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Africa’s fast-growing creator economy is creating demand for more than social media platforms and content tools, with a new generation of creators increasingly requiring the infrastructure to turn knowledge, skills and audiences into sustainable businesses.
One Nigerian-founded startup seeking to fill that gap is Coachli, a digital platform that says it has processed more than N1 billion in transactions for over 15,000 creators and freelancers across Africa.
Founded in Nigeria in 2022 and publicly launched in March 2023, Coachli initially focused on helping coaches schedule one-on-one sessions and receive payments. The company has since expanded into a broader business infrastructure platform covering digital products, subscriptions, paid sessions, live classes, professional services, invoicing and payment collection.
From Booking Tool to Creator Business Infrastructure
According to Coachli founder and CEO, Sharon Onyinye, the company’s original product was deliberately simple, but feedback from users revealed a much bigger problem.
“We realised we were not just building a booking tool. We were building infrastructure for an entire category of businesses that did not have it.”
That realisation has driven the platform’s expansion beyond appointment scheduling.
Creators can now sell e-books, templates, audio products and other digital downloads, offer paid consultations, organise live classes for as many as 1,000 attendees, list freelance services, issue invoices and payment links, manage subscriptions and automate email communication.
The result is a single platform designed to bring together functions that creators would otherwise have to manage across several different services.
For Coachli, the opportunity lies in recognising that Africa’s creator economy extends well beyond influencers.
Coaches, tutors, consultants, designers, writers, educators and other professionals are increasingly packaging their expertise as products and services and selling them to audiences both within and outside their home countries.
Payment Friction Remains a Major Challenge
One of the biggest obstacles facing African creators is payments.
A creator may be able to attract customers from another country through LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube or other digital platforms, but collecting money from those customers can become complicated when international payment cards, foreign bank accounts or compatible payment processors are required.
Coachli is positioning payments as a central part of its infrastructure rather than leaving creators to solve the problem themselves.
The platform supports payment integrations including Paystack, Flutterwave and Stripe, while allowing users to receive payments in the naira, US dollar, pound sterling, euro, cedi, rand and more than 30 other currencies, according to the company.
This is particularly relevant to African freelancers serving international clients in areas such as graphic design, content writing, digital marketing, UI/UX design, video editing, web development, motion graphics and social media management.
Coachli also operates on a transaction-based model rather than charging creators a monthly platform subscription, reducing the initial cost for users testing new business ideas.
Taking on Global Creator Platforms
Coachli is entering a market already populated by global platforms such as Stan Store, Kajabi, Teachable, Skool and Kit, each of which targets different aspects of the creator economy.
Some focus on storefronts and digital commerce, while others specialise in online courses, memberships, communities or email marketing.
Coachli’s differentiation is its attempt to combine several of these functions while placing African payment infrastructure at the centre of the experience.
For African creators, the issue is therefore not simply the number of features offered by a platform. A service may provide excellent course-building or storefront tools but still leave users struggling with payment acceptance and settlement across African markets.
Coachli is betting that integrating those functions can reduce that friction.
Building a Business With Fewer Tools
The company is also targeting the operational complexity faced by solo entrepreneurs.
Managing bookings on one platform, payments on another, digital products somewhere else, invoices through another service and audience communication through a separate tool can create additional subscriptions, logins, integrations and potential points of failure.
Coachli’s proposition is to consolidate much of that workflow.
A creator can establish a public page, sell an offer, receive payment, schedule a session, deliver a digital product, issue an invoice and communicate with customers from one environment.
That could become increasingly important as more Africans transition from simply producing content to building businesses around their expertise.
Scaling on African Terms
Coachli’s strategy reflects a broader trend in African technology: building infrastructure around challenges that are not always adequately addressed by products designed primarily for mature Western markets.
The company says its approach is built around local payment realities, currencies, settlement and affordability.
Its platform is already integrating with tools used by creators to reach and serve audiences, including TikTok, Meta, Telegram and Google Meet, as it seeks to expand beyond basic monetisation.
Onyinye said the company’s next phase would focus on helping creators scale their businesses rather than simply giving them somewhere to sell.
“We have built the foundation,” she said, adding that Coachli now wants to help creators “go deeper” and scale beyond their initial expectations.
She said the company’s broader ambition is to provide a pathway for users to move from side income to primary income while building infrastructure “for African creators, coaches and freelancers, built on African terms, designed for African economics.”
The Road Ahead
The reported N1 billion transaction milestone offers an early indication of demand for locally relevant creator-business infrastructure, although transaction volume alone does not determine the eventual size of Coachli or Africa’s wider creator economy.
The bigger test will be whether the platform can maintain reliable payments, deliver an easy-to-use experience, provide effective support and continuously introduce tools that genuinely improve creators’ ability to earn.
As Africa’s digital economy expands, the creator opportunity is also moving beyond follower counts and advertising revenue. Increasingly, the creator is becoming a business owner, with expertise transformed into courses, consultations, digital products, memberships and professional services.
For Coachli, the ambition is to provide the infrastructure connecting those elements from audience and expertise to products, payments and sustainable businesses.
If that model scales, the Nigerian startup could become part of a wider shift in Africa’s digital economy: one where creators are not merely users of digital platforms, but entrepreneurs building businesses on infrastructure designed around the realities of the continent.
