South African fintech startup Centbee has successfully completed testing of its remittance service Minit Money within the framework of the South African Intergovernmental Fintech Working Group’s Regulatory Sandbox. Launched in 2016 by co-CEOs Lorien Gamaroff and Angus Brown, Centbee launched its bitcoin cash wallet to market late in 2018, allowing users to send bitcoin cash directly to their…
Egyptian e-health and IoT solutions startup Sotech has raised US$1 million in pre-seed funding to scale into the rest of the MENA region. Founded in 2020, Sotech specialises in smart IoT, trackable OOH advertising, and data gathering. The startup bridges the worlds of offline advertising with online campaigning, via an app that helps clinics understand the volume,…
Written by Aline Alonso Design Thinking for Innovators – a brand new course for entrepreneurs now available at the VC4A Startup Academy. The self-paced course by Butterfly Works includes real cases and challenges faced by entrepreneurs as well as interactive tools and methodologies to test new theories and develop agile solutions. Design thinking is a human-centered creative…
Written by Alexander Onukwue Besides being a key ingredient for cooking jollof rice, vegetable oil is used industrially in paints, soaps, biofuels, and lubricants. But getting the oil from palm nuts can be a hassle for manufacturers if they have to engage smallholder farmers directly. In most cases, the Nigerian farmer cracks palm nuts with…
The Financial Times is hosting the first FTxSDG Challenge in collaboration with Seedstars, a Swiss-based organization that invests in and supports startups from emerging countries. The competition was created to provide learning and financial opportunities to innovative, impact-driven firms and entrepreneurs. The application period is now open. The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are being…
The Global Innovation Initiative Group has announced the creation of a fund to support African innovation. Over the next three years, the vehicle will invest $100 million in African early-stage tech firms. The GIIG Africa Fund aspires for returns of more than 25%. “We are not simply opening a new fund; rather, this is the…
Written by Luis Monzon Data has undoubtedly permeated every aspect of our modern life, from what we buy to the news we consume to fundamental truths we believe; data has become the bedrock of the modern decision-making process. The data analytics landscape has evolved drastically over the past five years, with Big Data and IoT…
Written by Luis Monzon A new report by The Financial Times Focus and Mambu shows banks must redesign their role in society to avoid extinction. More than two thirds (67%) of banks think they will lose market share within two years if they fail to digitally transform, according to a new report from cloud banking platform Mambu…
Yellow, a Malawian off-grid solar company, has received a $4 million loan from SunFunder, a company that finances solar energy projects all over the world. The funding will help the company expand its solar home system sales. Yellow has enhanced energy availability for over 400,000 people while also reducing CO2 emissions by 12,000 tons per…
Written by GILEAD EDELMAN, WIRED.COM One case in Turkey cuts to the heart of the search giant’s power. Being a global company has its perks. There’s a lot of money to be made overseas. But the biggest US tech companies are finding out that there’s also a downside: Every country where you make money is…
Yearly, the amount of e-waste produced by the entire bitcoin network is comparable to that produced by a country like the Netherlands. Written by Jody Serrano There’s no doubt that cryptocurrency in its current form is bad news for our planet. But while much attention has been paid to crypto’s carbon footprint and electrical use, its impact on…
Written by Joan Aimuengheuwa Mobility platform, Bolt, formerly known as Taxify, focused on ensuring affordability, ease and sustainability in urban travel, has taken a step in Kenya which is considered ‘unreasonable’ by the public. Recently, one of the company’s drivers was assaulted by female passengers. Rather than Bolt taking adequate actions, the company suspended the driver…
Google Chrome, approximately used by 2.65BN users, dominates the web browser market. The problem with such dominance, however, is Chrome has become the number one target for hackers and now Google has had to issue another serious upgrade warning. This dominance has caused it to be a major target for hackers. The company recently issued…
Written by Joan Aimuengheuwa Fintech unicorn, Flutterwave, has partnered with Currencycloud to stimulate expansion in Europe and the United States. Interestingly, Flutterwave was listed as one of the 100 Most Influential Companies in Time’s recently published magazine. The current partnership with Currencycloud will help the company increase its customer base, gaining wider traction. The company…
Written by Luis Monzon The unprecedented speed of development of the COVID-19 vaccines can be attributed to multiple factors including record levels of international collaboration and swift action on the part of many governments and regulatory bodies to provide a conducive framework. As every nation across the globe faced impending economic doom, massive cross-sector funding…
Written by Luis Monzon One of South Africa’s big 4 telecoms, Vodacom, has announced the launch of a programme that will see over 600 young girls between the ages of 14 and 18 receive coding training virtually from 4-7 October 2021. The initiative is called the #CodeLikeAGirl programme and aims to encourage more girls to explore careers that…
Written by Luis Monzon Microsoft has revealed the launch date for its Office 2021 consumer release on 5 October 2021. The tech giant also announced that its Microsoft Office Long Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) for Windows and Mac will be available for commercial and government users from today. According to The Verge, Office LTSC is designed for…
Written by TOM JACKSON Kenyan fintech startup Jumuisha, which helps churches and NGOs receive donations, make payments and manage events all in one place, has raised a round of seed funding to help it scale. Launched in October 2020, Jumuisha allows churches to receive donations via USSD, bank transfer, mobile money, online payment or credit cards, and…
Written by TOM JACKSON South African startup 6DOT50 is enabling crypto-holders to pay for goods and services at over 40,000 merchants across the country, including at Shoprite Holdings stores and all Zapper merchants. Until now cryptocurrencies have mostly failed to fulfil the primary purpose of money, namely its ability to be exchanged for goods and…
Liquid Intelligent Technologies, is now delivering affordable high-speed connectivity to communities in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) using state-of-the-art Wireless Optical Communication technology (WOC) from Project Taara at X, Alphabet’s moonshot factory. This achievement marks a robust high-capacity communications bridge between Kinshasa and Congo Brazzaville. Despite being just 4.8 kilometres apart, internet is more…
Written by Queenie Wong Facebook said Thursday that it’s taking a tougher approach against groups of accounts from real users who work together to cause harm. The social network says it may reduce the reach of content from these accounts or disable them if they’re working together to cause harm and evade the rules. The…
Written by Luis Monzon TECNO Mobile’s Spark 7 series of smartphones is set to officially launch in South Africa on 16 September 2021, a statement from the company reads. After the September launch, TECNO says the Spark 7 series will be available for purchase from October 2021. “We aim to provide the best contemporary technology in artistic designs…
Written by TOM JACKSON Kenyan startup Teleeza has developed a mobile content aggregation and advertising platform that utilises a smartphone’s lockscreen. Launched earlier this year, Teleeza allows users to easily and conveniently access customised content on their lockscreen, and has already onboarded over 55 local, regional and international publishers. The startup has 30,000 users on the platform,…
Facebook looks to offer users personalised shopping experiences with the new features. Facebook is rolling out new ways for businesses to find and chat with potential customers on its apps, the social media company said Thursday, as it seeks to become an online shopping destination. The new features will help Facebook, already a leader in digital advertising, offer personalised…
The first phone to sport a 108 MP main camera was the Xiaomi Mi Note 10, an upper-midrange offering launched in November of 2019. Since then, Xiaomi has expanded 108 MP sensors to a myriad of its products, but Samsung has so far only used this resolution for its top of the line offerings in the S…
Written by Taylor Hatmaker Facebook is in the hot seat again. The Wall Street Journal published a powerful multi-part series on the company this week, drawing from internal documents on everything from the company’s secretive practice of whitelisting celebrities to its knowledge that Instagram is taking a serious toll on the mental health of teen girls. The flurry of investigative…
Written by Shubham Pandey Africa has witnessed an immense amount of cryptocurrency adoption over the recent years. This doesn’t come as an unexpected move. Consider this, the fees paid to remittance service providers, to send money to Africa, average to nearly 9 percent. This marks the highest rate in the world and three times the Sustainable Development…
The Global Innovation Initiative Group (GIIG) stands out as an investment vehicle supporting early-stage tech startups by establishing a new fund aimed at investing in early tech innovations startups across Africa. The curaçao-based private investment fund, GIIG Africa Fund, invested annually in winner pools across the Africa region of the Global Startup Awards (GSA) – the world’s…
Written by Luis Monzon Logitech has today announced a partnership with Mustek Limited, one of the largest assemblers and distributors of personal computers and complementary ICT products in South Africa, to meet the growing demand for high-quality video conferencing technology across the region. “Through this partnership, even more businesses across South Africa will benefit from Logitech’s…
Written by Tage Kene-Okafor Less than 3% of genetic material used in global pharmaceutical research is from Africa. The staggering gap is quite surprising because Africans and people of African descent are reported to be more genetically diverse than any other population. Since launching in 2019, African genomics startup 54gene has been at the forefront of bridging this divide in the global…