This Week in African Tech Ep 4 : Suing African Presidents for Twitter Blocks, More Money Raise and Digital Agric
I created “This Week in African tech”,as a witty, irreverent look at the industry, if this is something that works for you enjoy the update:
In Episode 4 ….
FULL Video Update
Rapid Fire News
German investment firm GreenTech Capital Partners has signed an agreement with the Senegalese government, entrepreneurs in that country benefit from investments of between €10 000 to half a million Euro.
Mr Green Africa , Kenyan tech-enabled plastic recycling startup Mr Green Africa has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from DOB Equity, a Dutch family-backed impact investor to expand and build on its aggregation model. The startups s sells ethically sourced materials with a traceable social and environmental impact
Kenyan B2B agri-tech startup Taimba, which operates a mobile-based cashless platform connecting directly from rural farmers and delivers directly to informal greengrocers, school etc has raised US$100,000 in funding from US-based impact investor Gray Matters Capital under its gender lens portfolio GMC coLABS to strengthen its infrastructure and increase delivery logistics to cater to new markets
Accion Venture Lab, the seed investment initiative of US-based non-profit Accion, has launched a new $23-million fund aimed at fintech startups that focus on financial inclusion.The fund will invest between $4.5-million to $7-million of this l in emerging markets in Africa
Accra-based PEG Africa currently provides 400 000 daily users in Ivory Coast, Ghana and Senegal with credit for solar home systems via its pay-as-you-go financing model PEG Africa has raised $5-million in funding in the form of debt finance, from the EU-funded Electrification Financing Initiative (ElectriFI).
Leapfrog Ventures has invested $100 000 in Kenyan virtual postbox startup MPost. Even though announced this year , the investment was made last year.
Egyptian fintech NowPay [compliant solution enables employees to get their salaries in advance at any time during the month, with the ability to pay back over multiple months with zero liabilities on their employers.]raised $600 000 seed round from Endure Capital and 500 Startups
Trolley, a Cairo-based grocery delivery platform founded last year, has secured a $200 000 seed investment from a Kuwait investor.
SA startup Fincheck allows consumers to compare financial services products has netted 300,000 USD in investment from two investors, Benatar Capital and Parktown Capital.
SA fintech company Nomanini a startup that has developed a platform that provides micro loans and enables informal merchants and micro-entrepreneurs in emerging markets to distribute digital goods such as airtime and prepaid electricity has raised $4-million in an investment round led by Standard Bank, with participation from Amsterdam-based investment firm Goodwell Investments . The
The bad
Mugo Kibati, CEO, Telkom Kenya has accused Safaricom , Kenya’s largest Telco with over 70% market share)of derailing the planned merger between itself and Airtel Kenya . in the text he did seem to provide any proof of how this actually happening but this is interesting to watch …
Meatier News
Story 1
Hillary Innocent Seguya Taylor, a Ugandan citizen studying for a Master’s in Harvard University, is suing Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni to court because he blocked him on Twitter!
Seguya has petitioned the civil division of the high court in the capital, Kampala, to declare Museveni’s action as illegal, procedurally improper, unreasonable and irrational.
Story 2
Last week I spoke at the Africa Green Revolution Forum, on Digitalization and supporting startups to build solutions to support agriculture and small holder farmers . My points were 1. Policy: without effective policy to support startups as they go into vital and unsexy areas like farming in Africa we risk losing a vital resource in building agricultural digital support .governments need to define policy to help support and make it easier for all startups in vital areas to grow 2. Funding for Scale , keeping digital startups in that support agric small means that they cannot have the immense impact they need to make and Lastly there is work that need to be done on the startups side to build sustainable commercial models in a space heavily propped up by grant funding . hashtag#technology hashtag#Africa hashtag#agriculture hashtag#AGRF
Last Story
MTN Group has announced that it has closed its service centers and stores across Nigeria as a precaution given the ongoing anti-South Africa attacks in the West African country. This comes after 4 MTN stores in Nigeria came under attack on 3 September 2019.
Fact Check from last week : Lesotho was the first country to legalize the private growing and consumption of cannabis not South Africa