the IPO • 22:54 The dot-com bust and the realities of family and travel • 24:14 Joining Kodak across Africa, the Middle East and Central Europe • 25:38 Growing a mature Western European market • 28:10 Kodak, film and the early digital disruption • 32:00 Mo Ibrahim’s vision for African mobile telecommunications • 34:34 Joining Mobile Systems International and building Celtel • 39:27 The commercial growth of Celtel • 43:49 Me2U and Tito’s account of Celpay’s early mobile money story • 50:45 Why African consumers were paying so much to roam • 54:28 How One Network emerged • 59:28 Why the story needed a third episode

The episode on the publisher’s site ↗ (opens in a new tab)