Plus:LASG suspends tech hub audits
Editor’s Note
- Week 39, 2022
- Read time: 5 minutes
Multinational oil giant Shell acquiring a clean-energy company is further proof that we’re in interesting times, given Shell’s history with pollution. Sultan covered that story this week, and we highlight it here, alongside other fine stories from TechCabal this week.
Happy post-Friday.
Kelechi Njoku Senior Editor, TechCabal.
Editor’s Picks
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Sky.Garden to shut downThe future is brittle for several startups due to the funding winter. Three months after Kenyan foodtech Kune shut down, another Kenyan startup Sky.Garden, a B2C marketplace, has announced that it may have to tow the same path soon. |
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Nigerian investors sue in KenyaOver 2,000 Nigerian investors have petitioned Kenyan courts to release funds which were earlier frozen by the Asset Recovery Agency (ARA) in a fraud investigation against fintech unicorn Flutterwave. |
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Lagos suspends tech hub auditsNigerians accused the Lagos Safety commission of overtaxing the tech sector when it announced that all coworking spaces and tech hubs would be required to pay an annual sum of ₦150,000 ($347) for upcoming audits. Now the audits have been suspended. |
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Uber and Bolt drivers go slow in KenyaUber and Bolt drivers stage go-slow protest in Kenya to pressure both ride-hailing companies to reduce their commissions to 18%. The drivers say that the rising cost of fuel is burning too much off their earnings. |
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Higher borrowing rates loom over NigeriaNigeria’s apex bank has raised interest rates to a record high to stope the record inflation. This is in the best interest of Nigerians, but things may get worse before they get better as commercial banks will also increase their interest on loans they offer business people. |
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Daystar Power sells to shell
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Jumia partners with ZiplineE-commerce giant Jumia now has wings. It has partnered with drone delivery service Zipline to offer on-demand drone delivery services to its costumers in Africa. The service will first roll out in Ghana and not Nigeria, its biggest market. |
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Safaricom makes overdrafts cheaper
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The race for 5G dominance in SA
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Paymob partners with Tabby
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Who brought the money this week?
- Yellow Card, a crypto exchange platform, closed a $40 million series B round led by Polychain Capital.
- Vendease, a Nigerian digital procurement platform, secured $30 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Partech Africa and TLcom.
- South African identity startup, iDENTIFii, received $15 million in growth capital. The round was led by African investment company Arise.
- Uganda-based fintech, Numida, raised $12.3 million in a pre-Series A equity-debt funding round led by Serena Ventures with participation from Breega, 4Di Capital, Launch Africa, Soma Capital and Y Combinator.
- South African home services startup, SweepSouth, secured $11 million in a round led by Alitheia IDF, a gender-lens private equity fund.
- Farmerline, a Ghanaian-based agritech company raised a $1.5 million extension to its previous $12.9 million pre-Series A announced in April.
TC Game: Unscramble “Nigerian”
Independent Nigeria is 62 today! How many words can you create from “Nigerian” without repeating any letter?
Top Tweets of the Week
What else to read this weekend?
- The surge of BNPL: How Africans are opening up to credit.
- Can Haul247 succeed where its online logistics predecessors failed?
- What will it take for Nigerians to trust social commerce?
- Next Wave: Can tech founders successfully run their startups from overseas?
- Women in boots: Nigeria female founders share their bootstrapping experience.
- How Algerian Yassir is leveraging users’ trust to build francophone Africa’s biggest super app.
Written by: Ngozi Chukwu
Edited by: Kelechi Njoku
