TC Daily

TechCabal Daily – DHL acquires minority stakes in Link Commerce

8th June 2020

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with
FLUTTERWAVE, STARTUP GUIDE & VVM MEDIA		 08.06.2020
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PARTNER CONTENT

Medplus – A wholesale & retail pharmacy that not only sells locally manufactured & imported drugs but also your everyday essentials. Now you can order your COVID-19 essentials & have it delivered to you in one click.
ACQUISITIONS
DHL has acquired minority stakes in Link Commerce, a turn-key e-commerce company spun off Nigeria’s MallforAfrica. DHL, through this acquisition, is taking its global expansion further and broadening its client base globally. Link Commerce makes transactions between international vendors and local buyers in Africa easy on MallforAfrica’s Africa eShop which it set up in 2019 in partnership with DHL.

As at 2018, DHL’s e-commerce traffic represented only 20% of its total volume. However, with international, cross-border e-commerce reported to have been  growing faster than domestic e-commerce around 2017, the logistics giant started to shift its focus towards the online commerce segment.

While MallforAfrica’s DHL Africa eShop put it in a competitive spot alongside companies like Jumia, its CEO, Chris Folayan says Link Commerce takes precedence with the recent acquisition and there are plans to expand beyond Africa with room to accommodate large corporations looking to launch an international e-commerce site.
RoW FEES WAIVER

Anambra State in Eastern Nigeria has joined a number of state governments to waive Right of Way (RoW) fees in the state. Originally RoW costs in the state was ₦600 (US$1.55) per linear meter.

Early this year, about fourteen states in the country increased their RoW fees by almost 1,200% to between ₦3,000 (US$7.73) and ₦6,000 (US$15.46). But following the lead of Ekiti
state in southwest Nigeria, a ripple effect has seen governments in more states completely wave or slash the costs by more than 60%.

While these moves are essential in ensuring infrastructure development to deepen broadband connectivity in the country, a lot more needs to be done to standardise these fees across board, one of the goals of the new five-year Broadband Plan of the federal government. Also critical is putting more policies in place that ensure that organisations who make investments in infrastructure development in locations where the guarantee of returns are minimal have enough incentives to do so.

PARTNER CONTENT

Startup Guide was founded in 2014 by Sissel Hansen to help entrepreneurs navigate and connect with different startup scenes around the world.

With the support of partners including TechCabal and SAP, its scope has expanded to highlight impact-focused initiatives and purpose-driven ventures.
E-HEALTH
Egyptian mental health platform, Shezlong, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Asia Africa Investment Consulting (AAIC), a Singapore-based investor focused on investing in
healthcare startups in Africa. Shezlong allows users speak to qualified psychiatrists through video or voice sessions. They can choose to be anonymous. With users outside Egypt and the Middle East, the platform sees to the mental health of over 100,000 users. The funds will help its expansion plan as well as the development of texting-based therapy for users.

Digital tools and platforms have seen a spike in usage since March when extensive lockdowns as a result of the coronavirus pandemic swept much of the world. In Nigeria, Mentally Aware Nigeria Initiative (MANI) said they have since recorded a 70% increase in traffic. One text-based platform operating in the US, UK, Ireland and Canada saw a 116% spike in traffic late March, early April. Kara Connect based in Denmark saw a 15-fold increase in March.

As lockdowns are lifted, new waves of the virus threatens and new global challenges unfold, people will need all the mental and emotional help they can to weather this trying year.
APPLY
Applications are open till June 10 to US-based Aptive Capital fund for post-revenue startups from Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, Egypt and Ethiopia ready to scale and deepen their solution.

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TC INSIGHTS
Women are under-represented and under-funded in Africa’s tech industry. According to our Nigerian Women in Tech report powered by the UK-Nigeria Tech Hub, only 9% of African female-led startups received funding between 2012 and 2017.

The continent’s funding and gender
gap is further pronounced in the off-grid energy tech sector which is dominated by male and foreign founders. In our new report, the Future of Energy in Sub-Saharan Africa, we found that all-male founding teams got the majority of funding in the sector. Women-led teams only got about 18% of the funding.

Despite progress made to increase access to opportunities in tech for women, they continue to find it difficult to access funding for a number of reasons.

Learn more about the off-grid renewable energy tech sector in Sub-Saharan Africa in our new report, the Future of Energy in Sub-saharan Africa. The report was created in partnership with Stears Data. You can preview the report here.
That’s all for today,

Enjoy your week.
– Kay

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