The roots of my commitment
Lagdo, the first five years
His primary schooling takes place in Lagdo, in the North region, where his father is posted at the hydroelectric dam. Five years in the Far North, far from the West from which the family originates — years that count in who he became.
There he learns Fulfulde, which he still speaks with precision. Alongside his mother tongue, he speaks French, English, Russian and Fulfulde. The latter is spoken from Senegal to Chad, across several of the markets the group operates in today, and it puts him in a position to address directly people whom most executives from the South of the country approach through translation.
The SNK Foundation today runs several solidarity initiatives in Lagdo. The place of his primary schooling has become a territory of intervention, which gives his social engagement a prior history that few leaders can document.
His path begins at the Lycée Technique de Nkolbisson (Yaoundé), where he earns a technical F2 baccalaureate. There he acquires early a culture of engineering, systems and execution. That foundation would lastingly shape his view of leadership: understand the mechanisms before claiming to lead them.
In 2012, at twenty, he leaves the Cameroon to continue his studies in Moscow. His mother hands him a Bible at the airport, a gesture he would never forget. He arrives in a city where nobody is waiting for him, has to find his own way, and quickly learns to fend for himself. With no work permit at first, he takes on small jobs to finance his studies: handing out flyers in the cold of the Russian winter, private tutoring, restaurant work. He would later call those years his school of life — the period in which he learned endurance, the value of effort and the price of autonomy.
It is in Moscow that he lands his first official job, at 1xBet, where he starts out in marketing. Quickly understanding that performance is rewarded, he stands out through work: arriving early, leaving late, present on Saturdays. His results get him noticed. Appointed team lead, he is entrusted with recruiting and training the group’s future African managers, conducting their interviews and overseeing their upskilling.
When his employer offers to send him back to Africa to take part in the group’s rollout, he refuses at first. He only accepts later, once convinced. From 2018-2019, he returns to the continent as Area Manager Africa, in charge of a specific region of Africa. There he leads the rollout of 1xBet, obtains operating licences and structures local operations, first in Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso and Cameroon.
A trajectory pursued in one of the most regulated sectors, placing him among the youngest African executives to have led such a course.
He then returns to Africa with a strengthened conviction: the continent must be the ground of an economic sovereignty built by its own sons.
In parallel, he develops a diversified entrepreneurial ecosystem, at the intersection of digital, fintech, marketing and high-value services. He founds NBIKO Groupe, a pan-African platform that designs technological, financial and communication solutions adapted to African realities, with operations in Central and West Africa.
A next-generation generalist television channel, founded in 2021 in Cameroon. It built and mastered its production chain within the country pay-TV bouquets, then began scaling up in January 2026, during the Africa Cup of Nations. It is conceived as a pan-African media outlet that owns its platforms.
Steven Nbienou Kouadjo also acts as a shareholder and executive of several companies in Africa and internationally, including Ludus in Côte d’Ivoire. He supports high-potential projects, guided by a logic of lasting value creation.
In 2021, his journey receives notable recognition when he is listed among the most successful Cameroonian entrepreneurs internationally, alongside established figures of the African economic landscape.
Over time, he has made transmission a part of his commitment. He wants to put his experience at the service of the younger generations and open opportunities for them — a conviction reflected notably in the SNK Foundation and the SNK AI Challenge.
Today, SNK presents itself above all as the expression of a vision: building systems — economic, digital and media — in service of African sovereignty, strategic autonomy and the projection of the continent’s leadership.
The conviction remains clear: Africa lacks neither talent nor ambition. It needs structures it controls, solid platforms and leaders able to build over time.
