Nairobi, August 1 – The 2022 SweepSouth Report on Pay and Working Conditions for Domestic Workers for Kenya and South Africa has been released. This is the fifth year that SweepSouth has released their annual report, each year painting a picture of what domestic workers go through and endure. This year, the survey was sent…
The future of African banking is digital. A 2021 Fiserv report showed that “78% of people under the age of 40 would stay with their bank if it went all digital, compared to only 47% of people over 40”. Africa has the youngest population in the world, with over 70% of sub-Saharan Africa under the age…
Outsource Monetic Group, an American and Senegalese fintech based in Atlanta, GA, announced this week the completion of a pre-seed funding round with 500 Global, a San Francisco-based startup accelerator. The fintech also announced the start of the pilot phase of its private ATM network, KaliSpot, in Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire. The KaliSpot network is…
Michanic, a South African mobile car service and repair platform, has received US$400,000 in debt capital from the MultiChoice Innovation Fund to assist it in further developing its technology and expanding across the country. Michanic, founded in 2016 by Lesetja Dikgale, allows users to request instant service and repair quotes from its online platform, saving…
Aerobotics, a South African agri-tech startup, has launched a new yield management platform, providing growers with tools to measure, manage, and protect their yields. Aerobotics, founded in Cape Town in 2014, uses aerial imagery from drones and satellites and combines it with machine learning algorithms to provide tree and wine farmers with early problem detection…
Qwili, a hybrid hardware-software startup based in Cape Town, has raised US$1.2 million in an oversubscribed seed funding round to support the launch of its low-cost NFC smartphone. E4E Africa, a venture capital organization focused on entrepreneurs, led the funding round, which included funds and angel investors in addition to Strat-Tech, Next Chymia, and Untapped…
Applications for the second year of DMZ’s incubator program, which aims to support early-stage tech startups, are now open. DMZ Cairo, which will open in 2021, will provide the next generation of tech entrepreneurs with the tools they need to build, launch, and scale highly impactful startups in Egypt’s capital. The Academy of Scientific Research…
Safaricom customers can now purchase tokens for coding lessons through the mobile operator’s financial services platform, M-Pesa. Customers will be able to activate the coding lessons on their children’s tablets, laptops, and desktop computers after making a successful purchase. Safaricom will collaborate with Kodris to see this new business venture through to completion. “We are…
Gamic Guild, a platform dedicated to providing users with a diverse catalog of NFT games to play while also earning, plans to introduce gamers to blockchain gaming by hosting “Gameathon,” Africa’s largest play-to-earn video game tournament. Gamic Guild is Africa’s largest play-to-earn gaming guild, offering players multiple economic earning opportunities through blockchain games. Gameathon is…
Namibia’s first Bitcoin ATM is now available at the Crypto Kiosk in Windhoek’s Maerua Mall. The Crypto Kiosk operates in full compliance with the Namibian Financial Intelligence Centre and all applicable Namibian and international legislation (NFIC). Bitcoin ATMs are similar to traditional ATMs, but instead of connecting to a bank account, they connect directly to…
Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs) are changing the way we think about mobility – and transforming the digital network infrastructure that supports these vehicles. Soon, every car will be connected and able to talk to everything around it using Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) technology, including other cars and smart city infrastructure. But as with any connected computing…
The price of a product determines what customer segment would make demands for them and determines its classification as a luxury good or one for the middle class. There are many factors used in determining the price of a product or service and they can determine your market share. 1. The Price of Your Competition Your competition…
Paratus, a telecommunications company, will open Armada, a new data center in Windhoek, Namibia come August 20222. For the first time, colocation customers will have the option of using infrastructure hosting services. Any client hosting within the facility will be able to select which telecommunications provider they want to use. Schalk Erasmus, COO of the…
Kodris Africa, an education technology firm, has partnered with Safaricom to promote coding education by purchasing annual lessons through the M-PESA app. Customers can now use the M-PESA platform to purchase tokens that provide a year’s worth of coding lessons and then activate them on a tablet, laptop, or desktop computer for their children to…
As part of its global expansion, Moove, the world’s first mobility fintech and Uber’s largest vehicle supply partner in EMEA, has announced its launch in India. Moove, a company that provides revenue-based financing to mobility entrepreneurs, has expanded from its African roots to Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Bangalore to provide vehicle financing to Uber driver-partners. Moove…
PayGate, a subsidiary of South Africa’s DPO Group, has announced the addition of Samsung Pay as an additional payment method for its merchants. The mobile payment solution enables secure and private mobile payments without the need to hand over cash or share payment card information for each new transaction. “Samsung Pay eliminates the need to…
The UN Population Fund and AfriLabs have launched an incubation program to support ideas that address female genital mutilation (FGM) and climate change. The Climate HackLab project was launched in May 2021 by the UNFPA East and Southern Africa Regional Office as part of the flagship Safeguard Young People Programme. The HackLab is a climate…
With this second emerging market seed stage fund, Seedstars, a seed-stage venture fund devoted to emerging and frontier markets, will build on its success in supporting over 90 emerging market venture ecosystems and invest in 100 pre-seed and seed-stage companies throughout Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America over the course of the next…
The Krosscoin Ecosystem’s Hashgreed, a Nigerian NFT marketplace, multifunctional NFT, and super dapp platform, recently raised more than US$1 million in investment for expansion outside of Nigeria. The Hashgreed platform is made to make web3 solutions for asset tokenization, commerce, and creativity more accessible to both individuals and corporations. DeFi and WorkFi solutions are also…
The first 156 firms confirmed to be a part of the famed Silicon Valley accelerator Y Combinator’s S22 cohort include four African startups. The S22 batch of the Y Combinator program, which helped launch businesses like Airbnb, Coinbase, and Dropbox among others, is presently in session and will come to a close in September with…
The TU/Ecomotive student group at TU Eindhoven has revealed that they have created an electric passenger automobile that purifies the air as it travels. The prototype vehicle, known as Zem, uses “Direct air collecting” technology to purify the air as it travels rather than emitting it. Direct air capture, according to TU/Ecomotive, is a revolutionary…
SANAD Fund for MSME, an impact investment fund committed to assisting business owners in the Middle East and North Africa, and Silicon Badia, a venture capital firm investing in global technology entrepreneurs, both actively participated in the $12 million Series A fundraise for Cartona, a B2B platform with headquarters in Egypt. Along with already established…
Ubenwa, a cutting-edge healthtech firm that uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to identify newborns between the ages of 0 and 6 months, has secured $2.5 million in pre-seed capital to scale its operations and realize its go-to-market plan. Charles Onu, a Nigerian with experience in the medical industry and a significant amount of AI…
With outstanding results, Jobberman, the largest online training and job placement platform in sub-Saharan Africa, has broadened its non-cognitive soft-skills training to cover low-tech messaging networks like WhatsApp and Telegram. The program had a 41 percent completion rate over a five-month period, which is nearly three times higher than the typical completion rate for certificated…
In order to increase the productivity of Africa’s pharmaceutical industry, Nigerian startup Remedial Health has created a number of solutions. As a result, it was accepted into the Silicon Valley-based Y Combinator incubator. Remedial Health, founded in 2020 by Samuel Okwuada and Victor Benjamin, offers a variety of technological solutions that make it simpler for…
Gumtree, a South African online listings network, has been acquired by Impresa Capital, a venture capital firm with offices in Durban, for an unknown sum, subject to regulatory approval. Gumtree, one of the most popular locally published websites in the nation, was founded in 2004 and currently has 4 million unique visitors and 71 million…
Adopting edge computing is the next important step in future-proofing your infrastructure. By moving data processing towards the ‘edge’, you bring real-time decision-making to where it’s needed. This supports whatever capabilities will be critical tomorrow, from Internet of Things (IoT) technologies to Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered applications. Edge computing will be bigger than cloud computing…
With the introduction of KwikStore, Kwik is extending the range of digital services it provides to African business owners and social sellers, adding even another new service to the already amazing package it offers. KwikStore is a free e-commerce storefront solution that enables any African business owner, merchant, social vendor entrepreneur, and small to medium-sized…
A cooperation between Lender Equity Bank Kenya and NALA Payments Limited has been declared. NALA is a platform for processing remittance payments that is authorized in the US and the UK to facilitate remittances from the diaspora into Kenya. According to a statement from Equity, the partnership would enable Kenyans living in the UK and…
The Kofi Annan Award for Innovation in Africa has been given to Vaxiglobal, a Zimbabwean startup that uses contactless biometrics to reduce waste of immunization resources, improve data quality with open standards, and enable the expansion of immunization campaigns in African nations. Vaxiglobal will receive a $250,000 cash prize as one of the award’s winners….