The Startup mentioned all represent the best of African tech potential and entrepreneurial talent. Other Startups will be featured in forthcoming articles.
Startup Tech in Africa
Said El Mansour Cherkaoui - December 30, 2017 - Cherkaoui Journal صحيفة الشرقاوي
The companies mentioned all represent the best of African tech potential and entrepreneurial talent. Other Startups will be featured in forthcoming articles. You can always contact our editorial staff to have your preferred Startup Made in Africa to be published by Cherkaoui Journal. Posted on- Science and Technology
After infoDev launched its mLabs in Kenya, Senegal, and South Africa in 2011, they introduced incubation programs that successfully supported the creation of over 100 start-ups that raised close to $15 million in investments and grant funding, and developed over 500 digital products or services. As these ecosystems and start-ups have matured, more needs to be done to improve the marketability of these companies to global and local investors.
This year, our team launched XL Africa, a pan-African acceleration program for growth start-ups seeking Series A funding, between $250,000 and $1.5 million. XL Africa received over 900 applications for 20 spots. Some of these start-ups, like Sendy and CoinAfrique, are mLab program alumni.
Sendy uses motorcycle delivery to compete with Kenya’s inefficient postal system and expensive private courier companies. Sendy had first joined mLab East Africa at the early stages of customer discovery and product validation, and through its support, the company has grown considerably. With a network of over 300 drivers, their app enables individuals and businesses to connect with drivers to request on-demand courier services, while also providing GPS-enabled tracking, transparent pricing, and insurance. Sendy now facilitates over 11,000 deliveries each month, and is a prime example of an innovative company ready to compete with larger players across the region.
Unlike many acceleration programs, XL Africa does not take an equity stake in the companies, but a key value proposition is the exposure to global and local investors. To ensure a quality pipeline, the XL Africa selection process was investor-driven. We worked closely with the IFC’s Startup Catalyst team along with other investors from Goodwell Investments, Knife Capital, Nest Africa, Silvertree Capital, Singularity Investments, TLcom Capital, and 4Di Capital. These investors consciously selected companies, such as Sendy, that could most benefit from XL Africa’s specialized curriculum in the hopes of attracting additional investment.
The average size of the deals struck in Africa by startups also increased year-on-year at every stage of investment, with Series A funding, for example, increasing to around $3.7m. Series A refers to a company’s first significant round of venture capital financing. At the same time, the number of tech hubs in Africa has risen to 310, with 173 accelerators and incubators recorded in 2016, according to the World Bank. There were 117 in the previous year.
VConnect (Nigeria) Lagos-based company continues to matches customer needs with available suppliers of services and now logs more than one million businesses.
MeQasa (Ghana) Raised $500,000 in 2015, MeQasa operates in Ghana's real estate market a search platform to match prospective tenants and buyers with landlords, brokers and real estate industry professionals.
Flutterwave (Kenya, Ghana, South Africa, Nigeria) Flutterwave provides smart developer- and customer-friendly payments infrastructure with services that allow its global merchants, PSPs and financial institutions to accept various payment types including Mastercard, Visa, mobile money, bank accounts and more. According other sources, $200 million of transactions across Africa were facilitated by Flutterwave's technology.
Sliide Airtime Sliide Airtime is a mobile advertising startup offering free airtime to clients in return for engaging with news and branded content delivered to the lock screen of their mobile devices. Sliide Airtime uses 65% of its advertising revenues to buy mobile data for its users so they can spend more time online for free. It was named Most Innovative App at the 2017 Mobile World Congress awards, Africa’s Best App at the 2016 Apps Africa awards and its CEO.
Printivo (Nigeria) Founded in 2014 , Printivo ships printed material express orders across Nigeria and helps Nigerian SMEs with print marketing. Client list includes Samsung, Google and Uber and has been through two rounds of funding.
LIfeQ - South Africa LIfeQ launched in 2015 at the Las Vegas CES show, with complex combination of sensors and bio-mathematical modeling brings together knowledge and understanding of human physiology and systems biology to extract and deliver person-specific digital biomarkers from multitudinous curated data channels. Other notable African startups to watch out are the finalists in the Appsafrica.com Awards 2017 that were recently announced in sectors such as m-commerce, apps, enterprise and 'Changing Africa'.
TheAppsafrica.com Innovation Awards 2015 attracted entries from 21 countries, across 3 continents, we now take a look at the Best App Finalists from across Africa.
Truppr (Nigeria) Truppr is a social start-up that provides a platform for a vibrant community of fitness enthusiasts to connect with events and people around them to help make regular exercise a lifestyle. Truppr aims to bring fun to fitness through: simplified process of organising amateur sporting events and teammates, one stop shop for finding and booking sport venues in cities around the world.
bookly – (South Africa) bookly is a free mobile reading and writing platform built to improve literacy in Africa. South Africa has a massive illiteracy problem. bookly provides access to quality reading material via a free virtual library of hundreds of books. It also provides a platform for unknown authors to publish their work, giving them valuable feedback, exposure, and confidence. Critically – this is all accomplished from something they already have in their pockets: a basic feature phone.
mPaper (Tanzania) mPaper is a mobile application which allows users to preview for free and download books, study material, newspaper and magazines for half the price. mPaper aims to incorporate all study materials and books from the Tanzanias student curriculum, local newspapers and magazines dating back to the 1960’s.
Tuluntulu (South Africa) Tuluntulu is a mobile content platform targeting audiences in Africa and globally with African focused content. The problem is most streaming systems on offer are on-demand (VOD), paid for services (subscription) that only work on broadband connections (3G, LTE, ADSL, FTH etc). Tuluntulu’s model is free, and is designed to work on low bandwidth mobile networks including EDGE. The app is a single source of African content that educates, informs and entertains. A key focus is social development – the platform is used for formal education, informal education, social development, skills development, health and other areas of content that can benefit and improve the lives of Africans.
Cross Dakar City (Senegal) Cross Dakar City is a video game aims to highlight the perils of Dakar’s roads. Ousseynou Khadim Beye is the game’s developer. He designed Dakar Cross City, a video game for smartphones, a story of Mamadou, talibé forced to beg in the streets. One day he decides to go searching his biological parents. Thus begins his journey through the streets of Dakar, Senegal.
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