Author: Staff Writer

World Economic Forum (WEF) has launched a new initiative to help African start-up enterprises grow and compete in international markets. It is called the Africa Growth Platform. According to WEF, the Africa Growth Platform will do this in three ways: firstly, by securing commitments from governments to implement policy reforms aimed at…

Solar energy company, BBOXX, has successfully raised $50 million in a Series D funding round to boost BBOXX’s expansion drive and fuel its mission to use technology to unlock potential and transform millions of lives worldwide The financial milestone includes a substantial investment from Mitsubishi Corporation, a global integrated business enterprise…

US-based Fintech service, Esusu, has announced the closing of a $1.6 million seed round to scale, expand market share, and focus on product development. The seed round was led by Acumen Fund with participation from Sinai Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Katapult Accelerator, Plug and Play Tech Center, Global Good Fund, Temerity Capital…

Google has announced that it is shutting down the job application tracking system, Hire by Google, it launched just two years ago. The company had built “Hire” with Diane Greene, a former Alphabet board member. According to the tech giant, it says it is focusing its resources on other products in…

The Executive Governor of Oyo State, Engr. Oluwaseyi Makinde has unveiled a partnership between Farmcrowdy, Nigeria’s first digital agriculture platform, and the Oyo State government. The official launch event which was held on Monday in Ibadan, Oyo State had all executive members and commissioners of the Oyo State cabinet in…

According to Canalys, Baidu replaced Google in the number 2 position in the smart speaker market in the second quarter of 2019. The Chinese vendor grew 3,700% to reach 4.5 million units in quarter 2 after it re-entered the market with Xiaodu device in Q2 last year. Even though Baidu…

Gokada is back on the streets after a 2-week hiatus with Gokada 2.0 initiative. A couple of days ago, CEO of Gokada, Fahim Saleh said that the ride-hailing company was shutting down operations for two weeks. This was to attend to some operational issues that Fahim experienced while on the…

The photograph of a young girl carrying another younger albino girl has won Spaniard Sara De Antonio Feu the 2018/19 Grand Prize of the prestigious Nikon Photo Contest. De Antonio Feu’s winning photo was taken in Ghana and shows Ayimpoka, a young girl with albinism. Albinism is a recessive condition that drastically reduces…

Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) has approved the disbursement of $230 million to telecoms company 9mobile (formerly known as Etisalat Nigeria) to support its growth plans. According to a statement released by Abdulrahman Ado, its executive director for regulatory and corporate affairs, the facility divided into two tranches will be used to…

PewDiePie (real name Felix Kjellberg) now has over 100 million subscribers to his YouTube channel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFzM-7_dSyE Though this is a newsworthy achievement, this does not necessarily translate to earnings. Last year he was ranked number 8 on the “YouTube earners in the top ten list for 2018” with $15.5 million. The…

Samsung witnessed a growth in its smartphone sales in the 2nd quarter of 2019 after six consecutive quarterly declines. It sold over 75 million smartphones in the second quarter of 2019 and grew its share by 1.1 percentage points year over year. It defied the global decline in smartphone sales…

Facebook is working on another messaging app to compete with Snapchat. It is called “Threads”. According to “The Verge”, this app is meant to promote constant, intimate sharing between users and their closest friends. Wonder why Facebook is intent in introducing yet another app? Well Facebook is intent on winning…

biNu announced that over 1 million customers use its Moya messenger in a month and about 650,000 customers use the platform every day. Moya Messenger, a WhatsApp alternative, is mobile messaging app that enables users to communicate without incurring data cost. So no data cost is incurred by users to send and…

Willem Nolens has resigned as the CEO of SolarNow. The Lars Johannisson (COO) and Daniel Wellington (CFO) will jointly lead the company going forward. After 8 years in the role, Willem Nolens will continue as advisor to SolarNow turning his attention from day-to-day operations to Fund Raising, Investor Relations and Strategy.…

Shareholders of South African based Internet giant, Naspers, have approved the listing of Prosus, a new global consumer internet group, on Euronext Amsterdam on the 11th of September 2019. As a global consumer internet group and one of the largest technology investors in the world, Prosus is likely to be…

Tastemakers has raised $1 million for its business that caters for the African travel experience. The seed round was led by Precursor Ventures. This is the second seed fund raised by the company following the $980k raised by October 2018 also led by Precursor Ventures joined by Metis Investments, Pipeline Angels, CRE…

Global Consultancy firm, Palladium, has launched its first impact fund – the Palladium Impact Fund I – to bridge the financing gap for small businesses in sub-Saharan Africa. This follows two successful direct investments, design of the world’s largest development impact bond (DIB), and three years spent developing a strong pipeline of…

Just two months after its launch in Lagos, the kwik Delivery platform reached 2000 verified customers and is already well on its way toward 3000 verified customers. “We are thrilled by the response from Lagosians to our on-demand B2B delivery service. Among the 2000 verified customers are several large corporate accounts…

Leading automobile trading platform Cars45, has now introduced a premium inspection service where they can now visit your home or office to do an inspection of your car. This valued-added service allows Cars45 to cater to individuals who are unable to visit any of its inspection centers but would still…

PayPal backed Micro-loan lender, Tala, announced that it has raised $110 million in funding. Founded in 2011 by Indian American CEO and founder, Shivani Siroya, Tala aims to close the credit gap in emerging markets by using mobile data to overcome traditional barriers to financial access. It collects thousands of data points…