Israel Ihaza

Building a company starts with seeing a problem others have learned to live with. For Israel Ihaza, that problem was clear: African real estate transactions were built on too much uncertainty and too little trust.

Israel Ihaza, founder of Oikus, knew the exact problem he wanted to solve. He set out to fix the broken architecture of African real estate, where property transactions are often plagued by fraud, missing documents, and a heavy reliance on blind trust. Through verification checks, secure escrow accounts, and an AI scoring engine that evaluates both agents and property listings, Oikus ensures that a buyer in Lagos or a developer in Abuja never has to cross their fingers and hope a deal is legitimate.

Yet, long before Oikus had a clear trajectory, Israel was walking an isolated path.

“Before Wicked Labs, I had the idea, but I didn’t have the structure around it.”

He found himself building alone, forced to figure out complex product decisions entirely by instinct rather than process. He understood the depths of the real estate crisis, but he quickly realized a hard truth: knowing a problem exists is a completely different skill from knowing how to build the right thing, in the right order, for the right person. What he needed was real mentorship from people who had actually built and scaled products, alongside a network capable of opening doors.

That search for structure led him to Wicked Innovation Labs, an initiative of the Innovate Africa Foundation. Stepping into the program provided the exact pivot he was looking for. Rather than receiving generic advice, Israel encountered intense, hands-on mentorship that demanded rigorous product thinking. He was paired with industry leaders who were willing to sit down and ask the difficult questions he had been actively avoiding.

“Why this feature, why now, who is it actually for?”

That kind of high-stakes pressure-testing fundamentally changed how Israel approached product development. The accelerator provided immediate operational clarity, delivering a measurable turning point for his startup’s trajectory.

“With the Wicked Innovation Labs, I wasn’t building in the dark anymore. It opened doors I genuinely didn’t think were possible this early.”

Reflecting on the broader landscape, Israel points out just how rare that kind of institutional backing is for early-stage builders across the continent.

“Finding someone who believes in you and takes a bet on you as an early-stage founder is a gem in this ecosystem.”

Today, that backing has translated into sharpened execution and a much stronger foundation for Oikus. For Israel Ihaza, the journey from building in isolation to leading an AI-driven real estate platform is proof of what happens when raw founder grit meets intentional structural support.