PeoplePulse Africa: The HR Problem Nobody Was Solving for Nigerian Businesses Until Now

If you run a small business in Nigeria, you probably know how this goes.

Someone wants time off, they send you a WhatsApp message. You say yes, life moves on, and two weeks later there is a scheduling conflict nobody saw coming. A new person joins the team and their details go into a spreadsheet that half the office has access to and nobody updates. Payday arrives and something is off and you are not entirely sure why.

For a while, it works. Then the team grows, and suddenly it really does not.

This is the reality Adetoun Adele-Muraina and Adetola Abolarinwa watched play out across business after business through their HR consulting firm, Bridgemead Consulting. Working closely with Nigerian founders and business leaders, they saw the same pattern repeat itself: companies that had outgrown their informal systems but could not find a solution that actually fit where they were.

The tools that existed were either built for large corporations with dedicated HR departments, or designed for markets with very different realities. For the millions of small and growing businesses that sit at the heart of Nigeria’s economy, there was a gap.
So they built something to fill it.

PeoplePulse Africa is an HR platform built specifically for African MSMEs. Payroll, leave management, performance reviews, employee records and compliance, all in one place, designed to be simple enough to use without an HR department and powerful enough to actually run your people operations as the business grows.

“We kept seeing the same challenges across different businesses,” says Adetoun. “It was never a lack of care. Founders wanted to do right by their people. The right tools just were not there for them.”

The platform launched into paid pilot earlier this year and has been onboarding businesses since. PeoplePulse Africa has participated in programmes within the wider business and technology ecosystem, including the Providus Bank SME Programme and the Village Capital x Standard Chartered Women in Tech Accelerator 2026. PeoplePulse is also currently participating in a founder programme by Antler Africa, a venture capital firm.

“We are building something we genuinely believe in,” says Adetola. “The businesses we built this for deserve better than what existed before.“

With 39 million MSMEs in Nigeria and only one in ten currently automating their HR processes, the opportunity is significant. More importantly, so is the need.

Businesses can request a demo or join the early access waitlist at peoplepulseafrica.com

About PeoplePulse Africa

PeoplePulse Africa is an HR platform built for African small and medium-sized businesses. Founded by Adetoun Adele-Muraina and Adetola Abolarinwa, it covers payroll, leave, performance management, and compliance in one simple platform.