Y Combinator’s latest batch — W22 — features 414 startups from 42 countries, representing more than 80 sectors. America reportedly has the most representation while India comes in second with 32 startups and Nigeria sits in third, having delivered 18 startups. This is the first time an African country is appearing in the top three. The W22 batch of the Y Combinator programme, which played a role in the early days of companies like Airbnb, Coinbase and Dropbox among others, is currently taking place, and concludes with a demo day end of
Microsoft said this week that it had fired some employees and terminated partnerships in relation to allegations made public Friday of bribery in its sales efforts in the Middle East in recent years. The disclosure came regarding allegations of bribery and corruption in Microsoft operations in the region made public by a former manager for the company named Yasser Elabd, who worked for the tech giant throughout the Middle East and Africa from 1998 to 2018, when he says he was fired. In an essay published Friday on Lioness, an outlet that documents
alGROWithm, a Nigeria-based growth agency is building Africa’s first growth talent accelerator. While most digital schools and programmes like Decagon, and AltSchool focus on solving the engineering and product talent gaps, growth is largely unattended to but alGROWithm’s GTAP aims to bridge that gap. The Growth Talent Accelerator Programme (GTAP) is a two-phase training programme in partnership with Digital Africa’s Talent 4 Startups Initiative which will help develop world-class growth engineers on the continent. Founded by Bili Sule in 2018, the agency uses growth engineering to design and implement sustainable growth models and strategies for African startups
Who Is Babajide Duroshola, The Ex-SafeBoda Executive, Who Joined M-KOPA To Lead Its Africa Expansion
M-KOPA, an African connected asset financing platform that provides underbanked customers in Africa to essential products including solar lighting, televisions, fridges, smartphones, and financial services, raised $75M after it clocked 2 million customers across four African markets. The “growth equity round” highlighted by M-KOPA in its press statement is its fifth equity fundraise – it has raised similar rounds of debt, too and in total, its equity raise stands at $190 million. It was previously backed by the CDC Group and Light rock took part in this round alongside LocalGlobe’s
In 2021, venture capital invested just $115 million in digital media globally, a tenth of the $1.1billion it funded in 2015, but not much came to Africa. Digital newsrooms in Africa are reportedly said to be more likely to receive story grants than business funding, with a few exceptions like OMG Digital. Of the reported $4.3–$5 billion raised by African startups in 2021 where fintech received 53–63% of the volume, digital media companies are one of many sectors that have traditionally been overlooked in the conversation of tangible ventures. But last week Big Cabal
The BBC reported nearly a quarter of the 76,000 foreign students in Ukraine were African in 2020, citing government data. Campaigners say these students were drawn to the nation’s relatively inexpensive tuition and easy access to European labor markets. 2015 data shows that foreign students inject upwards of $500 million a year into the Ukrainian economy — almost the entire sum of the financing for the country’s public higher education, according to a former education official. Black Women for Black Lives, a new coalition focused on helping Black residents escape
Social media giant Meta Platforms, Inc., formerly known as Facebook, Inc., faces prosecution in South Africa for unfairly trying to block local startups from using its WhatsApp Business Application Programming Interface (API), a government agency said Monday. It comes after the country’s competition regulator, the Competition Commission, said in a statement that it has referred Meta Platforms and its subsidiaries WhatsApp Inc and Facebook South Africa to the Competition Tribunal for prosecution for abusing its market dominance. According to Anadolu Agency, the commission alleges that Facebook in July 2020 threatened to
Last week, Yep!, a “financial super app” with payments, remittance, and banking features, announced that it has raised $1.5 million in a pre-seed round led by pan-African VC Greenhouse Capital. The San Francisco- and Lagos-headquartered startup was started by Olaoluwa Awojoodu, who then teamed up with Airende Ojeomogha and Garry Ottosen to start Yep!. The startup plans to go live across the five markets where E-Settlement is present, serving digital financial services to consumers, small business owners, and merchants. They also have a mission to enhance financial inclusion by leveraging PayCentre Africa — the startup’s agent banking platform, to
TechLit Africa redistributes recycled technology to build computer labs in African schools. With 4,000 students and 20 teachers, the organization has built 10 computer labs in rural Kenya and is working on the next 100 computer labs. Nelly Cheboi, who grew up in a poor rural village in Kenya, landed a full scholarship to study computer science at Augustana College in Illinois and later built a school in Kenya, Zawadi, where she then started TechLit Africa. The program is unique because it teaches relevant classes; they hire local teachers to make
Curacel, the YC-backed startup developing insurance infrastructure for the African market, has launched a new interface that allows digital businesses like those in retail, fintech, e-commerce, and logistics to add insurance to their core products. Dubbed Curacel Grow – the new product is an embedded insurance product that empowers technology companies to seamlessly offer insurance as part of their existing products and services. The Nigerian insurtech startup is launching Grow to support insurance distribution to millions of Africans through partners like Barter by Flutterwave, Float, Payhippo, and other leading technology companies. Insurance
