In Egypt, 40% of deliveries fail. This is four times higher than the global average, which is about 8%. Concerned by the situation, several local entrepreneurs have been trying to deal with this challenge which plagues a sector that is worth about US$3.1 billion in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
ShipBlu is a digital platform that provides last-mile delivery services in Egypt. It fulfills orders not only from individuals but also from online shopping platforms and local stores. It was co-founded in 2020, by Ali Nasser (photo, center), Ahmed ElKawass (photo, right), and Abdelrahman Hosny (photo, left). In October 2021, the startup completed a US$2.4 million funding round, with investors including Nama Ventures and Orange Ventures, to improve its services and support expansion.
The idea for ShipBlu came from Ali Nasser’s realization of the state of delivery services in the country. “Roughly 56% of the time when someone in Egypt places an order online, they don’t even get a delivery date. After you place your order and you get an email confirmation, it’s complete silence until, on a random day, you’re going to get a call from the agent who’s on their way to you asking if you are available to pick up the package. We’re changing that,” he explains.
To change things as they put it, ShipBlu founders created a platform allowing users to access marketplaces and online stores of partner brands operating in Egypt. The partners usually have stocks in ShipBlu’s warehouses to allow the startup to quickly deliver placed orders. Right from their ShipBlu dashboards, users can monitor the status of their orders.
The startup, accelerated by Y Combinator, usually delivers orders within three hours and users always have an idea of when they will receive their packages.
Deliveries are billed per the size of the package, the delivery time frame selected, and the destination. The startup claims to have developed an Artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithm to “reduce costs, meet delivery constraints and refine its operating assumptions.”
ShipBlu’s system improves the quality of the services offered by online shopping platforms in the country despite addressing problems that arise due to inaccurate or non-existent postal codes.
Adoni Conrad Quenum
In the previous decade, the Kenyan government made significant investments to transform the country into a digital hub in East Africa. With the new plan, it is setting higher goals.
Kenya's Minister of ICT, Joe Mucheru (photo), launched the National Digital Master Plan 2022-2032 on Tuesday, April 12. Launched on the sidelines of the Connected Kenya summit being held from April 10 to 14 in Diani, the about US$45 million master plan will guide the government’s investments in digital transformation over the next ten years.
“The National Digital Master Plan, which will be launched will guide us in shaping our discussions towards a transformed digital Kenya where technology plays a pivotal role in economic development. (...) I do not doubt that with the successful implementation of the identified programs and projects in the master plan, this country can live up to its reputation as the Silicon Savannah in matters of ICT and economic development,” indicated Joe Mucheru.
According to the master plan, by 2032, Kenya will deploy, 100,000 km of fiber optic cable to connect 40,000 schools and other educational institutions, 20,000 government institutions, and 13,000 health facilities. The country will also install 25,000 Internet access points to support its youth and innovators and create 1,450 digital innovation hubs, two software factories, and two electronics manufacturing plants. Overall, the plan will help create 10,000 jobs for software engineers.
The master plan strongly emphasizes digital skills development by building the capacities of 20 million citizens, 300,000 civil servants, and 10,000 professionals.
On the regional level, it is agreed to establish a hub on future technologies and another dedicated to the maintenance of submarine cables.
“To position the country as a regional ICT hub, the plan proposes the establishment of regional ICT smart hubs as well as regional submarine cables maintenance depots. (...) To enable a one-stop-shop for all government core services, the plan proposes accelerated automation and digitization for all government core services in both national and county governments” to quickstart the digitization of 5 billion government records, ICT Minister Joe Mucheru indicates.
Ruben Tchounyabe
For a long time, many public actors have launched health platforms that did not help efficiently take care of patients across Morocco. Now, the government wants to change things, as it is more concerned about inclusive healthcare.
During a public communication on Saturday, April 9, Khalid Ait Taleb (photo), the Moroccan Minister of Health and Social Protection, announced the upcoming launch of a national e-health system. It will provide citizens equal access to health records and other online services.
Through the new platform, the government wants to put an end to the existing fragmented e-health system, set up by university hospitals, regional health authorities, and various national health programs, said Khalid Ait Taleb. Indeed, nationwide, two programs have established electronic platforms: the National Maternal and Child Health Program and the Tuberculosis Program.
The idea of an integrated national e-health system is a recommendation of the Mohammed V University of Rabat. In a summary report on e-health in Morocco prepared by its e-health innovation center, the academic institution assessed the national health system and identified opportunities and challenges for e-health solutions that match the digital transformation strategy undertaken by the government over the past 20 years.
According to the Minister of Health and Social Protection, during the Covid-19 crisis, innovative e-health solutions boosted the resilience and responsiveness of the country's health system. The official added that telemedicine and online access to health services are in line with the country's legal framework for the protection of personal data and the practice of medicine.
Ruben Tchounyabe
Alexandre N'Djore (photo), on March 10, 2022, successfully raised €300,000 in seed funding to develop his startup Digitech Group. Founded in 2016 with Zachariah George, the startup specializes in insurance technology solutions. Digitech Group offers insurance and reinsurance companies a set of fully integrated, cloud-based web and mobile solutions to improve their productivity and competitiveness.
Digitech Group was founded after Alexandre N'Djore noticed the fragmented and broken state of the insurance sector in Africa. According to the former MTN Côte d’Ivoire’s logistics manager, the problem affects the whole sector, right from insurers to policy buyers. " This leads to a generally low insurance penetration in Africa, about 3%, except for South Africa,” he says.
For its new development phase, Digitech Group created Hyperion 2.0, an ERP system that automates transactions between insurers and reinsurers, saves time and money, eliminates errors, and provides real-time critical business information.
Alexandre N'Djore holds an MBA from the Hult International Business School in Dubai. He also obtained a Master's degree in supply chain and transport engineering from Ecole Supérieure de Commerce et d'Administration des Entreprises (ESCAE) in Abidjan. The Master’s degree opened doors to executive positions in supply chain logistics for him. For instance, for four years, he has been the director of catering at Air Ivoire.
His ambition is to transmit the operational efficiency he acquired during his professional career in the supply and logistics chain to the African insurance sector. Since the creation of Digitech Group, the tech entrepreneur claims to have processed more than 7 million insurance policies. His dynamism earned him numerous awards, including the best Insuretech Award, offered in 2020, by the Federation of African National Insurance Companies (FANAF). In 2018, Digitech Group won the Best Startup award in South Africa, by Amazon Web Services at the AWS Startup Day.
Melchior Koba
Mobile operator Orange Egypt recently signed an exclusive 5-year partnership agreement with electronic payment network VISA. The agreement officially announced on Twitter, Tuesday, April 12, aims to provide Orange Cash clients with exclusive digital payment solutions through VISA virtual and physical bank cards.
Thanks to the partnership, Orange Egypt’s clients can make online and in-store transactions using Visa’s various payment services (both domestic and international services) right from their mobile money wallet (Cash wallet). It will also allow merchants to accept transactions via the digital wallet just by scanning QR Codes.
The partnership signed by Orange is in line with its commitment to “provide unique and innovative features to facilitate clients’ daily transactions as well as save them time and energy.” It will thus help Orange Egypt's clients carry out financial transactions in a simple, fast, efficient, and secure manner. It will also help the operator attract new customers and improve its position in the digital payment market in Egypt.
For VISA, the initiative is part of plans to "diversify payment methods, encourage digital payments, and support Egypt's evolution to a cashless society." In May 2017, the electronic payment network signed a memorandum of understanding with Egyptian authorities to develop the infrastructures needed to transform the country into a regional digital payment hub. So, Visa Inc. will capitalize on the "extraordinary opportunity" offered by the new partnership to pursue its growth ambitions.
Overall, the exclusive deal will contribute to Egyptian authorities’ efforts to move to a cashless society as the country is, since 2016, engaged in a digital transformation process, which was accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Isaac K. Kassouwi
Afrikamart is a Senegalese fresh produce distribution startup that offers its marketing services to agri-food producers. It has an online platform where merchants, hotels, restaurants, and supermarkets can buy their fresh products. Launched in 2018, Afrikamart was founded after Mignane Diouf, its founder, noticed that it was easier for retailers to import fruit and vegetables from Morocco than to buy them locally in Senegal.
The startup collects fresh products from thousands of producers in rural areas for distribution to retailers in urban areas. In doing so, it guarantees better incomes for farmers, better prices for retailers, and quality products for end consumers.
To become Afrikamart suppliers, producers fill in contact information to allow the startup to reach out for more information about their products and whether they can be sold on the platform.
Clients also have to follow a set of procedures like the products they are willing to buy and which quantity they are planning to buy weekly.
Afrikamart claims to have delivered 8,000 kilograms of products daily in 2021 and created 200 indirect jobs thanks to the collaboration with more than 600 agri-food producers. Its long-term plan is to expand into more West African markets by building on the supply chain expertise and the success it acquired in Senegal.
Adoni Conrad Quenum
E-commerce proved indispensable for the continuation of business activities amid the pandemic in 2020 when the world was hit by social restrictions. As a result, the global revenue of this segment which stood at US$3.351 trillion in 2019, jumped to US$4.248 trillion in 2020, according to Statista.
In Africa, the same trend was observed with e-commerce revenues growing by more than US$6 billion to $27.97 billion in 2020. Despite the growth, Africa’s 2020 e-commerce revenues represented less than 3% of the global revenues. This reflects the continent’s low readiness for new retail opportunities.
In its report "E-Commerce and the Digital Economy in LDCs: At Breaking Point in COVID-19 Times" published on March 15, 2022, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) listed several negative factors that contributed to Africa's modest global e-commerce performance.
Lack of political interest, difficult access to the Internet, the digital divide, low investments in e-commerce activities, supply chain disruptions, lack of consumer protection and fair competition rules, and the persistent practices of cash on delivery are the main factors listed by the UNCTAD.
A glance at the UNCTAD's Business to Consumer (B2C) e-commerce index -which measures an economy's readiness to engage in and benefit from e-commerce- shows that Africa has been the lowest-ranked in the past six years. For the UNCTAD, the situation must appeal to governments and prompt them to take strong actions to make sure the continent can reap the rewards of the digital economy.
Since 2017, UNCTAD has been helping countries improve their e-business readiness. Through the eTrade Readiness Assessments (eT Readies), it helps them assess and correct their e-commerce development strategies, the quality of ICT infrastructure and services, trade facilitation and logistics available, the payment solutions as well as the legal and regulatory frameworks. It also points to the skills to be developed and assesses if there is compelling access to finance.
In December 2021, 46 eT Readies requests, including 15 from African countries, were submitted to the UNCTAD. Of the 15 submitted by African countries, six have been completed, two are still in progress, and seven are not yet processed.
Muriel Edjo
In Egypt, e-health startup Otida helps people with diabetes manage their daily lives by being their nutritionist, fitness coach, or doctor. The startup wants to help its users maintain normal blood sugar levels without taking drugs or resorting to surgery but, with a program adapted to each user.
The Otida method can be summarized as nutritional therapy and personal coaching to avert diabetes complications such as cardiovascular disease, and eye and foot problems... The service costs EGP3,500 (about US$190).
Recently, the startup completed a US$340,000 funding round to improve the lives of 5,000 people suffering from diabetes in Egypt and the Middle East.
According to Ahmed Tawfic (photo, left), founder and CEO of Otida, "with the level of technology we are surrounded by today, it’s unacceptable to have patients with diabetes still struggling to find the right treatment program that fits each condition.”
To access the services offered by the health tech, users must first register on its web platform by entering personal information such as email, phone number, name, weight, and height. They then receive a glucose measurement kit (CGM kit) to measure their blood sugar level every 15 minutes for 10 days. They are also required to keep track of their eating habits to give an objective idea of their metabolism.
The data collected is directly sent to the startup’s cloud, and analyzed by specialists who will elaborate the most effective program for each individual. Every subscriber is assigned a sports coach available 24 hours a day.
Adoni Conrad Quenum
Côte d’Ivoire’s Ministry of Digital Economy launched, Thursday (April 7), in Daloa, a digital platform for agricultural services. Dubbed AgriStore, the platform will help improve farmers’ productivity and facilitate commercial relationships in the agriculture value chain.
"Our agriculture sector must capitalize on digitization to improve operations in its value chains,” said Minister of Economy Roger Félix Adom (photo, left), at the launch ceremony attended by his peers of the Ministries of Agriculture and Promotion of Good Governance.
In collaboration with the National Agency for Support to Rural Development (ANADER), AgriStore will provide agro-meteorological information and agricultural advice to its users. To facilitate the AgriStore’s operations, the operational capacities of the Ivorian marketing assistance board (OCPV) have been strengthened to cover all the areas served by the digital platform, informs OCPV coordinator Adjoumani Boffoué. That way, he explains, the assistance board will collect information on the available stocks, their location, and prices for listing on AgriStore.
AgriStore was developed in the framework of the Digital Solutions Project for Opening Up Rural Areas and E-Agriculture (PSDEA). Funded to the tune of XOF37 billion (US$61.3 million) by the International Development Association (IDA), the development of that platform started in November 2018. It aims to make the Ivorian agriculture sector efficient and competitive by reducing production costs and improving quality.
According to the PSDEA coordinator in charge of digital services, Abdoul Karim Koné, farmers registered on the platform will periodically receive market alerts (SMS and voice messages) in the languages most spoken in the project areas. The market alerts will provide information on rice, corn, cassava, yam, plantain, shea, chicken, guinea fowl, and vegetables. The platform’s services are entirely free, he stresses.
AgriStore will cover ten administrative regions with high agricultural production, namely Haut Sassandra, Marahoué, Bounkani, Poro, Tchologo, Bagoué, Kabadougou, Folon, Gôh and Loh-Djiboua. To ensure the success of the process, required investments will be made in rural connectivity, digital services, and rural road rehabilitation, the Minister of the Digital Economy informs.
Ruben Tchounyabe
In Kenya, transactions at the Mombasa tea auction house are now exclusively performed online through the electronic portal iTTS (Integrated Tea Trading System). With the US$2.12 million portal, the Mombasa Tea Auction House officially ends its physical interactions with tea traders.
For Arthur Sawe, chairperson of the East African Tea Trade Association (EATTA), the portal funded by the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA), will boost tea traders' and farmers’ benefits by reducing operating costs.
“The digitization seeks to fill gaps in the current procedures, which are done manually including membership and cataloging,” he added
According to Morgens Strunge Lursen, Councilor at the Danish embassy in Kenya, "the launch of the iTTS is particularly exciting because it helps position such a critical sector for future growth and success by driving efficiency and supporting both increased traceability and information exchange."
The Mombasa Tea Auction House serves Kenya, Mozambique, Tanzania, Malawi, Burundi, Ethiopia, DRC, Rwanda, Madagascar, and Uganda. Its digitization, which led to the creation of the iTTS portal, began in May 2020 at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. It helped the industry respect social distancing requirements by allowing buyers to place their tea bids online. After a two-year pilot phase, the iTTS portal was launched on March 31, 2022.
According to a release announcing the launch, “in time, iTTS is expected to shorten the pre-auction, auction and post-auction stages; create the potential for increased frequency in trading volumes; reduce the tea trading cycle by about 65 percent from the current 45 to 60 days to less than a month; and, fast track payments to farmers and reduce the need to take loans to finance farming operation.”
Users will only need connected devices (phones for instance) to track the tea they bought through auctions from factories to shipping companies. The portal also includes features allowing resellers to analyze global market trends. According to Kenya's Permanent Secretary for the East African Community, Kevit Desai, “the manual procedure involves middlemen, producers, warehouses, brokers, buyers. (...) The trickle-down effect was that farmers had little say in the prices of their tea but the new system is inclusive, and farmers will benefit immensely.”
The iTTS “will ensure that stakeholders of the tea auction, including farmers, buyers, and sellers receive real-time information on what is happening on the auction bourse, which will boost confidence in the Process,” concludes EATTA Managing Director, Edward Mudibo.
Ruben Tchounyabe
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Fintech startup ImaliPay announced on Thursday (April 7), the successful completion of a US$3 million funding round. The startup -founded by Tatenda Furusa (photo, left) and Oluwasanmi Akinmusire (photo, right)- will use the funds to expand its team with new talents, improve its one-stop-shop platform, and enter new markets (Ghana and Egypt in that instance).
Currently, ImaliPay’s app is available only on Play Store. Through its app and thanks to strategic partners, the startup offers actors of the gig economy access to various financial services still inaccessible to them. The services include Buy Now Pay Later, investments, savings, and insurance.
“We researched the gig economy and found that they were neglected by some financial services. And we saw that we were perfectly placed on building a fintech solving the problems of Africa’s gig economy workers, freelancers, and self-employed digital workers,” explains Tatenda Furusa, CEO of ImaliPay.
The CEO obtained a business and management master's from the University of Nottingham, UK, in 2017. His co-founder Oluwasanmi Akinmusire graduated with a Master of Business Administration, from Ajayi Crowther University in Oyo, Nigeria, in 2019. The two partners worked at Cellulant, a pan-African firm that provides local alternative payment solutions for global, regional, and local merchants. They want to foster financial inclusion in Africa, whose citizens are excluded from most of the traditional financial services.
In 15 months of operation, ImaliPay's user base has grown 60-fold, and the fintech claims over 200,000 transactions via its platform. Freelancers can access its services at 4,500 physical outlets.
Adoni Conrad Quenum
ICTs have many goals, including the reduction of time needed to collect and process data. The project, in this form, gives the State more flexibility in how it uses collected data.
Seychelles will start its first nationwide digital census on April 22, 2022. It will collect data on its population, households, and voters, said on April 5 the deputy director-general of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Helena Butler-Payette. Unlike previous years where the census was done using forms to be filled, this year it will be fully digital.
“One of the biggest changes in the way we do things resides in the digitalization of census,” said Butler-Payette while adding that training sessions, for about 500 door-to-door surveying agents, have already started.
Since it became independent, Seychelles has carried out six census operations; the first two in 1977 and 1987. The following censuses (1994, 1997, 2002, and 2010) focused on meeting national needs, especially the delineation of administrative borders. According to the NBS, Seychelles had 99,728 residents in 2021, 0.8% more than the figure recorded in 2020. This year’s census should have taken place in 2020 (it takes place every 10 years) but it was postponed to 2022 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
In addition to data on the population and households, agents deployed will also gather voters’ data. Commenting on the operation, Helena Butler-Payette said it is better to use the same resources now to carry out the two surveys instead of wasting money doing both separately. Overall, the government plans to spend 904,000$ on the operation.
The NBS believes that conducting the survey digitally would allow results to be obtained more rapidly. “Before, it took us nearly a year to draw reports from the data we collected during the census, but this time, it will take us only weeks or months,” the NBS official declared.
Ruben Tchounyabe
Algerian entrepreneur Noureddine Tayebi, heads, from Silicon Valley, Yassir, a carpooling and home-delivery app. The platform, which works in Africa, Europe, and America, aims to diversify its offer and expand to french-speaking markets in sub-Saharan Africa.
After studying engineering in Algeria, Noureddine Tayebi (photo) flew to the U.S. in 1998 to pursue a master's degree in electrical engineering at the University of Urbana-Champaign, Illinois. After graduating, he went on to earn a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford University. In the late 2000s, he moved to Silicon Valley where he started working for Intel. There, he spent over eight years acquiring product management and marketing skills. He also gained real start-up experience at the US microprocessor and semiconductor manufacturer.
However, his entrepreneurial journey started in 2011, after securing 23 patents. In 2014, he founded his first company called InSense, specializing in nano-motion sensors, launched with two grants totaling $1.6 million. He later sold the business to a Silicon Valley company. In 2017, he co-founded Yassir. Originally deployed as a cab app, the platform has since diversified into fast food and grocery deliveries with Yassir Express, and most recently, with Yassir Market into grocery delivery.
The startup claims three million active users across Algeria, Canada, France, Morocco, and Tunisia. Over the past five years, its turnover has been growing steadily (up to 40% per month). The app has helped, indirectly, create more than 40,000 jobs for drivers and delivery workers. In November 2021, Yassir closed a $30 million fundraising round with U.S. investors for its development. So far, the entrepreneur has successfully raised $67.6 million from 30 investors.
In the short run, Noureddine Tayebi's ambition is to develop Yassir in sub-Saharan Africa, especially in French-speaking countries like Senegal, Ivory Coast, Togo, Benin, Mali, and Cameroon. The Algerian affirms that the application is already working in Senegal, and other major markets on the continent such as South Africa, Nigeria, and Egypt.
"The goal is to create the largest technology company, not only in Africa but in the world. To achieve this, we need to be present in many markets," he says.
Aïsha Moyouzame
Robert Muoka Salim (photo) is a Kenyan techpreneur and sociopreneur. He is the CEO and co-founder of My Shamba Digital, an online legal platform selected on March 1, 2022, to join the Venture Capital for Africa (VC4A) program.
My Shamba Digital helps citizens complete their land procedures, and avoid scams and other bad decisions that can lead to disputes between individuals, companies, or the state. Its resource center and blog also provide users with access to important land-related information. Apart from its resource center and blog, the platform also has real estate and land listing pages, My Shamba Digital Property Listings, and My Shamba Sako.
Robert Muoka Salim launched My Shamba Digital in the first quarter of 2021. But, he got the idea several years back because of land dispute cases he came across during his professional career. In 2017, the Kenyan Ministry of Lands and Physical Planning signaled an increase in land fraud and related crimes over the previous decade. At the time, it indicated 7,052 land fraud cases costing the treasury Ksh60 billion (US$520 million) yearly.
Land affairs are not the only cases in which Robert Muoka is specialized. In 2020, he co-founded the digital platform Sheria Online, which specializes in legal coaching, and is currently responsible for business development and strategic partnerships.
For his digital solutions, he was listed in the Africa Law Tech and Lawyers Hub's Top 50 African Legal Innovators (2021). He also received the award for the best technological solution at the Africa Legal Innovation Hackathon 2021. He was also the finalist of the Global Legal Hackathon 2022 and one of the nominees for the Under-30 Techpreneur of the Year at the 2022 Founder of the Year Awards.
Melchior Koba