Black-owned venture capital firm Microtraction announced a $15 million close of its second fund to further invest in African tech entrepreneurs. Microtraction, founded in 2017 by Yele Bademosi and Kwamena Afful, works to make pre-seed funding for African tech entrepreneurs more accessible. The organization has invested in 36 businesses across Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and Rwanda. Their services aim to assist early-stage startups with pre-seed funding and advisory services. According to Microtration, its portfolio companies have raised over $100 million in follow-on funding, valuing the firm’s portfolio at over $750 million
Black-owned renewable energy platform, Koolboks, announced the close of its $2.5 million seed funding round. The funding round, led by Nigeria-based growth equity fund Aruwa Capital Management, also included participation from Acumen, Blue Earth Capital, All On, GSMA, and other investors. Koolboks, founded in 2018 by Ayoola Dominic and Deborah Gael, has provided a solution to Africa’s inconsistent and erratic power supply. The company has designed generated refrigerators without power to offer accessible cold storage solutions to businesses and citizens across Africa. The company also offers 24-hour refrigeration sourced from
Lola Omolola is a former Nigerian journalist who founded the Female IN (FIN) group on Facebook – a private group for women with nearly 1.7 million members where others can share their untold stories regarding their sexual abuses and other challenges they are facing. FIN’s genesis can be traced to 2014 when nearly 300 girls were kidnapped from a boarding school in Nigeria by the Boko Haram militant group. According to what she’s previously told the media – the kidnapping represented the worst form of patriarchy: men were targeting young
If you’re a person with dark skin, you may be more likely than your white friends to get hit by a self-driving car, according to a 2019 study out of the Georgia Institute of Technology. That’s because automated vehicles may better detect pedestrians with lighter skin tones. The study’s authors started out with a simple question: How accurately do state-of-the-art object-detection models, like those used by self-driving cars, detect people from different demographic groups? To find out, they looked at a large dataset of images that contain pedestrians. They divided up the
New York-based Mobot has publicly launched its QA-as-a-service platform and closed $12.5 million in Series A funding. The funding round was led by Cota Capital, a firm that recently backed Token.io, with participation from Heavybit, Uncorrelated Ventures, and others. Eden Full Goh founded Mobot in 2018 in New York after a decade of experience in engineering and product. Her journey? She dropped out of Princeton to build SunSaluter, a low-cost solar panel rotator used in developing countries around the world, with an entrepreneurship fellowship from The Thiel Foundation. After realizing the
Float, a Ghanaian cash flow and spend management platform, has completed a full acquisition of the Nigerian accounting platform, Accounteer. This Nigerian subscription-based cloud-based accounting service combines bookkeeping, tax prep, and financial advisory services all in one platform for African businesses, for an undisclosed amount. Founded in 2015 by Merijn Campsteyn, Accounteer allows users to create invoices, track expenses, and register payments, among other things. The venture-backed company provides accounting software that allows businesses to continue operations offline. According to previous reports – this deal comes eight months after Float closed its
Last Friday at the State House in Nairobi, Kenya’s outgoing president, Uhuru Kenyatta, announced the addition of coding as a subject into its primary and secondary schools curricula. With this new breakthrough, Kenya reportedly becomes the first African government to recognize coding as a topic of study in the two early schools. “I congratulate the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development for guiding our country to this historic milestone by including coding as a crucial ability inside our new Competency Based Curriculum,” Kenyatta announced. Kodris Africa, an online publishing company specializing
Many startup cofounders have exciting stories to share about how they met. From bonding as college roommates or former colleagues to surprise encounters leading to entrepreneurial adventures but for some, that perfect cofounder is found through a match-making platform. Damilare Ogunleye is the co-founder and CEO of FoodLama. He runs the Google-backed startup with his cofounder – 18-year-old Santiago Schmitt. But how does the startup work? FoodLama is a free-to-install-and-use browser extension that simplifies online grocery shopping with preferences. By taking into account your household’s individual allergies, preferences, and needs,
UK-based elderly care platform Cera has raised a £260m round of roughly half equity and half debt to grow the number of patients it supports by 500% and expand overseas. The funding round was led by the existing investor, US-based Kairos HQ. Vanderbilt University Endowment, Schroders Capital, Jane Street Capital, Yabeo Capital, Squarepoint Capital, Guinness Asset Management, Oltre Impact, and 8090 Partners also participated. LocalGlobe’s Robin Klein joined as an angel. The round is the second time the startup has raised debt after its previous $70m round — which was also
Black-owned real estate tech startup, Rhove, has announced its new partnership with housing changemakers in New Orleans to promote economic inclusion. The partnership, which includes Forward Together New Orleans, The Mayor’s Fund, and The Greater New Orleans Housing Alliance (GNOHA), will provide a grant to fund credit to help 2,000 residents invest in commercial real estate using the Rhove app. Rhove, founded by Calvin Cooper, is a fintech company designed to empower everyone to invest in and own real estate. The company, located in Ohio, is on a mission to
