Africa’s Digital Addressing System, Tesla in Africa, and Flutterwave’s Partnership with Airtel Money in East Africa | The Round-up

15 Nov

And just like that, we are already in the middle of November, on the cusp of a new year, but as usual, we are here to deliver your monthly dose of African tech news. This month, AfriTech XYZ explores OkHi’s partnership with fintech giant Interswitch, agritech start-up Vendease’s seed funding, payments company Flutterwave’s partnership with Airtel Money, and more. Here is the roundup.

Africa’s addressing system
The lack of physical addressing systems in Africa represents a huge problem for the continent. In Nigeria, it is estimated that the lack of a proper addressing system costs the Nigerian economy $3 billion per year due to inefficiency. OkHi wants to tackle a problem that stifles access to credit for billions of people across the globe.

Founded in Kenya over 5 years ago, the company is now moving into Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, to launch Nigeria’s first digital address verification service. Partnering with Nigeria’s fintech giant, Interswitch, the technology provides an alternative to existing paper-based processes, facilitating a more seamless digital service, reducing onboarding times and lowering operating costs.

Interswitch customers will receive an OkHi address allowing them access to larger wallets, faster loans and improved delivery service.

Here is a roundup of other news stories from the African startup scene in October:

Nigerian agritech startup, Vendease, raised $3.2 million seed funding to transform Africa’s food supply chain. The funding round was led by Global Founders Capital with participation from Y Combinator, Hustle Fund, Liquid 2 Ventures, and Soma Cap. Other local investors and early backers such as Paga CEO, Tayo Oviosu, Remita CEO, John Obaro, and Magic Fund also took part. Through its mobile and web apps, Vendease allows food businesses to place orders for food supplies, manage inventory, track expenses and gain access to credit facilities.
San-Francisco based Klasha, raised $2.4 Million in seed funding to build technology for cross-border commerce in Africa. With this investment, Klasha will expand its technology to help international B2B and B2C businesses such as ASOS, Zara, Amazon or Zoom to receive payments seamlessly online in African currencies from consumers across Africa. Klasha’s core technology allows African consumers to pay international online and offline retailers in African currencies while the retailers receive pay-outs in their dominant currencies, including USD, GBP, EUR.
Ghana’s Driver and Road Safety Foundation, unveiled a digital road safety platform, Drifan, aimed to help reduce the menace of road accidents on Ghana’s roads. Drifan is a social media-like platform with which road users can capture and share live alerts of road hazards anywhere in the country. Users can share images of broken-down vehicles at dangerous spots, major road defects, non-functioning traffic signals, and other hazards which could lead to crashes.
East Africa’s dedicated mobile money platform, Airtel Money, has partnered with leading African payments company, Flutterwave, to expand its services to businesses across Eastern Africa. The partnership enables businesses integrating Flutterwave in Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia, Malawi, Kenya and Rwanda, to receive payments from Airtel Money customers, as well as make bulk payments into Airtel Money wallets thanks to Airtel Money’s proprietary fintech platforms.
Nigerian fintech startup Bitmama has closed a $350,000 pre-seed funding round to grow its operational presence, expand its team, and penetrate new markets across the continent. The round was led by Flori Ventures, with participation from Emergence Capital, Fedha Capital, and other VCs and angel investors. Bitmama provides a secured blockchain infrastructure that allows users across Africa to transact Bitcoin, Ethereum, Celo and six other cryptocurrencies. With users across Nigeria and Ghana, Bitmama has recorded more than $6 million in transaction volume this year alone.
South Africa’s Stone Three, a leading industry 4.0 technology startup, has raised expansion capital from Knife Capital, a venture capital firm to purposefully enhance its enterprise product offerings and accelerate growth by putting the future of work into practice. Stone Three aims to increase operational productivity via machine learning.
Kenyan digital logistics firm, Sendy, has acquired a minority stake in an Ivory Coast-based company, Kamtar International, as part of a strategy to grow business deals at West Africa’s largest seaport. The tech-logistics startup has bought a ‘significant stake’ in the company for an undisclosed amount. Sendy will use its new investment to grow business deals at the Port of Abidjan, which also serves landlocked countries such as Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Chad and Niger.
Nigerian digital bank company, Brass, delivering easy access to affordable premium banking services for small and medium-sized businesses, secured $1.7mn in funding to address the heavily underserved banking needs of local entrepreneurs, traders and fast-growing businesses. The new funding will play a key role in accelerating Brass’ expansion into South Africa and Kenya - just a year after launch and will kickstart a range of new product categories, including an expansion of the startup’s footprint in the credit market as it bids to diversify its customer range.
Ghanaian businesswoman, Roberta Annan, has launched a €100m impact fund for African creatives, to accelerate the development of Africa's creative industry, by providing €50,000 grants to eligible entrepreneurs. The fund is open to creative, fashion and lifestyle entrepreneurs across the African continent.
Nigeria has finally launched its digital currency, eNaira. According to a press release by the Central Bank of Nigeria, the launch of the eNaira is a culmination of several years of research work by the Central Bank of Nigeria in advancing the boundaries of the payments system in order to make financial transactions easier and more seamless for every strata of the society. The eNaira marks a major step forward in the evolution of money and the CBN is committed to ensuring that the eNaira, like the physical Naira, is accessible to everyone.