![[Africa Tech Review] Duncan Mochama: African startups continue to raise more funding](Images/Key Persons/DuncanMochama-IncentroAfrica.JPG)
[Africa Tech Review] Duncan Mochama: African startups continue to raise more funding
This has been quite a busy week for African startups. Egyptian fees management and digital collection platform, KlickIt, announced the closing of its first investment round to further develop its platform. Sympl, the first ‘Save Your Money Pay Later’ platform in Egypt, announced it raised $6 million funding round led by Beco Capital along with A15, and Global Ventures. The Mastercard Foundation and the Dunin-Deshpande Queen’s Innovation Centre (DDQIC) announced a partnership offering free virtual entrepreneurship training, and an opportunity to receive startup funding to more than 1,000 students through the Jim Leech Mastercard Foundation Fellowship on Entrepreneurship for African Students at Queen’s University.
In Nigeria, TradeDepot, the leading B2B eCommerce and embedded finance platform this week raised $110 million in an equity and debt funding round to support the delivery of Buy-Now-Pay-Later services to 5 million SME retailers across the continent. FMO also partnered with Collaborative for Frontier Finance (CFF) to help recruit, train, and support more women and other underrepresented capital allocators in early-stage venture capital (VC) ecosystems across Africa. CinetPay, a digital finance platform that enables merchants in Francophone Africa to seamlessly accept and make payments, announced a $2.4 million seed fundraising round coles by Pan-African venture capital fund 4DX Ventures and unicorn Flutterwave. Autochek Africa, the leading auto tech platform, launched a dedicated brand new cars section on the Autochek website and mobile app.UK-based innovation foundation Nesta Challenges opened applications for the final strand of the Afri-Plastics Challenge while Adanian Labs launched the Adanian Labs Venture Building Program call for startups for 2022.
This week, Kenyan health tech startup Zuri Health also launched its operations in Senegal. The startup has partnered with Expresso Senegal to launch its operations in the country. Minly, the MENA region’s media and entertainment startup acquired Oulo, a Dubai-based celebrity shoutout platform focused on the Levant region. Fintech startup Kwara partnered with Workpay to offer Savings and Credit Co-operative Societies (SACCOs) in Kenya with human resource management and payroll processing solutions.
In Angola, Africell Angola awarded Digis Squared a multi-year contract to provide end to end Managed Services to support the launch of Africell’s new network in Angola. CVTelecom (Cabo Verde Telecom) and Angola Cables signed a joint cooperation agreement to identify synergies to expand connectivity and network capabilities.
This week, Meta released its ‘2021 Africa Year in Review’, an infographic capturing some of the company's significant investments and initiatives in sub-Saharan Africa. At the same time, Africa No Filter, a narrative change organisation, and Meta announced a partnership to launch “Future Africa: Telling Stories, Building Worlds” program, aimed at boosting the use of Virtual Reality in Africa’s storytelling. A new study commissioned by Mastercard Middle East and Africa (MEA) and carried out by Economist Impact released this week also revealed that the Middle East and Africa is emerging fast as the region proves to be a potentially fertile ground for its growth.
In South Africa, Vodacom this week launched the Vodacom Easy2Own proposition smartphone financing plan. In a move upending the hottest part of the fintech market, Paymentology and Tutuka merged to create a new payments and card processing powerhouse.
17.5% of all global e-commerce transactions – and 3.6% of Kenyan transactions – between November 25-29 were potentially fraudulent. This is according to new findings around global e-commerce fraud trends released by TransUnion this week.
Other top highlights of the week include Kenya launching an ICT Talent Cultivation whitepaper, Binance announcing that it has educated over 400,000 Africans on cryptocurrency, and American Platform Leaders launching an online real estate platform in Egypt.
Duncan Mochama is the solutions consultant at Incentro Africa.
