Investors update: Johannesburg is Africa's wealthiest city with over 14,000 dollar-millionaires

Johannesburg is Africa’s wealthiest city with over 14,000 dollar-millionaires 

Highlights

• South Africa’s commercial capital, Johannesburg, remains Africa’s wealthiest city, per a study compiled by Henley & Partners and New World Wealth.
• Called the “City of Gold,” it is home to the largest number of dollar millionaires (14,600) in the continent, according to the World’s Wealthiest Cities Report 2023. Up to 30 of them are dollar centi-millionaires and two are dollar-billionaires.
• Johannesburg was founded following the discovery of gold deposits nearby in 1886 and hosts the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), Africa’s largest. In 2021, its cumulative wealth stood at $235 billion, topping Africa’s chart.

Source: QZ Africa

Our Takeaway

Per the report, Johannesburg appears to have weathered the difficult times South Africa’s economy has faced in recent times, including a persistent energy crisis and rising inflation. The “Big Five” wealth markets—South Africa, Egypt, Nigeria, Kenya, and Morocco—together account for 56% of Africa’s high net-worth individuals and more than 90% of Africa’s billionaires. Mauritius, Rwanda, and Namibia are also catching up quickly. Elsewhere across the world, New York City, Tokyo, The Bay Area, London, Singapore, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, and Sidney are the top ten cities with the highest number of high net-worth individuals.

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Smile ID expands footprint with the acquisition of Ghana’s Appruve

Highlights

• Smile Identity, a KYC compliance and ID verification partner for many African fintech startups and businesses, has acquired Inclusive Innovations, the parent company of Appruve, a Ghanaian developer of identity verification software.
• Founded in 2017 and backed by over $30 million in venture capital, Smile combines document verification, face verification, biometrics, and data integrations into local trusted ID authorities to verify people’s identities.
• The acquisition is expected to help expand Smile Identity’s footprint across Africa and solidify its position in the identity verification and digital KYC space.

Source: TechCrunch

Our Takeaway

Globally, businesses lose up to $1 trillion annually to cybercrime, and in Africa, that figure stands at a whopping $4 billion. As digital services, financial and non-financial, providers penetrate the African market at large, there is a need for fintech startups and digital businesses on the continent to carry out stringent Know-Your-Customer (KYC) and verification checks on their customers. Smile Identity is one of the many platforms powering these crucial processes for other startups and large businesses.

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SA rewards app Maholla raises $1.5m seed funding to scale

Highlights

• South African startup Maholla, a viral consumer reward app, has concluded a $1.5 million seed funding round to help it continue to scale. 
• Maholla rewards users for scanning any receipt from any store, allowing users to earn rewards irrespective of where they shop. Rewards come in the form of instant airtime, 1Vouchers, in-app games, and more. 
• The company raised a $580,000 pre-seed round last July and has now brought its total funding to date to over $2 million dollars with plans to grow its users and deepen its technical capacity.

Source: Disrupt Africa

Our Takeaway

Maholla is one of an increasing number of technology startups across Africa that are reinventing the way traditional corporates in the fast-moving consumer goods sector offer discounts and rewards to end consumers. In Africa, startups that play in this space have a big market opportunity as the consumer goods sector is one of the largest and most resilient in the continent’s leading economies. There’s also a growing appetite for technology-enabled solutions among organizations and Household names such as Maggi, Milo, Fusion, and Switch Energy are among the many brands reportedly benefiting from Maholla’s dataset and targeting capabilities.