![[Africa Tech Week] Nixon Kanali: African fintechs aggressively increasing their valuation](Images/Key Persons/Nixon_Kanali_.jpeg)
[Africa Tech Week] Nixon Kanali: African fintechs aggressively increasing their valuation
This has been quite an interesting week in tech in Africa. The biggest news coming from Nigeria where fintech startup Flutterwave tripled its valuation to over $3 billion after raising $250 million in Series D funding. This valuation now makes Flutterwave the highest valued African startup.
Launched in 2016, Flutterwave facilitates cross-border payments transactions of small to large businesses in Africa via one API enabling people and businesses to connect with the global economy. To date, the startup has processed over 200M transactions worth over $16B across 34 countries in Africa. It now serves over 900,000 businesses across the globe.
This was not the only startup that was in the news this week, South Africa’s online home services platform, SweepSouth launched SweepSouth Connect in Kenya. Nigeria’s fintech CrowdForce raised $3.6m to offer better access to cash in underserved communities. In South Africa, API fintech startup Stitch has raised a $21 million Series A funding round to scale its operations. Visa also opened applications for its Visa Everywhere Initiative (VEI), a globally open innovation program for fintech startups while Miss.Africa Initiative led by DCA Academy announced that it is extending the application deadline for its Miss.Africa Seed- Fund Impact programme to March 15th, 2022. Zbooni, MENA's c-Commerce (connected commerce) platform, announced its official launch in Egypt. Healthtech startup Remedial Health raised $1 million in pre-seed funding to digitize neighbourhood pharmacies across Africa starting with Nigeria.
Last year, Kenyan logistics startup Sendy Sendy fulfillment service is a digital-enabled platform that relieves online sellers of logistics difficulties while also insulating them from the high operational costs that come with logistics. This week, the company CEO announced that they crossed 1,000 online sellers with over 7000 unique products. The startup this week also teamed with Mini Marts to enable retail commerce at the micro-level.
African telcos were also in the news this week. MTN revealed plans to rebrand and position itself as a technology company, rather than a telecommunications company. Orange along with its subsidiary Sonatel, the Senegalese telecommunications solutions provider partnered with SES, the global content connectivity solutions provider, to deploy and manage the first O3b mPOWER gateway in Africa, In Ethiopia, Ethio Telecom partnered with Subex for a new business assurance solution using the enterprise AI platform HyperSense. In Kenya, Safaricom entered into a new partnership with the National Industrial Training Authority (NITA), Sightsavers and Cisco to equip people with disabilities with digital skills through training and internship opportunities.
This week, Pay Television broadcaster StarTimes Media committed to inject an additional Ksh.200 Million investment in local content development this year. The planned investment will bring the broadcaster’s progressive spending in local content to over Ksh.400 Million following an initial commitment of a similar amount when the broadcaster set up the self-produced local content channel that is available to Kenyan subscribers. FOX News International, FOX News Media’s global streaming service, announced it will expand distribution into Africa.
Other top highlights of the week we covered include Africa technology boot-camp, Moringa School expanding to Ghana in partnership with Impact Hub Accra, PAIX Data Centres completing Africa50's equity investment of $20 million into PAIX Data Centres (PAIX) and Moneto Ventures launching Chumz investment app in Kenya .
Also to remind you that in partnership with afriQloud, Africa Business Communities will be organizing a Tech Networking Event on Tuesday 22 March 2022 in Westlands, Nairobi. You can check our more details here on how to sign up and attend.
Nixon Kanali is the Tech Editor for Africa Business Communities.
