Egypt-based life science startup Nawah Scientific has sold a strategic stake to Essam Abdelhadi, the former vice president Middle East, Turkey, Africa and Pakistan (METAP) of Abbott, a US-based healthcare multinational, ahead of its upcoming Series A round. Founded in 2015, Nawah Scientific is an online platform that receives experiment requests, collects samples, conducts tests and returns…
Tala, a fintech company, announced that it has raised USD 145 million in a Series E funding round led by Upstart and with participation from Stellar Development Foundation. Tala’s total capital now stands at over USD 350 million, thanks to new investors including Kindred Ventures and The J. Safra Group, as well as current investors…
African blockchain company Bitmama has closed a $350,000 pre-Seed round, led by Flori Ventures, with participation from Nigeria-based investment fund Emergence Capital, Fedha Capital, and a host of VCs and angel investors. The Bitmama pre-seed round will be used to grow its operational presence, expand its team, and penetrate new markets across the continent, while rapidly scaling crypto and payment…
Sudanese classifieds and marketplace platform alsoug has raised US$5 million in Series A funding in a round that includes Egyptian fintech unicorn Fawry. Founded in 2016, alsoug is Sudan’s largest classifieds platform, and the startup has raised a US$5 million Series A funding round in order to build out an associated fintech platform, Cashi. “From our earliest beginnings…
South African student housing marketplace DigsConnect has secured a ZAR3 million (US$200,000) grant from the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation to help university students from low-income backgrounds secure safe and affordable accommodation. Launched in 2018, the DigsConnect platform allows landlords, estate agents and property managers to post their property listings, with students then searching and filtering through these listings to…
Sudanese classifieds startup, alsoug has received a $5 million investment co-led by Egyptian fintech company, Fawry. The investment is the first foreign investment into the Northern African country since sanctions were lifted in 2020. alsoug is Sudan’s largest classifieds marketplace and allows consumers to buy and sell products including real estate, cars, electronics, and furniture as well…
Eden Life, Africa’s first home services app for scheduling food, laundry and cleaning services, has completed a $1.4m Seed round, led by UK-based LocalGlobe, along with participation from Samurai Incubate, Future Africa, Village Global, Rising Tide Africa and Enza Capital. This brings Eden Life’s total investment to date to $2m following pre-seed backing from all of Andela’s original co-founders, and additional accelerator…
Tunisian last mile delivery startup Lamma has secured an undisclosed investment from Orange Ventures to fuel its international expansion. Founded last year by Hamza Guesmi and Koussi Aymen, Lamma recently launched its q-commerce – “quick commerce” – app, offering delivery services in under 45 minutes. The startup began life as a carpooling service before it pivoted into…
Payday, a Pan-African financial technology company has announced a $1m pre-seed fund raise. According to the startup, the raise will help it to build an online payments system that is equivalent to Paypal. According to the announcement, the raise was supported by several investors including LofyInc, Microtraction, Magic Fund, Ventures Platform, Voltron Capital, CcHub Syndicate, Helicarrier…
Mono, an African startup that helps connect consumers’ bank accounts to financial applications, has raised a $15 million Series A round, the company confirmed to TechCrunch today. The round, led by Tiger Global — the VC firm’s third major investment in Africa this year after Flutterwave and FairMoney — also had participation from new investors Target Global (an investor…
African Development Partners III Fund (ADP III) has surpassed its US$800 million target and is set to close at US$900 million, with an additional US$250 million in dedicated co-investment capital, according to Development Partners International, a premier investment firm focused on Africa. This takes the total amount invested on the continent to US$1.15 billion. ADP…
Moroccan B2B e-commerce and fintech startup Chari has raised a US$5 million seed round which values the company at US$70 million and sets it up for expansion into French-speaking Africa. Founded last year by husband and wife team Ismael and Sophia Belkhayat, Chari.ma allows traditional proximity store owners in Morocco to order products and have them delivered….
Tunisian data management and analysis startup Biware has raised a MAD3.5 million (US$1.2 million) seed funding round to help it expand its team and launched new branches. Founded in 2011 by Mohamed Amine Boussarsar and Walid Kaâbachi, Biware assists businesses in extracting value from their data for strategic purposes, such as increasing revenues, lowering costs, and reducing…
South African startup Stone Three, a leading industry 4.0 solution business that combines expert services with the power of machine learning to solve problems that increase operational productivity and keep people safer, healthier and happier, has raised expansion funding from Knife Capital. The end-to-end solutions for AI-augmented digital productivity, health and workplace safety offered by Stone…
According to a report published by the World Bank, it was observed that while Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) create 7 out of 10 jobs in emerging markets, access to finance has remained a key constraint to SME growth. The Report noted that access to finance is one of the most cited obstacles facing SMEs to…
In July, video conferencing mainstay Zoom announced that it was stepping into its first major acquisition buying cloud call centre service provider Five9 for $14.7-billion in an all-stock transaction. The deal was supposed to be finalised within “the first half of 2022.” Now, CNBC reports that Zoom’s agreement with Five9 has fallen through after Five9’s shareholders rejected the deal….
Andela, a global engineering talent outsourcing company launched in Nigeria in 2014 has secured a $200-million investment during a Series E funding round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, the venture capital arm of Japanese mega-corp SoftBank. This latest funding round brings Andela’s total valuation to $1.5-billion, officially making it Africa’s fifth unicorn startup. According…
Nigerian startup Verto, a B2B payments platform that provides a fast, simple, and reliable way for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to make payments to their suppliers in over 200 countries across 39 currencies, has raised a US$10 million Series A round to boost its geographical expansion. Launched in 2018 by co-founders Ola Oyetayo and…
South African startup Sun Exchange, a peer-to-peer solar leasing platform, has raised a further US$2.5 million in funding by way of a convertible note investment from an existing investor to help it scale more quickly. Launched in 2015, Sun Exchange enables anyone, anywhere in the world, to buy remotely-located solar cells that power schools, businesses and other…
mLab Southern Africa has opened applications for its StartUp Accelerator, offering selected companies access to mentorship, business clinics and grant seed funding. The mLab StartUp Accelerator 2021 is open to startups based in Gauteng, Limpopo and the Northern Cape, and will provide 15 businesses with a range of support mechanisms for a period of six months. It…
Senegalese delivery startup Yobante Express, an online marketplace that connects local couriers with local commerce to optimise domestic, cross-border and last mile delivery, has raised a US$1.2 million bridge funding round as it looks to build on its impressive growth. Founded in November 2018, Yobante Express is a web and mobile platform that uses gig economy, independent…
Cairo-based startup Pravica, a communication platform using blockchain technology to empower user privacy and security, has secured an undisclosed investment for a Swiss VC firm to help it scale operations. Founded in 2019 by Mohamed Abdou, Pravica utilises blockchain to empower user privacy and security in the communication industry, specifically messaging apps, where enormous amounts of data…
Flat6Labs, a regional seed and early-stage VC firm, has announced the second close of its Tunisia-based Anava Seed Fund (ASF), taking the total size of the fund up to US$10 million from US$3 million. The Anava Seed Fund was launched in 2017 in partnership with the Tunisian American Enterprise Fund, BIAT Bank and Meninx Holding,…
Nigerian cryptocurrency exchange Yellow Card has raised US$15 million in Series A funding to ramp up hiring and continue its expansion across the continent. Launched in 2018, Yellow Card makes it easy for anyone, anywhere in Africa, to buy cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum and USDT Stablecoin using cash, mobile money, card, or bank transfer. The company now…
Moroccan e-heath startup DataPathology has raised MAD2 million (US$$223,000) to help it transform the pathological diagnosis system and improve services provided to practitioners and patients. Founded in 2020 by Hicham El Attar and Mohammed El Khannoussi, DataPathology fights shortage and delays of diagnosis of cancer patients in rural areas, providing healthcare practitioners with a complete solution to…
Input Output has launched a six million dollars (USD) blockchain fund in Africa, to invest in the most innovative blockchain projects, who are building on Cardano in Africa. The fund focuses on blockchain technology because the lack of deeply embedded legacy infrastructure means that African governments and businesses have fewer obstacles to adopting next-generation technology than the…
Dopay, the B2B2C payments platform serving 1.7bn unbanked workers in emerging markets, has closed a US$ 18 million Series A funding round. Dopay meets a strong and growing demand from businesses for cashless payroll and from employees for access to digital banking and electronic payments. Worldwide, an estimated 200 million businesses still rely on cash…
Startups have spent the last decade trying to offer every variation of Airbnb that they can imagine. But Ukio thinks it has found a way through the ever-growing tangle of housing rental competitors — and regulators — right as remote work becomes the norm. It offers rentals of one month or longer, featuring a turnkey premium experience…
LG Electronics, the Korean tech giant that once was a leading player in mobile phones but is now winding down that business, is making an acquisition that points to its ambitions in another, emerging area: next-generation automotive hardware and services. Today the company announced that it will be snapping up Cybellum, an Israeli automotive cybersecurity specialist that detects…
Egyptian startup Shiphaly, a platform connecting shoppers and travellers, has raised an undisclosed six-figure seed funding round from angel investors to help it build on its steady growth. Launched in October 2019, Shiphaly is a mobile app and marketplace connecting shoppers who want to buy products from abroad with travellers who can buy and deliver the products…