In the past few years, global leaders in on-demand transportation have heavily invested in African markets. Bolt, Yango, and Uber are notable names but, their solutions are sometimes not efficient. Local startups like Moja Ride are building their solutions to address those minor inefficiencies.
Moja Ride is a Mobility-as-a-Service startup launched, in 2017, to make life easier for Ivorians. In March 2021, the startup created by Jean Claude Gouesse (photo, center), raised an undisclosed amount from Mobility 54, a venture capital fund set up by Japanese firm Toyota.
The eponymous platform developed by the startup is an alternative to ride-hailing giants operating in Abidjan. With its platform, Moja Ride wants to offer an urban mobility solution to its users but it also wants to help them build a network by offering simple, affordable, and efficient alternative mobility solutions.
The app allows ride-sharing between friends, neighbors, and co-workers to help save on daily travel expenses. It also allows transport operators to easily manage their fleets and routes.
Each of the rides planned through Moja Ride is insured for up to XOF2 million for individual accidents and up to XOF300,000 for healthcare coverage.
To facilitate payments, Moja Ride developed an internal solution based on the payment network Visa and fare collection O-City’s systems. To access its services, users just have to download the mobile app from AppStore or PlayStore and fill in a set of information. Its revenues come from commissions generated on rides booked and payments collected by drivers.
In October 2020, Moja Ride was selected to participate in the Africa Tech Summit Connects, a competition offering startups the possibility to raise pre-seed, seed, or Series A funding.
In 2021, the startup was claiming over 1,200 taxis and buses available for booking through its platform in Abidjan.
Adoni Conrad Quenum
Large U.S. tech firms are increasingly investing in Kenya. A few days ago, Microsoft inaugurated its tech talent hub in the country. It is now followed by Google, the world’s third-largest tech company by market capitalization.
Google announced, Tuesday (April 19), the launch of its first African development hub in Nairobi, Kenya. The U.S. tech firm also launched the recruitment of various tech skills to endow the product development center with skills necessary to contribute to innovation on the continent.
“We’re looking for talented, creative, and collaborative people who can help solve difficult and important technical challenges, such as improving the smartphone experience for people in Africa, or building products that will help everyone to thrive together,” reads a Google blog post announcing the vacancies.
According to the post, applicants must have great technical knowledge, a “passion for solving hard problems together with others” and “understand how people across the continent use their phones every day and the challenges they face.”
The African Product Development hub in Nairobi is part of Google’s efforts to support digital transformation in Africa.
In October 2021, during Google for Africa, a virtual event, Google CEO Sundar Pichai (photo) unveiled a US$1 billion investment to be rolled out over five years. The plan includes projects to provide fast, reliable, and affordable Internet access across the continent, create useful local products, and support entrepreneurs and small businesses that sustain African economies.
Muriel Edjo
The video game industry is rapidly growing in Africa. It offers employment opportunities to millions of young enthusiasts and, on November 24, 2021, by approving the organization of the international cup, Beninese authorities proved their ambitions to capitalize on the opportunities offered by the industry.
The International Africa Gaming Cup, a competition bringing together African video game enthusiasts, will take place in the coming days, in Benin. The competition was unveiled during a press conference held, Wednesday, April 13, by the co-organizers Mike Hessabi (photo, right) and Médard Djékété (photo, left), respectively founder of Nicecactus Gamer and President of Africa Gamers.
Officially, the competition will be launched next April 23 with the regional qualifying and final phases between several Bennese gaming communities. After the regional phases, the continental phase will be between the best African teams at Cotonou Congress Center during a weekend-long show in July 2022.
According to Médard Djékété, three games will be played during the competition. They are namely Clash Royal, the most played mobile e-sport game in Benin, Tekken 7- a reference game, and Battlegrounds Mobile- a widely popular action and adventure game.
The organizers were authorized, on November 24, 2021, during a press briefing, to host the first edition of that gaming cup in Benin. During the press briefing attended by the Beninese Minister of the Digital Economy, Ms. Aurelie Adam-Soule Zoumarou, the organizers claimed the competition aims to make Benin the hub of E-sports in Africa.
For Mike Hessabi, with its internationally-renowned gaming community, Benin has what it takes to become the champion of that continental competition. Indeed, many young Beninese are illustrating themselves in international gaming cups.
“We have carried out a survey on the ground and we know that there are many active gaming communities in Benin,” he explained.
Nicecactus Gamer is an “all-in-one platform for gamers of all levels worldwide.”
It can host up to 2,000 online tournaments monthly.
Ruben Tchounyabe
Cybersecurity and data protection are important issues in the digital era. The solution developed by Youverify aims to address those issues in Nigeria, and in Africa as a whole.
YouID is a digital solution developed by Nigerian start-up Youverify to secure personal information and physical identifiers. It aims to help users share the least possible amount of information on the web by storing them in an encrypted format.
Thanks to its digital solution, Youverify, which was founded in 2017, by Gbenga Odegbami and Suru Avoseh, completed several funding rounds, including a US$1.5million round led by Orange Digital Ventures.
According to Gbenga Odegbami, Youverify CEO, YouID “constitutes a unique opportunity for the company to take further our ambition to simplify and secure its client’s internal processes, whether in the recruitment of staff, customer onboarding, etc.”
“Our ambition is to be the leading African player in verifying people and companies’ identities by making data protection and security the core of our proposal,” he added.
On behalf of its users, YouID automatically fills social media, e-commerce, and streaming forms with information previously submitted for storage on the encrypted digital platform.
To store their information on YouID, users first have to download the app from App Store or Play Store, create their accounts, and secure them using PIN codes or biometric data. Then, they will have to scan their faces to prove the accounts are created by humans, not bots. A third phase consists of scanning ID documents proving users’ identities. The last step is to add contact information through which the app can alert users when their information is compromised.
Youverify claims over 300,000 registrations and verifications since the launch of YouID.
Adoni Conrad Quenum
For about two years now, Simon Ward has been contributing his over 20 years of experience in the fintech and e-commerce industries to improve South African workers’ financial health. He gives them tools to reduce their debts and increase their savings.
Floatpays is a money management app launched in 2020 by tech enthusiast Simon Ward (photo). With over 20 years of experience as an entrepreneur and business leader in the fintech and e-commerce industries, Simon Ward has always wanted to make a positive impact on the living conditions of local populations in South Africa. The mechanical engineer graduated from the University of Cape Town and obtained an operational management certificate from the University of Derby in England. He has been one of the chief technology officers of the photo-printing firm PhotoBox. He has also been a chief technology officer for Prodigy Finance, a financial institution that provides loans to international master's students.
For the serial entrepreneur, Floatpays was born from his desire to lift Africans out of poverty by helping address the usual cause of that phenomenon: poor financial management. Financial education and budget planning are the essential skills needed to avoid unnecessary spending, he believes. To illustrate his point of view, he indicates that in his native country, South Africa, 75% of employed people spend their salaries before month-end, and more than 50% of them end up taking loans to survive.
His digital solution helps companies improve their employees’ financial health. Once deployed, it allows employees access to the accrued but yet to be paid salaries at any point of the payroll cycle. They can thus avoid taking loans and use the accrued earnings to cover their needs. Floatpays also offers employees flexible savings solutions by allowing them to change or stop their monthly contributions, or deposit funds into their savings accounts right from their phones.
“I launched Floatpays in 2020, as a social impact-driven business on a mission to help move employees out of bad debt cycles and into a savings culture. We educate employees on financial matters, support them with financial planning, and remove the need for any employee to reach out to payday lenders/high-interest credit solutions when mid-pay cycle liquidity becomes a problem,” says the founder and CEO.
In January 2022, Floatpays completed a US$4 million funding round to develop operations nationwide and initiate its African expansion.
Melchior Koba
The management of corporate sales and orders has constantly evolved in the past few decades. The era of big cash registers has passed to give way to digital solutions like TallOrder.
TallOrder is a cloud-based digital solution that helps SMBs manage sales and orders. Available via windows, iOS, and Android apps, the solution was developed by the eponymous startup launched in 2014 by Anna Groenewald and Dana Buys (photo). In January 2022, it completed a US$3.1 million funding round to complement the US$2.2 million it previously raised to accelerate its African expansion.
With TallOrder, the South African startup allows SMBs to avoid losing files, keeping duplicate data, or filling wrong inputs when using excel workbooks. "Creating a powerful, feature-rich, and broadly adaptable cloud POS solution requires significant development effort, both financially and time-wise," said Dana Buys, CEO, and co-founder of TallOrder.
TallOder can replace the IT department of retail, service, and hospitality companies, manage their internet security handle onsite and offsite backups and make disaster recoveries, software updates as well as database integrations. Employers can seamlessly submit quotes and invoices and access product information (stock, bill of materials, pricing) or customer data.
The platform also allows companies to get paid via popular platforms like SnapScan, Zapper, MasterPass, Yoco, ThumbzUp, MTN MoMo, Innervation, African Resonance, NetCash, DPO, and PayFast.
Currently, in Africa, TallOrder is present in South Africa, Uganda, Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Botswana, and Seychelles. In Asia, it is present in Indonesia. For its international market, TallOrder has an offer for hotels and guesthouses.
Its services are accessible at flat rates ranging from US$24.95 to 119.95.
Adoni Conrad Quenum
Dumisani Kaliati has been working since 2015 to improve the living conditions of rural populations in Malawi. This year, his expertise helped the UNICEF speed up disaster assessment and assistance planning.
Dumisani Kaliati (photo) is an Information Science and Technology graduate from the University of Malawi. An experienced hardware and software developer and computer-aided designer, he founded MicroMek, a drone manufacturing startup at the age of 21. To manufacture its drones, MicroMek uses 3D printed parts and recycled materials. Dumisani Kaliati is also the co-founder of Peza, a platform connecting informal service providers with potential clients.
He got the MicroMek idea in the third year of his information science and technology study after noticing how difficult it was for people living in remote areas to access healthcare institutions. He then developed a medication reminder, which was still not addressing the challenges faced by rural populations. In 2016, while the Malawian government was vulgarizing drone usage, he decided to leverage the technology to address the challenges identified.
In 2017, he was trained on how to use drones during a workshop organized by UNICEF and Virginia Tech University. Since then, in collaboration with Virginia Tech University's Unmanned Systems Lab, he has been developing low-cost drones for remote delivery. Called EcoSoar, the drones are designed to deliver drugs and medicines, blood samples, and vaccines to hospitals. Beyond facilitating access to healthcare, the startup also helps reduce the times needed for the delivery of diagnostics, vaccines, and medications. It also manufactures drones for environmental and aerial data collection.
According to Dumisani Kaliati, the sensing drones can travel up to 30 km for aerial mapping, while the ambulance drones can carry 1 kg of medicines and samples. Depending on the purpose, their production cost averages US$350 and $430 per unit. Currently, the entrepreneur is working on drones that can fly longer distances and carry up to 6 kg of medicine and other health products.
In February 2022, Dumisani Kaliati's expertise was solicited by the UNICEF for the assessment of damages caused by Tropical Cyclone Ana in late January. The disaster wreaked havoc in Southern Malawi causing huge human, material, and agricultural losses.
Using his drones, the entrepreneur sped up the assessment, ultimately assisting in the planning of response activities.
With MicroMek, he garnered several awards, including the Malwai ICT Innovation Award's Top Entrepreneurship category in 2017. A year later, he was selected for the Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders, where he had the opportunity to train in business and entrepreneurship at Northwestern University in Evanston, USA. In late March 2022, he took part in the Global Entrepreneurship Congress that brings together entrepreneurs from over 170 countries. The congress was an opportunity for Dumisani Kaliati to showcase Malawian expertise to the world.
Aïsha Moyouzame
In 2018, the French Development Agency provided US$872,000 for the creation of an incubator in the digital content industry. This new commitment is focused on the gaming industry that has strong job and wealth creation potential.
The French Institute of South Africa renewed, Friday (April 8), the contract of Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct, the University of Witwatersrand’s digital hub. The contract consecrates €450,000 financial support to the digital hub for the development of innovative and cultural industries, the creation of a video game studio incubator, and many other projects and programs.
According to Lesley Williams, CEO of Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct, South Africa needs to meet the demand “where creativity and digital meet.” “There's a massive demand for African aesthetics in creativity, the world is calling for digital content from Africa and we need to meet that demand,” she added.
Through the video games incubator, Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct, AFD, and the French Institute want to foster the emergence of young talent in this digital sector with strong job and wealth creation potential. The incubator will provide startups active in the industry with access to training that will help them create market-ready products and develop their entrepreneurial and technical skills.
The initial contract was signed by the French Development Bank, the French Institute, and the South African digital hub in 2018. The ZAR14 million (about US$872,000) financial support provided by the French institute helped Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct create an incubator for innovative and creative audiovisual content. The contract provided an avenue for collaboration between French and African experts in the animation, video, gaming, virtual reality, digital arts, and music industries.
Eary this year, investment bank Drake Star Partners published a report revealing the growing volume of funds being invested in the global gaming industry. This year, the industry is expected to attract US$150 billion of additional investments. There is thus an opportunity for Africa to attract a sizeable chunk of those investments.
Ruben Tchounyabe
In 2020, Nigeria decided to boost its broadband penetration rate to 70%, by 2025. To this end, it is developing partnerships with actors that will contribute to the achievement of that goal.
The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and Google Global Services Nigeria recently announced their commitments to collaborating for “ubiquitous” broadband access in Nigeria. The alliance formed in that regard was revealed during a visit paid, Thursday (April 14), by a Google Global Service delegation to the NCC headquarters in Abuja.
The visit was organized to discuss possible joint actions that could accelerate digital transformation in Nigeria and Africa as a whole.
During the visit, Umar Garba Danbatta, NCC CEO and executive vice president stressed the importance of such an alliance and the need to make their joint initiatives more impactful and measurable through enhanced collaboration. As for Juliet Ehimuan, country manager for Google Nigeria, she commended the consultative approach always adopted by the NCC, the local telecom regulator, to formulate policies that impact digital and economic transformation in the country by promoting optimal delivery of telecom services.
On April 7, 2022, a Google Nigeria delegation announced to the Minister of the Digital Economy Isa Ali Pantami the coming landing (by late April) of Google’s subsea cable Equiano in Lagos. Through this high-speed teleNigeriacom infrastructure, Googles Global Services Nigeria wants to ensure that Nigeria's large population has access to high-quality data connectivity in line with the government's ambitions to increase broadband penetration to 70% and ensure digital inclusion by 2025.
For Umar Garba Danbatta, the subsea cable will have a significant impact on socio-economic development in Nigeria. He also urged approved telecom operators to collaborate on the creation of more landing points inland to make sure broadband internet is accessible everywhere.
Ruben Tchounyabe
Yemaachi Biotechnology is a healthtech company co-founded by Yaw Bediako, an experienced cancer researcher. His extensive experience earned him an affiliate membership in the African Academy of Sciences.
Ghanaian Yaw Bediako (photo) is the CEO and Co-founder of Yemaachi Biotechnology, a healthtech company based in Accra (Ghana) with offices in Washington D.C (USA). In 2011, he graduated from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago with a Ph.D. in microbiology and immunology.
With Yemaachi Biotechnology, he turns immunogenomics, bioinformatics, and artificial intelligence into assets for the early detection and cure of cancer in Africa. The healthtech was founded in 2020, with David Hutchful, Joyce Ngoi, and Yaw Attua-Afari as co-founders.
In March 2021, it successfully raised US$3 million in development funds from investors like Y Combinator, V Square Capital, VestedWorld, V8 Capital Partners, Tencent, LoftyInc Capital Management, LifeLine Family Heritage Fund, and Ethan Perlstein.
According to Yaw Bediako, Yemaachi Biotechnology was launched to give Africa a saying in oncology and genome research, using artificial intelligence and data science.
“Creating a dataset that has the greatest genomic diversity can enable rapid discoveries that have long-term implications for cancer research, drug development, and patient care, not just in Africa, but globally,” says Yaw Bediako.
The Ghanaian CEO has extensive experience in cancer research. He is currently a research fellow at the West African Centre for Cell Biology of Infectious Pathogens at the University of Ghana. In London, he has been, for four years, a postdoctoral fellow at the Francis Crick Institute. For twelve months, he was a research assistant at the Calvin Institute of Technology in Indonesia and the Van Andel Institute in the United States.
In recognition of his commitment, Yaw Bediako was recently selected as an affiliate member of the African Academy of Sciences. He is also an executive member of the African Science Initiative, a project to network and promote African scientists worldwide.
Melchior Koba
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In Morocco, public notaries are not always consulted because a significant portion of the population is not aware of their competencies. For that purpose, the supervisory authority launched a digitization project to vulgarize their services.
Last week, the Moroccan Agency of Land Registry, Cadastre, and Cartography (ANCFCC) launched the digitization of services offered by notaries popularly known as adouls.
On Wednesday, April 13, the digital platform allowing access to those services was presented. It is still in its pilot phase but 25 adouls are already enrolled to document and assist in the obtention of ownership certificates, land property plans, and the payment of land registration duties.
In an interview granted, last week, to Moroccan media, Mohamed Sassioui (photo), president of the National Order of Adouls, indicated that all of the adouls active in the country will be enrolled on the digital platform, but it will be a gradual process.
The dematerialization of the services offered by adouls is part of the development program being implemented by Karim Tajmouati, since 2016, when he was appointed head of the ANCFCC. It is in line with the digital transformation efforts being carried out by Morocco for some ten years now.
For Mohamed Sassioui, digitization will ease access to public notary services but also showcase all of the areas adouls are competent.
For Moroccans, “adouls are only limited to drawing marriage and divorce contracts, and managing inheritance cases… The land registry agency launched the [digitization] initiative after it noticed the sheer number of land-related acts issued by adouls,” he indicated.
Muriel Edjo
For many development agencies, e-commerce is now one of the key factors that will boost Africa’s post-Covid-19 recovery. The momentum generated by the pandemic attracted investors from all horizons to the sector, which is growing day in and day out.
Four Cameroonians launched Kuruba.cm, a wholesale e-commerce platform last week. They are namely Pierre-Lionel Ebe, Ivan Kharl Manga, Armel Fotso, and Simon Mbelek. All four are former employees of Jumia Cameroon, which ended its operations in Cameroon in November 2019. Through Kuruba.cm, they aim to help retailers quickly source their products from reference brands and get them delivered anywhere they like in Cameroon.
“We launched Kuruba to help retailers, who are crucial parts of our daily lives, to access millions of products at better prices than what they are currently offered. We connect independent merchants with a wide range of suppliers, allowing them to easily buy their products,” explains Pierre-Lionel Ebe, CEO of the eponymous start-up that launched the e-commerce platform.
In Cameroon, there are currently thousands of supermarkets, stores, and small shops that usually turn to wholesalers, resellers, distributors, and producers to acquire their merchandise. Kuruba.cm wants to facilitate this costly and time-consuming task by allowing them to quickly contact producers and distributors.
With its online platform, the startup is positioned in a market segment with high economic potential in Africa. In Morocco, chari.ma has been doing the same thing since January 2020, with much success. For instance, it claims nearly US$2.5 million orders processed monthly. In January 2022, it was valued at US$100 million.
In Cameroon, Kuruba.cm has a warehouse and large storage facilities, and pickup points to reduce delivery time and costs. To quickly attract clients, it unveiled an aggressive commercial policy. For instance, the startup promises free delivery for orders exceeding XAF100,000 (US$164.66). It also announced discussions with financial partners to allow clients to obtain supply credits they can pay after 30 days.
Currently, the startup claims over 200 reference brands in categories like household appliances, agri-food, cosmetics, and home maintenance. Its ambition is to expand out of Cameroon once it consolidates its presence in the country.
“We are only at the beginning of the adventure because the African e-commerce market is growing exponentially and Kuruba wants a large share of that market. We want to offer an innovative, convenient and affordable online service for African retailers and help them meet their customers’ daily needs,” said Pierre-Lionel Ebe.
Muriel Edjo
In the wake of the ongoing digital transformation in Africa, local startups are developing solutions to facilitate the discovery of their culture and tourist attractions. Tabaani is one of those startups.
Tunisian startup Tabaani allows private individuals (called hosts) to organize, through its eponymous platform, tours in regions with tourist potential. It was founded in 2020 by Hamza Moussi (photo), Moukim Hfaidh and Wiem Ben Mahmoud. Early this year, the startup completed a US$120,000 funding round to support its expansion.
Tabaani aims to provide tourists with a tailored experience and help them avoid tourist traps. For Wiem Ben Mahmoud, Tabaani cofounder, the startup allows tourists to travel “off beaten paths,” meet new people and discover new cultures. “It is more than mere tours, it is an immersion in local culture: a highly emotional experience,” she explains.
On Tabaani, hosts can organize all sorts of tours, be they bike tours, car trips, food tours, or visits to historical places as a way to share lifetime memories and meet people from various backgrounds who share the same passion. The price of each of the tours is set by the hosts. It is then up to tourists to select the tours they are interested in to customize their own traveling experience. Tabaani even has a rating system to let tourists discover the most rated hosts, who are called ambassadors.
In 2020, the e-tourism platform was selected as the best solution for external use during the first national "OpenGovDataHack2020" hackathon organized by the Tunisian Ministry of Public Service in partnership with the World Bank. The value of the award was DT3,000, about US$1,000.
Adoni Conrad Quenum
It is still difficult for African video game publishers to effectively market their games in local markets. Strategic partnerships between actors of the ecosystem are rare but, the partnership between Ethio Telecom and Qene Games may be a breakthrough.
Ethiopian video game publisher Qene Games, on Monday (April 11), signed a partnership agreement with Ethio Telecom to facilitate access to its games for local users. Thanks to the agreement, Qene Games will leverage the telecom operator’s fintech solutions to ease users’ subscriptions and in-app purchases.
For Dawit Abraham (photo), Qene Games CEO, " Africa has a great potential to become a major games exporter and compete in the global creative and entertainment industry. However, the first step we need to take to make this a reality is to give African creators easy access to sell their content in the African market.”
Considered the first video game publisher in Ethiopia, Qene Games has developed games like Kukulu, Gebeta, and Feta, inspired by African art and characters. In 2021, With its first two games, Kukulu and Gebeta, Qene Games won the best entertainment app and best app of the year award at Apps Africa Awards.
The subscription and purchase models envisaged in the partnership agreement will be tested on Kukulu, which is a popular game available in four local languages. The game follows the adventures of a chicken running from its farmer.
Once successful, Qene Games will eventually include its whole game catalog, therefore making the first moves towards its dream to conquer the African market.
Qene Games and Ethio Telecom’s partnership comes just weeks after ten African game publishers formed a continental alliance called Pan African Gaming Group (PAGG). The alliance aims to create more monetization opportunities and jobs in the African gaming market.
Ruben Tchounyabe