Nabayatrade exists because international trade between Africa, the Americas, Europe and Asia has run on hope and good faith for too long — and too often, that trust has been betrayed.
Nabayatrade was founded by Aboubacar Sakho and Mohamed Sanoh, who bring complementary expertise to the problem of cross-border trust.
Aboubacar is a security professional who has lived in Texas since 2007, specializing in transaction security — the discipline of making sure that when money and goods change hands across borders, both sides can trust the process. Mohamed is a financial specialist and product researcher with over 15 years of experience sourcing and evaluating equipment and goods. He travels weekly to visit vendors and factories and attend trade shows, building the kind of firsthand, on-the-ground knowledge that no listing photo alone can replace.
Over many years, both had heard the same stories on both sides of a trade that should have been simple: a buyer travels to purchase gold or diamonds, only to find the goods are fake or don't exist. A seller lists genuine equipment online, a buyer abroad sends payment, and the goods never arrive. Aboubacar experienced this kind of misrepresentation firsthand. Over time, these stories accumulated into something larger — a deep, structural mistrust between buyers and sellers separated by oceans and borders.
Africa holds real, valuable resources — gold, diamonds, and more — yet international buyers often hesitate, scarred by past experiences with counterfeit goods. At the same time, African buyers and businesses are frequently wary of sourcing from places like China, assuming everything available is low quality or fake.
Meanwhile, here in the United States, we saw enormous value going to waste: heavy machinery that could power African mining operations sitting idle, hospitals discarding usable medical equipment every year, schools scrapping working electronics. Valuable goods on one side of the world, real demand on the other — and a wall of mistrust standing between them.
We built Nabayatrade to take that wall down.
We chose quality over quantity. Every product on Nabayatrade is verified before it ever reaches a buyer — and we mean that literally: Mohamed and a network of verifiers around the world visit vendors and factories in person to confirm that listed products are real, accurately described, and exactly what they claim to be.
Every order is also protected by escrow, so payment is only released once a buyer confirms their goods arrived as described. No more sending money into the dark. No more traveling for goods that don't exist. A verified marketplace where reputable buyers and sellers — wherever they are in the world — can finally do business without fear.
Nabaya is the name of a respected community from Guinea Conakry, known throughout the region for their integrity and trustworthiness. We named this company after them, because trust is not a feature we're adding to trade — it's the entire reason Nabayatrade exists.