[Africa Tech Week] African tech startups continue to raise more funding
2018 was a good year for the African startup and tech community. A number of startups raised funding to scale and expand their operations across the continent. Over the last five years, Africa has rapidly built a strong tech startup culture as technology becomes more accessible and less costly.
According to the Digest Africa INDEX, an annual report that summarises Africa’s technology investment landscape set to be released on Thursday 9, Africa’s 50 most funded tech companies in 2018 raised a total of $618M. At the same time, Uganda-based solar energy company SolarNow raised $9 million in debt arranged by SunFunder, a longtime debt financier for the company alongside co-lenders responsAbility and Oikocredit. Remember in 2017, the startup opened its first branch in Kenya on June 20th. In Kenya, Villgro Kenya has invested $80,000 each in Maisha Meds and Turaco, two companies working to improve health access for low-income Kenyans. Maisha Meds is a software platform for ensuring that rural pharmacists and clinicians effectively purchase quality affordable medicines and pass on subsidies to patients. Turaco, on the other hand, offers health loans bundled with insurance so their clients can get care whenever a medical emergency arises.
Safaricom was also in the news this week. The telco rolled out Fuliza to all subscribers on its mobile money platform. Fuliza is an overdraft facility that will allow M-Pesa users to send money or pay for goods and services even when they have insufficient funds in their accounts after the company. This came just a few weeks after it also introduced DOT Braille Watch, in partnership DOT incorporation to enable visually impaired people to access M-Pesa services. In November last year, it announced the deployment of faster and more private cashless payments at over 2,500 Lipa Na M-PESA merchants. The move was set to benefit more than 21 million monthly active M-PESA customers with faster transactions and increased privacy by eliminating the need to show transaction confirmation messages. This week, it also opened applications for its 2019 technology internship program. The Safaricom Technology Academy is a 3-month internship program that is targeted to Ongoing Kenyan Degree Students and also unveiled Ndoto Zetu, an initiative that aims at positively transforming lives of communities across Kenya.
Pan-African telecoms group Liquid Telecom this week also appointed Mohamed Abdel Bassit as its new Regional CEO for the Middle East and West Africa (MEWA), effective January 1, 2019. Remember Last year in December, we published a report on Liquid Telecom’s partnership with Africa’s largest non-profit civic technology network Code for Africa (CfA) to install air quality sensors at 3,000 sites across Kenya, following warnings that air pollution is killing more than 20,000 Kenyans a year. In South Africa, the company announced plans to establish a multi-billion Rand 4G network in South Africa.
Back in Uganda, digital money transfer service WorldRemit joined forces with Pride Microfinance Ltd (MDI) to allow customers to send money instantly to 30 new cash pickup locations in Uganda - from Arua to Kabale. WorldRemit recently also entered into a similar partnership with Atlas Mara Limited-owned Zimbabwe financial institution BancABC as well as Addis International Bank in Ethiopia.
Microsoft this week also announced that it had rescheduled the opening of its two data centres in South Africa. Microsoft had announced plans to launch the data centres to be located in Johannesburg and Cape Town targeting cloud services growth on the continent. The increased utilisation of public cloud services and the additional investments into private and hybrid cloud solutions will enable organisations in South Africa to focus on innovation and accelerate the pace of digital business transformation according to the IDC report, Economic Impact of IT & Microsoft in South Africa. In Ghana, Denmark based BLUETOWN announced a new agreement with Microsoft to provide broadband internet access to approximately 800,000 unserved people in the eastern part of the country.
The African continent is steadily becoming one of the most fertile regions for the proliferation of blockchain technology, and South Africa is one of the countries under the spotlight in this movement. This week, saw HashCash targets South African blockchain market with a new payment processor. This also came just a few weeks after blockchain-based social network Jamaa launched its operations in South Africa to overcome the growing cases of fake news while enabling all users to get paid just for using the network, with a “proof of brain” algorithm.
Other highlights of the week included Intelsat S.A. operator of the world’s first Globalized Network and leader in integrated satellite communications, announcing that it has joined GSMA, the organization representing mobile operators worldwide, to further strengthen the integration of satellite and terrestrial technologies and advance 5G deployments,Professional Provident Society partnering with Plug and Play to bolster insurance innovations and EXPLORE Data Science Academy launching new online courses.
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