Solutions (528)
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
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
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
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
Trella entered the Egyptian market in 2018. Within years, it expanded to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan with hopes to enter every MENA country with support from leading investors.
Trella is an e-logistics platform launched by its eponymous startup, in 2018, in the Egyptian market. The platform, available on playstore, acts as a network connecting shippers with transporters and even goes an extra mile to resolve issues that may arise between the two parties. In June 2021, Startup Trella successfully completed a US$42 million funding round thanks to its innovative business model.
Founded by Muhammad El Garem, Ali El Atra, and Omar Hagrass, the startup aims to improve efficiency and reliability in the trucking market. “The cost of moving goods in Egypt is two to four times more expensive than it is in Europe and the US,” said Trella’s CEO, Omar Hagrass. For the CEO, by making the sector more efficient, Trella brings costs down and wins the market.
Before Trella, “carriers used to make hundreds of phone calls every day just to be able to take one load. (...) Sometimes, they would spend three to five days idle because they did not have anyone to assign them any loads,” he added.
In addition to its reliability and transparency, Trella also allows shippers to track their shipments in real-time. It also provides key transportation trends and performances.
To access the various services offered by Trella, users either register online or via the mobile app. Then, they can fill a set of information to be informed about everything needed for their loads to reach the started destination.
By 2021, Trella was already employing 100 people. At the time, it claimed more than 350 shipping partners and more than 15,000 carriers on its platform. With automated dashboards and 24/7 customer service, the platform is keeping up with the competition. Its next step is to expand in the whole MENA region.
Adoni Conrad Quenum
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
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
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
In South Africa, mobile app Kena Health allows citizens to chat with health professionals remotely. Available on Play Store and App Store, the app helps registered users get advice, diagnoses, prescriptions, sick notes, and even get referred to pathologists and specialists if needed.
The health tech is developed by Healthforce, a South Africa-based startup whose stated mission is to improve health offers in the country thanks to a network of multidisciplinary health professionals in over 450 hospitals in the country.
On Kena Health, users chat with Linda, the virtual assistant that collects general information about the patient’s health. After that step, consultations can be booked either offline or online with a nurse to describe the symptoms. If the patient’s condition requires so, the nurse will transfer the call directly to a doctor. Kena's services are available from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday and from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday. The first three consultations are free of charge and from the fourth onwards, the fee is ZAR160 (about US$11) per session.
Currently, Healthforce claims over 1.5 million offline and 135,000 virtual medical consultations in the past four years.
“Our goal is to improve access to quality care by lowering cost. (...) By creating an app that focuses on team-based healthcare, we’re able to do this, while actually improving the quality of health outcomes for each patient,” explains Saul Kornik, founder and CEO of Kena Health.
Adoni Conrad Quenum
Egyptian healthcare startup O7 Therapy recently raised US$2.1 million in a seed round, according to a release issued Monday (April 4). With the proceeds, the startup plans to support mental health and expand in the MENA while developing new features and innovative products.
O7 Therapy is an online platform and network of hand-picked Arabic-speaking psychiatrists and psychotherapists. It is also a referral network of specialized clinics and hospitals that take care of people with mental health issues in the MENA region. The platform provides online psychotherapy in a friendly environment using reliable encryption and data storage protocols. In doing so, O7 Therapy revolutionized online health support and provides collaborative mental health services to Arabic-speaking people around the world.
It was founded in 2019 by Egyptian serial entrepreneur Ashraf Bacheet (photo) in partnership with assistant professor of psychiatry Dr. Ashraf Adel and software entrepreneur Nader Iskander. Ashraf Bacheet studied at various institutions such as the German School of Cairo, Cairo University, the University of Maryland, and the UK Chartered Institute of Marketing.
“Our Investment in mental wellbeing improves the lives of individuals in all areas of life; their student life, work, homes, family, friends, and even physical health. This in turn improves the performance of entrepreneurs, SMEs, corporate and government employees, positively affecting countries economically, ” says Nader Iskander.
According to an official release, their “Employee Wellness Programs for organizations are provided through a unique B2B2E model, prioritizing the impact of mental health challenges in the workplace, focusing on raising awareness and understanding, creating safe and supportive spaces, and implementing strategies that promote mental wellbeing.”
With several degrees and certificates in pharmaceutical sciences, tech entrepreneurship, and marketing and communication, Ashraf Bacheet runs a family business operating in the pharmaceutical industry. He also offers consultancy and mentorship services to startups.
In 2011, he started developing his passion for social entrepreneurship by joining a “global NGO as their Middle East Director.”
Ruben Tchounyabe
More...
Waste management is currently one of the most important global issues. In 2019, the International Labour Organization revealed that 2.01 billion tons of solid waste were produced in the world annually. Just 16% of the global solid waste is recycled. To address the waste management problem, a Nigerian entrepreneur is betting on technology.
In November 2021, Nigerian entrepreneur Damilola Kadiri (photo) launched Wura, an item-sharing app whose sole purpose is to save the planet. Through Wura, users can share things they no longer need, be they used clothes, books, shoes, jewelry, or even earpieces. So far as they can be useful, they are welcome on Wura.
To post or recover items on Wura, users have to register on the app and abide by its golden rules. The said golden rules were drafted by Damilola Kadiri to avoid bad situations when exchanging items through his platform. All items are free and users are asked to report anyone selling items through Wura. Also, users are cautioned to receive items only from people with profile pictures. The rules also request users to appreciate givers, request items with compassionate words and meetup in public, and follow Covid-19 prevention rules.
With 354 registered users and 47 donations so far, Wura plans to positively impact Nigerians by showing them how everyday actions affect the environment. “For now, we are looking at increasing the number of transactions on the app and sign-ups, then over time, what we intend to do is promote sustainability businesses. So I feel that would be an avenue for us to generate profit. As I said, the idea is to change people’s behavior to be eco-friendly,” says Damilola Kadiri adding that he has no plans to commercialize the app for the time being.
The app is available on android and iOS. Thanks to “an advanced analytical algorithm,” users are made aware of the environmental contribution of the transaction they make. By including such a feature, Wura developers expect users to change their attitude towards the environment once they start noticing the amount of carbon dioxide emissions they help reduce by not throwing away bulk items.
Adoni Conrad Quenum
Botswana currently has more cattle than residents. Over 100,000 ranches are registered in the country. However, owners who still use traditional management methods are finding it hard to oversee daily activities.
Motswana Thuto Paul Gaotingwe (photo) developed an offline app to allow livestock farmers to improve the management of their cattle and ranches. Initially, his goal was to help a friend, but he quickly realized that Botswana's livestock farmers have limited control over the farming process.
"We have worked around innovative ways that still allow them to improve production and efficiency with less change from their old ways," he says.
The farm management app is dubbed Modisar, which means ‘livestock caretaker’ in Tswana, one of the oldest Bantu dialects. It allows efficient farm data collection, enabling farmers to act accordingly when things seem to be going wrong.
With Modisar, livestock caretakers and farmers keep livestock, farm, financial, and production records. The app has a built-in "smart farm assistant" feature, which reminds farmers of important tasks and best practices for profitable farming. It also has an "animal management" feature, which keeps track of almost everything concerning the livestock on farms and produces a wide range of operating reports.
By synchronizing farm data collected, the app recommends solutions to optimize profits. It also integrates a feature that tracks farm assets and inventories while reminding of important actions to take. For instance, it can send text messages to caretakers or farm owners reminding them to vaccinate their livestock or proceed to insemination.
In 2014, the app won the Orange Social Venture Prize, known by its French acronym POESAM. In 2015, Paul Gaotingwe’s startup, Modisar also, decided to make the app free for farmers, attracting 1,200 farmers at the time.
Adoni Conrad Quenum
Clinic Agro has helped analyze thousands of hectares of cultivable lands in several African countries. The ambition of its developer, Pyrrus Koudjou, is to improve food security and help lift farmers out of poverty.
Pyrrus Koudjou (photo)’s plant clinic, ClinicAgro, recently launched a fundraising campaign to expand its operations. The agricultural startup created in 2019 is the result of a discussion between its creator and a farmer. During that discussion, Pyrrus Koudjou discovered the various problems facing the agricultural sector. Realizing that the problems are almost the same everywhere, he decided to find a solution to provide farmers with vital information needed for the success of their activities.
"Africa […] and Cameroon in particular, need stable food supplies because the population is growing exponentially. In that context, we must help farmers optimize their production and space utilization, reduce their ecological footprint and preserve natural resources for future generations," explains the social entrepreneur and computer scientist.
Connected to a mobile app through Bluetooth, the ClinicAgro kit offers advanced diagnostics of soils and diseases that can affect plants. Within 60 seconds, it can provide various indicators like fertilization rate, nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium level or the nutrient index.
Based on the result of the analysis, ClinicAgro will provide recommendations to improve the soil, its yields, and ultimately the farmer’s income. Users can also submit pictures of diseased plants for an artificial intelligence algorithm to identify the disease affecting that plant and appropriate solutions.
Available in 6 languages, ClinicAgro is a decision-making tool essential for farmers. The eponymous start-up was officially launched in February 2021. To date, ClinicAgro has manufactured 12 kits, which have been deployed in several countries, including Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Togo, and France. Some 1,200 hectares of land have been analyzed using the technological solution.
"What motivates me every day is my target audience: farmers. My goal is to find solutions to help them achieve optimal yields,” says Pyrrus Koudjou, whose target is to help analyze 1.8 million hectares of cultivable lands in Cameroon.
Pyrrus Koudjou is a tech enthusiast. He has developed several solutions based on artificial intelligence. Thanks to ClinicAgro, he received numerous awards including the Coup de Cœur awards during Med’Innovant Africa 2019, the grand prize of Antic 2019, and Cultivez le Numérique Morocco as well as the main prize of Espoir Afric Startup Summit 2019 in Paris. In 2019, as the top winner of Orange Social Entrepreneur, Pyrrus Koudjou joined the acceleration program offered at Orange digital center Douala. Thanks to the mentorship program, he was able to develop the prototype and the commercial version of ClinicAgro.
Ruben Tchounyabe
Developed in 2019, Smart Bra has the potential to save the lives of millions of women across Africa. Kemisola Bolarinwa, the young Nigerian who developed the app, wants to spare other families the sad experience she had.
Nigerian tech firm Nextwear Technology is set to release a smart bra in July 2022. Developed by robotics engineer Kemisola Bolarinwa (photo), the smart bra is aimed at helping fight breast cancer by improving early diagnosis. The bra is equipped with small, battery-powered ultrasound sensors. It scans the user’s breasts, synchronizes the result with a mobile app, and sends the data to a doctor for interpretation.
Dubbed “Smart Bra,” the technological tool is the result of four years of research. It’s an idea that Bolarinwa came up with, in 2017, after her mother passed from breast cancer, at the University College Hospital in Ibadan. The young engineer believes the tragedy could have been prevented if the cancer was diagnosed earlier.
"In her ward at the hospital, I saw women of different age groups, even teenagers, groaning in the pain of breast cancer," she said.
“The smart bra must be worn on the breasts for a maximum of 30 minutes for the result to show,” she explains. For the robotics engineer, women can screen for breast cancer from the comfort of their homes. The technology can also be used by health centers–which lack the funds needed to acquire radiology and mammography equipment–or by poor communities.
“We have conducted a local trial and got about 70 percent accuracy. We are working towards 95-97 percent accuracy,” Kemisola Bolarinwa informs.
With 129,000 new cases diagnosed in 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that breast cancer is currently the most common type of cancer among women in sub-Saharan Africa. In the region, less than 50% of the affected survive five years after they are diagnosed, according to the WHO.
Ruben Tchounyabe