Greg Cooke is a South African entrepreneur currently based in the UK, leading Growth and Product at Rafiki, a startup he co-founded after several years in performance and growth marketing. At Rafiki, he is developing software that streamlines cross-border subcontracting by utilizing stablecoin rails and multi-party invoicing. Unlike traditional invoicing tools, Rafiki is designed specifically for subcontracting workflows, collapsing multi-party engagements into a single process that saves time, reduces errors, and enables instant settlement across borders.
Cooke and his team are targeting agencies, independents, and small businesses working within Africa’s growing professional services subcontracting corridors. By embedding a fractional talent community into Rafiki’s SaaS, they’re tapping into Africa’s structural shift toward collaborative, micro-agency work models. Backed by the Baobab Network, Jobtech Alliance, CVLabs, and founder-angel investors, Rafiki is currently in private beta and opening its pre-seed round as it prepares for a wider rollout.
- Explain what you do to a 5-year-old.
I make it easy for adults to work together.
Imagine you want some lemonade. To make lemonade, you need lemons, some water, some sugar, and a cup. I built a special lemonade stand, called Rafiki, which makes it easy for the lemon person, the water person, the sugar person, and the cup person to work together to make tasty lemonade.
- What’s the hardest part about paying people across borders?
Finicky payment processes and slow, expensive transactions. For the most part, payments are still slow (taking up to 3 days to clear), and fees can eat into earnings or margins (up to 5%). Most traditional systems still make you send payments one by one instead of letting you combine multiple invoices and settle everything at once. That’s why wallet-based payments and stablecoins are so attractive. They’re instant, low-cost, and make cross-border settlement much simpler. It’s an incredibly flexible way for building around very specific pain points, like subcontracting and the associated flow of funds.
The challenge is that off-ramping into local currencies and cross-chain interoperability can still be messy in certain regions. That’s exactly what we’re tackling at Rafiki: collapsing multiple bills into one workflow, enabling instant stablecoin settlement, and building the rails that make off-ramping seamless wherever it is you’re paying from or to.
- If Rafiki were a superhero, what power would it have?
In many ways, Rafiki already is a superhero. As the confidante to Mufassa in The Lion King, Rafiki possesses powers of immense wisdom, spiritual guidance, and foresight, using rituals and insight to unite and guide those around him. Rafiki is all about collaboration, harmony, and the greater good.
But if I had to boil it down, Rafiki would be the magical conductor of collaboration, orchestrating many moving parts into one harmonious melody (workflow). Is it obvious I love music?
- What’s one story from your early days that made you realise Africa’s subcontracting problem is massive?
The ‘aha’ moment for us came on a project last year with a German client. We had assembled a team of about five freelancers and a small agency across South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, and the UK. Paying multiple individuals and businesses felt absurdly manual, so we tried freelancer management software, payroll platforms, compliance tools, and even fintechs. Nothing worked—they were all anchored in the old way of work, treating collaboration and subcontracting as a set of 1:1 engagements, poorly bolted together.
We realised legacy systems were outdated and began talking to senior freelancers and agency founders we knew. Two things stood out: subcontracting and collaboration were on the rise, and the more people engaged in them, the more they ran into the same pain points we had.
- Name one tool, trick, or habit that keeps you sane while building Rafiki.
Less a tool than a mindset, but trusting the process. Being an early-stage founder in a fast-moving space is intense; juggling anxiety, product builds, keeping the lights on, running a small agency, and investor outreach is no joke. I’ve become more intentional about my mental space and wellness, knowing this is a long haul. Persistence beats resistance, and trusting your gut, the process, and a dedicated team is critical to staying sane.
- What’s the biggest misconception people have about multi-party subcontracting?
I believe the biggest misconception about multi-party subcontracting is that it’s just a way to cut costs. There’s a false sentiment that it’s an arbitrage play where businesses (or freelancers) chase the cheapest rates, leading to corner-cutting, inconsistencies, or poor outcomes. This is predominantly when viewed through the lens of professional services, which completely misses the point.
Subcontracting, done right, isn’t about saving cents or some form of exploitation. It’s about collective value creation through fractional collaboration.
Framed through the building and construction industry, for example, and it makes sense. Just as a beautiful home isn’t built by one person, but rather by a general contractor orchestrating expert plasterers, painters, decorators, plumbers, and electricians, great projects in strategy, design, marketing, and technology come together when specialists collaborate in harmony. Each role is critical, and the result is something no solo provider could deliver alone. This is exactly what Rafiki’s Talent Services does, and what Rafiki OS empowers others to do autonomously. Businesses built solely on traditional agency or startup structures are falling behind as modular, nimble teams prove more effective for growth.
In short, multi-party subcontracting is about specialist orchestration and quality, not cost-cutting.
- If you could wave a magic wand and fix one thing in Africa’s freelance economy, what would it be?
Independents and micro-agencies are the fastest-growing yet most underserved layer of the workforce. They’re the innovators, creators, and next generation of entrepreneurs driving Africa’s creative and professional economy, yet they remain overlooked and neglected when it comes to security, benefits, and access to quality financial services.
By fixing that gap and helping them collaborate instead of working in silos, we can derisk their work, open doors to bigger clients, and make flexible careers both sustainable and scalable. My magic wand would fast-track Rafiki’s vision for the next few years, right now.
- What excites you most about the future of fractional collaboration in Africa?
Without wanting to sound repetitive, I think it has the potential to unblock and unlock a significant proportion of value creation. While it’s nascent in nature, the fractional economy across Africa has immense potential to become a leading powerhouse globally.
- Outside of work, what keeps you grounded or inspired?
Running. Intense training sessions and longer runs can occasionally steal my mind for an hour or so, a welcome distraction from work. And when timing allows, music. Discovering new music, researching new artists, or even trying my hand at creating music. From as early as I can remember, music was a constant, integrated into pretty much everything I do. Drop me into a mountain range, give me a day to run, and let me lock into a favourite playlist, and I’m happy, grounded, and inspired.
Original Feature on Rafiki Works on Tech Cabal here: https://techcabal.com/2025/10/03/quick-fire-with-greg-cooke/
