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| A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR |
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She Leads Africa is building Africa’s largest female-focused media company. They’ve just closed a seed round and are hiring. Click here for more details: http://bit.ly/slay-cabal.
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| South Africa’s GovChat has received a R20 million (US$1.4 million) equity investment from Johannesburg Stock Exchange-listed company, Capital Appreciation. Founded by Eldrid Jordaan, GovChat, a civic technology solution is attempting to bridge the communication gap between South Africans and its government using already existing communication apps. Complaints about public utilities and service delivery can be communicated to government representatives while people can support fellow citizens financially in relief and charity drives across the country via the GovChat channels. According to Jordaan, the funding will expand the scope of its operations in the country and other jurisdictions outside South Africa. THe company has raised R30 million in funding till date. |
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Unless Vodacom Congo renews its 2G license in the Democratic Republic of Congo to the tune of US$65 million, some of its 11 million users who are yet to migrate to 3G and 4G networks will be cut off from its 2G services. According to the government, the telecom’s 20-year license tenure, signed in 1998, was breached by an irregular extension the company received in 2015 from the previous administration and for which US$16.3 million was paid to the country’s treasury. The company denies any fraud allegations and will continue to operate 3G and 4G telephony services if it loses its 2G rights.
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Seven startups from South Africa have been selected as the first cohort of the IBM Techscale programme, which will provide them with incubation, mentoring and possibly access to funding. The selected startups include P2P blockchain remittance platform GeoPay, business financial management solution KryszanTec, big data company Zyelabs, and AI startup BotsZA among others.
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Applications are open for the Startup Support Program in ICT and Agriculture, an initiative of the Ministry of Youth Promotion and Employment led by the Youth Employment Agency and Seedstars Abidjan. Learn more and apply before June 2.
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| Despite challenges securing funding in the last five years, Angolan recruitment platform, Jobartis, is expanding to Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Zambia ahead of a hoped-for funding round. The startup is hoping to raise between US$750,000 and US$1 million in funding. Since its launch in 2013, the company has added about half a million users in Angola and are already building a user base in its new locations. Last year, its revenues grew by 125% in spite of a currency devaluation. |
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| South African identity management platform, Intergreatme, recently surpassed expectations in an equity crowdfunding campaign where they raised a whooping R29 million (US$2 million) on crowdfunding platform, Uprise.Africa. Founder and CEO, Luke Warner, speaks extensively with TechCentral about the exercise and more in this podcast. |
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Applications are still open for Student Entrepreneurship Week, an initiative of Ghanaian ed-tech company SFAN. The event is targeted towards aspiring young entrepreneurs and serves to provide them with actionable, experiential knowledge, business tools, an opportunity to network, showcase their talent and seek funding for their ideas. Apply here before June 30 if you’d love to attend.
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| If you are a healthcare entrepreneur or innovator in Nigeria or anywhere else in Africa, we’ve got a stack of very insightful and valuable video and written content for you. They cover themes such as how to approach innovation in healthcare, amongst others. Check them out here. Also, get our deeply researched report, The State of Health Tech in Nigeria, which examines the challenges health tech startups face, the opportunities in the space and makes actionable recommendations for entrepreneurs, investors and regulators to consider. Get the report here. |
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| Banking malware, designed to steal credentials and ultimately funds from bank accounts, grew by an alarming 58% in Q1 2019, a recent Kaspersky Lab Report has found. Most popular were banking trojans and a new version of the Asacub malware. FInd the rest of the report here. |
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| Venture-backed tech company KOKO Networks has launched a network of 700 KOKOpoints (multi-purpose consumer access machines comprising a fuel ATM, an e-commerce kiosk and an in-store digital media experience) across Nairobi, Kenya. With its KOKO Fuel, the company’s bioethanol solution is tapping into Africa’s US$ 20 billion cooking fuel market still dominated by pollutant sources, which consumers can access at these points and pay for via their M-PESA accounts. The company is heavily present in East Africa and India and will see additional lines of business added on top of its networks. |
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| Amplify Digital Agency is hosting its monthly ThinkDigital event on Thursday, May 30, 2019, at Work Station, MaryLand Mall in Lagos, Nigeria. The month’s meetup is themed: Under Influence: Understanding the Power and Reach of Social Influencers. Request an invite here if you’d love to attend. |
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Google says it is launching 200 free WiFi hotspot locations across 5 cities in Nigeria before the end of the year. To be rolled out in partnership with fiber optic telecoms service, 21st Century, the service will be available in public places like universities, malls and bus stations. The tech giant began rolling out this service last year in some parts of Lagos as part of efforts to further drive internet access and penetration.
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What happens on your iPhone stays on your iPhone. Or not. While your Apple device might be asleep, dozens of in-app trackers feed your data to third parties. Read about Apple’s privacy gaffes in this Washington Post article.
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That’s it,
We’ll see you tomorrow.
– Kay
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