Category: east africa
Africa Roundup: Visa connects to M-Pesa, Flutterwave enters e-commerce
It seems the demand for Safaricom’s M-Pesa payment product never eases. Since its 2007 launch in Kenya, the fintech app has commanded over 70% of the mobile money market in that country. When COVID-19 hit the East African nation of 53 million in March, the Kenyan Central Bank turned to…
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Visa and Kenya’s Safaricom partner on M-Pesa, payments and tech
Visa just connected to Africa’s most powerful mobile payments network. The global financial services company and Kenyan telecom Safaricom — operator of the M-Pesa mobile money product — announced a partnership today on payments and tech. The arrangement opens up Visa’s global merchant and card network across 200 countries to…
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Goldman backed ventures Jumia and Twiga partner on produce in Kenya
Pan-African e-commerce company Jumia and B2B agtech startup Twiga Foods are partnering to deliver produce in Kenya using adaptive measures during COVID-19. In 2019, Jumia became the first VC funded tech company in Africa to list on a major exchange, the NYSE. Based in Nairobi, Twiga raised a $30 million…
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Africa Roundup: Africa’s tech ecosystem responds to COVID-19
In March, the virus gripping the world — COVID-19 — started to spread in Africa. In short order, actors across the continent’s tech ecosystem began to step up to stem the spread. Early in March Africa’s coronavirus cases by country were in the single digits, but by mid-month those numbers…
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African turns to mobile payments as a tool to curb COVID-19
Africa is using digital finance as a means to stem the spread of COVID-19. Governments and startups on the continent are implementing measures to shift a greater volume of payment transactions toward mobile money and away from cash — which the World Health Organization flagged as a conduit for the…
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A snapshot of the leading startups in Africa’s top VC markets
TechCrunch did a synopsis recently on Africa’s 2019 VC stats. Analyses from investment fund Partech and media outlets Disrupt Africa and WeeTracker came up with varied numbers, but there was a common trend: the top two countries for venture capital to startups across all three studies were Nigeria and Kenya.…
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