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Sony Group is taking charge to help African founders in the entertainment startup realm.
Oct 13, 2023
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.
Aug 16, 2023
As talent across the African continent consistently rises in numbers, its tech ecosystem is growing right along with it. From securing millions of dollars for funding initiatives such as for climate change to creating innovative technology that aims to disrupt industries, there is a movement of African founders and tech entrepreneurs who aim to build a promising future. At the same time, there are global events taking notice of this powerful movement and bringing it to center stage including AfroTech Executive D.C. On May 11, executive leaders will join together to discuss Africa’s growth in the tech industry. View this post on Instagram A post shared by AFROTECH Events (@afrotech.events) Ahead of AfroTech Executive D.C., Prosper Africa, the leading U.S.-Africa trade and investment initiative, has partnered with the Africa Fintech Summit. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Africa Fintech Summit (@afrifintechsummit) Africa’s fintech sector, leaders, and pioneers...
Apr 10, 2023
Investors have backed an African startup that is helping brands source critical data before entering into markets.
Mar 23, 2023
People don’t refer to her as Mother Africa for nothing. The home of some of the world’s greatest natural resources is getting an economic boost with 24 African startups chosen to receive funding for startups. As released by Tech Crunch, Y Combinator released its most recent batch of awardees – W22 – that will receive seed funding for new businesses. Of the 414 startups representing over 80 sectors that are a part of this batch, the continent of Africa has received notable funding with Nigeria ranking third, having delivered 18 startups. Per the company’s norm, the United States has the most representation and India ranks second with 32 startups a part of this most recent batch. Although the United States has the largest amount of representation from a single country each year, about 50 percent of Y Combinator’s awardees come from countries outside of the country. Based on previous award batches, this is the first time an African nation has appeared this high on the list. With 24...
Apr 6, 2022
The African continent is the next stop for Nas’ investment portfolio. Bloomberg reports that the rapper has joined Andreessen Horowitz in a $20 million funding round for Carry1st, an African mobile games publisher. Google, Avenir Growth Capital, Riot Games, Konvoy Ventures, Raine Ventures, and TTV Capital were also investors in the round.
Jan 19, 2022
Since Twiga Foods’ launch in 2014, the startup has been using technology to build more efficient supply chains in food and retail distribution in Kenya. With the announcement of their latest funding, the company aims to take their mission across the African continent. Twiga Foods raised $50 million on Nov. 1 in a Series C round, TechCrunch reports. The round was led by private equity firm Creadev and majority of the participants from their previous Series B round invested in Twiga. New investors included OP Finnfund Global and Endeavor Catalyst Fund. “We are deeply convinced in Twiga’s potential to revolutionize informal retail across Sub-Saharan Africa, ” said Pierre Fauvet, Africa director at Creadev, in a statement. “Tapping into a $77 billion urban market on the continent, Twiga has gained significant traction since inception, leveraging on technology to optimize the food supply chain in African cities and constantly innovating to better tackle logistics, commercial, social and...
Nov 1, 2021
Zambian startup Union54, which specializes in fintech, has announced that it’s developing Africa’s first card-issuing API. According to TechCrunch, the company founded by Perseus Mlambo and Alessandra Martini claims to be Africa’s first card-issuing API — and while, technically, they’re correct, they initially thought of the idea when they were part of Zazu, their previous startup. Back then, Zazu — which was launched in 2015 — was considered a “challenger bank,” and had to rely on outside vendors to issue debit cards to customers. According to Mlambo, some customers waited as long as 18 months to get a debit card issued in their name. “We just realized that either the processor or the bank was not necessarily well equipped to be able to answer our questions or to be able to give us the product that we’re looking for,” the founder of the Zambian startup said in an interview with the outlet. Because of that, Martini and Mlambo met directly with Mastercard so that Zazu could become...
Aug 6, 2021
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...
Aug 3, 2021
After years of investing on his own, Nigerian angel investor Olumide Soyombo is launching his own venture to support African-based startup companies. According to TechCrunch, Soyombo — a known high profile angel investor in Nigerian tech and African startups — today has announced the launch of Voltron Capital — a Pan-African venture capital firm co-founded with Abe Choi — which will invest in pre-seed and early-stage companies in Africa. The outlet also reports that Soyombo’s goal for the new firm — which aims to start off with 30 startup investments — is to ultimately “address the severe lack of access to early-stage funding for African tech companies.” The investment sizes will range from $20,000 to $100,000 and focus on startups based in Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa and North Africa. Soyombo is recognized as a prominent and influential figure in Nigeria’s tech ecosystem, as he has access to almost any important deals happening in the market on account of his respected reputation....
Jul 26, 2021
While it may be faster for African businesses to trade goods with other partners outside of the continent, it also makes them more dependent on exports and prevents new markets from being created. To combat this, Ghanaian-based company Jetstream is proposing its own solution. Jetstream — which operates as a vertical broker between the fragmented and often-hidden segments of cross-border supply chains in Africa — uses technology in order to simplify the process of moving cargo across borders, per its company website. Today, its mission has become focused on “white labeling the systems built internally to manage shipments and financing for customers,” according to TechCrunch, and the startup just closed a $3 million seed round to continue this work. The outlet reports that the funding round included both local and international investors as participants, such as Alitheia IDF, Golden Palm Investments, 4DX Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Asia Pacific Land, Breyer Labs and MSA...
Jun 29, 2021
Insurtech infrastructure company Curacel — an AI-powered platform for claims processing and fraud management in Africa — has just announced a raise of a $450,000 pre-seed funding round to accelerate product development and expansion efforts for the startup across the African continent. According to a press release shared with AfroTech, the funding round was led by Atlantica Ventures and Consonance with participation from Kepple Ventures and other African angel investors. Curacel — which was originally founded in 2018 — reveals that the new funding will be used to help facilitate Curacel’s goal of becoming Africa’s premier provider of embedded finance technology for insurance and drive insurance inclusion across 10 new African countries by the end of 2021. “We are excited to have these investors on board and we are looking forward to partnering with them to drive our vision of improving insurance inclusion across Africa,” Curacel co-founder and CEO, Henry Mascot shares in a...
Mar 30, 2021
Africa’s health-research landscape has been steadily growing as of recently, but in order to keep this momentum going healthcare must become decentralized. For Ghanaian medtech startup Redbird, its company believes there is a better way to make medical testing in the country an easier process for both patients and doctors by introducing a simple health monitoring system. By partnering with pharmacies, Redbird is able to bring Ghanaian doctors proven rapid test technology for chronic and acute conditions that allow them to give patients a more convenient way to monitor their health wherever they are, its website reports. In order to continue Redbird’s vision of making modern healthcare more efficient, the startup has just announced a raise of a $1.5 million seed investment that will ultimately help scale the company. Participating investors in the round include Johnson & Johnson Foundation, Newton Partners (via the Imperial Venture Fund), and Founders Factory Africa, according to...
Mar 23, 2021
Ghanaian health tech startup mPharma — which works to improve access to medicines — is continuing its mission to provide innovative financing and accessibility solutions in the medical field by expanding its markets to Ethiopia, TechCrunch reports. As one of the toughest markets to enter to date, extending mPharma’s operations to the East African country will only help the startup achieve its goal of ruling African healthcare. The company — which was founded in 2013 by Daniel Shoukimas, Gregory Rockson and James Finucane — has established a system that specializes in vendor-managed inventory, retail pharmacy operations and market intelligence on behalf of the hospitals, pharmacies and patients it serves. As outlined by TechCrunch, Africa’s $50 million pharmaceutical market still faces challenges such as low stock of inventory and excessive prices that make it difficult for many Africans to get ahold of the medications they need to treat their illnesses. mPharma’s goal is to...
Mar 11, 2021
This time last year, Nigerian-founded and San Francisco-based startup Flutterwave just finished closing on a $35 million Series B funding round. Now this week they close on an additional $170 million, bringing the company’s value to over $1 billion, TechCrunch reports. This Series C round was led by New York-based private investment firm Avenir Growth Capital and U.S. hedge fund and investment firm Tiger Global. Additionally, new and existing investors who participated in the round also include DST Global, Early Capital Berrywood, Green Visor Capital, Greycroft Capital, Insight Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, Tiger Management, Worldpay FIS 9yards Capital. According to TechCrunch, Flutterwave has raised an upwards of $225 million total in the last three years and is one of the few African startups to have secured more than $200 million in funding overall. We previously reported that the startup had processed more than $5.4 billion in transactions as of 2019, more than doubling its...
Mar 10, 2021