African fintech Flutterwave has raised $250 million in a Series D round that tripled the company’s valuation to over $3 billion in justtwelve months.
Karin Fuentesová started off her career in the accounting sector, where she worked for 13 years. While working there, she observed how much time is wasted by people doing mundane tasks, such as manual data entry of invoices into accounting systems. After taking notes, Fuentesová launched Digitoo, which automates manual bookkeeping processes. Founded in 2019, the founder struggled to find investors but in 2021, it raised €900k in seed funding from Czech investors Kaya VC and Nation 1. For Fuentesová this was a huge success because only 46% of founders raise more than
Egypt and US-based MoneyHash has just emerged from beta with $3 million in pre-seed funding.
According to sources who spoke to the ‘Rest of World‘ and compiled salary data, demand for tech talent is skyrocketing, but supply remains relatively scarce, fuelling fierce competition between startups and established tech companies. The publication’s report comes after research we published several weeks ago showed that over the past five years, tech and science jobs in the United States have outnumbered qualified workers by roughly 3 million. And according to the recent study we quoted – the next decade could see a global shortage of more than 85 million
It was rare to see a Nigerian startup raising $10 million ten years ago but now the country’s fintech unicorns are becoming just as valuable as its banks. Every other month we’re hearing about startups all over the country raising capital but a new report has found that in 2021, investors, including global giants SoftBank and Tiger Global, put a total of $1.37 billion into Nigerian startups, according to Africa: The Big Deal, a pan-African funding tracker. But to justify large valuations, companies need to demonstrate growth, which means spending big on customer acquisition.
Remedial Health has secured $1 million in pre-seed funding to digitize pharmacies, and stem the supply of fake and substandard pharmaceutical products, starting with Nigeria before expanding to the rest of Africa. Founded in 2020 by Samuel Okwuada, a trained pharmacist and self-taught software developer, together with his co-founder Victor Benjamin – the company is said to be using part of the new funding will be used to extend the startup’s buy-now-pay-later offering, for an even wider reach. Okwuada started his entrepreneurial journey while still at the university, where he built SaaS products,
Mdundo, an Africa-focused music streaming service, is banking on more partnerships with telcos across the continent to grow its earnings and user base. The optimism comes after a successful year. Last year, the Kenya-based company signed deals with MTN and Airtel in Nigeria, and Vodacom in Tanzania, which reportedly appeared to be paying off after its user-base almost doubled as it added paying subscribers as a source of revenue, according to media. According to TechCrunch, MTN and Airtel Nigeria have a combined customer base of 124.5 million, while Vodacom Tanzania
Kiaan Pillay runs Stitch, which offers a B2B application programming interface (API) focused on fintech infrastructure. The founder has announced that Stitch — one of the prominent players building and operating these APIs in Africa — has raised $21 million in Series A funding. The South African API fintech enables businesses to build, optimize, and scale financial products. With its API, developers can connect apps to financial accounts. This allows users to share their transaction history and balances, confirm their identities and initiate payment Per a statement released by the company, it plans
Kenya’s central bank has called on the public to share their views, before May 20th, on the possibility of adopting a digital currency, just one day after it emerged that Zambia is also testing its viability too. The Bank of Zambia is also carrying out research on digital currencies. Digital currency, unlike cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, is developed by central banks and pegged on countries’ fiat currencies. The potential decision-making comes just a year after Nigeria became the first country in Africa to pilot its central bank digital currency . While Ghana
Up to £23 million in government funding will create more AI and data conversion courses, helping young people from underrepresented groups including women, black people and people with disabilities join the UK’s world-leading Artificial Intelligence (AI) industry. Up to two thousand scholarships for master AI conversion courses, which enable graduates to do further study courses in the field even if their undergraduate course is not directly related, will create a new generation of experts in data science and AI. The UK has a long history in AI, from codebreaker Alan
