Fatima Kassim, Founder and CEO, GoTruck Logistics

Moving goods across borders in East Africa is often harder than it needs to be. Shipments that should take days often drag on for weeks, slowed by administrative hurdles, lack of transparency, and unreliable infrastructure. For businesses on the ground, every delay feels like another door slammed shut. But when frustration is met with vision, it can spark the kind of change that reshapes how an entire region moves forward. Fatima Kassim is living proof of that change. As the Founder and CEO of GoTruck Logistics, she is transforming how East Africa moves. 

Raised in London with deep roots in Ethiopia and Somaliland, Fatima bridges two worlds: the speed and precision of global tech, and the grit and complexity of East African trade. In 2023, a seemingly simple shipment between Ethiopia and Somaliland turned into a costly, drawn-out ordeal. That moment lit a fire. “Why,” she wondered, “is it easier to track a £5 Uber in London than a $50,000 fuel truck across Africa?” Instead of letting the system beat her down, she built a new one. Through GoTruck, Fatima has launched one of the region’s first end-to-end digital freight platforms, bringing transparency, efficiency, and hope to an industry long stuck in the slow lane.

The Move from AI to Logistics

Fatima’s journey into technology didn’t begin with a product, it began with a principle. After reading Give Work, Not Aid by Leila Janah, she found herself questioning the long-standing narratives that painted Africa as dependent on charity. Janah’s words, “Talent is equally distributed, but opportunity is not”, struck a chord. They became the compass guiding Fatima’s first venture: Access AI.

The startup focused on training data for AI systems, supporting industries ranging from biotech to autonomous transport. But its real innovation was in where and how it operated. By setting up delivery hubs in Somaliland, Fatima tapped into overlooked talent and connected them with major players in the global tech scene. “We weren’t hiring out of pity, we were hiring for potential,” she reflects.

Access AI wasn’t just a company, it was a challenge to the status quo. It created skilled jobs where few existed, offering work that required precision, intellect, and creativity. When the company was acquired following the pandemic, it marked not just a successful exit but the start of something deeper. That chapter brought a different kind of problem into focus. Logistics needed rethinking, and Fatima was ready to take it on.

The Infrastructure of Dreams

The idea for GoTruck took root when Fatima attempted to move goods between Ethiopia and Berbera, only to find herself entangled in a system riddled with inefficiencies. Pricing lacked consistency, service was unreliable, and transport costs ate up more than 70% of the product’s value. She quickly realised that the issue wasn’t with individual players, but with the lack of digital infrastructure. The industry still ran on calls, handwritten documents, and informal networks that couldn’t scale. “We weren’t just dealing with logistics. “We were dealing with the infrastructure of dreams,” she states. 

Together with her business partner, Hodan Ismail, Fatima entered one of the region’s most traditional and male-dominated sectors. Rather than impose a quick fix, they spent months on the ground, in ports, with drivers, union leaders, and dispatchers, earning trust and listening. “Copy-pasting a Western model like Uber wouldn’t work. Business in Africa demands presence, connection, and respect for what exists,” she explains. Their approach proved that technology, when thoughtfully applied, could strengthen human networks and unlock value for everyone in the supply chain.

How GoTruck Is Changing the Freight Game

When Fatima launched GoTruck in 2023, she wasn’t just building a platform. She was tackling the deeper frictions that had long slowed East Africa’s freight economy. At the heart of her idea was a belief that logistics didn’t have to be inefficient. With the right technology, it could become precise, connected, and transparent. Using artificial intelligence, GoTruck matches cargo with return trucks, helping reduce empty miles, fuel costs, and emissions across a $4 billion cross-border trade corridor. “We’re improving freight and unlocking movement for markets and people,” Fatima shares. 

Fatima led the design of a mobile-first system tailored to WhatsApp users, meeting logistics operators in the tools they already trusted. Under her leadership, the platform introduced real-time tracking, embedded insurance, and clear pricing. In just a year, she secured $100,000 in angel funding, launched operations in Hargeisa, Berbera, Addis Ababa, and Dire Dawa, and built a distributed team. She developed scalable systems for onboarding and service delivery. At the same time, she piloted partnerships with major industrial clients along the Berbera trade corridor.

She also built the relationships essential for long-term adoption, partnering with unions, fuel traders, and private terminals. Now, GoTruck is in talks to integrate with modernizing ports. For early clients, it’s already making a difference, cutting costs and shortening turnaround times in ways that make the future feel within reach.

Logistics as Infrastructure for Opportunity

GoTruck is more than a logistics solution, it’s a shift in the rhythm of East African trade. In a $4 billion cross-border freight market, even small efficiency gains can unlock major economic value. By increasing truck utilization and reducing empty returns, the platform lowers fuel consumption and carbon emissions, bringing sustainability goals within closer reach. But the impact goes further. Real-time tracking and standardized pricing remove guesswork from transactions. Smarter routing cuts costs that are passed directly to clients. And by creating scalable digital infrastructure, GoTruck is poised for regional growth.

At the heart of it is Fatima’s leadership, thoughtful, ambitious, and grounded in reality. Alongside co-founder Hodan Ismail, she is digitizing an industry built on legacy relationships, without tearing them down. “We’re not trying to replace what exists,” she says. “We’re building the digital scaffolding that lets it grow stronger.” With expansion plans that include ERP integrations, finance tools, and compliance systems, GoTruck is laying down rails for a faster, cleaner, more connected future.

The Corridor She Built

Fatima is scaling GoTruck and redefining what it means to build from within. With operations rooted in Hargeisa and expanding across Addis Ababa, Dire Dawa, and the wider Horn of Africa, the company stands as proof that systems born in local soil can still compete on global terrain. Fatima moves between boardrooms in London and dispatch hubs in East Africa with the same clarity of purpose: to architect infrastructure that’s native, necessary, and ours. Her approach has caught the attention of tech and logistics leaders alike, not because it mimics Silicon Valley, but because it doesn’t. “I’m not here to build a company just to attract investors. I’m building a corridor. I’m building trust. I’m building a future where our goods, our drivers, and our data move freely, because no one is coming to fix this region for us. We have to build it ourselves,” Fatima asserts. If GoTruck is the engine, Fatima is the mapmaker, charting new ground, one line of code and one leap of faith at a time.