San Francisco and Lagos-based fintech startup Flutterwave has launched Flutterwave Store, a portal for African merchants to create digital shops to sell online. The product is less Amazon and more eBay — with no inventory or warehouse requirements. Flutterwave insists the move doesn’t represent any shift away from its core payments business. The company accelerated the development…
Greater availability of African genomic data could lead to medical breakthroughs for the continent’s 1.2 billion people. That’s the driving proposition of 54gene — a U.S. and Nigeria based startup — that collects African genetic code for use in health research and drug development. The company has closed a $15 million Series A round, in…
Since its inception, Cape Town based crowdsolving startup Zindi has been building a database of data scientists across Africa. It now has 12,000 registered on its its platform that uses AI and machine learning to tackle complex problems and will offer them cash-prizes to find solutions to curb COVID-19. Zindi has an open challenge focused…
Five years ago, it was hard to come by any numbers for annual VC investment in Africa. These days the challenge is choosing which number to follow. That’s the case for three venture funding studies for Africa that turned up varied results. The numbers and variance Investment stats released by media outlet Disrupt Africa, data-base…
South African fintech startup Jumo closed a $55 million round from a diverse group of investors, the company confirmed. Founded in 2015 and based in Cape Town, the venture offers a full tech stack for partners to build savings, lending, and insurance products for customers in emerging markets. This week’s funding follows a $52 million…
Cape Town based startup Zindi has registered 10,000 data-scientists on its platform that uses AI and machine learning to crowdsolve complex problems in Africa. Founded in 2018, the early-stage venture allows companies, NGOs or government institutions to host online competitions around data-oriented challenges. Zindi opens the contests to the African data scientists on its site…
Ben Okereke, who legally immigrated to America when he was 14-years-old, took part in Turning Point USA’s 2019 Young Black Leadership Summit Friday at the White House, where he thanked President Donald Trump for everything he has “done for the African American community so far.” “With us this afternoon is Ben Okereke,” Trump said as…
If you’re a VC or founder in London, Bangalore or San Francisco, you’ll likely interact with some part of Africa’s tech landscape for the first time — or more — in the near future. When measured by monetary values, the continent’s tech ecosystem is small by Shenzhen or Silicon Valley standards. But when you look…
A refugee program that allowed foreign relatives of already-arrived foreign refugees to the United States was halted, altogether, more than a decade ago due to mass fraud among applicants. This week, Powerline blog’s David Steinberg suggested that Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) entered the U.S. in the mid-1990s as a third-priority, known as P-3, refugee —…
