In order to promote entrepreneurs developing agricultural and climate solutions, Novastar Ventures, a pan-African venture capital business, has received a $25 million equity investment from the US International Development Financing Corporation (DFC). The $80 million East Africa Fund and the $108 million Africa Fund II, which allowed the company to enter West Africa, are followed…
By delivering online and offline payment solutions, Cellulant, a payments technology company, promises to redefine how businesses in Africa make payments and get paid. Due mostly to improvements in peer-to-peer (P2P) and consumer-to-business (C2B) payment systems, the payments market in Africa is expanding quickly. Yet, for companies looking to expand into Africa, the fragmentation of…
Applications are now open for the first Femintech Innovation Challenge from Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud computing division of the largest e-commerce company in the world, Amazon. The challenge is designed specifically for women-led startups in Africa and aims to promote innovation, networking, and investment opportunities. The Femintech Innovation Challenge will highlight and honor…
IamtheCODE and the UN Women Regional Office for East and Southern Africa have joined forces to address the gender gap in digital technology in Africa. A two-day hackathon that just ended in Johannesburg, South Africa, had as its goal providing 102 high school girls from townships in the province of Gauteng with digital literacy skills…
The British oil giant BP has announced a global partnership and charging arrangement with Uber. Under this partnership, BP will provide “bespoke” charging options to Uber drivers across its EV charging network. By 2030 in the United States, Canada, and Europe and by 2040 in the rest of the world, Uber wants to have a…
The second iteration of the “VC Grow” program for new VCs has been introduced by prominent development partners GIZ Egypt, FMO, and AfricaGrow. The program aims to invest equity or venture loans between the seed and series A stages and targets new and rising fund managers operating in Africa or the Middle East, with a…
The PepsiCo Greenhouse Accelerator: MENA Sustainability edition is now accepting applications with the goal of partnering with entrepreneurs with a mission to develop novel and ground-breaking agricultural solutions. Six firms and entrepreneurs with ground-breaking sustainability agriculture technologies will be chosen to participate in the 2023 PepsiCo Greenhouse Accelerator: MENA Sustainability edition program. At the closing…
The third Egypt’s Entrepreneur Awards (EEA), which will honor, recognize, and connect Egypt’s most creative, prosperous, and resilient businesspeople, is now accepting applications. The EEA is the first forum in Egypt to honor budding entrepreneurs and established, prosperous companies equally. It will give these business owners a platform, give them leverage, and help them advance…
The “missing middle” of East Africa will be addressed by a new EUR20 million (US$22 million) fund that Goodwell Investments and Oxfam Novib have announced. This fund will invest in early-stage development businesses that are having trouble obtaining financing from banks and investment funds. Goodwell Investments is an impact investment company that focuses on inclusive…
Between January 1 and March 31, 2018, African tech companies raised US$649,303,000, a decrease of 57.2% from the total raised during the same period in 2022 as the industry starts to suffer the effects of the global economic climate. The most recent edition of Disrupt Africa’s annual report on funding for African tech startups, which…
With its Growth Talent Accelerator Programme (GTAP) 2023 designed to upskill key startup team members into knowledgeable Growth Engineers for their firms, alGROWithm, a Nigerian-based growth talent accelerator, has opened applications to entrepreneurs from Nigeria and Kenya. Since its launch in 2019, alGROWithm has collaborated with tech companies, venture capital firms, and ecosystem builders to…
The term “generative AI” refers to a new class of Natural Language Processing (NLP) foundational models, such as the OpenAI ChatGPT and DALL-E, the Google BARD chatbot, the ERNIE Artificial Intelligence (AI) model from Baidu, and others. With the help of these models, users can create text and code, make predictions and summaries, translate across…
Elon Musk defended his contentious wage structure for Twitter on Friday, asserting that any social media site that didn’t adopt it would perish due to a bot invasion. On the eve of Twitter’s April 1 ultimatum that verified accounts with the prized blue tick that had not paid up would lose it, Musk made his…
The DFS Lab Stellar Africa Fund I, which will support high-potential builders and teams in Africa looking to revolutionize the landscape of digital payments and beyond by building on the Stellar network, has been unveiled by DFS Lab. Early-stage investor DFS Lab invests in founders that are generating possibilities for everyone while concentrating on Africa’s…
African companies have been invited to submit applications for the third Green Changemakers Challenge, a global innovation contest looking for products that give people the skills and mentality to help create a sustainable and just world. The Green Changemakers Challenge, which is being run by Ashoka in partnership with HSBC, will fund initiatives that assist…
Samsung Electronics has unveiled the Galaxy A54 5G and Galaxy A34 5G, two innovative smartphones that advance Samsung Galaxy’s commitment to designing awesome mobile experiences. These new additions to the popular Galaxy A series will help users shoot steady and crisp videos, see clearly even in bright conditions, and do more of the things they…
UmojaHack Africa 2023, a 2-day event for data scientists that aims to solve Africa’s toughest challenges through machine learning, was hosted by Zindi, the network for data scientists, on March 18–19, 2023. It brought together over 1000 students from 345 universities in 36 countries to create machine learning models for climate change. With over 1000…
The annual conference and awards are now accepting registration, according to the Africa Women Innovation and Entrepreneurship Forum (AWIEF). The AWIEF event, now in its ninth year, will take place on November 9 and 10, 2023, at the Kigali Convention Centre (KCC) in Kigali, Rwanda. More than 1,300 entrepreneurs and startups, industry experts, thought leaders,…
The Nigerian Internet Registration Association (NIRA), the registry for .ng Internet Domain Names, responsible for and maintainings the database of names registered in the .ng country code Top Level Domain, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), to provideon cyber security trainings for the personnel of the…
The venture-building company Factor[e] Ventures has opened a new venture studio for African entrepreneurs named Delta40. Factor[e] Ventures invests in early-stage companies in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. The venture studio will have its headquarters in Kenya and operations in Nigeria. It wants to invest between $100,000 and $600,000 in businesses in the fields of…
Since its new policy went into effect in January and called for digital lenders in the East African nation to provide proof of license, Google has removed hundreds of lending apps from the Kenyan Play Store. The directive followed Kenya’s Digital Credit Providers (DCP) laws from the previous year, which demanded that businesses that offer…
Governor of Anambra State, Prof. Chukwuma Charles Soludo, has launched the Solution Innovation District, (SID); the innovation and business incubation program of the State, starting with the Anambra Digital Tribe Program. The SID is set up to drive overall innovation in the State including deep technology, creative talents, startups, business innovations etc. The function which was…
Fintech has played a significant role in democratising access to financial services across Africa in the past decade. Improved access includes the usability and quality of these services, with most fintech solutions targeting the underserved population, including the youth, women, low-income earners, rural communities, and SMMEs. These groups have faced many barriers to accessing banking,…
Technology advancement has increased the value of data, and many businesses are willing to invest in it. These data are obtained from customers directly or indirectly. When data is directly gathered, customers are often asked for their consent, and they typically provide it. In contrast, information that is gained inadvertently may be gathered through tracking or…
Applications for the Greenovations Africa initiative, which provides access to mentoring and investment opportunities, are requested from African firms with creative ideas that address current difficulties in any green sector. Entrepreneurs in the fields of smart agriculture, renewable energy, waste management, water management, and climate action can submit an application to get specialized assistance, mentoring,…
If they don’t start paying for it, already verified Twitter accounts will soon lose their checkmarks. According to the website, on April 1st, “[it] will start winding down [its] heritage verified program and eliminating legacy verified checkmarks.” It was always clear that the business wanted to accomplish this. Elon Musk, the CEO of Twitter, stated…
Google, a division of the digital behemoth Alphabet, has unveiled its newest AI technologies. These tools will serve as add-ons to currently available services, such as Workspace apps, and aid with tasks like summarizing Gmail message threads, creating slide presentations, and taking meeting notes. In its most recent version, Google Pictures, Google Messages, and Gmail…
Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud computing division for the world’s largest e-commerce retailer, Amazon, continues to strengthen its footprint in Africa with a call-for-applications from early-stage startups to join their inaugural edition of the AWS FinTech Africa Accelerator. This program is hosted by AWS’ globally-recognized Startup Loft Accelerator, but unlike other cohorts, this edition…
Applications are now available for the African Impact Challenge, which supports participants in developing market-creating ideas that utilize technology to address the greatest challenges facing the continent. The African Impact Challenge is expanding to South Africa this year and introducing a pan-African health-focused stream, after a pilot in Ghana in 2020, a challenge in Kenya…
Applications for the fourth iteration of the ShEquity Business Accelerator have been opened by African investment firm ShEquity Partners, which focuses on women (SHEBA). ShEquity is an investment company that makes wise investments in Sub-Saharan African companies run and managed by women that are innovative, effective, and scalable. Through de-risking African female-led businesses, making them…