All about Business.
Paratus announced in February that it had reached an agreement with Google to be the landing partner for the Equiano cable in Namibia. The agreement includes the construction and management of a cable landing station for the Equiano subsea cable in Swakopmund. Paratus has already completed the construction and is on track with its aggressive…
DigsConnect, a South African student accommodation marketplace, now has over one million listed beds. The DigsConnect platform, launched in 2018 by Alexandria Procter and Greg Ramsay-Keal, allows landlords, estate agents, and property managers to post their property listings, with students then searching and filtering through these listings to find accommodation that meets their needs, as…
Finance options and transactions are undergoing a massive transformation all over the world. Payments, lending, asset, and wealth management are all being reshaped by digital technologies as individuals and organizations adopt more effective digital solutions to solve problems in virtually every aspect of life. Nigeria’s financial landscape has not lagged. According to a McKinsey report…
Mdundo, an Africa-focused music streaming service, is counting on more collaborations with telcos across the continent to increase its earnings and user base. Last year, the company signed agreements with MTN and Airtel in Nigeria, as well as Vodacom in Tanzania, which appear to be paying off, as its user base nearly doubled as it…
Kenya’s central bank has asked the public to share their thoughts on the possibility of adopting a digital currency by May 20th, just one day after it was revealed that Zambia is also testing its viability. Nigeria was the first African country to launch its central bank digital currency (CBDC), dubbed the eNaira, in October…
A few months into the coronavirus pandemic, in April 2020, a team of four African-origin students in Sweden—including The Gambia-born Lamin Darboe, who had recently moved to Stockholm to pursue a master’s degree—participated in a climate action challenge organized by the Norrsken Foundation and Stockholm Innovation & Growth (Sting). Though the team, which also included…
SendChamp, a Nigerian startup, provides communication APIs and customer relationship management tools to developers and businesses, allowing them to reach their customers through various messaging channels. SendChamp was founded by Goodness Kayode and Damilola Olotu with the goal of improving customer relations for both technical and non-technical business owners. The APIs provided by the startup…
Docklands Ventures has acquired South African startup ParkUpp, a marketplace that connects owners of parking spaces with companies and individuals in need of parking. ParkUpp was founded in 2016 with the goal of improving the parking experience for shopping malls. After realizing that the market was too small, the company pivots in 2018 and launches…
Greycroft and Tiger Global, two American venture capital firms, led a $15 million Series A funding round for Nigerian investment platform Bamboo, which allows Nigerians to buy and sell US equities in real time via their mobile computers or phones. Motley Fool Ventures, Saison Capital, Chrysalis Capital, and Y-Michael Combinator’s Seibel all participated in the…
Lami, an insurance technology company, has announced the acquisition of Bluewave Insurance Agency, a Nairobi-based insurtech firm, for an undisclosed sum, allowing it to reach Africa’s underserved population and fill the existing insurance gap. Lami will continue its goal of democratizing insurance goods and services for low-income Africans by providing users with accessible and affordable…
According to Bloomberg News, Ford Motor is planning an additional $20 billion investment in the development of electric vehicles. According to the report, which cited people familiar with the plan, the $10 billion to $20 billion investment will be spread out over the next five to ten years and will include converting its current factories…
There has never been a more exciting time to be in the African startup scene. According to a recent BCG report, the number of local startups that received funding increased by 46 percent between 2015 and 2020, a growth rate six times faster than the global average. The very nature of the startups in our…
BlackBerry announced on Monday that it will sell its legacy patents, primarily related to mobile devices, messaging, and wireless networking, to a special purpose vehicle formed to acquire the company’s patent assets for $600 million. BlackBerry stated that the transaction with Catapult IP Innovations will have no effect on customers’ use of its products or…
Many organizations are seeking ways to offer their products and services to customers in an efficient way in order to save time, ease the processing of the orders and provide the highest quality of delivery as at the expected time. One major opportunity that most start-ups are not taking advantage of is the availability of data in…
Magalix, an Egyptian-American cloud security startup, has been acquired by Weaveworks Limited, a GitOps firm with offices in London and San Francisco. Magalix, founded in 2017 by Egyptian-American entrepreneurs Ahmed F. Mohamed and Ahmed Badran and headquartered in the United States with its R&D engineering team in Egypt, created a platform that allows organizations to…
If you’re new to the world of blockchain and crypto asset management, the term “smart contracts” may sound a little complicated. But, if “smart contracts” are the foundation upon which Defi will work or will invariably work, it only makes sense for everyone to understand what they are. Understanding the origins of smart contracts is…
Nigeria became the first African country to adopt a digital currency, the eNaira, in October 2021. Three months later, only 10% of digital currency transactions have been peer-to-peer transactions. This was revealed by Godwin Emefiele, Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, at the first MPC meeting of 2022. According to a Nairametrics report, the…
Many people around the world have had a difficult time as a result of the global pandemic. It’s been a difficult time for individuals involved in art, entertainment, and sports, with the closing of galleries and other public display places and venues. However, a new pioneering concept emerging from Africa has the potential to transform…
The development of Covid-19 and the desire to be safe has forced many businesses to operate in silos, which has hampered effective communication. Most firms now rely primarily on communication technologies to bring together a big number of people who are physically separated. In fact, applications such as Zoom are a major focus. However, as…
Microsoft and FedEx made more information about the second phase of their multiyear relationship, which they first announced in 2020, public today. On January 24, the pair announced that they are collaborating to establish a cross-platform “logistics as a service” offering for retailers, merchants, and brands by combining FedEx network analytics with Microsoft Dynamics 365….
Workers are quitting employment at an alarming rate, resulting in a talent shortage that has corporations around the world scrambling. According to a recent Citrix poll, 40% of 1,000 knowledge professionals in the United States have left or are considering leaving at least one job in the last year. The event has been called “The…
BitCo Telecoms, one of South Africa’s major Telecommunications and Internet Service Providers, announces fiscal and market share growth for 2021, as well as plans to expand its national last mile carrier-grade network and geographic coverage to outlying areas and towns in 2022 and beyond. In 2021, BitCo had a great year of company growth, with…
Apple has been investing heavily in Apple TV+, its own streaming platform that features original movies and TV shows. While Apple TV+ market share increased in 2021, the platform remains well behind its competitors in the United States, with only a 5% market share. According to a JustWatch data obtained by 9to5Mac, Apple TV+ market…
Many experts lost their jobs after the Covid-19 epidemic struck in 2020. Others reduced their working hours or began working remotely, giving them more opportunity to pursue numerous revenue streams. These factors contributed to a significant increase in the number of startup and small business launches, many of which are still surviving as we approach…
P2vest Technology Limited reported that their peer-to-peer lending application, P2Vest, has reached 100,000 customers who have access to rapid loans. This accomplishment highlights the organization’s contribution in improving the way individuals obtain credit and lend money by connecting borrowers and lenders. Over the last 15 months, the leading peer-to-peer lending network has employed technology to…
Chari, a Moroccan B2B e-commerce and fintech business, has raised a bridge round of funding valued at US$100 million. Chari, which was founded in 2020 by husband and wife pair Ismael and Sophia Belkhayat, allows traditional local store operators in Morocco to order and have things delivered. It collaborates with more than half of the…
IFC and the Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We-Fi) announced a new call for applications for IFC ScaleX, a new program aimed at bridging the financing gap that women entrepreneurs continue to encounter, particularly in emerging countries, through supporting accelerators. IFC ScaleX is a performance-based project for which IFC has partnered with Village Capital to launch….
A new pan-African payment system eliminates historical complexities, such as the cost of cross-border payments, boosts operational efficiencies, and paves the way for more stable and stronger African currencies, all of which are expected to boost intra-Africa commerce. Following the formal debut of a new payment system in Africa, a Kenyan client can now pay…
The subscription economy has come of age. The notion is gaining traction in the United States and Europe for a wide range of services. Subscription models, such as Netflix for TV, Spotify for music, Adobe Creative Cloud for design services, and Ring for home security, have steadily woven themselves into our daily lives and enterprises…
Fintech platforms are increasingly looking for new ways to serve their clients, one of which underlines the motivation for the BNPL (Buy Now Pay Later) model that many have begun to use. This unique credit offering model has grown in popularity in recent years, owing to the rapid gratification and delayed payment that it offers…