José Samo Gudo Digitizes Mozambique's Traditional Savings Groups

By : Melchior Koba

Date : mardi, 21 octobre 2025 18:33

Across Africa, many residents continue to rely on informal, traditional savings systems to manage and secure their money. In Mozambique, one entrepreneur is tackling this trend by working to formalize and digitize these practices, making them more structured and accessible via digital tools.

Mozambican entrepreneur and computer scientist José Samo Gudo is modernizing a traditional African savings practice as the co-founder and CEO of Roscas, a financial technology startup. Roscas digitizes the community-based savings groups known in Mozambique as roscás.

Founded in 2023, Roscas is a digital platform focused on community financial resilience. It facilitates the management of both collective and individual savings, serving as a financial product that allows groups to leverage collective strength for economic well-being and financial autonomy. The company's vision is to make inclusive and sustainable solutions accessible to every community, promoting long-term economic security and stability.

Roscas' services include customized financial literacy content to boost basic personal and collective finance knowledge. It also provides a tool for individuals, groups, or institutions to create and manage one or more tontine or savings groups. Users can choose to receive educational content between two and five days per week. The platform also offers individual savings management alongside the collective feature.

To date, Roscas reports more than 130,000 active members in approximately 2,500 groups across Africa, with cumulative savings exceeding $32 million. The solution is available to both individuals and organizations seeking to deploy the platform at scale.

Samo Gudo is also the founder and CEO of Tablu Tech, a digital solutions company established in 2017. In 2019, he co-founded the Mozambique Fintech Association (FINTECH.MZ), where he served as Vice President for regulation, investment, projects, and studies from 2021 to 2023. In 2022, he co-founded Kunona, a startup that connects farmers and buyers in Mozambique, where he served as a non-executive director for one year.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science and software engineering from the Higher Institute of Science and Technology of Mozambique (ISCTEM), obtained in 2010. He earned a master’s degree in innovation and entrepreneurship from HEC Paris in 2021 and is a certified digital finance practitioner from the Digital Frontiers Institute. From 2016 to 2022, he was a shareholder and deputy general director at Escopil Tecnologia, a Mozambican tech firm.

Melchior Koba

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