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South Africa’s first Black-owned bank has hit unicorn status, POCIT reports. Tyme Group, founded in 2019, is majority-owned by billionaire Patrice Motsepe, notes Bloomberg. The platform was designed to make digital banking more affordable and accessible, and it has been an overwhelming success with online and physical banks throughout South Africa and the Philippines. According to TechCrunch, it has attracted 10 million users since its inception and reached an additional 5 million users through its Philippine brand, GoTyme. GoTyme allows users to create an account via its bank app. Customers can then receive an ATM debit card instantly and retrieve it at a kiosk. Tyme Group says it has allocated $600 million in financing to support small businesses and has raised $400 million in customer deposits. Now it is seeking to extend its reach in new markets, which include Vietnam and Indonesia by 2025. This will be made possible in light of a $250 million round led by digital bank Nu...
If you’ve been tuned in to modern hip hop in the last few years, you’re likely already familiar with the prolific works of NBA YoungBoy. The artist, who is only 24-years-old at the time of this writing, first rose to prominence in 2015 and beyond, releasing numerous rap albums and mixtapes per year ever since. YoungBoy has also amassed quite a large following through viral marketing techniques. He’s earned a dedicated listenership of just under 16 million users on Spotify alone. This behind-the-mic success gives way to an impressive financial portfolio. Celebrity Net Worth estimates his full net worth to clock in at over $10 million. Despite these major successes, NBA YoungBoy’s career is mired by legal troubles and music industry drama, keeping him from reaching his full financial potential. In fact, the young rapper has spent a significant portion of his fame on house arrest while awaiting trial for numerous alleged crimes. The situation keeps him from capitalizing on the outlets...
African Infrastructure Investment Managers (AIIM) has surpassed its funding expectation. AIIM was launched to “invest long-term institutional unlisted equity in African infrastructure projects,” its website mentions. The company’s investments extend across Eastern, Western, and Southern Africa, with $2.8 billion in assets under management. Now, AIIM will scale its work in light of reportedly raising $954 million, which comprises $748 million in commitments and $206 million in co-investments, Shoppe Black reports. Marking its fourth pan-African infrastructure fund, AIIM surpassed expectations by 50% with the backing of 29 investors from all over the world, such as pension funds, insurance companies, sovereign wealth funds, asset managers, and family offices, with half of the commitments coming from Development Finance Institution (DFI) investors. “Given the challenging global fundraising environment, we are delighted to have outperformed the targeted fund size. We received strong...
Investments are continuing to pour in for African tech entrepreneurs. TechCrunch reports that Founders Factory Africa (FFA), an early-stage investment firm, has raised $114 million “to scale its model to better serve founders across the African tech ecosystem.” The funding for the South Africa-based accelerator was led by Mastercard Foundation and Johnson & Johnson.
From billionaire to billionaire, Patrice Motsepe has formed an opinion on Elon Musk. As South Africa’s first Black billionaire, Motsepe said that entrepreneurs can learn a thing or two from the Tesla CEO, which could most likely increase their net worth and the success of their business. According to Motsepe, Musk’s strong belief in himself is a good thing. “I’m not saying [entrepreneurs] must be cocky and arrogant . . . but I think [Musk] believed so much in what he was doing . . . he succeeded,” said Motsepe.
Of the 18 richest people in Africa, only five of them are Black. That’s right: on the continent of Africa, 72 percent of the richest people are either white or of other non-Black descent. That’s according to the latest list compiled by Forbes, which revealed that more African billionaires are Afrikaners (descendants from the Dutch, French, and German colonialists in South Africa) than any other African subgroup. And this shouldn’t be surprising, considering how the after-effects of colonial times are still being felt today. In 2015, data released by New World Wealth (via BusinessTech of South Africa) revealed that there was an inequitable transfer of wealth to so-called “marginalized groups,” which includes groups of Black Africans that didn’t even have rights in the country prior to 1994 on account of apartheid. While these statistics about the richest people in Africa are distressing, it’s still better than the statistics regarding the number of Black billionaires in America. As...
Over the past week, Joe Rogan has been in the headlines for his use of the n-word in his podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience”. AfroTech previously reported that India.Arie became one of the latest musicians to pull her music catalog from Spotify. Her decision came in following the resurfaced videos, as well as the platform’s negligence of the COVID-19 misinformation shared on Rogan’s podcast, which Neil Young was the first to demand action. “Neil Young opened a door that I must walk through,” Arie wrote via Instagram. “I believe in freedom of speech. However, I find Joe Rogan problematic for reasons other than his Covid interviews. For me, it’s also his language around race.” In the midst of the controversy around Rogan, it looks like the podcaster will continue to stay on Spotify. The platform’s CEO Daniel Ek has recently stated his condemnation for Rogan’s actions but has no plans of removing him according to The Hollywood Reporter. While Ek addressed in a letter to staff that...
Patrice Motsepe has just added more to his $3.1 billion net worth. According to Business Insider, South Africa’s richest Black man — and one of the world’s Black billionaires — has just purchased a wine farm. The outlet reports that the luxury wine farm is called Hidden Valley, and it’s located in Stellenbosch and Somerset, South Africa. “The sale, which was recently announced, includes the purchase of a 28-hectare farm listed for sale at R160 million but was acquired for between R100 million ($5.5 million) and R120 million ($7.9 million) in cash,” confirms Business Insider. “The mining tycoon reportedly paid more for the property than former owner Riaan Stassen did in 2015 when the property was first purchased.” While it’s unclear why Patrice Motsepe decided to purchase this vineyard, what’s clear is that experts believe it will encourage tourism in the area. “This will be good in terms of advertising the brand and making it more attractive to other markets,” Wines of South Africa...
Small African farmers are facing a multitude of problems that affect the progress of agricultural production on the continent. But software-for-agriculture startup Khula has an innovative solution that’s helping this niche industry thrive again. TechCrunch reports that the South African-based company just announced the raise of a $1.3 million seed round to help further scale its farming software and expand nationwide. The round, which closed last year, was led by AECI — one of Africa’s biggest agrochemical companies — and included participation from South African impact investor E Squared Investments. With financial-backing from its lead investor, Khula now has access to AECI’s wide distribution network which is poised to help the platform scale its inputs app. AECI’s support will go a long way as a long-term partner that’s genuinely interested in the execution of the platform’s services. “Khula has very attractive fundamentals, a sizable addressable market, app development...
When Dr. Arabia Mollette was five-years-old, she knew she wanted to be a doctor — she just wasn’t sure what type of doctor she wanted to be. But then, life threw the Bronx native some curveballs. “Growing up in the Bronx, I was surrounded by trauma and tragedy, ” she told AfroTech. “When I was 17-years-old, I became a teen mom — then I lost my baby boy at just four months. Then, just six years later, my sister was killed in a shooting. Those sorts of things change you, for certain, but they also gave me my life purpose.” As a part of her purpose, Dr. Mollette became an Emergency Medicine Resident Physician at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center. She practices and teaches in New York City and in various countries in the Caribbean and Africa. She also travels the world delivering keynote speeches with timely messages. These days, thanks to the pandemic — which landed Dr. Arabia Mollette on the front page of the New York Daily News wearing her scrubs and a concerned look on her face —...
Two South African brothers have reportedly vanished from the public, and their disappearance may have caused Bitcoin worth $3.6 billion from their cryptocurrency investment platform to vanish as well. According to a report from Bloomberg, investors of Africrypt’s platform have hired a Cape Town law firm to investigate the brothers’ disappearance after reporting that the pair cannot be located at this time. An elite police unit called The Hawks has also been alerted as this could possibly be part of the biggest-ever dollar loss in a cryptocurrency scam. Crypto-exchanges across the globe have also been informed of the incident should any attempt to convert the digital coins be made amid their disappearance. Bloomberg reports that Bitcoin’s value has surged over the last year, but nearly 69,000 coins — worth more than $4 billion at their April peak — could now be lost. Amid the rising cases of fraud in cryptocurrency, this could trigger more regulation efforts to restore order in the...
Ghana has just announced that it’s launching a new digital currency called the e-cedi. But this isn’t like your typical cryptocurrency — this is actually something quite different. According to Dr. Ernest Addison, the governor of the country’s central bank, the new proposed digital currency will go into effect after three pilot stages confirm it to be a positive thing to introduce into the local economy. “The Bank of Ghana was one of the first African Central Banks to declare that we were working on a digital currency looking at the concept of an e-cedi,” Dr. Addison said at a news conference in Accra. Currently, the e-cedi has completed the first phase of the process where the design has been made and finalized by a centralized committee. Right now, the digital currency is in a limited implementation phase, meaning that some online transactions will accept the digital currency if it’s applied to the payment. Dr. Addision said that the Central Bank of Ghana will then determine,...
A new South African partnership has announced that it has secured $3 million in pre-Series A funding. The interesting part is, according to TechCrunch, this partnership doesn’t have a name as of yet. However, it still managed to secure enough funds to launch a tele-health product. Even more interestingly, this product that they’ve just launched doesn’t have a name yet, either. How did they manage to do this? This South African partnership is ultimately a joint venture between three companies: Webrock Ventures, Healthforce.io, and Doktor.se. Webrock Ventures is a Sweden-based investment firm that partners with African companies to create what’s called “portfolio businesses.” They do this while retaining a stake in the company. Healthforce, meanwhile, is a South African company that has installed nurses in more than 450 locations throughout the continent. And Doktor.se is another Swedish company, and this company offers tele-health services throughout Scandinavia through phones. So,...
Last year, Nigerian startup Paystack was bought by fintech giant Stripe in a $200 million deal that sent shockwaves across Africa’s tech ecosystem. Now with more validation for the company, Paystack — already operating in both Nigeria and Ghana — has positioned itself to expand and launch its next location in South Africa. “South Africa is one of the continent’s most important markets, and our launch here is a significant milestone in our mission to accelerate commerce across Africa,” the company shared in a statement. “We’re excited to continue building the financial infrastructure that empowers ambitious businesses in Africa, helps them scale and connects them to global markets.” According to the company’s statement, this new launch also “takes us one step closer to our goal of accelerating commerce and removing barriers to trade across Africa.” The company’s South African launch comes after a six-month pilot project that kickstarted a month after it was acquired by Stripe....
Meet Dr. Thakgalo Thibela, a 21-year-old woman who is the youngest doctor in South Africa today. Glamour South Africa was the first to draw the world’s attention to this remarkable woman when it was revealed that Dr. Thibela was on South Africa’s frontlines during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. She received her bachelor of medicine and bachelor of surgery from the University of Witwatersrand, located in the northern part of Johannesburg. Currently, the youngest doctor in South Africa calls the Helen Joseph Hospital — also in Johannesburg — home. Priscilla Sekhonyana, the spokeswoman for The Health Practice Council of South Africa, confirmed that Dr. Thibela is the youngest doctor on the IN register today. But Dr. Thibela always seemed destined for greatness. According to News24, she skipped seventh grade and was bumped up to high school. Once she got to Lehlasedi High School, she skipped yet another grade. Ultimately, she graduated from high school when she was just...