Six years ago, he decided to put his IT skills and international professional experience at the service of African countries. Today, he has several clients and awards thanks to the solutions he developed to help combat environmental crimes.
Badr Idrissi (photo) is a Moroccan entrepreneur and co-founder of tech startup Atlan Space. The startup, launched in 2016, builds artificial intelligence solutions to pilot fixed-wing drones. It aims to help African countries have affordable surveillance equipment to combat environmental crimes, illegal fishing notably.
In an interview with Médias24, Idrissi explained that some countries, African notably, did not have tech solutions to effectively monitor and protect their oceans and fishery resources while "developed countries use several powerful tools, including light aircraft, satellite surveillance and other tech tools that cost millions, even tens of millions of dollars,” for the same purpose. His aim through Atlan Space is therefore to help monitor large geographical areas for the identification of anomalies or environmental threats to human health.
In 2021, Badr Idrissi successfully raised 10 million dirhams (US$1 million) to expand his startup’s intervention sector to include deforestation, desertification, and illegal mining. Last February, the startup also launched a new product.
For Atlan Space's contribution to the environment, Badr Idrissi has received several awards, including the Marine Protection Prize from the National Geographic Society and the African Entrepreneurship Award. This year, Atlan Space was one of 45 start-ups competing for the AfricaTech Awards organized during the 2022 edition of Viva Technology from June 15 to 18.
Melchior Koba
African startups are increasingly relying on venture capital funding to support their growth but, that funding mechanism is still not accessible to every one of them. So, a Nigerian startup has come up with a solution that helps the ecosystem and also gets people to invest.
GetEquity is a digital platform developed by a Nigerian fintech startup founded in 2020. The platform connects African startups with investors to help fund their growth. According to co-founder and CEO Dike Jude, the startup challenges the status quo of startup financing and venture capital by democratizing access to startup financing, “thereby expanding the pie for previously underfunded, and underserved startups.”
It also allows users, be they individuals or institutional investors to invest in the local startups they like. To fulfill its mission, the platform has a mobile app available on AppStore and Playstore. Users can create their accounts through the app or web platform by filling in personal information and loading their wallets. Once those steps are completed, they can buy shares (as low as US$10) in growing African startups or sell previously owned shares.
GetEquity claims to have attracted more than 6,000 investors on the continent.
Adoni Conrad Quenum
Four years ago, investors’ attraction to the African insurtech segment was low. In 2021, that interest rose significantly with actors keeping a watchful eye on it.
Starting from July 1, 2022, actors in the Moroccan insurance market can offer products and sign insurance contracts with buyers exclusively online. Last June 8, the Supervisory Authority of Insurance and Social Welfare (ACAPS) signed a decision outlining the regulatory requirements of the digital platforms to be set up by insurance actors to allow the online purchase of insurance contracts.
ACAPS issued the decision because the insurtech segment is steadily growing. It is getting more attractive because of its convenience, flexibility and the new offers developed. In Africa particularly, the number of start-ups investing in the segment is rising rapidly. In its report "2021 Africa Tech Venture Capital," Partech reveals that the Insurtech segment attracted US$36 million in funding in 2021. This is significant growth for a sector that was still in its infancy two years earlier.
On February 9, 2022, in Nigeria, the National Insurance Commission (NAICOM) partnered with FSD Africa to launch BimaLab, an accelerator program. BimaLab aims to drive digital innovation and ICT adoption in the insurance industry. The accelerator program will help drive digital innovation and expand the adoption of information and communication technologies in the insurance industry.
Muriel Edjo
The coronavirus pandemic stalled and even reversed economic growth in several African countries. The most affected were mostly those with the lowest e-governance readiness level. That weakness must be corrected given the political, climatic, and economic risks proliferating.
Burkina Faso should develop digital services to improve its resilience to crises, the World Bank advises. In its report titled “Resilience in Uncertain Times: Promoting Digital Services,” the institution argues that investing in dematerialized services, digital technology solutions, and the internet will be beneficial to the country.
In the public sector, the development of digital services (with the implementation of e-government projects) will help preserve service continuity and ensure efficiency, in the tax segment particularly. In its latest report on its e-government development index (EGDI), the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) reveals that Burkina Faso's readiness level is still below the West African and Sub-Saharan African average.
In its 2021 national accounts, Burkina Faso's National Institute of Statistics and Demography reveals that the 6.9 percent GDP growth recorded by the country that year (after 1.9 percent in 2020) was all thanks to the public administration component (+8.3 percent), which resumed an uptrend stalled by the coronavirus pandemic.
According to the World Bank, Burkina Faso’s private sector can boost productivity and inclusion, therefore creating new growth opportunities. In the agricultural sector -which plays a key role in food security- the introduction of digital services (weather, farming practices, crops, markets, etc. services) is likely to improve farmers' performance. It can do the same in the trade and finance sectors.
To effectively make the digital sector a tool for economic and social development, the Burkinabe government must improve internet access. In January 2022, its internet penetration rate was 27.3 percent, representing just 5.95 million residents covered out of 21.80 million overall population.
Muriel Edjo
The mass retail industry is booming in Egypt since 2020. The boom is attracting new actors who either want to capitalize on the commercial opportunities or offer new financial products.
Tanmeyah Microenterprise Services, a leading microfinance institution in Egypt, recently acquired Fatura, a startup that connects suppliers with retailers. The information was disclosed on Wednesday, June 15, but the amount of the transaction was not stated.
According to Karim Awad, CEO of Tanmeyah’s parent company (EFG Hermes Holding), the deal marks a major milestone for the Egyptian microfinance institution. “This acquisition marks a major milestone for Tanmeyah, which has grown to become a key player under our Non-Bank Financial Institutions (NBFI) platform. Tanmeyah turned to this strategic acquisition to bolster its digital transformation and enrich its product and service offerings to become more holistic and support Egypt’s microfinance space. [...] We’ve always seen potential in Fatura, and we are firm believers in its ability to innovate in the B2B digital space, which is why our very own EFG EV Fintech made the decision to become one of the early investors in the company years ago,” he commented.
Fatura started operations in Egypt in 2019. In July 2020, the startup successfully raised about US$1 million in its seed round led by Disruptech with EFG Hermes and The Cairo Angels and angel investors as participating investors. In June 2021, it raised another US$3 million in a pre-series A round led by Sawari Ventures, Arzan VC, Egypt Ventures, EFG-EV, The Cairo Angels, and Khwarizmi Ventures. Within three years, it expanded its presence to 22 governorates in Egypt. It also built a network of more than 60,000 merchants.
Muriel Edjo
Côte d’Ivoire’s 2016-2020 development plan helped the country achieve 5.9% yearly growth on average. With the new plan, the country wants to do better by capitalizing on the digital sector.
Côte d’Ivoire will build a national data center and develop a 7000-kilometer of fiber-optic network by 2025, Communications Minister Amadou Coulibaly announces. The investments, which will complement others planned in the framework of the national digital development strategy, will help develop the national economy.
They were presented on Wednesday, June 15, during a meeting held in Abidjan to present the 2021-2025 National Development Plan’s financing mechanism. At the meeting, Amadou Coulibaly explained that the data center and the fiber optic projects were key priorities for his ministry because of their importance for digital transformation, which Côte d’Ivoire wants to accelerate.
The data center will allow the centralization of public services (being dematerialized) in a secure location, rendering them more efficient. The fiber optic network will enable the government to offer access to affordable high-speed internet -an essential tool for access to dematerialized services and economic opportunities- for every household.
Côte d'Ivoire approved its 2021-2025 national development strategy during the ministerial council held on December 22, 2021. It focuses on seven key points including the development of infrastructure, services, and financial services, building skills, improving the business environment and the digital economy, enhancing innovation, cybersecurity, and digital trust.
According to the World Bank, the digital economy will fetch Côte d'Ivoire more than US$5.5 billion by 2025, and more than US$20 billion by 2050, if the government and the private sector strengthen investments in the five fundamental pillars of the digital economy: infrastructure, platforms, financial services, entrepreneurship, and skills.
Muriel Edjo
He started a tech entrepreneurship venture to improve the quality of healthcare in Africa. Barely seven years later, he is one of the influential figures on the global healthTech scene.
Imodoye Abioro (photo) is a Nigerian doctor, entrepreneur, and self-taught IBM Cloud software developer. He is the founder of Healthbotics Ltd, a health tech whose stated mission is to “solve Africa’s perennial healthcare challenges.”
The young doctor and entrepreneur started Healthbiotics following the death of his best friend who bled to death in the emergency room where he was working as a Doctor-on-call. “...that loss almost broke me and so I was motivated to do something about some of these perennial problems facing our hospitals and care delivery system,” he told Pan-African Visions in an interview in 2021.
To fulfill its mission, with Abioro at the helm, Healthbiotics developed two flagship products notably Mediverse and Lend an Arm. The first is a digital AI-powered health record backed by blockchain technology. It allows doctors and nurses to record patients’ health information “with just their voice, eliminating the endless need for writing and typing.” The second product was created in 2017 to connect blood donors and hospitals with blood banks. With that mobile and web AI-powered solution, blood donors and recipients can chat, organize, or join a blood donation campaign. They can also find the nearest blood bank.
The two products earned Abioro several awards in 2020, including the AI for development Challenge, the Young Innovator Award at the World Summit Awards, and the African App Launchpad Cup. In 2021, he was one of the winners of the African Young Innovator Award for Health.
Apart from Healthbiotics, he also co-founded Bimi Online for Africa (in 2018), a health information aggregation platform that he served until December 2019 as the Chief Technology Officer. He was also, from 2019 to 2020, the Chief Technology Officer of Future Food Project, a startup committed to “ending malnutrition in Africa.”
Melchior Koba
E-commerce platforms have gained popularity with the Covid-19 pandemic because they are more convenient and save time.
Carniger is a website allowing users to quickly buy cars, motorcycles, trucks, and parts in Niger. The website was launched in 2017, by Africargroup, Africa’s first automotive marketplace.
To buy a product on Carniger, users have to visit the website, check the information of listed cars/motorcycles/trucks, and select what they like. Users either register or login in and contact the seller either through the website’s chat feature or by dialing the number listed. Buyers can also directly make counter-offers for the products listed.
The website also has a buy now and pay later service that connects potential buyers with specialized institutions for vehicle financing. To access that service, interested buyers must submit a valid Nigerien ID card or passport, justify a permanent source of income, and provide a bank statement dating six months before the financing request. Then, they fill out a form to quickstart the process.
Let’s note that the platform also facilitates insurance subscriptions.
Adoni Conrad Quenum
Tech solutions have become handy tools in most sectors. In the education sector, platforms are also proliferating to help learners in their curriculum.
Ennajah QCM is a digital platform developed by Bibliothèque Ennajah, which allows students in clinical clerkship and residency training access to specialized books and courses. It helps students check their knowledge with multiple-choice questions.
Ennajah QCM "is a virtual platform that allows quick access to all the MCQs needed to pass the various Setif clinical clerkship and residency evaluation exams. It, therefore, facilitates the simple and accurate review of the skills developed by students,” Bibliothèque Ennajah explains.
The platform is accessible through a mobile app currently available on Playstore only (the iOS version will be available soon, according to Ennajah). Users have just to register by providing the information required. Once completed, he/she can start answering the multiple-choice questions or even personalize the questions to answer by filtering the sources, courses, modules, exam years, and pass rate.
Currently, Bibliothèque Ennajah claims 86,616 MCQs on Ennajah QCM and over 10,000 app downloads.
Adoni Conrad Quenum
Africa’s fintech sector is currently attracting huge amounts of investment capital. The reason for that interest is the continent’s poor financial inclusion and the startups offering interesting alternatives.
Motito is a Ghanaian fintech startup founded in 2020 by Tobi Martins. The startup allows its users to buy products and pay in installments from partner brands.
In its own words, it gives users “the chance to buy items for personal and business needs without breaking the bank.” It also promises partner brands “to turn window shoppers into actual paying customers” and increase their order value by 40%.
The startup has a mobile app (available on Android and Ios phones). The app, called Motito PayLater allows users to access all the services the startup offers. To access those services, users must first register and activate their accounts by filling in the information required at each stage of the process.
Once they activate their accounts, they can visit the online stores of partner brands, make purchases and select the payment plans most suited to their income flows. The maximum installment period is three months, however.
With Africa’s credit access challenges, solutions like Motito’s are needed to combat financial exclusion. In June 2022, the fintech startup was selected with eight others to participate in the second edition of the Norrsken Impact Accelerator.
Adoni Conrad Quenum
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By training, he was destined for a career in public health and epidemiological surveillance. However, he chose digital entrepreneurship. Nowadays, he is a startup builder whose ambition is to develop effective solutions for well-defined needs in Africa.
Amos Avoce (photo) is a Beninese digital entrepreneur and founder of 229Founders, a startup studio he launched this year. In his own words, “229Founders is neither an incubator nor an accelerator or a coworking space. It is a startup builder.”
“Incubators and accelerators incubate startups but 229Founders creates startups,” he stresses. Through the startup builder, Amos, and his team identify needs that can be addressed with lasting and efficient tech solutions. They then issue calls for expression of interest for co-founders interested in creating solutions for those needs, back the startup in charge of addressing the needs (they take stakes in those startups) from creation till the marketing of the solutions created.
Amos is not a newcomer in the Beninese tech ecosystem. In 2017, he had already co-founded Bénin FinTech (BFT), a startup guiding financial institutions in their digital transformation. BFT notably developed SmartPay, a fintech solution that allows microfinance institutions to digitalize their savings and credit issuance processes. The startup also developed SmartAgri, a system facilitating agricultural credits.
The young social entrepreneur is a graduate of the University of Parakou’s National School of Technicians in Public Health and Epidemiological Surveillance (in Benin). In 2011, one year before his graduation, he joined Give1Project, an NGO dedicated to “building strong and healthy communities.” He is, since 2013, the country manager for ADS Group, which “designs and implements solutions to help develop Africa.”
He also actively participated in the deployment of the Akon Lighting Africa project started by Senegalese-American singer Akon.
Melchior Koba
Ecommerce is booming in several African countries. So, most governments have introduced reforms and incentives to encourage the activity. To benefit from those incentives, some buyers indulge in fraudulent acts. Therefore, Morocco is introducing the tax to protect the local industry and secure more revenues.
Morocco will tax every good purchased online and shipped from abroad starting from July 1, 2022. The decision is decreed in ordinance n° 2-22-438 issued during the ministerial council carried out last Thursday, June 16. According to the decision, all the goods purchased via electronic platforms are now subjected to import duties no matter their value. Goods delivered before the law’s effective date will not be affected, the ordinance stresses.
The new ordinance amends article 190-E of decree n°2-77-862, which exempts some goods and parcels from import duty. Goods and parcels worth less than MAD2,000 (US198.65$) imported by individuals with ordinary residence in Morrocco and those worth less than MAD1,250 (about US$125) (except for alcoholic drinks and tobacco) sent to natural or legal persons domiciled in the country were included.
Article 190-E is amended because Morocco noticed that with the boom of e-commerce activity in the country, some users have developed fraudulent practices to benefit from the exemption. For instance, large goods exceeding the exemption limits are fractioned and sent to multiple persons even though they are destined for one individual or legal person.
Speaking during a press conference after the June 16 ministerial council, government spokesperson Mustapha Baitas explained that the new decisions are aimed at combating fraudulent practices. "The project aims to strengthen customs control procedures for parcels bought online and delivered from abroad,” he said.
For the spokesperson, those acts harm the Moroccan economy-local businesses particularly- and deprive the government of important resources. In 2021, he estimates, more than MAD1 billion worth of goods bypassed taxation using fraudulent schemes to benefit from the exemption provided by article 190-E. For the government official, that figure could rise to MAD2 billion this year.
Ruben Tchounyabe
During his medical studies, he stumbled upon a scientific paper that prompted him to streamline health exchange and collaboration. The innovation now helps save lives and earns its founder accolades and awards.
Sedric Degbo (photo) is a Beninese doctor, entrepreneur, and founder of the African Doctors' Exchange Network (REMA). For the entrepreneur, “health exchange and collaboration always save lives.” Therefore, his mission with REMA is to make the exchange and collaboration process more efficient with digitalization.
His network allows remote medical collaboration and facilitates collective intelligence and solidarity between doctors practicing on the African continent. Its mobile platform gives doctors the opportunity to discuss practical cases in real-time with their colleagues for improved medical decisions. Currently, it claims an active community of over 6,000 doctors, most from West Africa.
Sedric got the idea to create REMA in 2016 during a research work when he stumbled upon a scientific paper on medical mistakes in the world.
“The conclusions were really alarming, so I decided out of curiosity to find the data concerning Africa… The figures specified by numerous authors proved that medical mistakes are real public health issues on our continent. An analysis of those figures demonstrates that beyond the organizational challenges of the African health system, the high number of medical mistakes on the continent is due to doctors’ low level of information, their isolation, and the lack of a suitable mechanism to communicate with peers,” he explained in 2020.
Thanks to REMA, the young entrepreneur who worked for Caritas International between 2016 and 2019 has received numerous awards. In 2019, he was awarded the first Inwidays prize in Casablanca and the first BreizhAfrica prize in Paris. He also received the second Afric'Up prize in Tunis. The following year, he received the Covid-19 Solidarity Award from the International Organization of the Francophonie. This year, he is on the Medika Life 50, a list of the 50 most influential voices in the healthcare industry. Since September 2021, he is a member of the executive board of Bluemind Foundation, an NGO making mental healthcare accessible for every African.
Melchior Koba
Digital jobs are now popular because of the technological revolution, which was accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic. In Africa however, there is still a digital skill gap. Some edtech startups want to close that gap.
GOMYCODE is a teaching concept developed by Tunisian edtech GoMyCode to teach advanced programming and digital courses. It includes a mix of projects and exercises to allow learners to master the skills taught. Half of the courses are taught online and the other half at the 20 offline centers the startup has in its markets, namely Bahrain, Morocco, Egypt, Algeria, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, and Nigeria.
For Amine Bouhlel, co-founder of GoMyCode, the teaching concept has notable impacts. “There are a lot of impact and mass-market players. We are targeting a wide range of students. So our courses are not just for graduates, professionals, or people from a specific social class. [...] GOMYCODE programs target mass markets, and our blended model makes us accessible and affordable, which you don’t see a lot,” he explains.
The concept is taught by over 500 teachers who teach in 12 languages. The startup has launched more than 25 training paths with professionals. Its fees vary between US$250 (for 3-month courses) and US$750 (for 5-month courses). For every student trained it guarantees placement with one of its over 100 partner institutions. Currently, it claims it has already secured placement for 80% of its over 10,000 learners.
Currently, the startup plans to attract more than 100,000 learners and open an additional 50 offline centers in Africa and the Middle East in the next two years. For that purpose, early this month (June 2022), it raised US$8 million to expand its presence. Its target markets are South Africa, Kenya, Ghana, and Saudi Arabia.
Adoni Conrad Quenum