22 – 01 – 2019

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Dutch impact investor Goodwell Investments has made a $2-million investment in Nairobi-based consumer goods catalogue and delivery service Copia, per VentureBurn. The company leverages technology and a network of over 3K local agents to deliver goods and services to about 40K underserved consumers in rural Kenya. Copia will reportedly use the investment to increase the geographical footprint of its services to low income consumers in the country.

Cellulant will hold a memorial service for the six employees killed in last Tuesday’s horrible terror attack on the DusitD2 hotel complex at 14 Riverside Drive in Nairobi, Kenya. The memorial will be held at the CITAM church, Valley Road campus on 22 January from 10.30am. If you’re in that neck of the woods, please go show some support and commiserate with the families and the Kenyan tech ecosystem. May the souls of these brave men rest in peace. 🙏🏾

South African online ticketing firm, Computicket, has been fined ~$1.45 million (R20-million) by the Competition Tribunal of South Africa for abusing its dominance in the ticketing industry. The alleged contraventions happened between 2005-2010 and the company has been ordered to pay up within 60 days.

Our Health Tech Townhall and public launch of our State of Healthtech in Nigeria Report is happening this week, on Friday, January 25, 2019 at Impact Hub Lagos. The event will convene some of the leading healthcare innovators, investors and policymakers to discuss the challenges and opportunities in the sector. There’s also going to be a legal workshop so you definitely don’t want to miss it! Register here to attend, slots are limited.

Ten African tech startups have been selected to take part in the #Africa4Future accelerator programme organised by Airbus’ BizLab and helps aerospace startups speed up their innovation and scale. The selected startups include three from Kenya – drone company Astral Aerial, environmental monitoring solution Lentera and water monitoring solution MobiTech Water Solutions; and two from South Africa – smart manufacturing company Elemental Numerics, and wireless charging solution WiPo Wireless Power. Digest Africa has more.

As the world continues to grapple with the aftermath of misinformation and fake news spread through the Internet, WhatsApp has said it will start limiting message forwarding to a maximum of 5 contacts or groups. Facebook-owned WhatsApp has been testing this limit in India since July 2018 following a series of violent lynchings that were triggered by the spread of false information through WhatsApp. Many African countries have a very serious misinformation problem (e.g Nigeria) and while this may not be the do-it-all solution we all want, it’s not bad to have.

The Zimbabwe unit of the Media Institute of Southern Africa has sued the Zimbabwean government (and telco Econet) over the social media shutdown in the country. The shutdown was as result of widespread protests, which have turned deadly, over price hikes on fuel. An High court in the country has already declared the shutdown illegal too. Another day, another African country joins the growing list of repressive African governments.

Nigeria’s plan to produce 30% of its electricity through renewable energy may already be dead in the water as the Federal Government raises customs duty on solar power equipment from five to 10 per cent. Renewable Energy Association of Nigeria (REAN) President, Segun Adaju says the organisation has written the Federal Government, National Assembly and the Nigerian Customs Service seeking a reversal of the policy. Oh, Nigeria.😷

Clickbait: The Sanwo-Olu Campaign as an ad-company startup accelerator.

From TechCabal

+ A Timeline of Internet Blockages in Africa

+ The Fine Art of Tech

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– Akindare.

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