During a short business trip to Nigeria in 2015, Ike Okosa witnessed firsthand the nascent but bubbling tech ecosystem in the country. At the time, Okosa was running Swoop Media, a UK-based company that provided IT and digital marketing solutions to UK private schools. The UK-born entrepreneur, who was visiting for the first time in over a decade, admits he was unaware that the country had a tech ecosystem. However, attending the 2015 edition of Social Media Week in Lagos changed his notion, and he formed vital connections there that proved helpful in
In the last few decades, business activities around the globe have become increasingly mobile, and thankfully, Africa isn’t left out. The continent has become an eager adopter and innovator in virtually all things digital and mobile. The more than 122 million active users of mobile financial services across Africa lends credence to this claim. However, when choosing locations, innovators have to be deliberate as they need to consider who will use their products. Expert opinion has it that being intentional about where to locate a business strongly impacts growth prospects and profitability.
Divided into winter and summer batches, US seed accelerator, Y Combinator (YC) invests $150,000 yearly in selected startups in exchange for 7% equity. However, starting from next year, the ticket size will reduce to $125k for the same amount of equity. Usually, these startups spend three months with the San Francisco-based accelerator before finishing off their activities with a Demo Day. But things have been slightly different this year due to the coronavirus pandemic. While the 197 startups from the Winter batch had participated in some sessions in the Valley, they had to virtually
This article was written by Tage Kene-Okafor and was originally published on African based publication Techpoint.africa In 2012, Jesse Ghansah, Prince Boakye Boampong, and Dominic Mensah began trying their hands on a new project, OMG Ghana. Three years later, the project would become a media startup, OMG Digital. At the time, the Ghanaian startup was dubbed the “BuzzFeed of Africa” and as a founder, Ghansah co-led his team into Y Combinator (YC), participating in the accelerator with the likes of Envyl, Flutterwave, Instabug, and Paystack in 2016. Up until 2019, Ghansah remained at OMG Digital but he has now
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It took a white man, CEO of Twitter Jack Dorsey, to point out one of the most powerful, yet underrated stories coming out of Africa, when he said “ Africa will define the future of Bitcoin.” I am here to tell you that story. After years of poor governance and corruption, the time has now caught up with Africa’s states. They are unable to generate enough job opportunities for the millions of digital native Africans that spend 6 hours every day glued to their WhatsApp, Tik Toks, selfies and hyper-localized
It’s fair to say Kenya’s predominantly informal sector is currently under shock, due to the impact of the ‘rona’ and the measures and mitigations that have followed: quarantines, social distancing rules, curfews, restrictions and possibly lockdowns. M-Pesa inextricable link with Kenya’s biashara economy [small trader economy] fully exposes it to this shock. Newly appointed CEO Peter Ndegwa of Safaricom and M-Pesa admitted to Reuters , that the mobile payments darling of Africa and East Africa is fully dependent on the economy of Kenya. It has only been a month of subdued biashara,
As a naturally curious and confident person, Linda Kamau is no stranger to trailblazing. There were four paths in her all-girls school, and computer science was usually the path least chosen. But for Linda, computers were a passion, and she happily chose computer science to the surprise of her peers. She also had a natural interest in making things better, a talent encouraged by her older brother with whom she would spend time around the house repairing everything from radios to the roof. At many African universities, it is extremely
The importance of informal finance arrangements is a reverberating theme across Africa. Informal doesn’t necessarily mean bad or evil or dirty, it’s just that rather than rely on the heavy hand of the law, some communities prefer to place their trust in reputation and social networks for all trade commerce and financial relationships whether offline or online. Others, will turn to informal institutions of trade and finance when faced by adversity in an immediate harsh environment such as war, political instability, structural programs or lack of reliable services. For example,
As news of Uber’s possible decline and fall filters in, it behooves me to take a moment to ponder the implications for sub-Saharan Africa’s digital economic ecosystem, particularly, the decentralized hybrid one emerging among the erstwhile informal sectors of the economy, such as motorcycle taxis like Safeboda and other on-demand services. While Uber itself has made waves in all the major urban metros across the African continent – Lagos, Nairobi, Johannesburg, etc – its inevitable end will leave a greater legacy than simply copycat taxi-hailing services. Uber the app, has changed the
