| E-commerce giant, Jumia has shut down its Cameroon operations five years after launching. Jumia Group CEO & co-founder, Jeremy Hodara told TechCabal the commerce platform “as it is run today is not suitable to the current context in Cameroon.” However, Jumia’s classifieds portal will remain functional for buyers and vendors to do business. It’s been a rocky year for the e-commerce platform since its shaky outing on the New York Stock Exchange and failure to raise its share prices following a fraud allegation. Last week, 2019 Q3 reports revealed that the company had lost $180.1 million for the first nine months of 2019 alone compared to $129.2 million in 2018. At this time, Jumia can still lay claim to having a presence in 13 African markets including Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Egypt, Ghana, Morocco, Uganda, Tanzania, Senegal, Rwanda, Ivory Coast, Tunisia, and Algeria. |
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| OKash or OPay, Opera’s micro-lending service is growing at an incredible pace. In three months, the company says it has disbursed over $250 million worth of loans according to its Q3 report. Incredible right? Abubakar Idris breaks down who these loans are going to and more. |
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| Female tech entrepreneurs in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa tackling local development challenges have until Thursday (21 November) to submit their applications for the Africa-UK: Female Tech Founders 2020 programme. Selected participants will attend masterclasses, events and workshops designed to provide in-depth training on how to scale and grow their business, expand to the UK and how best to position their purpose-driven organisations. |
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| Nigeria’s Hello Tractor and Kenya’s BuuPass have each won $15,000 and three month’s acceleration in Bosch Africa’s Smart Mobility competition. The two startups were among over 200 teams from 27 countries that submitted applications for the competition. The other startups that pitched at the event were Bonang.ai, Bwala, Dronamics, Hovo, Mobility, Moja Ride, Motolix, Naviafleet and ParkCrowdy. |
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| Dayo Koleowo, Partner at Microtraction will be speaking at the TC Townhall: Edtech & the Future of Work. Microtraction is an early-stage micro VC backing and supporting remarkable African tech entrepreneurs at the earliest stages of their businesses. Microtraction’s portfolio companies include edtech company, Schoolable.
TC Townhall Edtech & the Future of Work will hold on November 29, 2019. We are bringing together regulators, government agencies, investors, entrepreneurs, NGOs, social enterprises and schools to set a strong agenda about how to use technology to leapfrog Africa’s education challenges and prepare our citizens for future jobs. To attend the Townhall, click here to buy your tickets. Discounts apply for companies/individuals buying at least 5 tickets. Please click here to enjoy our corporate discounts.
We are also putting together a map of the African edtech industry. If you have an edtech startup or you are a technology company doing significant work in the industry we would like to hear from you. Please fill this form. |
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| One of the major concerns of remote work is how team members manage or misuse company time when there’s no supervision. A mobile field force management solution, Outwork, is providing a solution to this by providing real-time monitoring of offsite and field team members. Learn more here or call 08175993729 |
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| It’s been a long time coming but South Africa’s power utility company, Eskom, finally has a new CEO. Andre de Ruyter who is currently the CEO of packaging firm Nampak will assume his new role come January 15, 2020. Since the last CEO, Phakamani Hadebe resigned in May, the heavily indebted national power company has been looking to fill what has been termed South Africa’s toughest role. Prior to his role at Nampak, De Ruyter spent more than two decades at petrochemical giant Sasol in a number of senior management roles working in the US, Germany, China, Nigeria and Angola. In addition to shoring up a company in debt to the tune of R450-billion ($30 billion), De Ruyter will also be spearheading the proposed split into generation, transmission and distribution companies. |
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| Cairo-based chatbot Botme has raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from angel investors. Botme enables businesses and individual users to build chatbots for Facebook Messenger and web through its user-friendly platform without having to write any code. These chatbots can then be used for sales, customer service, and lead generation. The startup says the funds will be used to expand as well as to launch Botme Assistant to help businesses track the performance of their chatbots. The startup also plans to use a part of investment to add more features, channels, and integration with NLP and AI engines. |
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| Data Science Nigeria, a leading promoter of artificial intelligence adoption and education in Nigeria, will hold its ‘Artificial Intelligence for Socio-Economic Development Summit’ today November 19, at Oriental Hotel, Victoria Island Lagos. At the Summit, the organisation will unveil its first artificial intelligence book, ‘Beginners’ Artificial Intelligence & Python Programming’. The book’s lead author is Olubayo Adekanmbi, a respected thought-leader within the Nigerian AI community using his privilege to change the world. |
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| The European Investment Bank (EIB) – the lending arm of the European Union – has announced a US$1.1 billion programme to help female African entrepreneurs grow their businesses. Launched at the Africa Investment Forum in Johannesburg, South Africa, the vision of the SheInvest gender-lending initiative is to promote female entrepreneurship and enable more women play a more active role in the economy. |
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| In more investment news, following their recent launch in Nairobi, Kenya, emerging markets fund manager network Capria is looking to invest up to US$20 million in two new African funds. Capria is a global investment firm that funds a network of emerging market fund managers, bringing venture capital innovation and global best practices to local venture capital, private equity and innovative debt funds. 19 funds out of 800 have been selected to join Capria’s network so far; 7 are African. Its 8th investment cycle is now open. |
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| What do you do at a Lion Walk in Senegal when touring mainland West Africa for the most moving culture stories? You take the perfect picture! The #JollofRoad team is currently in Senegal, the 10th country on their itinerary and went on a memorable walk with lions. Yep. Lions. Four countries, 22 days to the end of the trip. Follow the road trip daily for all the stories and videos from the road. |
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That’s it for today,
See you tomorrow!
– Kay
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