Plus: Hackers want ShopRite to pay for its customers’data.
Editor’s Note
- Week 29, 2022
- Read time: 5 minutes
In the past, we’ve done some reporting on gender imbalance in the startup funding landscape. But this week, we’re sharing some news about racist biases in the African funding space. It’s a situation we’ll be reporting on again soon, so we’d love to read your thoughts about it.
Have a great weekend.
Kelechi Njoku,
Senior Editor, TechCabal.
Editor’s Picks
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Nigerian fintech execs convicted in the USNigerian fintech executives at US-based Ping Express were sentenced to a combined 8 years in US prison for money laundering. They transferred $167 million—including proceeds from fraud—to Nigeria for over 3 years. |
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South Africa’s black startup founders are excluded from fundingIt appears that the fundraising landscape of the rainbow nation—South Africa—isn’t colour-inclusive. The South African Competition Commission reported that though the country’s population is 8% white, white founders are more likely to raise $58,000 (R1 million) than black founders. |
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Nigeria’s Senate passes the Nigeria Startup Bill
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The 5 African startups in Y Combinator’s S22 batchOut of 146 applications from all over the world, 5 African startups have been accepted into Y Combinator’s Summer 2022 batch. They are Pivo Technologies, Chowdeck, Garage Mobility, Patika, and Moneco. |
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Experts say CBN can’t enforce new directive
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Vodacom loses almost 400,000 subscribers in 3 monthsSouth African mobile network operator Vodacom lost almost 400,000 subscribers between April 2022 and June 2022. However, while its subscribers dropped, revenue, contract customer base, data traffic, and more grew. |
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MTN in talks to acquire TelkomMTN and South African mobile network operator Telkom are discussing the possibility of an acquisition. The acquisition will strengthen MTN’s presence in the 38 countries where Telkom operates. |
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Africa’s first cybersecurity fusion centreLiquid Cloud and Cybersecurity have launched Africa’s first cybersecurity fusion centre—Fusion Lab. The lab fuses services by Liquid technology, Liquid Cloud Operations and Liquid Network Operation Centres and ensures that customers have full support across their cyber security, cloud, and networks. |
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Nigerian mobility tech MAX attains 100 million km milestoneNigerian mobility tech platform, MAX has covered a total distance of over 100 million kilometres. This is like going to the moon 260 times. They spoke to TechCabal about how they pulled it off. |
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ShopEx TV to launch live-shopping platformLivestream shopping is finding its way to Africa. ShopEX TV operator, Response Architects, has exclusively partnered with Alibaba Cloud to launch a live stream shopping platform, Penda, in major African markets like Nigeria, Ghana, and Kenya. |
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inq. acquires license to edge orchestration technologyinq. has gotten the license to be edge-y. The pan-African computing solutions provider acquired a license of Sweden-based Enea AB’s technology, Enea Edge. This brings inq. into the edge orchestration space and widens its customer base to the US and Europe. |
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Meta’s plans for Kenya’s electionsOnce bitten twice shy. Meta has been bitten severally by election-related scandals so it’s unsurprising that the social media giant is rolling out a dedicated Kenyan Elections Operation Centre and other fact-checking measures to combat fake election news ahead of Kenya’s upcoming elections. |
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Construction of Egypt’s first nuclear power plant begins
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Municipal manager charged for unlawful $12 million tenderA former manager of South Africa’s Moretele Municipality has been arrested and awaiting trial for unlawfully awarding an ICT management contract worth R215 million ($12 million) to ICT firm, Flame IT Strategy in 2016. |
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AfyaRekod puts Kenyans’ medical records on the blockchainWhile cryptocurrencies suffer disaffection, other adoptions of blockchain technology continue in Africa. Kenyan health tech AfyaRekod has launched a blockchain-based platform that enables the retrieval of patients’ health data and medical history in real time. |
Who brought the money this week?
- Africa-focused integrated tech company Cassava Technologies secured $50 million in investment from C5 Capital.
- Bloom, a Sudan-based fintech, raised $6.5 million in a seed round.
- Moroccan startup, Aza Petrolsolutions, raised $296,000 in funding from the Maroc Numeric Fund II.
- Carthay Afrivest Investment Fund (CAIF) raised $112 million to finance early- to growth-stage startups in Africa.
Puzzle: Guess the Currency.
We guessed Nigeria’s currency right!
Can you guess what the other currencies are?
Top Tweets of the week
What else to read this weekend?
- Co-founder of talent discovery startup Bubu Buna is not gunning to be Steve Jobs.
- Investor Hannah Subayi believes the gap between anglophone and francophone African startups is reducing.
- How Microsoft’s Redmond campus inspired this Zambia agritech startup.
Written by: Ngozi Chukwu
Edited by: Kelechi Njoku
