Pernod Ricard makes a strategic investment in Jumia
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| The International Finance Corporation (IFC) is planning an equity investment in Egypt-based Flat6Labs’ proposed Tunisia-focused fund, the Anava Seed Fund, Digest Africa reports. The $10 million accelerator and early-stage venture capital fund will look to invest in about 90 Tunisian startups. The IFC previously invested in Flat6Labs’ Egypt-focused fund. |
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| France-based Pernod Ricard – which owns brands such as Beefeater gin, Absolut vodka and Jameson whiskey – has announced a strategic investment in Jumia. The idea is that Pernod Ricard will bring its distribution network expertise and combine that with Jumia’s digital, logistics and payment platforms and thus offer its large portfolio of premium brands to a greater number of consumers in Africa. It is unclear the size of equity Pernod Ricard will be taking in this deal. This investment follows an $83 million investment from insurance company AXA for an 8% stake in 2016 and reports that parent company Germany-based Rocket Internet plans to divest its remaining 28% stake via an IPO planned for early 2019 at a $1 billion valuation. Since it was founded in 2012, Jumia has expanded to operate in 14 African countries and raised over $750 million from investors like MTN, Goldman Sachs and the aforementioned AXA. In 2017, after a rebrand that saw it bring in its many business verticals under the Jumia brand, it posted losses of ~$137 million despite an increase of 41.8% y-o-y in General Merchandise Volume (GMV). |
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| The African Development Bank (AfDB) has approved a $7.5 million investment into Africa Tech Ventures (ATV), per Digest Africa. The equity investment is part of the AfDB’s Boost Africa Investment Program and the investment is expected to help boost operations of “highly scalable companies” on the continent. ATV’s investments include Twiga Foods, Sendy, Cellulant, FarmDrive, mSurvey, Eneza Education, and Pezesha. |
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| Join us at TC Townhall: The State of Healthtech in Nigeria holding on January 18, 2019. The event will convene some of the leading healthcare innovators, investors and policymakers to discuss the challenges and opportunities in the sector as well as put together proposals to support the growth of the sector. Our theme panel includes healthtech entrepreneurs with a wealth of experience, investors and government representatives. There will be a legal workshop and we will also unveil our Nigeria Healthtech Industry Report. Sign up here so we can notify you when registration goes live. |
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| Telkom Group has appointed Althon Beukes as its new Chief Information Officer (CIO) with immediate effect. Prior to this appointment Beukes was Chief Commercial Officer at Openserve, and previously served as BCX’ Chief of International Business, BCX Chief Operations Officer, and Cybernest managing director. |
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| France-based Engie’s Africa-focused solar home system company, Fenix International, has launched in Nigeria – its fifth market in Africa. It plans to tackle the ~90 million households in rural Nigeria that don’t have access to electricity. |
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| CcHub is opening a R&D design lab in Kigali, per this tweet from CEO/co-founder Bosun Tijani. He also said the lab will be home CcHub’s designers, engineers & product devs who will collaborate with top scientists globally to solve some huge social challenges |
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| Richard Appiah Akoto, the Ghanaian teacher who went viral after someone posted a picture of him using a drawing of the Microsoft Word interface to teach his students, was featured on Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s “10 change-makers who inspired me in 2018” list. |
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| We will be sending off the last edition of TC Daily for the year on the 21st of December, 2018. TC Daily will be back on the 3rd of January 2019. However, in between, we will endeavour to keep you company during the holidays across our platforms. Keep an eye out! |
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All Done.
See you tomorrow.
– Akindare.
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