All about Business.
You Can Now Give Amazon More of Your Money in Monthly Installments Amazon is joining forces with buy-now-pay-later company Affirm, which will allow customers to split the total cost of purchases above $50 into monthly payments. Written By Jody Serrano Amazon wants you to buy, buy, buy, so it’s making it easier for you to do that. The company…
Disrupting the supply chain with better data analysis Written By Yinka Okeowo According to the SAS Experience 2030 research, 65% of South African consumers have indicated that they will not be returning to traditional shopping practices following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, with 37% of those stating they will use even more online and digital apps than…
Ethiopia hints on launching social networking platforms, rules out Facebook, others from country Writen by Joan Aimuengheuwa Ethiopia has embarked on the development of its own social networking platform in opposition to Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and Zoom. Shumete Gizaw, director-general of the Information Network Security Agency (INSA), Ethiopia, accused Facebook of widely spreading a wrong…
SA virtual accelerator Sw7 builds on offering with formal AWS partnership Written by TOM JACKSON South Africa’s Sw7, which claims to be Africa’s largest virtual business accelerator, is looking to up the ante of its content and support for thousands of African enterprises by tapping into a formula partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS), the…
African fintech OPay valued at $2B in SoftBank Vision Fund 2-led $400M funding Written by Tage Kene-Okafor Chinese-backed and Africa-focused fintech company OPay raised $400 million in new financing led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Bloomberg reported Monday, valuing the company at $2 billion. The round, which marks the fund’s first investment in an African startup, drew…
Mobility startup Plentywaka picks up $1.2M seed, acquires Ghana’s Stabus Written by Tage Kene-Okafor Lagos and Toronto-based mobility startup Plentywaka has raised a $1.2 million seed round to scale its operations on the back of leaving the Techstars Toronto accelerator program last month. Canadian-based VC firm The Xchange led the round, SOSV and Shock Ventures participated, while…
New business registration forms will be available by end of August – CAC. Written by David Oladele The Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) has disclosed that the two new forms of business registration provided by the Companies and Allied Matters Act (CAMA 2020) will be available for Nigerians by the end of August 2021. The registrar…
Is public shaming by online lending platforms that gives loan a legal or criminal?- A legal perspective Written by Ejike Kanife Nigeria is a country with millions of people existing in abject lack. With an unemployment rate of 33.3%, the country has the second-highest rate on the global ranking. According to a Bloomberg report, about 23.5…
Is Uber raising your fare based on your battery percentage? Written By Aleksandar Anastasov The topic of privacy has been a heated one for some time now, and if you are wary of large companies taking a peek into your life without you knowing, you would not be the only one. Recently, a Twitter user reported…
Here’s How to Know When It’s Time to Pivot Your Online Business Written by Christine Hansen Even if you have an absolutely perfect business idea, there will inevitably come a time in which you have to pivot. Pivoting is a normal, natural part of the business development process — particularly for service-based entrepreneurs. With that…
South African e-health VitruvianMD raises 8-figure ZAR funding round Written By TOM JACKSON South African e-health startup VitruvianMD has raised an eight-figure ZAR – so at least ZAR10 million (US$659,000) – funding round in order to scale its tech and launch more pilots. Founded last year, VitruvianMD combines biomedical engineering and state-of-the-art artificial intelligence (AI) to deliver…
Meet Wale Abba, who designed Interswitch’s Quickteller and several Nigerian banking apps Written By Oluwanifemi Kolawole Nigerian fintech unicorn, Interswitch, has, for the past 19 years, led the way when it comes to digitising payments in Nigeria — where it provides most of the country’s digital banking infrastructure — and other African countries. Interestingly, an…
SA fintech startup Revio set for continental expansion as it powers SaaS businesses Written By TOM JACKSON South African fintech startup Revio, a subscription billing and payments platform that powers software-as-a-service (SaaS) businesses, is planning an expansion into other African markets soon. Co-founded in 2019 by venture builder The Delta and a private investor, Revio is a SaaS company…
Wiiqare App disrupts health care services in eastern DR Congo’s Goma Written By Africanews In the Democratic Republic of Congo, access to quality healthcare is expensive and tedious. But Bienvenue Zigabe has managed to create an application to facilitate quick access to medical services. “Wiiqare” helps patients pay for treatment and drugs using their savings…
Eight African fintech startups have been selected to participate in the latest edition of the GreenHouse Lab accelerator, securing access to funding and mentorship. Written by TOM JACKSON GreenHouse Lab is the flagship accelerator programme run by GreenHouse Capital, a Lagos-based fintech investment fund and platform focused on supporting early-stage companies and world-class emerging market entrepreneurs…
Founders of tech startups based in Egypt and Nigeria have been accepted into the global Endeavor network, gaining access to various support services to help their companies scale. Written by TOM JACKSON The Endeavor initiative works to catalyze long-term economic growth by selecting, mentoring, and accelerating the best high-impact entrepreneurs worldwide, and has accepted a host…
How Nigeria’s Nguvu Health provides on-demand therapy sessions to Africans Written by TOM JACKSON Nigerian startup Nguvu Health is providing on-demand online therapy sessions to Africans anywhere in the world via their smartphones. Founded in March 2020, Nguvu Health utilises Android and iOS apps to connect users with licensed therapists via in-app messaging or video call, in…
Ghanaian fintech Waya sees strong growth propel it into other African markets Written by TOM JACKSON Ghana-based payments startup Waya is seeing month-on-month growth of between 20 per cent in its three existing markets, prompting it to launch expansion activities into three additional African countries. Founded in 2018 after co-founder Delali Anku-Adiamah faced a challenge sending…
How Kenya’s Paylend is helping MSMEs better record data and access loans Written by TOM JACKSON Kenyan fintech startup Paylend, which is helping MSMEs better record data and access loans, is conducting surveys in Tanzania and Nigeria ahead of beta tests in those markets. Founded in 2019 by Bendon Murgor and Eliutherius Juma, Paylend is digitising the…
More than 300 African tech startups have raised over $1.1bn so far in 2021 Written by TOM JACKSON More than 300 African tech startups have raised more than US$1.1 billion combined so far in 2021, the first time the sector has broken the US$1 billion mark – and with four-and-a-half months of the year still to…
Why Innovation Is Increasingly Becoming Critical to Entrepreneurship Innovation is a facilitator of entrepreneurship and a way of empowering people to take charge of their lives and economic prosperity. At the same time, entrepreneurship is the answer to innovation both at the individual business level. It also stimulates the general business sector growth of a…
Growth tactics that will jump-start your customer base Jenny Wang is a principal investor at Neo and co-host of the “Techsetters” podcast. Brand-building is no longer a one-hit game, but an exercise in repetition: It may take four or five times for a user to see your startup’s name or logo to recognize, remember, or Google it….
According to Adeva IT, as of 2018, women held only 25% of all the jobs in the tech industry, despite women making up almost half of the total workforce. It is a known fact that women are under-represented in the African tech ecosystem. More women need to find their way into tech in Africa and…
Impact-Driven Startups Are a Gold-Mine for Investors Written By Krishna Athal ENTREPRENEUR LEADERSHIP NETWORK CONTRIBUTOR Investors across the globe are finding ways to unleash the power of their capital by trying out different industries and business models. Most investment-seeking entrepreneurs believe that projecting massive profits is the best way to impress investors. Many entrepreneurs also…
MAGNiTT has announced the launch of its first quarter of 2021 reports, which shows Egypt among the top three in MENA regions with the highest startup investment rates. MAGNiTT has announced the launch of its first quarter of 2021 reports, which cuts across the eCommerce, food and beverage, fintech, delivery and logistics, and healthcare sectors….
Instagram rolls out more anti-abuse features Instagram today is rolling out a set of new features aimed at helping people protect their accounts from abuse, including offensive and unwanted comments and messages. The company will introduce tools for filtering abusive direct message (DM) requests as well as a way for users to limit other people from…
Lamide has joined the KTN Global Alliance Africa as Country Lead (Nigeria). This is a six-year pioneer project co-funded by the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and Innovate UK which aims to promote job creation, inclusive growth and poverty reduction through knowledge sharing, skills building and opportunities to support businesses and innovations that…
Omnibiz set to digitize Nigeria’s informal B2B supply chain, gets $3M funding Omnibiz, a Nigerian-based startup has raised a seed round of $3 million to expand into new markets. Omnibiz is a B2B e-commerce platform that connects fast-moving consumer goods (FMCGs) manufacturers to retailers by digitizing the supply chain stakeholders. The platform offers a mobile…
Moove raises $23M to create flexible options for drivers to own cars in Africa Africa is home to more than a billion people where a majority have limited or no access to vehicle financing. In fact, the continent has the lowest per capita vehicle ownership in the world. For instance, in Nigeria, owning a car…
On her way she met a copy. The copy warned the Little Blind Text, that where it came from it would have been rewritten a thousand times and everything that was left from its origin would be the word “and” and the Little Blind Text should turn around and return to its own, safe country….