Good morning.

Frontier Car Group has closed a $22 million investment, which was co-led by Balderton Capital, EchoVC and TPG/Saty. The Berlin-based holding company runs a network of online used-car marketplaces that is focused on emerging markets, through high-growth businesses located in Mexico, Chile, Turkey, Nigeria, and Pakistan. In Nigeria, particularly, it operates through its subsidiary, Cars45, a platform that aims to organize the fragmented used car marketplace, as the majority of the market relies on ineffective communication & transaction channels between sellers and potential buyers. Cars45 closed a $5m Series A round from the Group about a month ago to scale these services and further bridge the gap.

Safaricom’s daily revenue was undercut by approximately KES 40m exactly a month ago due to a nationwide network outage that disrupted voice, data, Mpesa, and enterprise services for a few hours. The telco’s execs attributed the event to faulty routers that broke down during a firmware update. But a Nigerien international has now claimed that he triggered the outage from a cell in Industrial Area Prison, with the help of wardens and police officers.

Google Developers has revealed the 4th class of Launchpad Accelerator, accepting participants from Africa (Paystack, Twiga Foods, Delivery Science, Flutterwave, Gidi Mobile Ltd…)  for the first time to help them leverage Google’s latest technologies to scale their businesses through mentoring from 20+ expert Google teams.

ikOOba Technologies has launched a cloud accounting service for SMEs to collaborate with potential investors during due diligence in order to bolster their commercial credibility.


Afrobytes is an annual international Tech Conference connecting businesses and technology leaders, founders, investors, and policy experts with the fastest-growing African tech startups. The inaugural conference will take place in Paris on June 8-9, 2017, at Le Medef. Find out more and register here.


Other bits…

+ Nigeria’s Tuteria, founded by Godwin Benson, has emerged as the winner of £25,000 in Africa Prize by the Royal Academy of Engineering. Link

+ Nigeria’s economy contracted by 0.52% in the 1st quarter of 2017, an improvement on the 1.73% shrink in the previous quarter. Link

+ Here’s the online service for ‘Made in Aba’ goods that grew out of the TBWA and Ford Foundation partnership to present local Aba brands to a broader consumer market, and provide a platform for local makers.

+ Tunde Leye compared shopping experiences on Jumia and Konga by assessing communications, response time, delivery time, and product quality – and Konga came out on top by offering better services on nearly all fronts. Link

+ This  article by Marc Andreessen on what it will take to build the next Silicon Valley(s).

+ Clip: This Zimbabwean pastor claims to have God’s direct mobile phone number. Link

+ Venture capitalist, Andrea Bohmert, questions why so few women are involved in angel investing. Link

+ The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) says that WannaCry was contained and Nigeria was “largely spared” due to “a massive enlightenment campaign and proactive measures put in place to swiftly deal with any reported incident.” Link


The Greentree Startup Lab is providing access to funding, governance structure, financial planning, legal advice, and technical support to innovative businesses to scale rapidly. So if you are interested, apply here.


Upcoming events

Lagos: Work and Family Conference, May 24th. Link

Lagos: IAMCP Women in Technology (WIT), May 24th. Link

Lagos: Usable May Meetup, May 25th. Link

Lagos: LeadSpace Happy Hour, May 26th. Link

Lagos: V8 Social Media Marketing Training, May 26th. Link

Lagos: Code Pyramid Design Meetup, May 27th. Link

Deadline: Next Einstein Forum Ambassadors Programme Application, May 27th. Link

Abuja: The Abuja WeCode Hackathon, May 27th. Link

Lagos: ScholarX User Experience, May 27th. Link

Lagos: Startup Grind with Pradeep Pahalwani, May 27th. Link


That’s it for today.

Thank you for your time.

Francis Bulus Author

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