There are hundreds of African startups offering solutions offering innovative solutions to the many challenges being encountered on the continent. They leverage technology to tackle these problems. Interestingly, these startups cut across fintech, edtech, agritech, transport/mobility, logistics, cleantech, and healthtech among others.
As we ride into 2022, Innovation-village highlights startups across the earlier mentioned sectors to watch out for next year.
Fintech
TeamApt
In 2022, TeamApt would become one of the African unicorns. The Nigerian fintech startup processes $3.5 billion in month-on-month transactions, has 150,000 agents on its platform, and 14,000,000 users. TeamApt is looking to raise $150 million that will take its valuation to over $1 billion. Founded in 2015, TeamApt is an agency banking operator focused on building the largest digital bank offering financial services products tailored to meet the needs of the underserved mass market. The company leverages technology and low cost offline distribution models to offer products including micropayments, savings, lending, insurance, pensions.
Mono
Launched in August 2020 by Abdulhamid Hassan, ex-Product Manager, Paystack and Prakhar Singh, Mono is a Nigerian API startup that enables its partners — internet businesses and developers — to build apps that make transfers from their customers’ bank accounts instantly, help them understand their users’ cash flow with more detailed information, offer convenient credit, among other things. Mono has grown to service 200+ valued customers & partners including Flutterwave, Renmoney, Aella, Credpal, Lendsqr, Float, Payhippo and so many more. It has delivered over 200 million units of financial data to its partners.
CinetPay
CinetPay is a digital finance platform that enables merchants in Francophone Africa to seamlessly accept and make payments. It is backed by 4DX Ventures and Flutterwave. The investment will boost CinetPay’s sales and marketing efforts across nine markets in West and Central Africa. Since its 2016 launch in Côte d’Ivoire, CinetPay has processed over 30 million transactions for 350 active merchants in nine countries, including Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, Cameroon, Mali, Togo, Burkina Faso, Benin and Guinea. CinetPay’s platform provides a single interface for businesses to process over 130 different payment operators, from mobile money to credit and debit cards and e-wallets, eliminating the need for merchants to spend months integrating with different systems in order to manage sales and revenues. We watch to see the impact of Flutterwave and its investment in this fintech.
Moove
Moove is Uber’s exclusive vehicle financing and vehicle supply partner in sub-Saharan Africa, with Moove-financed cars having completed more than 850,000 Uber trips covering over 13 million kilometers across the continent to date. Founded by Ladi Delano and Jide Odunsi in 2019, Moove provides vehicle financing to ride-hailing drivers in sub-Saharan Africa.
Edtech
uLesson
uLesson is arguably the biggest edtech startup in Africa and it has brought a unique strategy to delivering quality education across the continent. Founded by serial Sim Shagaya in 2019, uLesson offers a suite of educational products — a core curriculum video library, live lessons, and live personalized homework help — that provides holistic learning that is both interactive and tailored to the individual needs of primary and secondary school learners across Africa. Since its launch, uLesson has seen incredible traction from learners. In 2021, daily average users surged 430%, and live lesson demand grew by 222% since their introduction in September. The uLesson app has been downloaded two million times; 12.3m videos have been watched; and 25.6m questions have been answered.
Edukoya
Founded by the former Country Director of the UK-Nigeria Tech hub, Honey Ogundeyi, Edukoya empowers learners and their parents to take control of their learning and makes it easier for them to access high-quality learning material and expert help. The platform has a range of valuable features targeted at Nigerian secondary school learners including 24/7 Exam Preparation & Homework tutor help, a data-driven question bank with step-by-step solutions, and personalised performance tracking systems.
It was launched in December 2021 and raised $3,5 million in pre-seed funding led by Tiger Global. This is one of the largest pre-seed funding raised by a Nigerian edtech startup. This should not come as a surprise because the founder has a large network, can be trusted, and can command the interest of investors. Her status is similar to Sim Shagaya. Perhaps, uLesson should be wary of Edukoya as we move into 2022.
Kidato
Founded by serial entrepreneur Sam Gichuru in 2020, Kidato is a Kenyan online school for K-12 students with a vision to provide a high-quality, affordable education to the growing middle class in Africa. Kidato currently has more than 700 registered students from eight countries around the world, including Canada, Kenya, Malawi, Switzerland, Tanzania, the UK, the United States, and UAE. Kidato was one of the African startups accepted into Y Combinator’s ((YC) 2021 winter cohort. It raised $125,000 from YC.
B2b Ecommerce
Alerzo
The competition in Nigeria’s B2B marketplace is intensifying as more and more startups join the race to digitise mum and pop stores. Alerzo is one of them. Founded in 2018 by Adewale Opaleye and based in Ibadan, Alerzo is a mobile B2B trade platform that connects retailers in emerging markets directly to consumer goods brands for ordering and delivery. Its focus is to reduce the turnaround time for the ordering and supply of consumer goods for SMEs.
According to Opaleye, Alerzo has a network of up to 100,000 small businesses, 90% of which are owned by women. The company exclusively serves the country’s tier-2 to tier-4 cities in Southwest Nigeria — Ibadan, Ekiti and Abeokuta. It connects retailers to local and multinational distributors of consumer brands, like Unilever, Nestlé, Procter & Gamble, Dangote, and PZ.
Alerzo also has an office in Lagos and another office in Singapore which serves as a regional hub to identify best practices among similar high-growth businesses operating across Southeast Asia and India and adapt them to the Nigerian market.
Sabi
Founded in 2020, Sabi is digitising Nigeria’s $244 billion informal trade sector by enabling agents, merchants, wholesalers, aggregators, distributors and manufacturers to grow their businesses using Sabi’s technology rails. These rails facilitate access to fulfillment, logistics, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) tools, data insights, a B2B marketplace, and financial services. According to the startup, it has over 175,000 merchants using its category agnostic platform to manage their businesses and make B2B transactions. Merchants are transacting at over a US$100 million GMV annualized rate on Sabi’s platform.
Sabi’s network of over 10,000 agents now interacts with merchants across all 36 Nigerian states, delivering the online and offline support needed to properly service the over 41 million micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises in Nigeria alone that can benefit from the Sabi platform. Sabi which is a spin-off of Rensource raised $6 million recently to expand its service offerings. Anu Adasolum is the CEO of Sabi.
MarketForce
Founded in 2018 by Tesh Mbaabu and Mesongo Sibuti, MarketForce enables the optimized distribution of FMCG goods and financial services through small retail shops and their distribution networks. Their other product, RejaReja, is a B2B e-commerce marketplace for merchants. It helps informal retail merchants buy and sell FMCGs and digital financial services. RejaReja runs an asset-light model where it doesn’t own capital assets like delivery trucks and warehouses. These are provided by the company’s partners (manufacturers, distributors, and third-party logistics providers), who lease their assets to fulfill orders.
Wabi Nigeria
Wabi Nigeria is an e-commerce platform that is a subsidiary of Wabi BV, a joint venture between the Coca-Cola Company and Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company. Wabi seeks to transform the way consumers buy their products on a daily basis. By bringing the neighborhood store to the consumer’s cell phone and giving them the ability to access their favourite brands in an easy and fast way. Wabi2b is a marketplace that enables FMCGs to sell all their products directly to the Traditional Trade stores fulfilling through multiple channels and allowing them to know each customer. Wabi is present in 18 countries around the world. In Africa, we are in Kenya, Egypt and Nigeria.
MaxAB
Founded in 2018 by Belal El-Megharbel and Mohamed Ben Halim, MaxAB helps small retailers in Egypt procure inventory for their stores using its mobile app. It makes procurement easy for retailers by enabling them to order everything from one supplier (MaxAB), offering transparent pricing and 24-hour delivery. Since its launch, the startup has helped over 55,000 retailers in Egypt, fulfilling more than 1 million orders, and creating 1,600 direct jobs in the process, it said in a statement.
Healthtech
mPharma
mPharma improves access to medicine by providing innovative financing and inventory management solutions to hospitals, pharmacies and patients. Its proprietary Vendor Management Inventory (VMI) system is already being used in over 250 pharmacies across West, East and Southern Africa in Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Zambia and Zimbabwe. mPharma was founded in 2013 by Gregory Rockson, Daniel Shoukimas and James Finucane, with the aim to increase patient access to less expensive and high-quality medications.
MyDawa
Founded in 2017, MYDAWA is a technology-based service that enables consumers to purchase authentic high-quality medicines, health and wellness products. The service, a first of its kind, assures quality and gives consumers value for their money for medicine purchased. The ePharmacy startup has signed up more than 80,000 registered users so far. The company was established by Irish private equity firm ION Equity with an initial capital of $5 million as an online medicine distribution platform in Kenya.
Transport/Automobile
Swvl
Swvl is a premium mass transit system that provides buses to every neighborhood in Egypt. It allows people to share a ride in a van or bus during morning and evening commutes for a fixed flat fare with no surge pricing. Through an app, one can book a ride at an affordable rate. The startup is looking to list on Nasdaq in 2022. This is something to watch as if this listing is done, Swvl will become a unicorn.
Treepz
Founded in 2019 as Plentywaka, the Toronto-based shared mobility company currently operates in Nigeria and Ghana. Plentywaka changed its name to Treepz in September 2021 in line with its ambition for a Sub-Saharan African Expansion. It acquired Stabus (Ghana) and Ugabus (Uganda) this year.
Clean Energy
Opibus
Opibus was founded in 2017 and has over the years developed products in three main segments, electric motorcycles, electric public transport/commercial vehicles as well as charging and energy solutions. The focus is on creating sustainable ecosystems for mass transport in Africa. Today, it is the largest manufacturer of electric vehicles in East Africa. Opibus, Sub-Saharan Africa’s leading electric vehicle manufacturer, raised $7.5 million in funding led by Silicon Valley fund At One Ventures, further supported by Factor[e] Ventures and Ambo Ventures managed by former Google and Uber executives.
MAXNG
Max addresses the last-mile delivery and online retail problems by using mobile and web platforms to connect consumers, retail businesses, and independent drivers in real-time. They are eliminating all logistics and technology barriers that have historically prevented retail businesses in Africa from realizing their full potential. It recently raised funding to enable the deployment of electric vehicles and charging infrastructure, and the provision of credit and financial products to over 100,000 drivers.
Ecoboda
Founded in 2020 by Kenyan engineering duo Kim Chepkoit and Steve Juma, Ecobodaa has pioneered the country’s first affordable electric motorbike taxis. The e-mobility startup aims to provide a cost-effective, safer, and environmentally-friendly form of transportation for commuters in African cities. Referred to as ‘bodabodas’, the electric motorbikes work on a rent-to-own model enabling riders to eventually own the electric-powered motorbike and further empowering them. Designed and assembled in Nairobi, the electric motorcycles are reportedly equipped with sensors that collect data. The data collected is used to help the tech startup improve its services and product offering for its users. As a result of the bodabodas being fitted with a high-efficiency electric motor, the overall cost of maintenance is reduced and further enhances its offering of affordability for owners.
Agritech
Releaf Nigeria
Releaf uses pre-processing technology to increase the quality of inputs supplied to African food factories running at <30% capacity due to procurement challenges. Its proprietary oil palm de-sheller is 25X faster, improves quality to double factory margins, and pays itself back in <3 months. Releaf is backed by Samurai Incubate, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Y Combinator, Future Africa, Chairman of Bain Capital, amongst others. The company was established in 2017, and participated in the Y Combinator accelerator programme in Silicon Valley in the same year, however, it started to operate in the oil palm sector in 2019, and in January this year, it deployed its proprietary technology.
Khula!
South Africa’s Khula! is a business that creates technology solutions for agriculture in Africa. Its main focus is on creating an inclusive mobile marketplace that will drive the success and growth of farmers, disrupting the wholesale food market. This marketplace optimizes logistics by using geolocation and by offering efficient and cost-effective logistics services for emerging farmers. Khula! also has a marketplace that connects farmers to suppliers and allows farmers to sell their produce in bulk; The Khula! Funder Dashboard connects investors with farmers, and their newest product, the Khula! Inputs App, connects local farmers to local and international suppliers and service providers.
