In Africa, thanks to technology, citizens now have easy access to alternative financial solutions. Lucky is one of those solutions.
Lucky is a digital app that gives users in the MENA region the chance to win discounts, as well as access interesting offers, cashback, and credit products from 20,000 local and international brands. The platform was developed by the eponymous startup, Lucky, co-founded in 2018 by two Egyptians, Momtaz Moussa and Ayman Essawy (photo).
In March 2022, some four years after its creation, the startup completed a US$25 million series A funding round to support its growth in the MENA region. Lucky gives users transparent offers and increased buying power in a region where consumers usually have poor or no access to credit. For Momtaz Moussa, “the MENA region’s huge unbanked, young population and cash-dominated economy is a significant market opportunity” for Lucky.
All users have to do is to download Lucky from AppStore or PlayStore, register, and shop as they usually do to start accumulating points to be redeemed for discounts and cashback from the numerous e-commerce platforms Lucky is partnered with. Most of the time, the offers and cashback come from brands seeking more visibility. In their quest, they pay commissions to Lucky, which redirects part of those commissions to its users through the offers and cashback.
Currently, the startup claims more than eight million users and a network of 30,000 stores.
Adoni Conrad Quenum
Because of the coronavirus pandemic, African countries have sped up their digital transformation plans. Demand for the internet is growing, as a result. However, though internet adoption is rising tremendously, millions of residents are still unable to access the service because of its prices. Yet, affordable and quality internet is one of the requirements for successful digital transformation.
The Internet now appears like a necessary service in the likes of drinking water and electricity. According to the GSM Association (GSMA), in 2020, global internet penetration was 51% with 4 billion users. However, some countries have lower penetration rates. In its 2022 internet poverty index, the World Data Lab identified Nigeria as the country with the largest number of people living in internet poverty, meaning the number of people who “cannot afford a minimum package of mobile internet.”
The World Data Lab based its index on three factors, including affordability, quantity, and quality. “Affordability refers to the price of mobile broadband service and is set with a person’s total expenditure. (...) quantity refers to the amount of data that can be sent or received per theoretical use” while “quality describes a multitude of factors such as download and upload speed, bandwidth, latency, 2G, 3G, and 4G coverage, as well as the number of servers per 100,000 inhabitants,” the data agency explains.
The World Data Lab estimates that 103.015 million people are internet poor in Nigeria out of an estimated 217.366 million people. In the world, Nigeria is followed by India and China, we learn. In Sub-Saharan Africa on the other hand, Burundi is the country with the highest percentage of the internet poor in 2022, that is 96.6% of its 12.026 million residents.
According to the latest broadband affordability data from the Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI), in Africa, one-gigabyte bundles cost less than US$3 in ten countries while in 17 countries it ranges between US$3 and 5. In the remaining countries, it is over US$5. For the A4AI, broadband internet is deemed affordable when it is less than 2% of average monthly per capita incomes.
High internet cost is one of the obstacles to digital transformation in Africa because it prevents millions of residents from accessing the socio-economic opportunities it offers.
For the International Finance Corporation and Google, the digital economy can help generate up to US$180 billion of GDP in Africa by 2035. For that, however, affordable internet is needed.
Muriel Edjo
After some 20 years of professional experience in the toy industry, Amir Shenouda returned to Egypt to implement a decade-long project, mumerz.com.
Amir Shenouda (photo, left) is the CEO of mumerz.com, an online shopping platform selling items specifically dedicated to mothers, babies, and children under 12 in Egypt. It offers a wide range of products in several categories, including food, clothing, toys, accessories for mothers, etc.
The platform was launched in 2021, by Amir Shenouda and Nadia Gamal Al-Din (photo, right) after a decade-long maturation that started in 2011. That year, Amir Shenouda joined, as a business development manager for mumzworld.com, which is also an e-commerce platform dedicated to mothers and babies in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Jordan, and Lebanon.
While working for mumzworld.com, he got the idea to leverage the experience he acquired while working for U.S. toy manufacturer Toys“R”Us to create a mumzworld.com-like platform that would be focused on the Egyptian market.
He later left mumzworld.com to join Cartoon Networks as Retail Business Manager (from 2013 to 2014). From 2014 to 2018, he was a senior regional manager for Amazon’s Toys and Babies department, and from 2018 to 2021, he was the e-commerce director of Toy Triangle LLC, a Dubai-based toy store. In July 2021, after years of evaluating the market, he decided to launch mumerz.com.
Months later, on March 1, 2022, the entrepreneur successfully raised US$1.2 million in a pre-seed round, led by DisrupTech Ventures, to develop its market offerings.
Melchior Koba
In the past few years, global leaders in on-demand transportation have heavily invested in African markets. Bolt, Yango, and Uber are notable names but, their solutions are sometimes not efficient. Local startups like Moja Ride are building their solutions to address those minor inefficiencies.
Moja Ride is a Mobility-as-a-Service startup launched, in 2017, to make life easier for Ivorians. In March 2021, the startup created by Jean Claude Gouesse (photo, center), raised an undisclosed amount from Mobility 54, a venture capital fund set up by Japanese firm Toyota.
The eponymous platform developed by the startup is an alternative to ride-hailing giants operating in Abidjan. With its platform, Moja Ride wants to offer an urban mobility solution to its users but it also wants to help them build a network by offering simple, affordable, and efficient alternative mobility solutions.
The app allows ride-sharing between friends, neighbors, and co-workers to help save on daily travel expenses. It also allows transport operators to easily manage their fleets and routes.
Each of the rides planned through Moja Ride is insured for up to XOF2 million for individual accidents and up to XOF300,000 for healthcare coverage.
To facilitate payments, Moja Ride developed an internal solution based on the payment network Visa and fare collection O-City’s systems. To access its services, users just have to download the mobile app from AppStore or PlayStore and fill in a set of information. Its revenues come from commissions generated on rides booked and payments collected by drivers.
In October 2020, Moja Ride was selected to participate in the Africa Tech Summit Connects, a competition offering startups the possibility to raise pre-seed, seed, or Series A funding.
In 2021, the startup was claiming over 1,200 taxis and buses available for booking through its platform in Abidjan.
Adoni Conrad Quenum
Large U.S. tech firms are increasingly investing in Kenya. A few days ago, Microsoft inaugurated its tech talent hub in the country. It is now followed by Google, the world’s third-largest tech company by market capitalization.
Google announced, Tuesday (April 19), the launch of its first African development hub in Nairobi, Kenya. The U.S. tech firm also launched the recruitment of various tech skills to endow the product development center with skills necessary to contribute to innovation on the continent.
“We’re looking for talented, creative, and collaborative people who can help solve difficult and important technical challenges, such as improving the smartphone experience for people in Africa, or building products that will help everyone to thrive together,” reads a Google blog post announcing the vacancies.
According to the post, applicants must have great technical knowledge, a “passion for solving hard problems together with others” and “understand how people across the continent use their phones every day and the challenges they face.”
The African Product Development hub in Nairobi is part of Google’s efforts to support digital transformation in Africa.
In October 2021, during Google for Africa, a virtual event, Google CEO Sundar Pichai (photo) unveiled a US$1 billion investment to be rolled out over five years. The plan includes projects to provide fast, reliable, and affordable Internet access across the continent, create useful local products, and support entrepreneurs and small businesses that sustain African economies.
Muriel Edjo
The video game industry is rapidly growing in Africa. It offers employment opportunities to millions of young enthusiasts and, on November 24, 2021, by approving the organization of the international cup, Beninese authorities proved their ambitions to capitalize on the opportunities offered by the industry.
The International Africa Gaming Cup, a competition bringing together African video game enthusiasts, will take place in the coming days, in Benin. The competition was unveiled during a press conference held, Wednesday, April 13, by the co-organizers Mike Hessabi (photo, right) and Médard Djékété (photo, left), respectively founder of Nicecactus Gamer and President of Africa Gamers.
Officially, the competition will be launched next April 23 with the regional qualifying and final phases between several Bennese gaming communities. After the regional phases, the continental phase will be between the best African teams at Cotonou Congress Center during a weekend-long show in July 2022.
According to Médard Djékété, three games will be played during the competition. They are namely Clash Royal, the most played mobile e-sport game in Benin, Tekken 7- a reference game, and Battlegrounds Mobile- a widely popular action and adventure game.
The organizers were authorized, on November 24, 2021, during a press briefing, to host the first edition of that gaming cup in Benin. During the press briefing attended by the Beninese Minister of the Digital Economy, Ms. Aurelie Adam-Soule Zoumarou, the organizers claimed the competition aims to make Benin the hub of E-sports in Africa.
For Mike Hessabi, with its internationally-renowned gaming community, Benin has what it takes to become the champion of that continental competition. Indeed, many young Beninese are illustrating themselves in international gaming cups.
“We have carried out a survey on the ground and we know that there are many active gaming communities in Benin,” he explained.
Nicecactus Gamer is an “all-in-one platform for gamers of all levels worldwide.”
It can host up to 2,000 online tournaments monthly.
Ruben Tchounyabe
Cybersecurity and data protection are important issues in the digital era. The solution developed by Youverify aims to address those issues in Nigeria, and in Africa as a whole.
YouID is a digital solution developed by Nigerian start-up Youverify to secure personal information and physical identifiers. It aims to help users share the least possible amount of information on the web by storing them in an encrypted format.
Thanks to its digital solution, Youverify, which was founded in 2017, by Gbenga Odegbami and Suru Avoseh, completed several funding rounds, including a US$1.5million round led by Orange Digital Ventures.
According to Gbenga Odegbami, Youverify CEO, YouID “constitutes a unique opportunity for the company to take further our ambition to simplify and secure its client’s internal processes, whether in the recruitment of staff, customer onboarding, etc.”
“Our ambition is to be the leading African player in verifying people and companies’ identities by making data protection and security the core of our proposal,” he added.
On behalf of its users, YouID automatically fills social media, e-commerce, and streaming forms with information previously submitted for storage on the encrypted digital platform.
To store their information on YouID, users first have to download the app from App Store or Play Store, create their accounts, and secure them using PIN codes or biometric data. Then, they will have to scan their faces to prove the accounts are created by humans, not bots. A third phase consists of scanning ID documents proving users’ identities. The last step is to add contact information through which the app can alert users when their information is compromised.
Youverify claims over 300,000 registrations and verifications since the launch of YouID.
Adoni Conrad Quenum
For about two years now, Simon Ward has been contributing his over 20 years of experience in the fintech and e-commerce industries to improve South African workers’ financial health. He gives them tools to reduce their debts and increase their savings.
Floatpays is a money management app launched in 2020 by tech enthusiast Simon Ward (photo). With over 20 years of experience as an entrepreneur and business leader in the fintech and e-commerce industries, Simon Ward has always wanted to make a positive impact on the living conditions of local populations in South Africa. The mechanical engineer graduated from the University of Cape Town and obtained an operational management certificate from the University of Derby in England. He has been one of the chief technology officers of the photo-printing firm PhotoBox. He has also been a chief technology officer for Prodigy Finance, a financial institution that provides loans to international master's students.
For the serial entrepreneur, Floatpays was born from his desire to lift Africans out of poverty by helping address the usual cause of that phenomenon: poor financial management. Financial education and budget planning are the essential skills needed to avoid unnecessary spending, he believes. To illustrate his point of view, he indicates that in his native country, South Africa, 75% of employed people spend their salaries before month-end, and more than 50% of them end up taking loans to survive.
His digital solution helps companies improve their employees’ financial health. Once deployed, it allows employees access to the accrued but yet to be paid salaries at any point of the payroll cycle. They can thus avoid taking loans and use the accrued earnings to cover their needs. Floatpays also offers employees flexible savings solutions by allowing them to change or stop their monthly contributions, or deposit funds into their savings accounts right from their phones.
“I launched Floatpays in 2020, as a social impact-driven business on a mission to help move employees out of bad debt cycles and into a savings culture. We educate employees on financial matters, support them with financial planning, and remove the need for any employee to reach out to payday lenders/high-interest credit solutions when mid-pay cycle liquidity becomes a problem,” says the founder and CEO.
In January 2022, Floatpays completed a US$4 million funding round to develop operations nationwide and initiate its African expansion.
Melchior Koba
The management of corporate sales and orders has constantly evolved in the past few decades. The era of big cash registers has passed to give way to digital solutions like TallOrder.
TallOrder is a cloud-based digital solution that helps SMBs manage sales and orders. Available via windows, iOS, and Android apps, the solution was developed by the eponymous startup launched in 2014 by Anna Groenewald and Dana Buys (photo). In January 2022, it completed a US$3.1 million funding round to complement the US$2.2 million it previously raised to accelerate its African expansion.
With TallOrder, the South African startup allows SMBs to avoid losing files, keeping duplicate data, or filling wrong inputs when using excel workbooks. "Creating a powerful, feature-rich, and broadly adaptable cloud POS solution requires significant development effort, both financially and time-wise," said Dana Buys, CEO, and co-founder of TallOrder.
TallOder can replace the IT department of retail, service, and hospitality companies, manage their internet security handle onsite and offsite backups and make disaster recoveries, software updates as well as database integrations. Employers can seamlessly submit quotes and invoices and access product information (stock, bill of materials, pricing) or customer data.
The platform also allows companies to get paid via popular platforms like SnapScan, Zapper, MasterPass, Yoco, ThumbzUp, MTN MoMo, Innervation, African Resonance, NetCash, DPO, and PayFast.
Currently, in Africa, TallOrder is present in South Africa, Uganda, Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Botswana, and Seychelles. In Asia, it is present in Indonesia. For its international market, TallOrder has an offer for hotels and guesthouses.
Its services are accessible at flat rates ranging from US$24.95 to 119.95.
Adoni Conrad Quenum
Dumisani Kaliati has been working since 2015 to improve the living conditions of rural populations in Malawi. This year, his expertise helped the UNICEF speed up disaster assessment and assistance planning.
Dumisani Kaliati (photo) is an Information Science and Technology graduate from the University of Malawi. An experienced hardware and software developer and computer-aided designer, he founded MicroMek, a drone manufacturing startup at the age of 21. To manufacture its drones, MicroMek uses 3D printed parts and recycled materials. Dumisani Kaliati is also the co-founder of Peza, a platform connecting informal service providers with potential clients.
He got the MicroMek idea in the third year of his information science and technology study after noticing how difficult it was for people living in remote areas to access healthcare institutions. He then developed a medication reminder, which was still not addressing the challenges faced by rural populations. In 2016, while the Malawian government was vulgarizing drone usage, he decided to leverage the technology to address the challenges identified.
In 2017, he was trained on how to use drones during a workshop organized by UNICEF and Virginia Tech University. Since then, in collaboration with Virginia Tech University's Unmanned Systems Lab, he has been developing low-cost drones for remote delivery. Called EcoSoar, the drones are designed to deliver drugs and medicines, blood samples, and vaccines to hospitals. Beyond facilitating access to healthcare, the startup also helps reduce the times needed for the delivery of diagnostics, vaccines, and medications. It also manufactures drones for environmental and aerial data collection.
According to Dumisani Kaliati, the sensing drones can travel up to 30 km for aerial mapping, while the ambulance drones can carry 1 kg of medicines and samples. Depending on the purpose, their production cost averages US$350 and $430 per unit. Currently, the entrepreneur is working on drones that can fly longer distances and carry up to 6 kg of medicine and other health products.
In February 2022, Dumisani Kaliati's expertise was solicited by the UNICEF for the assessment of damages caused by Tropical Cyclone Ana in late January. The disaster wreaked havoc in Southern Malawi causing huge human, material, and agricultural losses.
Using his drones, the entrepreneur sped up the assessment, ultimately assisting in the planning of response activities.
With MicroMek, he garnered several awards, including the Malwai ICT Innovation Award's Top Entrepreneurship category in 2017. A year later, he was selected for the Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders, where he had the opportunity to train in business and entrepreneurship at Northwestern University in Evanston, USA. In late March 2022, he took part in the Global Entrepreneurship Congress that brings together entrepreneurs from over 170 countries. The congress was an opportunity for Dumisani Kaliati to showcase Malawian expertise to the world.
Aïsha Moyouzame
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In 2018, the French Development Agency provided US$872,000 for the creation of an incubator in the digital content industry. This new commitment is focused on the gaming industry that has strong job and wealth creation potential.
The French Institute of South Africa renewed, Friday (April 8), the contract of Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct, the University of Witwatersrand’s digital hub. The contract consecrates €450,000 financial support to the digital hub for the development of innovative and cultural industries, the creation of a video game studio incubator, and many other projects and programs.
According to Lesley Williams, CEO of Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct, South Africa needs to meet the demand “where creativity and digital meet.” “There's a massive demand for African aesthetics in creativity, the world is calling for digital content from Africa and we need to meet that demand,” she added.
Through the video games incubator, Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct, AFD, and the French Institute want to foster the emergence of young talent in this digital sector with strong job and wealth creation potential. The incubator will provide startups active in the industry with access to training that will help them create market-ready products and develop their entrepreneurial and technical skills.
The initial contract was signed by the French Development Bank, the French Institute, and the South African digital hub in 2018. The ZAR14 million (about US$872,000) financial support provided by the French institute helped Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct create an incubator for innovative and creative audiovisual content. The contract provided an avenue for collaboration between French and African experts in the animation, video, gaming, virtual reality, digital arts, and music industries.
Eary this year, investment bank Drake Star Partners published a report revealing the growing volume of funds being invested in the global gaming industry. This year, the industry is expected to attract US$150 billion of additional investments. There is thus an opportunity for Africa to attract a sizeable chunk of those investments.
Ruben Tchounyabe
In 2020, Nigeria decided to boost its broadband penetration rate to 70%, by 2025. To this end, it is developing partnerships with actors that will contribute to the achievement of that goal.
The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and Google Global Services Nigeria recently announced their commitments to collaborating for “ubiquitous” broadband access in Nigeria. The alliance formed in that regard was revealed during a visit paid, Thursday (April 14), by a Google Global Service delegation to the NCC headquarters in Abuja.
The visit was organized to discuss possible joint actions that could accelerate digital transformation in Nigeria and Africa as a whole.
During the visit, Umar Garba Danbatta, NCC CEO and executive vice president stressed the importance of such an alliance and the need to make their joint initiatives more impactful and measurable through enhanced collaboration. As for Juliet Ehimuan, country manager for Google Nigeria, she commended the consultative approach always adopted by the NCC, the local telecom regulator, to formulate policies that impact digital and economic transformation in the country by promoting optimal delivery of telecom services.
On April 7, 2022, a Google Nigeria delegation announced to the Minister of the Digital Economy Isa Ali Pantami the coming landing (by late April) of Google’s subsea cable Equiano in Lagos. Through this high-speed teleNigeriacom infrastructure, Googles Global Services Nigeria wants to ensure that Nigeria's large population has access to high-quality data connectivity in line with the government's ambitions to increase broadband penetration to 70% and ensure digital inclusion by 2025.
For Umar Garba Danbatta, the subsea cable will have a significant impact on socio-economic development in Nigeria. He also urged approved telecom operators to collaborate on the creation of more landing points inland to make sure broadband internet is accessible everywhere.
Ruben Tchounyabe
Yemaachi Biotechnology is a healthtech company co-founded by Yaw Bediako, an experienced cancer researcher. His extensive experience earned him an affiliate membership in the African Academy of Sciences.
Ghanaian Yaw Bediako (photo) is the CEO and Co-founder of Yemaachi Biotechnology, a healthtech company based in Accra (Ghana) with offices in Washington D.C (USA). In 2011, he graduated from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago with a Ph.D. in microbiology and immunology.
With Yemaachi Biotechnology, he turns immunogenomics, bioinformatics, and artificial intelligence into assets for the early detection and cure of cancer in Africa. The healthtech was founded in 2020, with David Hutchful, Joyce Ngoi, and Yaw Attua-Afari as co-founders.
In March 2021, it successfully raised US$3 million in development funds from investors like Y Combinator, V Square Capital, VestedWorld, V8 Capital Partners, Tencent, LoftyInc Capital Management, LifeLine Family Heritage Fund, and Ethan Perlstein.
According to Yaw Bediako, Yemaachi Biotechnology was launched to give Africa a saying in oncology and genome research, using artificial intelligence and data science.
“Creating a dataset that has the greatest genomic diversity can enable rapid discoveries that have long-term implications for cancer research, drug development, and patient care, not just in Africa, but globally,” says Yaw Bediako.
The Ghanaian CEO has extensive experience in cancer research. He is currently a research fellow at the West African Centre for Cell Biology of Infectious Pathogens at the University of Ghana. In London, he has been, for four years, a postdoctoral fellow at the Francis Crick Institute. For twelve months, he was a research assistant at the Calvin Institute of Technology in Indonesia and the Van Andel Institute in the United States.
In recognition of his commitment, Yaw Bediako was recently selected as an affiliate member of the African Academy of Sciences. He is also an executive member of the African Science Initiative, a project to network and promote African scientists worldwide.
Melchior Koba
In Morocco, public notaries are not always consulted because a significant portion of the population is not aware of their competencies. For that purpose, the supervisory authority launched a digitization project to vulgarize their services.
Last week, the Moroccan Agency of Land Registry, Cadastre, and Cartography (ANCFCC) launched the digitization of services offered by notaries popularly known as adouls.
On Wednesday, April 13, the digital platform allowing access to those services was presented. It is still in its pilot phase but 25 adouls are already enrolled to document and assist in the obtention of ownership certificates, land property plans, and the payment of land registration duties.
In an interview granted, last week, to Moroccan media, Mohamed Sassioui (photo), president of the National Order of Adouls, indicated that all of the adouls active in the country will be enrolled on the digital platform, but it will be a gradual process.
The dematerialization of the services offered by adouls is part of the development program being implemented by Karim Tajmouati, since 2016, when he was appointed head of the ANCFCC. It is in line with the digital transformation efforts being carried out by Morocco for some ten years now.
For Mohamed Sassioui, digitization will ease access to public notary services but also showcase all of the areas adouls are competent.
For Moroccans, “adouls are only limited to drawing marriage and divorce contracts, and managing inheritance cases… The land registry agency launched the [digitization] initiative after it noticed the sheer number of land-related acts issued by adouls,” he indicated.
Muriel Edjo