Nelly Chatue-Diop, the Cameroonian tech executive who founded the crypto investment platform Ejara and recently took on a mandate to restructure one of the country’s struggling traditional banks, has died.

Her death was confirmed on Friday, January 9, 2026. The cause of death has not been disclosed.

​Chatue-Diop’s passing represents a significant disruption to the Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC) financial ecosystem. She was one of the few executives in the region who successfully straddled the divide between unregulated decentralised finance (DeFi) and the highly conservative traditional banking sector.

​From London to Douala

​An engineer with an MBA from HEC Paris and the London Business School, Chatue-Diop spent the early part of her career in the European financial sector before returning to Cameroon in 2020.

​Her return coincided with a surge in crypto adoption across Africa. She co-founded Ejara, a Douala-based fintech designed to offer investment products to the mass market. The platform allowed users to invest in cryptocurrencies and savings products with entry tickets as low as 1,000 FCFA (approx. $1.60), targeting a demographic largely ignored by institutional banks.

​Ejara differentiated itself early on through a non-custodial approach. Following the collapse of centralised exchanges like FTX, Chatue-Diop became a vocal advocate for user sovereignty.

​“When everyone was taking the other route and building centralised exchanges, we always thought that, if you want to own crypto, you need to own your keys,” she told TechCrunch in 2022.

​The model gained traction. By the time of her death, Ejara claimed over 200,000 users across the CFA franc zone and had secured the rare status of a Digital Asset Service Provider (PSAN) license from France’s financial regulator, the AMF. The startup raised over $10m in venture capital from international investors including Dragonfly Capital and Anthemis.

​The pivot to traditional banking

​While Ejara positioned Chatue-Diop as a Web3 disruptor, her most recent career move signaled an attempt to reform the legacy financial system from within.

​In July 2025, she was appointed as an Independent Director of National Financial Credit (NFC) Bank. The appointment was notable given the bank’s history. NFC Bank had spent nearly 13 years under provisional administration by the Central African Banking Commission (COBAC) following severe governance failures and accumulated losses.

​The Cameroonian government, owning 99.93% of the bank, orchestrated a 25bn FCFA ($41.5m) bailout to clear the bank’s balance sheet as part of an agreement with the IMF.

​Chatue-Diop joined a new board tasked with a specific, time-sensitive mandate: prepare the bank for privatisation within two years. Her role was viewed by market analysts as an attempt to inject digital agility into a “zombie bank” that had only recently returned to profitability (posting a cumulative net profit of nearly 13bn FCFA since 2017).

​Her death leaves the NFC Bank board without its primary technocratic voice just six months into the crucial two-year turnaround window.

​A unfinished regulatory legacy

​Beyond her corporate roles, Chatue-Diop was a structural figure in the region’s regulatory landscape.

​As President of the Cameroon FinTech Association, she acted as a primary interlocutor between startups and the regional central bank (BEAC), pushing for legal frameworks for digital assets. Through Makeda Asset Management, where she served as Board Chair, she was also piloting the tokenisation of real-world assets to deepen regional capital markets.

​Her sudden departure leaves questions regarding the strategic direction of both Ejara and the modernisation roadmap of NFC Bank. For the CEMAC region, which is currently battling to modernise its capital markets and broaden its investor base, the loss of an executive capable of navigating both blockchain protocols and central bank boardrooms is a material setback.

​Key Figures: Nelly Chatue-Diop’s Portfolio

• ​Ejara: Founded 2020. Raised ~$10m (Series A). 200,000+ users.
• ​NFC Bank: Appointed Independent Director July 2025. Tasked with privatisation prep for a bank with 25bn FCFA in state restructuring funds.
• ​Makeda Asset Management: Chair. Focused on asset tokenisation.