Week in review: The Catalyst
Web3 Afrika Dev Roundup June 20-26th more funding announcements +strongblock explained + wow to Accelerators in Africa +payment cards launched +expanding Africa
Friends, we're back! We're back to our regularly scheduled programming, if you’re new, welcome 🙌 you’ll receive a weekly like this one every Monday. For past essays and roundups, visit the previous articles. In today's Edition✍
Fintech is the most popular sector for investments in African tech, with fintech start-ups breaking the $1 billion funding barrier in 2021.Immense growth ,right?
Last week Kenya and Uganda were ranked among 15 African countries whose financial, health and climate-linked start-ups have the biggest impact potential in Africa.
Month, after month, after month…
✨Funding Announcement
➦ Kenyan insurtech startup mTek_Services has secured a $3m funding from an African-focused fintech platform, FinclusionGroup
Launched in 2020, mTek provides an entirely paperless ecosystem for the insurance industry.
➦ American Express has made its first investment in an African startup. Amex will be investing in Nigerian fintech startup KlashaCart which is helping merchants worldwide to sell seamlessly into Africa.
➦ XENO, a Ugandan fintech startup, has raised $2 million in seed funding.
Through its exclusive goal-based investment platform, which enables users to save with or without internet access, XENO democratizes access to professional investment management.
➦ Fido, a Ghanaian fintech startup, has raised $30 million in a Series A funding round.
The fintech has now raised $38 million to date and intends to use the fresh capital to launch new financial products in Ghana, expand its customer base throughout the continent and establish a tech center in Accra to train software engineers.
The round, led by Fortissimo Capital, saw participation from Yard Ventures, the VC fund of Harvard University alumni, as well as a number of private investors.
🚀WEB3 CORNER
StrongBlock explained
The digital financial environment continues to develop almost every second, which is no surprise to those in the crypto sector. Among such technological advancements, a new project called StrongBlock has popularized the concept of the node as a service (NaaS) on the blockchain. NaaS is an alternative to running entire blockchain nodes on your own; it provides developer infrastructure and tools for setting up and managing blockchain nodes.
Strongblock creates platforms and protocols with the intention of revolutionizing how blockchain networks compensate the nodes that protect and sustain them.
It sees the blockchain as the way of the future, but unless you're well-versed with this technological breakthrough, it can be a risky place to enter. As a result, StrongBlocks' objective is to make it easier for anyone to support and participate in blockchains.
🙌 IN ACCELERATORS
➦ Proparco joins forces with Digital Africa to provide financing solutions for African tech startups
As part of its 2022-2025 roadmap, Digital Africa has joined forces with proparco to provide financing solutions for African tech startups. The program will support 200 African startups at different stages of their growth with a wide range of offers at their disposal.
➦ Kenyan, and Ugandan entrepreneurs selected for a hardware led social innovation accelerator
Eight finalist teams of social innovators from throughout Africa for the ISHOW presented their design prototypes in a virtual event held June 14-22, with three entrepreneurs emerging as regional winners who will share US$30,000 in seed grants and receive technical support to help bring their design innovations to market.
➦ Nairobi’s “silicon savannah” just got more attractive to investors and startups
Kenya’s tech startup ecosystem—amongst the hottest on the continent is looking to attract even more overseas interest as the country launches an International Financial Center and giant tech firms renew their interest in east Africa’s Silicon Savannah.
The International Financial Center in Nairobi is slated to officially launch in June, offering foreign investors in the financial sector special deals—including taxes and immigration incentives—and space in the new building.
📚BE ON THE KNOW
➦ Nigerian investment tech startup GetEquity expands to Kenya
Nigerian invest tech startup GetEquity has expanded to Kenya as it looks to connect more African startups with funding opportunities. The startup launched in 2021 after raising a six-figure pre-seed funding round led by GreenHouse Capital.
Startups can list themselves on the GetEquity platform and market to institutional investors and public users. GetEquity enables anyone to buy equity in a listed startup for as little as US$10.
➦ Egyptian fintech startup Lucky secures approval to launch payments card
Founded in 2018 by Momtaz Moussa and Ayman Essawy, Lucky offers users access to a growing range of easy-to-use credit products, discounts, and cashback rewards, which can be used in person and virtually with over 20,000 local and global brands.
In March, Lucky raised a US$25 million Series A funding round to build out its credit capabilities, expand its market share, and drive further overseas growth. It has now followed that up by securing final approval from the CBE to launch the Lucky One card to all customers.
➦ Celo, Mercy Corps Ventures, Cinch, and Kotani Pay team up to launch DeFi employer-based lending pilot in Kenya
To explore how mobile-first DeFi built on Celo could offer a truly unique solution for employer-based lending, the Celo Foundation has partnered with Mercy Corps Ventures and Cinch Markets to launch a three-month salary-advance pilot in Nanyuki, Kenya.
The salary advances in this pilot helped farmers and landowners employed by Cinch, an agriculture company that leases farmland from smallholder farmers and hires farmers to grow high-value crops at scale.
➦ Nigeria Bourse Set to Adopt Blockchain Technology to Attract Investors
Nigerian Exchange Ltd., plans to start a blockchain-enabled exchange platform next year to deepen trade and lure young investors to the market.
The move follows the introduction of regulations to guide trade in digital assets by the Nigerian Securities and Exchange Commission, and the growing interest to adopt the distributed-ledger technology by businesses and policymakers across the continent including in Kenya and South Africa.
The exchange looks to deploy blockchain technology in the settlement of capital market transactions.
👨💻DEVELOPER OF THE WEEK
Meet George Gichuru ,a software developer here .He joined ngeni in August 2021.Prior to ngeni George was building a career in Machine learning and AI.He interned at AFRICA-AI Japan ,where he was handling inference and logic,web and mobile development .
“ In my quest to grow my career, I opted to go into Full-Stack development.I used to write code with the MEAN stack, (MongoDB, ExpressJS, Angular 10 and NodeJS). My interest also spanned python (Django and Flask) for Machine Learning and AI, Flutter for mobile development.
Joining Ngeni, however, changed my focus from AI to Blockchain, which was very strategic, and I love every part of the transition and adoption. A lot of learning has happened over the past few months I have been here. The learning has been quite instrumental to my growth.
I have learned Solidity, ReactJS, and Typescript, and currently learning Rust.It has opened my eyes to the reality of development .I am challenged everyday to be a better person as I learn and grow.”
Some of the projects he have worked on include ;
1.Radar protocol (an on-chain asset management platform on the Ethereum blockchain)
2. FluoFinance(a relending platform on abracadabra)
😎OTHER ARTICLES
➦Top 5 cryptocurrencies to watch this week: BTC, UNI, XLM, THETA, HNT
➦ Microsoft has officially shut down Internet Explorer.
About NGENI.
NGENI is Kenya and East Africa's first pure-play and largest Blockchain & Web3 development engineering Studio with a 50-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.
Thanks for reading👌
Contact us: NGENI Linktree
Shiko Karanja✍