Small businesses in South Africa were at a low point on April 10. Cracking under the weight of a nationwide COVID-19 burden, turnover was down by 92% relative to the period before lockdowns went into effect on March 24. There are now signs that activity is beginning to pick up. As of May 21, trading […]
Andela, the software engineering talent company, has laid off 135 of its staff across four locations. On Tuesday, Jeremy Johnson, the company’s CEO, led a company-wide video conference call attended by over 1,300 staff from Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Ghana, Egypt, and the United States. There were no layoffs in Rwanda or Ghana. The call […]
Emmanuel has waited for more than two hours outside a Zenith Bank branch in Surulere, Lagos state. His ATM card expired before the five-week lockdown began on March 30. Unable to renew it, he had withdrawn enough cash to last the period. But after now “surviving” the five weeks, he needs to withdraw more to […]
The buzz of fintech funding activities in Lagos, Nairobi and Johannesburg can sometimes restrict our imagination of the scope of African tech ecosystems. But over the past year, we have seen the strong emergence of North Africa on the landscape, somewhat buoyed by organisations like the International Finance Corporation (IFC). The IFC has announced that, […]
Iyin Aboyeji is innovating a new way of doing startup investing in Africa. His new Future Africa Fund is testing a co-investment model to allow more investors back startups.
Venture funding in the first quarter of the year was not terrible for African startups. Considering the ravaging impact of the coronavirus on the world, it would have been sensible to expect a bad outing for the continent’s tech economy. But performance between January and March 2020 mirrors what we had in the first quarter […]