WEEK IN REVIEW: GOOGLE DOING THE MOST 🚀🔥
Web3 Afrika Dev Roundup August 22-26TH more fundings +google launches wallet +alchemy Academy +web3 VC
👏FUNDING ANNOUNCEMENTS
➥Nigerian VC firm Microtraction has announced a $15M first close to invest in early stage African startups.
This comes in the light of the market downturn and expected slow down of an inflow of foreign investment into early-stage African startups.This second fund plans to invest in 60 startups and provide follow-on investment to 20% of them in their next round.
About Microtraction
It is an early-stage venture capital firm that invests in African tech entrepreneurs.
The founder, Yele Bademosi ,announced that they have invested in 36 companies comprising 83 founders across 2 funds in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and Rwanda. Their long term mission is to accelerate Africa's transition to a sustainable and developed economy .
➥Fintech Startup Watu Credit Secures USD 7 M Investment
Verdant Capital, a specialist corporate finance firm, has announced that its Verdant Capital Hybrid Fund has made its first investment in Watu Credit Uganda Limited. The investment will help Watu expand its footprint of two-wheeler financing throughout the country.
About Watu Credit Uganda Limited
Watu is one of Africa’s fastest growing asset finance companies, providing loans for two and three-wheelers across 6 countries. They strive to break down barriers and create opportunities for aspiring entrepreneurs to be successful.
“We believe in a world where mobility and financing are accessible, far-reaching, and inclusive! A loan from Watu goes far beyond the asset; the increased financial stability and ability to participate in the economy extends from the rider, to their family to their community. Everyone benefits from a single loan.”
➥Egyptian adtech company ArabyAds has secured $30 million in Pre-Series B funding for expansion.
Egypt’s ArabyAds, the leading ad-tech company in the MENA region, has raised US$30 million in Pre-Series B funding round to expand its footprint regionally and globally.The funding round was from AfricInvestGrp, a leading pan-African investment platform.
🌍INSIDE /OUTSIDE AFRICA Other News
➥Google Wallet launches in South Africa as digital payments boom
Alphabet Inc launched Google Wallet in South Africa,the first market for this product in Africa, as the tech giant tries to gain a foothold in the country's rapidly growing digital payments space.
What the Google Wallet Does
The Google Wallet app stores a consumer's credit or debit card information and allows shoppers to pay for goods by tapping their phone against a retail store's point of sale at the checkout counter.cardholders of FirstRand Bank, Discovery Bank, Investec, Standard Bank, ABSA and Nedbank will be able to add their cards to Google Wallet.
They will then be able to pay with their Android phones or use OS devices where contactless payments are accepted.
➥$10B crypto developer platform Alchemy buys coding bootcamp in first ever acquisition
Alchemy ,a web3 developer infrastructure startup has purchased an educational startup Chain Shot which runs coding bootcamps for aspiring web3 developers .
About Alchemy .
Last year Alchemy raised $200 million in series C1 .Their goal is to be the starting place for developers considering building a product on top of a blockchain or mainstream blockchain applications.Its developer platform aims to remove the complexity and cost of building infrastructure while improving applications through developer tools.
➥Polygon Founder Launches $50 Million Early stage Web3 Fund
Polygon founder Sandeep Nilwal launched a new crypto venture capital firm to plug in early web3 companies.The interesting fact is that the VC Firm is to be led by web3 founders which means they are familiar with the unique challenges that web3 projects face .
The founder stated that they will focus on banking startups building consumer facing decentralized apps(dApps)
About Polygon
polygon, previously known as Matic Network, is an interoperability and scaling protocol for launching Ethereum-compatible blockchains.
➥Disrupt Africa to launch deep-dive research publication on Nigerian startup ecosystem
Startup-focused news and research company Disrupt Africa will next month release its Nigerian Startup Ecosystem Report 2022, providing readers with a deep-dive into the country’s tech startup landscape.
➥Web3 Ladies Partners with Polygon to Onboard over 100k African Women onto Blockchain
Web3 Ladies, an African startup that is on a mission to onboard over 100,000 ladies in African to blockchain over 3 years, is partnering with Polygon towards this mission.
In the partnership, Polygon will come on board as a sponsor for the cohort 3 mentorship program that is run by Web3 Ladies. Having already mentored 350 ladies in cohorts 1 and 2, the organization expects to add to the quality of their training.
Polygon will be working as a sponsor of the program, which includes providing mentors and a seamless digital learning experience for these ladies.
🚀WEB3 CORNER
The concept and future of decentralized Web3 domain names
A decentralized crypto domain is a human-readable address that serves as a stand-in for your crypto wallet, rather than offering a human-readable collection of characters as an IP address. These Web3 domain names are non fungible tokens (NFTs) or digital certificates of validity that may be traded on platforms like Solana's Solsea or Open Sea. Moreover, Web3 domains have Web3 domain extensions like .crypto, .DAO and .eth.
Web3 domains differ from standard domain name system (DNS) addresses such as Cointelegraph.com or thenewslack.io. A DNS is similar to a telephone directory, only it indexes public websites and their accompanying internet protocol (IP) addresses to enable the directory.
Thanks for reading👌
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ABOUT NGENI🔥
NGENI is Kenya and East Africa's first pure-play and largest Blockchain & Web3 development engineering Studio with a 60-plus-person team. The studio recruits and trains recent graduates from STEM Universities across Kenya and today has twenty-five (25) talented developers, at our Kilimani Headquarters.
All engineers have successfully taken on complex coding challenges, and hackathons and have ultimately delivered on complex multi-Blockchain applications, bots, and dApps for international projects.