TECH STARS (663)
Although the fastest growing in the World, the African startup ecosystem is still faced with fundraising difficulties, the early-stage segment notably. For Nigerian entrepreneurs Benedict Afolami and Ose Eromosele, Conectivest may be the solution to that problem.
The finance industry has no secrets for Benedict Afolami (photo, left) and Ose Eromosele (photo, right). With over 15 years of combined professional experience in technology and finance, they have had time to identify the issues faced by fundraisers in Africa and the gaps between investors' and entrepreneurs’ expectations.
They created Conectivest to tackle the various problems they identified during their professional career. Officially launched in June 2021, the digital platform facilitates investments by networking investors and entrepreneurs. According to the founders, successful fundraising always starts with perfect alchemy between investors and the fundraiser.
“It’s an investment networking space that facilitates founder to founder connection; investor to investor connection; hub to founder connection and investor to founder connections,” explains Benedict Afolami, Co-founder and CEO of Conectivest.
Conectivest offers a quick way for founders, hubs, incubators, and investors to connect and exchange ideas. It helps startups fine-tune their profiles. It also allows investors to manage their deals and investments. Through weekly demo days, Connectivest allows entrepreneurs wh are ready to raise money to meet with investors.
In less than a year, the founders claim to have onboarded more than 350 active Africa-focused investors from three major investment groups, including LoftyInc Capital Management, Midlothian Angel Network, and South-South-East Angel Network. Through Conectivest, the said investors have directly or indirectly completed more than 50 deals totaling US$2.2 million, they told TechBuild Africa.
Aïsha Moyouzame
In July 2018, a diabetes management app entered the Nigerian tech ecosystem with the ultimate mission to educate the population and “reduce the prevalence of diabetes.” Diabetes is not a death sentence, its creator Diekola Sulu (photo) told Ventures Africa.
At age 26, in 2006, Diekola Sulu was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. At the time, he was careless with his lifestyle and had limited information about his disease. He kept his carefree attitude until his condition worsened. Then he started educating himself on his condition. Thanks to the information he got, he realized his disease was not a death sentence, it could be managed.
The realization gave him a new goal: to educate people and help those suffering from diabetes better take care of themselves.
Before founding Self Healthcare Empowerment Initiative (SHEI) he lived in the UK where he acquired a wealth of information on diabetes. He later relocated to Qatar where he worked with the government to deliver healthcare programs. In 2015, he helped the Qatari government develop a National Diabetes program. During his professional career, he discovered that both the Middle East and his native country, Nigeria, had the same problem, namely a lack of education and information about the right tools to manage diabetes.
In 2016, he decided to launch SHEI to raise awareness about the disease. However, realizing that on-the-ground activities were not reaching a larger audience, he decided to use technology to address the problem. “(...) Then we realized that we were not reaching as many people as we wanted because we were limited to only the people we could see. So we sat down and thought about a better way, and the best way was to go through tech,” he recounts. So, in July 2018, he self-funded the launch of ManageAm, a mobile app, with some strategic partners.
With diabetes management requiring a lot of effort between balancing routines, tracking blood tests, planning exercise and diet, medications, and managing blood sugar levels, ManageAM aims to be a dedicated self-management app. It helps users achieve their short and long-term health goals, and efficiently calculate their progress while facilitating healthy lifestyle decisions. It also allows users to effectively engage, discuss treatment, and follow up with their physicians.
According to the International Diabetes Federation (IDF), 24 million Africans were living with diabetes in 2021. In that context, ManageAm aims to position itself as a necessary tool to reduce the prevalence of diabetes and promote self-education.
Aïsha Moyouzame
Logidoo is a Senegalese e-logistics platform that lets its users send packages across Africa. Last year, it recorded a 200% turnover growth year-on-year.
The platform was created in 2019 by Tamsir Ousmane Traoré (photo) who wanted to develop logistics solutions that match African realities. The path seems natural for Traoré who comes from a family of entrepreneurs active in the logistics sector.
After taking marketing and management courses in Morocco and a brilliant career in the African supply chain, the Senegalese returned to his motherland in 2011. That is when his entrepreneurial career began. Indeed, before Logidoo, which he launched in 2019, Ousmane Traoré had Tex Courrier, a mailing business, Indilma, an event management business, and Pharma Express, a pharmaceutical distribution company.
With Logidoo, 2WLogistics, the startup founded by Tamsir Ousmane Traoré, manages the reception, storage, shipment, and all the import-export procedures. As for users, through Logidoo, they can compare different shipping options (road transport, air transport, or sea transport) and track their packages.
In 2020, Logidoo entered the Moroccan markets. While this move started Traoré’s expansion in the MENA region, he also wanted to make the Senegal-Morocco axis a route for West African clients seeking reliable logistics solutions.
In just two years, the solution has conquered six markets (Senegal, Mali, Guinea, Morocco, and Mauritania). Ultimately, his ambition is to progressively integrate technology into import-export operations in Africa, as well leverage the opportunities offered by the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) to conquer the African logistics market.
Aïsha Moyouzame
Female genital mutilations (FGMs) are prohibited in most African countries. Regardless, they are still carried out in some regions. In Nigeria for instance, it is still widespread, according to a release issued last February by UNICEF.
To combat such practices, in Nigeria, social entrepreneur Dirug Samuel (Photo) developed SmartRR, a mobile app allowing people to report female genital mutilation and rape cases.
Dirug Samuel is a computer science graduate from Adamawa State Polytechnic, Nigeria. He also holds a human resources certification from the Stallion Academy for Business and Leadership. As the founder and executive director of the Big Family 360 foundation, he has been actively opposing gender-based violence since 2017. The social entrepreneur is renowned for his commitment to the fight against female genital mutilation and the support he helps provide victims of such acts.
His app SmartRR facilitates anonymous reporting of FGMs, using “the UNFPA service mapping program.” For Dirug Samuel, female genital mutilations violate human rights. So, he is set on contributing his computer skills to fight the phenomenon.
Samuel also wants to sensitize communities against the phenomenon. “With awareness and innovations about the dangers of the practice of FGM, about 40 percent to 50 percent of women say they would not want their daughters to experience it [ed.note: FGMs] (...)The UNFPA and other stakeholders are achieving a lot in the fight against FGM in Nigeria,” he said in an interview in 2021.
In September 2021, the Big Family 360 Foundation’s CEO won the UNFPA Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) Hacklab and the Spotlight Initiative (SIARP) award.
Aïsha Moyouzame
In just one year, Ahmed Ismail and his partners managed to make Bloom, a fintech offering savings services, the first Sudanese startup to join a cohort of US startup enabler Y Combinator.
Former Barclays investment bank partner Ahmed Ismail (pictured) is the CEO of Bloom, a digital financial solution developed by Bloom Financial Technologies (UK) Limited through its Sudan-registered branch. He co-founded Bloom with Youcef Oudjidane, Abdigani Diriye and Khalid Keenan, African entrepreneurs who studied at renowned universities in the UK and worked at Goldman, Amazon and IBM. They decided to combine their experience in engineering, investment banking and venture capital to fight inflation and currency devaluation in Sudan.
They initially intended to invest in already established digital banking markets in Africa, but ultimately chose to build one instead. They entered the Sudanese market because they were familiar with it and wanted to make an impact in a still to be developed tech ecosystem. In 2021, they launched Bloom, a neobank that allows Sudanese to save in U.S. dollars and spend in their local currency, the Sudanese pound. Their neobank offers several other services like money transfer and dollar banking cards.
Their goal is to help users -the middle class mostly- save in stable currencies and spend in the local currency amid inflationary pressures, which exceeded 350% in the country in 2021.
Sudan's tech ecosystem is still in its infancy, Bloom is the second venture-backed startup in the country in over 30 years, and the first backed by U.S. startup enabler Y Combinator in the country. The neobank, which is thus representing Sudan’s tech ecosystem on the global scene, claims to have 15,000 people on its waitlist.
For the founders, being included in the Y Combinator 2022 startup program could help not only draw attention to Bloom but also to opportunities in other countries, like Sudan, that are not much present in international competitions.
Aïsha Moyouzame
Fatim Cissé (photo) is the founder of IT firm Dux and CEO of IHS Towers Côte d'Ivoire. She is also the first Ivorian woman to get an artificial intelligence degree.
After completing secondary school in Côte d'Ivoire, she traveled to Canada for a Master’s in Human resources management at HEC Montreal in 2010. Six years later, she obtained a degree in management from Harvard Business School. In 2019, she made history by becoming the first Ivorian woman to graduate from Singularity University’s Executive Program in artificial intelligence. Her professional career began in 2005 with big foreign firms like Hewitt & Associates, Quintiles, and Centennial Marketing Group.
In 2011, she returned to her home country where she took over the human resources division of Ericsson Côte d'Ivoire. Driven by the desire to contribute to the development of Côte d’Ivoire, she founded Dux, an IT firm, in 2018. Her company makes it easier for African businesses to access digital services, in addition to offering AI, cybersecurity, big data, and data science courses. She also designs customized courses for companies.
Besides her entrepreneurial ventures, she also pursues a career in telecoms. In 2020, she was appointed CEO of IHS Towers Côte d'Ivoire, a multinational telecom infrastructure company. In 2019, she was made a Knight of the National Order of Côte d'Ivoire. In 2019 and 2020, she was included in the first two editions of Who's Who Côte d'Ivoire, a book aimed at highlighting the country’s best talents.
In line with her goal to "prepare African organizations for the 4th industrial revolution," she builds strong trust-based partnerships with her clients, guaranteeing the security, reliability, and efficiency of the technological solutions she offers.
"We have a clear vision of what we want to be: a leader in artificial intelligence on our continent, through the development of tailored applications, training, and consulting. Our progressive thinking combined with our deep understanding of local realities and our pragmatic and creative approach set us apart from our competitors," she says.
Aïsha Moyouzame
Mauritius-based African Network Information Centre (AFRINIC), an IP address management institution, intends to contribute to the development of the digital industry in Africa by helping deal with the challenges faced in this sector. This year, Eddy Kayihura, AFRINIC CEO, has launched an extensive mobilization program that will be carried out in about twenty countries.
Eddy Kayihura (photo), CEO of the African Network Information Centre, recently embarked on an African tour in his bid to reach his 2022 goal of contributing to the development of the digital industry. The tour is aimed at mobilizing AFRINIC member countries around a common goal, which is to join forces for secure and stable internet services in Africa. In its framework, AFRINIC representatives will visit about twenty countries, including Côte d’Ivoire and Benin that have already been visited by the representatives.
For Eddy Kayihura, this tour is an opportunity to improve the services offered by AFRINIC by notably establishing a presence in the various member countries. That way, the center can understand member countries’ specificities as well as discuss their goals and challenges to make sure the center is aligning its services with ground realities.
"To offer improved services, we have to get closer to [member countries], listen to their problems, and present new products. Our members include Internet service providers, governments, and digital stakeholders. We will meet them, discuss current issues and explore ways to better serve them,” he explained.
The mobilization program is also expected to bring in new members. With the development of the digital industry, cybercrimes are ever-present threats. To this end, Eddy Kayihura reveals, AFRINIC has created new technologies to face those threats. One of the new technologies created is the Internet Protocol version 6 (IPV6), the new version of IP addressing, which is the foundation of network connectivity and the internet. According to the CEO, member countries are lagging in the adoption of that new version. So, during the tour, AFRINIC will also discuss with members to find the best approaches to facilitate that adoption.
AFRINIC is a non-profit organization that manages Africa's IP addresses. It provides blocks of IP addresses and allows its members to establish their own digital identity, certifying the origin of their internet traffic. Since 2004, the institution has served some 2,000 members in Africa. Eddy Kayihura plans to add 900 more members.
The CEO, who has over 20 years of experience in the IT sector holds a B.S. in IT from the University of Rwanda and an MBA in international business from Oklahoma Christian University. He worked for the Bank of Kigali in Rwanda, where he contributed to the initial stages of the bank’s digital transformation. He also held a management position at Broadband System Corporation, an internet service provider in Rwanda. In November 2019, he joined AFRINIC, with a mission to contribute to the success of the institution’s digital strategy.
Aïsha Moyouzame
Thanks to a passion born after an unfortunate accident, Nathan Nwachuku is now one of the leading innovators with much room for growth. Through Klas, the start-up he co-founded, he wants to allow everyone to learn and share their knowledge.
Give everyone a chance to share their valuable knowledge and earn an income by doing so. This is the goal of 18-year-old Nigerian Nathan Nwachuku (photo) through Klas, the start-up he launched in December 2021. Specifically, his mission is to unleash the power of knowledge-sharing through technology.
He recently raised US$130,000 from a group of investors including Voltron Capital, Cabal Fund, Velocity Digital, HoaQ, Tola Adesanmi of Spleet, Odunayo Eweniyi of PiggyVest or Nadayar Enegesi of Eden Life to boost the capacities of his e-learning platform.
Through the platform, anyone can create an online school and offer live lessons. The platform integrates course planning, community management, video conferencing, and payment features. On Klas, creators can teach a variety of subjects, including coding, design, cryptography, business, and languages.
Nathan Nwachuku came up with the idea for Klas while recovering from an accident that occurred on his 15th birthday, leaving him without his right eye. During his five-month recovery, the young Nigerian started teaching physics online. Upon discovering the potential of online teaching, he decided to fully devote himself to it.
After his JAMB, he declined university admissions to devote himself to his project. He later met Lekan Adejumo on a matchmaking site. The latter later became Klas’s co-founder.
The startup claims to have already collaborated with numerous firms worldwide with over 2,000 creators still on its waitlist.
Ruben Tchounyabe
The startup ecosystem has been booming over the past few years. This boom was accelerated by the digital transformation that ensued from the Covid-19 pandemic. The popularity of that ecosystem is to such an extent that it is attracting a growing number of atypical profiles.
Blaise Matuidi (photo), an Angolan native and former French professional footballer, fully entered the tech world after being a business angel for some time. Last March 22, he announced the launch of a tech investment fund.
Called Origins, the investment fund will focus on supporting Web3, video games, and crypto startups. The fund was launched in collaboration with Ilan Abehassera, co-founder and CEO of Dots, Salomon Aiach, head of German fund Earlybird’s French branch, as well as Yohan Benalouane, Matuidi’s childhood friend who plays for the Greek football club Aris Salonika.
"My interest in technology started a few years ago. When I arrived in the United States, I met Ilan who helped me make some investments. Then we got the idea to create Origins. With all the individuals contributing to the investment fund and, thanks to their popularity with some 160 million fans currently, we can spearhead very beautiful stories,” says Blaise Matuidi, the 2018 World Cup Champion.
Origins brings together internationally renowned personalities. They include over 50 athletes like Paulo Dybala, N'Golo Kanté, Olivier Giroud, Presnel Kimpembe, Kingsley Coman, Miralem Pjanic, and Antoine Dupont. The fund is also supported by several figures from the business world.
"Footballers are not much engaged in the tech sector although they are large consumers [of tech products]. We are going to help them invest in that sector [...] They must be aware that footballers have short careers so they need to plan their future," says Blaise Matuidi.
Ilan, Salomon, and I are learning “every day”. “We do it stepwise like it is done for football careers. What we have to do now is to win the startup world cup,” he adds.
Origins plans to stake €100,000 to €500,000 in early-stage projects, but its overall investment capacity has not been disclosed yet. It has already invested in two projects. The first is Ugami which provides financial solutions and rewards to gamers while the second is Yumon, an NFT platform.
Muriel Edjo
Response to gender-based violence remains poor in DR Congo. To change the game, Didier Bacigale and Amisi Musada have designed SOS Secours, an application to alert and assist victims.
Didier Bacigale got the idea of such an application when he was still a student. He reported that his neighbor was always beaten by her husband but that no one ever helped her. He then worked on the project with Amisi Musada (pictured) and that is how SOS Secours was born.
The two entrepreneurs created a tech startup called Yangu in 2019 thanks to the DRC Human Rights Hackathon event, organized by Internews. They won the competition with their SOS Secours solution.
Official data showed that the DRC records an average of 1,000 cases of gender-based violence every day. With Yangu’s app, victims can now easily seek help when in danger. The user just has to shake his/her phone 5 times (after the app is installed on the phone) and immediately, an alert and a geolocation are sent by message to relatives and to a network of local associations that are partners of SOS Secours.
Beyond helping victims, the solution works as a real-time data generator for all entities engaged in the fight against gender-based violence. “Many organizations say they have trouble accessing information and especially stats about gender-based violence. There are few real-time statistics. To have data, we are obliged to resort to health centers although we know that not all victims go to the hospital,” explained Amisi Musada.
In four years, the duo has managed to attract many partners, including Internews DRC, the French Institute of Bukavu, as well as associations like Femme au Fone and AFEM. Currently, the app is only operational in the province of South Kivu where the startup Yangu is based. The founders are now working on lobbying with telecom operators for SMS alerts.
Aïsha Moyouzame
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The Ivorian entrepreneur Christelle Hien Kouame (pictured) won the 2021 Challenge App Africa with her edtech solution “Prenez les feuilles”. The solution is an educational platform for students in Côte d'Ivoire.
To make her idea a reality, the marketing and communications engineer invested funds from her communications agency to develop the solution and, once that was done, she officially presented it to the Ivorian Ministry of Education. The solution was then validated and made available to students, for homework and exams.
Later, Christelle Hien Kouame bettered her offer by including new learning tools to challenge students. "We then integrated three other components to our platform: motivation through rewards by offering gifts for quizzes and exercises completed correctly within a given timeframe, career guidance by talking about jobs with different career paths, and finally short podcasts about general knowledge broadcast via the WhatsApp channel," she said.
Through her startup, Christelle Hien Kouame wants to improve the national success rate. In addition to its educational role, the platform helps students who do not have all the textbooks, to have access to lessons on different subjects directly on their mobile phones. The objective of "Prenez les feuilles" is to give access to school programs to as many people as possible. The app is also intended to be the best tool for preparing for school exams.
In 2019, the edtech company Eneza Education bought the project. As one success leads to another, Christelle Hien Kouame won the 6th edition of the Challenge App Africa organized by the media RFI and France24 in 2021. The prize is worth €15,000.
Today, 6,000 students regularly use the online platform, and the app version launched in early March already has almost 2,000 downloads. Christelle Hien Kouame aims to reach students outside her country. She is already planning an expansion strategy, starting with Senegal by 2025.
Aïsha Moyouzame
It took a decade for the former young innovator to become the boss of a tech company specializing in the modernization of agriculture. He has developed many solutions that facilitate the work and improve the yield of farmers.
In Niger, the company Tech-Innov has managed to build a solid reputation among farmers over the past nine years. The founder Abdou Maman Kané (pictured) has strived to make his company a national and global reference with the many innovations developed to help local farmers.
The computer scientist and entrepreneur made a name for himself in 2011 by winning the first place of the Orange Prize for Social Entrepreneurship in Africa and the Middle East with his remote-controlled irrigation system "Télé-irrigation". According to him, this idea, which came from his own experience as the son of a farmer, has been in his mind since 2005.
When he was younger, he noticed how difficult it was for his parents and other farmers to access water for their activities. They struggled to carry water several times a day over long distances to regularly water their crops. He then started to think of a way to help them. That is how he came up with the idea to not only improve their working conditions with ICTs but also put an end to manual watering.
In 2013, Abdou Maman Kané created Tech-Innov, a company specialized in the promotion and marketing of agricultural and irrigation technology solutions. With this startup, he marketed Tele-irrigation system, a hardware and software kit composed of a tank connected to a pump and a network of pipes installed in a field. The pump is connected to a box equipped with a SIM card. The farmer simply dials a code from his phone to activate it and start watering. Users can also access real-time information such as temperature, humidity, rainfall, solar radiation, air speed and quality to know when to water.
Abdou Maman Kané also developed other solutions such as the smart bio-fertilizer, the drinking water kiosk in rural areas, automatic watering, and mobile weather. These achievements have earned him several awards including the second prize Climate Startup COP22, the third prize of the Young African Social Entrepreneur of Libreville (2015), the Hassan II World Grand Prize for Water (2015), the Medal of Ecological Creation in Nice (2013), and a medal at the International Exhibition of Inventions of Geneva (2012).
Ruben Tchounyabe
Between the high prices and the poor condition of some real estate properties in African cities, people are finding it difficult to get decent housing. With his platform Spleet, Akintola Adesanmi facilitates renting through a home loan solution.
Former product manager at Guaranty Trust Bank Plc (currently known as Guarantee Trust Holding Company) and eTranzact, a payments company, Akintola Adesanmi (pictured, right) has a strong background in banking and fintech. Since 2018, he has been running Spleet, a startup providing a platform where people have access to home loans and a wide selection of properties.
The goal is to provide a solution that allows tenants to find understanding landlords. However, while Spleet was a good plan for tenants, it was not quite the same for landlords. It took the solution 15 months to integrate 16 landlords and about 101 spaces on the platform. The co-founder said he realized that most landlords prefer to receive their lease once rather than 12 times a year to mitigate the risk of default. He co-founded Spleet with Daniella Ajala (pictured, left).
“Growth was slow on the landlords’ side. We just couldn’t add as many landlords as we wanted to on time. But on the tenants’ side, we had great occupancy rates—an average of 90% month-on-month occupancy rates,” Adesanmi told TechCabal. So it became clear that this model would not be sustainable in the long run. After more than 3 years of trying to evolve his market, Akintola Adesanmi wanted to tailor his offering to both tenants and owners. To do so, he applied in 2021 to the accelerator program of MetaProp, a New York-based VC firm focused on the real estate technology industry. Spleet became the first African startup to complete the six-month program, which ended last month, and on March 15, the startup announced $625,000 in pre-seed funding led by MetaProp VC with participation from several investment bodies.
Spleet's new business model now allows tenants to apply for a loan to pay the full amount of the rent, then spread the repayment over up to 12 months. In this way, tenants can continue to pay the rent monthly and landlords who want annual payments can also be satisfied. This solution quickly won over new customers, and Akintola Adesanmi was able to get back on track. A beta version of Spleet's offering was launched this month, and it has already logged more than $10,000 in applications.
Now, the entrepreneur intends to make Spleet the go-to platform for residential real estate in Africa, especially since many African countries are affected by the housing deficit problem, with rental costs sometimes very high.
Aïsha Moyouzame
The head of two businesses, Brian Bosire designs tech solutions for agriculture, water, and sanitation. His solution HydroIQ has just been selected by the Google for Startups Accelerator Africa program.
With a passion for emerging technologies and their application to solving Africa's biggest challenges, Kenyan entrepreneur Brian Bosire (pictured) gained early attention for his innovations in agriculture and water. In 2013, he founded Electrosoft, a startup focused on bringing technology to efficiency, convenience, and improved productivity in the energy, water, and sanitation sectors.
With his startup UjuziKilimo (which he founded in 2016), he has developed a tech tool that studies soils to inform smallholder farmers, who have limited access to knowledge, to better use resources like fertilizer and water. Brian Bosire's innovations have won him many awards, including the ASME Ishow African Award in 2015, and the Africa Innovation Foundation's Top 10 Young Innovators.
Brian Bosire founded another startup -Hydrologistics Africa (HydroIQ), which offers a virtual water network to provide consumers and utilities with a unique and transparent platform to manage their water consumption. This innovation earned him the one.org award in 2017, ranking him among the Five Young Africans Changing the World. For creating a connected object to manage water networks remotely, namely HydroIQ, his solution was named startup of the year in Africa and won a €10,000 prize awarded at the second edition of SOTYA in 2018.
In November 2021, he announced the launch of HydroIQ in Central America, specifically in Guatemala. “We are proud and challenged to continue providing quality services to the world. As the world's first virtual water network operator, we are proud to keep leading the entire water industry in Africa and beyond in developing innovative technology solutions to make every drop of water count,” he said. The entrepreneur was also appointed the youngest senator from Nyamira County in the Youth Senate Kenya. His contribution to youth leadership and entrepreneurship led to him being named a United Nations (UN) Youth Leader for the SDGs, and a member of the World Bank Advisory Group (S4YE).
His recent selection by the Google for Startups Accelerator Africa program on March 14, 2022, will allow him to receive coaching to develop his HydroIQ technology, and expand his operations across Africa and beyond.
Aïsha Moyouzame