Author: Tapiwa Matthew Mutisi

Crealo, a Moroccan startup specializing in copyright management, has successfully secured 14.1 million dirhams ($1.42 million) in seed funding. The funding round was led by 212 Founders Programme, part of CDG Invest, with participation from Kima Ventures, Evolem, Super Capital, and other angel investors. This funding will allow Crealo to…

The African startup landscape is developing beyond the conventional markets of Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa, with activity now accelerating in other areas throughout the continent. As the market evolves, there is a growing demand for more local fund managers to unlock additional capital and provide support to founders.…

In defiance of the global investment downturn in 2022, venture capital (VC) investments in African startups witnessed a significant decrease last year, reflecting the broader scenario of stringent investment measures in other regions. This drop, however, was anticipatable as investment deals started dwindling in the months leading up to the…

Let’s delve into a pertinent inquiry – why do Zimbabwean startups find it difficult to attract equal amounts of funding compared to other African startups? Is this a balanced question for us to be asking? Let’s explore this further. There are numerous elements at play that complicate the process for…

The Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (POTRAZ) has given a strict warning to distributors and advertisers of Starlink Internet Services’ devices, stating that they could face arrest. This development follows the discovery of several local companies marketing these devices, notably on Facebook, which is in direct contravention of…

Today marks the 40th anniversary of the release of the Apple Macintosh, first launched on January 24, 1984. In celebration of the Mac’s birthday, the Folon Foundation shared an intriguing story. Steve Jobs had once enlisted Belgian artist Jean-Michel Folon to design an illustrated character. This character, known as Mr.…

Safaricom’s M-PESA, a mobile money platform, is currently experiencing operational issues that are affecting its paybill services. Despite an earlier announcement that the outage had been resolved, Safaricom issued a subsequent notification stating the connectivity issues had returned. As of reporting time, Safaricom has not disclosed the cause of the…

Nigerian agri-tech startup, ThriveAgric, has launched its dry season farming cycle by delivering agricultural inputs catering to over 100,000 smallholder farmers in Northern Nigeria. The aim is to facilitate the production of more than 300,000MT of grains. Established in 2017 and fully active since 2018, ThriveAgric assists Nigerian farmers in…

Business magnate Dr. Patrice Motsepe’s Tyme Group is planning to launch a third digital bank in Vietnam, Southeast Asia, aiming to grow its foothold in the continent’s banking sector. Tyme Group, majority-owned by Dr. Motsepe’s African Rainbow Capital (ARC), owns a 57.7% stake in TymeBank, self-acclaimed South Africa’s first digital-only…

E-hailing company Bolt has introduced a new cancellation feature within its app to discourage users from making offline trips. Offline trips are trips taken without using the online features of the Bolt app, such as a driver negotiating a lower fare with a rider, which can potentially expose them to…

Thabi Leoka, an economist under scrutiny, has stepped down from her role on the board of directors at telecommunications group MTN after a tenure exceeding four years. Leoka’s resignation follows media queries about the validity of her academic credentials. Earlier this month, Business Day reported that Leoka was implicated in…

Kenyan platform PesaLink, which facilitates real-time fund transfers between bank accounts, is introducing a merchant payments feature. The announcement was made on X, following an M-PESA service disruption that has caused difficulties for consumers trying to make payments for products and services using the paybill service. PesaLink said on X, in…

The Nigerian edtech startup AltSchool Africa, known for its likeness to the US coding bootcamp BloomTech, has expanded its operations to Kenya, its second-largest market in terms of revenue. Adewale Yusuf, the founder of AltSchool Africa, confirmed this development in an interview. With Kenya contributing the second-highest revenue, the startup…

eBay announced plans to lay off about 1,000 employees, approximately 9% of its workforce, due to the current economic conditions. As mentioned in a recent blog post, the e-commerce company also intends to reduce contract positions in the upcoming months. CEO Jamie Iannone acknowledged that although the company was swift…

UK asset manager Abrdn is set to make hundreds of job cuts as part of a cost-cutting plan aimed at saving around £150mn. The job cuts, which will account for about 10% of Abrdn’s workforce, will focus mainly on support and control functions rather than investment roles. This decision comes…

On Monday, Riot Games, a division of Tencent, announced cuts of 11% of its workforce, about 530 jobs, and a reduction in its division that supports small developers’ game publication. Riot CEO Dylan Jadeja, in a blog post, informed employees about the changes saying, “We’re transitioning some of our forecasts…

WWE enthusiasts can expect to spend their Monday nights on Netflix soon, following a colossal agreement between the wrestling organization and the streaming service to air “RAW” in 2025. The deal is worth $5 billion and spans 10 years, a move both companies expressed their excitement over. Describing the deal…

Twiga Foods, a Kenyan eCommerce platform, has reached an agreement with Google Cloud reseller Incentro Africa to resolve their lingering dispute over Google Cloud Services debt. The financial disagreement between the two firms, which began in September 2023 and lasted over four months, started when Incentro sued Twiga Foods, demanding…

Telegram is releasing a raft of updates as part of its January feature rollout, including “view-once” audio and video messages, the capability to pause recording during the sending of an audio or video message, and new controls for read time. The app first incorporated “view-once” photos and videos for one-on-one…

MrBeast earned over $263,000 in ad revenue from his latest video posted on X, but the YouTube star considers this figure to be somewhat misleading. “Advertisers noticed the attention it was attracting and bought ads on my video (I think), resulting in my revenue per view probably being higher than…