In February, Prestige magazine published a list of the top-selling pieces of crypto-art to date, with all entries sharing some common traits – they were all men and all white. And when you look into the news reports of those who’re supposedly ‘killing it’ in the NFT or crypto space most of them look the same. But here at POCIT – we’re all about shining a light on the communities that are sometimes cast to the side and forgotten even when they’re making a considerable impact. Before we begin – for
Nzambi Matee, a 30-year-old who quit her job in oil and gas to work on her passion full-time, has created a lightweight and low-cost building material that is made of recycled plastic with sand to make bricks that are stronger than concrete material. Every day her enterprise, Gjenge Makers, churns out 1,500 bricks made from industrial and household plastic that otherwise would be dumped in the city’s overflowing garbage heaps. In 2021, the team recycled 50 tonnes of plastic but Matee has ambitions to double that amount this year as
CarePoint, a Black-owned technology-driven healthcare startup that seeks to make healthcare accessible, has just raised a $10 million bridge round to accelerate its growth across Africa. How does it work? Patients are able to access care virtually through CarePoint’s MyCareMobile app, which links them to diverse services through teleconferencing, including consultations with their doctors, test results, and 24-hour emergency response. The funding round was led by TRB Advisors and brings the total funding raised by CarePoint to $30 million. It follows an $18 million Series A round announced in November last year.
Recent YC graduate Topship has raised a $2.5 million seed round months after concluding the recent YC winter batch with Flexport as its lead investor. Other backers include Y Combinator, Soma Capital, Starling Ventures, Olive Tree Capital, Capital X and True Capital. The individual investors in the round include Immad Akhund, Mercury CEO and Arash Ferdowsi, co-founder of Dropbox. Topship is considered a borderline local and international shipping solution between digital freight and e-commerce fulfillment. It was founded in 2020 during the pandemic when co-founder and CEO Moses Enenwali reportedly noticed a surge in merchants’ needs for
Identitypass today announced that it has raised $2.8 million in seed funding, months after graduating from Y Combinator. The round also comes a few months after the startup raised $360,000 in pre-seed investment last November, bringing its total funding to $3.1 million. The startup, launched in 2021, is focused on making it possible for digital businesses in Africa to easily verify their customers within seconds. It’s a simple compliance and data security platform that allows online businesses to easily verify and confirm a transacting party’s identity using existing forms of identification. Identitypass
Abibat Adesanya, a Nigerian TikToker, is helping viewers to connect and appreciate their mother-tongue, Yoruba, by making informative videos about the language and Nigerian culture. In short – she’s helping to dismantle the idea that it’s ever ‘too late’ to get in touch with your roots. Why can’t you speak your language?” A question that sounds so simple but the answer is usually much more complicated. A question that sometimes fills many – mostly those from the diaspora – with fear of ridicule from friends – or worse, family. But
Originally by Musawenkosi Cabe, NewFrame The exploitation of workers by tech giants is another pandemic while the world is battling Covid-19. Labor experts have called for the regulation of the gig economy, where loopholes see workers carrying all the risk with no benefits. As the world moves towards digitization, or what is termed the fourth industrial revolution, new forms of unregulated and precarious work have emerged. This space is dominated by tech giants such as Amazon, Uber, Facebook and Apple. Amazon made obscene profits in the midst of Covid-19. It
Norebase, the trade technology company building a single platform for businesses to start, scale and operate in any African country, has secured a $1M pre-seed funding round. The company is laser-focused on building two-pronged platforms that offer African and non-African businesses access to the African continent as one big market while creating a channel where African founders can access the international markets (such as the USA). Using Norebase, established companies can expand to new locations while new businesses can be incorporated in any African country of their choice in just a
OnePort 365, a platform that claims to solve problems by providing end-to-end digitization of freight management for stakeholders, is building an operating system for cross-border trade in Africa. It says its platform covers air freight, ocean freight, inland haulage (trucking, barge, and rail), pay-as-you-go warehousing, marine insurance, and customs brokerage. Traders can connect with shipping and inland transportation vendors and manage the entire process (from booking to payments), including real-time visibility of their shipments. When it comes to payments, OnePort 365 claims to aggregate different methods enabled by the Pan-African
Google has opened its first product development center in Africa. Located in Nairobi, the center is designed to build “transformative” products and services, company officials have said. It comes after the tech giant revealed plans to invest $1 billion over the next five years in October last year. The center is Google’s second major research and development investment in Africa after the tech giant set up an AI and research center in Ghana in 2019. The firm will reportedly hire more than 100 tech talent including software engineers, researchers, and
