African Tech Weekly Recap: March 28 to April 1, 2022

Welcome to our weekly recap where we share the most important news of the week in the African Tech Ecosystem 🌍

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🇪🇬 Egypt’s Khazna raises $38m Series A round

Highlights

• Egypt-based fintech Khazna has raised a Series A round of $38 million in equity and debt, with the equity investment led by Quona Capital while the debt financing was provided by Lendable.
• Launched in 2020 by Omar Saleh, Ahmed Wagueeh, Fatimah El Shenawy, and Omar Salah, Khazna aims to serve underbanked Egyptians who have little access to formal financial services, including general-purpose credit, buy now pay later (BNPL), and bill payment.
• Khazna has raised a total of $47 million since the company’s inception. The new round will allow it to ramp up its efforts to replace informal cash-driven alternatives across Egypt.

Source: Wamda

daba’s takeaways

Digital banks have enormous potential in Egypt, a country where 2 of every 3 individuals are partly or totally excluded from formal financial services but 50% of its 100 million people actively use smartphones. In addition to high mobile and internet penetration, the North African country boasts a young and tech-savvy population with 61% below 30. Startups like Khazna have thus moved to capture this opportunity with neo banking platforms, contributing to the general booming fintech sector in Egypt.

🇳🇬 CredPal raises $15m to scale BNPL across Africa

Highlights

• CredPal, one of the earliest pioneers of buy now, pay later (BNPL) in Nigeria, has closed a bridge round of $15 million in equity and debt to expand its consumer credit offerings across Africa.
• Per a statement shared by the company, the investment will support its expansion into other African markets, mainly Kenya, Egypt, Ghana, and Cameroon.
• The startup claims to have over 85,000 active customers and more than 4,000 active merchants.

Source: Nairametrics

daba’s takeaways

The BNPL movement is waxing strong across the continent. Lipa Later is one of the early companies in the space in Kenya and there is M-Kopa in Kenya, Uganda, and Nigeria. CDCare, PayQart, and Carbon also play in Nigeria. And in South Africa, there are PayJustNow and Payflex. The adoption of BNPL in Nigeria as a payment option both online and at the point of sale is expected to record a CAGR of 20% from 2021 to 2028.

🇪🇬 Egypt’s fantasy football platform Eksab raises $3m

Highlights

• Egypt-based daily fantasy football platform, Eksab, has secured a $3 million Seed funding round, led by 4DX Ventures with participation from a number of local and international angel investors, bringing the total funding the platform has raised to date to $3.7 million.
• Launched in 2018 by Aly Mahmoud, Eksab allows players to choose free or premium competitions, make predictions and choose line-ups, with winners climbing the leaderboard and winning cash and prizes.
• Eksab will deploy the capital to scale its user base across the MENA region and Africa, invest in product development, talent acquisition for engineering, product, and execute partnerships with several global football clubs.

Source: Techcrunch

daba’s takeaways

Eksab is the first and currently only licensed fantasy football platform in Egypt. The company plans to acquire licenses to operate in three additional MENA countries by mid-2022, in a bid to capture the lion’s share of the multi-billion dollar football ecosystem in the region, serving more than 500 million football fans across the Middle East and Africa.

🇰🇪 Kenyan social commerce platform Tushop raises $3m

Highlights

• Tushop, a Kenyan social-commerce platform that enables communities in Nairobi to buy groceries more cheaply with free delivery, has secured $3 million in pre-seed funding round, led by 4DX Ventures.
• Founded in 2021 by Cathy Chepkemboi, Tushop’s mission is to make access to groceries more affordable and more convenient for Kenyans and eventually all Africans.
• The funds will be deployed to grow Tushop’s team, invest in tech to make its platform as easy to use as possible, and to further expand across Nairobi before rolling the service out to other cities in Kenya.

Source: TechCrunch

daba’s takeaways

While the idea of community group buying is still nascent, the market has enormous potential. Africans spend $260 billion yearly on food and in Kenya, an average of 46% of individual income is spent on food. Tushop’s model saves consumers up to 60% on groceries compared to buying in supermarkets and other retail outlets while providing the added convenience of free delivery.

🇨🇲 Cameroonian e-health startup Waspito raises $2.7m

Highlights

• Cameroonian e-health startup Waspito has raised a $2.7 million seed funding round to grow its user base in its home market and expand to Ivory Coast.
• Founded in 2020, Waspito connects users with medical doctors via instant video consultations from their smartphones. It also provides mobile laboratory services, with a lab technician collecting samples from a user’s home and results received digitally.
• To date, Waspito has served over 15,000 patients, and it plans to expand to 10 countries in the next four years.

Source: Disrupt Africa

daba’s takeaways

Healthcare-focused African startups are increasingly attracting venture capital investment as the continent’s e-health sector booms. As of 2020, there were 180 companies active in Africa’s e-health space, while investment peaked in the first half of 2020 despite the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, 55 African e-health startups secured funding from investors. As the African population continues to grow and the need for a nimble approach to healthcare delivery grows, there are strong indications startup numbers and investment levels will continue to soar.

🚀 Q1 2022 has been the most funded quarter ever

According to Briter Bridges “ The first three months of 2022 witnessed almost $1.8 billion that was attracted by tech-enabled African companies, more than the amount raised in the same period in 2019, 2020 and 2021 combined”

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