Zap Africa Cut Nearly Half Its Staff. The Co-Founder Says It Was Always the Plan
Eight people came to work one day and left without a job. For a startup processing over $17 million every month, the question everyone is asking is, why?
It is never easy to hear that your role no longer exists. For eight people at Zap Africa, a Lagos-based crypto startup, that reality landed in February 2026, the second round of job cuts in just three months.
The company went from 18 employees to 10, a reduction of 44 percent. The first five exits happened quietly in December 2025. Eight more followed in February. According to a report by TechCabal, severance was paid to everyone who left; a small relief in what was otherwise a difficult situation.
The roles that disappeared were in design, operations, marketing, and customer support. The people working in product, engineering, finance, legal, and growth kept their jobs. The reason customer support roles were hit hardest comes down to one thing: artificial intelligence.
Zap Africa's co-founder and CTO, Moore Dagogo Hart, built an AI tool called Martha AI through his separate company, Cognito Systems. Martha AI now handles the kind of customer conversations that used to need a human being on the other end.
Hart did not sugarcoat what happened, but he was careful with his words. "Zap Africa implemented a limited restructuring affecting a few roles. This was not a company-wide layoff," he said, adding that the move to a leaner team of ten was intentional, part of an AI-driven push to do more with less.
The broader context matters here. Crypto markets have been difficult globally. When trading slows down and revenue becomes less predictable, young startups have to make hard choices fast. Zap Africa leaned more heavily on OTC trading, meaning large, private deals done outside the open market, to keep money coming in while cutting costs everywhere else.
Founded in 2023, the company was processing over $17 million in transactions monthly and earning around $100,000 every month before the cuts. With ten people now running the operation, it is betting that a smaller, sharper team is better built for whatever comes next.
For the eight who left, the hope is that something better is already on the way.
