TECH AS IT HAPPENS🚀👇
Discover more from NGENI LABs Newsletter
TECH AS IT HAPPENS🚀👇
Funding announcements+Bundle Africa shuts down+Mastercard partnerships+Mara Releases Ethereum-Compatible Testnet+send money globally
Funding Announcements💸 ➥Nigeria’s Remedial Health Gets QED backing in $12M Round
Remedial Health, a Nigerian startup digitizing pharmacies and bringing efficiency to the pharmaceutical value chain, has raised $12 million Series A equity-debt funding to scale operations in West Africa.
Fintech VC firm QED Investors co-led the round, banking on embedded financial opportunities like payments and lending in the pharmaceutical sector. This is QED’s third investment in Africa after its involvement in the Moniepoint (formerly TeamApt) and FlapKap deals last year. Ventures Platform also co-led the round, which saw the participation of existing investors like Y Combinator, Tencent and Gaingels.
➥MyCover.ai, Nigeria's Insurtech Start-up, Secures $1.25 Million in Pre-Seed Funding
The funding round is to bolster its in-house operations and tech talent, invest heavily in its proprietary technology, and strategically expand its operations into other African markets.
Innovation Corner 🚀➥Yellow Card Open to Crypto Regulation
Yellow Card's CEO, Chris Maurice, says this year has seen a sea of change toward friendly regulation of cryptocurrency trading in Africa and he welcomes it. The Pan-African cryptocurrency exchange's CEO spoke at the US-Africa Business Summit in Gaborone, Botswana.
➥Mastercard and Lipa Later Group Join Forces to Drive Financial Inclusion.
Mastercard has announced a strategic partnership with Lipa Later, a leading credit-led and technology-driven fintech. This collaboration aims to accelerate the expansion of Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) payment services in Africa.
The partnership is expected to unlock new opportunities for consumers and merchants by providing tailored BNPL solutions and enhanced payment capabilities. By leveraging Mastercard’s extensive network of merchants, innovative payment methods, and state-of-the-art technology infrastructure and Lipa Later’s strength in consumer credit, both companies are poised to empower individuals and businesses with greater access to essential products and services, make access to credit seamless and reduce friction to create seamless shopping experiences and transactions.
➥Africa-Focused DeFi Platform Mara Releases Ethereum-Compatible Testnet
Africa-focused decentralized finance platform Mara said it was releasing a testnet for its upcoming Mara Chain, an Ethereum-compatible layer 2 network that uses MARA tokens for fees, developers told CoinDesk in an email.
Developers in Nigeria and across Africa can build and test their decentralized applications on the Optimism forked Mara Chain. The network comes on the back of the recent launch of the Mara Wallet, which allows users to trade and withdraw both fiat currencies and tokens.
Among some benefits touted by Mara Chain developers are sub-second transactional speeds, low gas fees, and interoperability with other Optimism-based networks.
Stats📉➥New report from Duplo reveals that Nigeria trails South Africa and Kenya in Africa’s B2B payment revolution
A new report from Duplo, a business payment platform for African businesses of all sizes, has revealed that Nigeria trails South Africa and Kenya in the development of key B2B payment processes across Africa, including adoption of electronic bank transfers, speed of processing invoices and payment automation.
Kenya leads the way in payment automation, with 83.4 percent of Kenyans stating that their payment system was either semi-automated or fully automated, compared to Nigeria (79.9 percent), South Africa (71.69 percent) and Ghana (67.23 percent). Africa’s B2B payment sector represents a significant yet largely untapped opportunity. This is partly due to the complexity and larger transaction volumes associated with B2B payments.
➥What does crypto adoption in Africa look like?
Coingecko recently published a study on crypto interest in Africa. Nigeria is number 1 followed by South Africa, Morocco, and Ghana.
The West African sub-region is a massive lead, with 74.7% of the interest in crypto.
In other News 👇➥Bundle Africa shuts exchange operations after three years.
1.Bundle Africa, the social payments app catering to cash and cryptocurrency, has recently announced discontinuing its exchange services after three years of operation. In a statement released on its website, the company revealed that this decision was taken by its shareholders as part of a strategic business restructuring. Going forward, Bundle Africa will shift its primary focus to its peer-to-peer platform, Cashlink.
Having achieved significant milestones, including 50,000 monthly active users, a remarkable $50 million in monthly volume on Bundle, and surpassing 3 million transactions on Cashlink, the company is now gearing its efforts towards catering to the evolving demands of the Web3 and blockchain community.
The aim is to provide payment solutions that align precisely with the needs of this growing ecosystem, thus emphasizing the significance of Cashlink as the go-to platform for peer-to-peer transactions. Bundle Africa remains committed to its mission, ensuring seamless and efficient payment experiences in the world of cryptocurrencies and digital assets.
➥Women Who Build Africa to hold 1st annual Assembly in Kenya
Women Who Build Africa (WWBA), a community created to convene and support women working in tech across Africa, has announced an open call for women founders, as well as investors and ecosystem partners, to express interest in joining their first annual Assembly, taking place in Nairobi, Kenya on September 13-14.
Love seeing the positive change and empowerment in Africa's tech ecosystem 💪✨
➥Six companies making it easier for Africans to send money globally
Africa is the most expensive region to send money, but these companies are making it faster, cheaper, and easier.
😉 In case you missed it1.Borderless Africa ,Ethereum layer 2 Event
The L2 Nairobi was a 🥳 success!
We had an amazing turnout of brilliant minds and visionaries 🗺️ in the crypto space.The event was full of insightful conversations about the latest 💡 L2 solutions and their potential to scale and impact the crypto space.
At a fireside with Nairobi Web3 founders, the speakers shared on making infrastructure more robust, secure and decentralized to eventually welcome high stake applications and products.
Main takeaway ~ Permissionless opportunity at scale L2s make that a practical reality. Reducing barriers in speed and cost of using crypto.
2.WeAreDevelopers World Congress
The world’s leading event for developers.
This event was in Berlin, Germany.The developers got a complete overview of the latest insights and trends in modern software development. We're at the
WeAreDevs
As they joined tech enthusiasts from around the globe, they were able to showcase the innovative spirit and talent of AfricaTech as they put Africa on the map of disruption and most importantly how NGENI LABs could help them engineer amazing products 🚀
Thanks for reading👌
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