Category: 3-SometimeTechTalk

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African Tech Roundup - Kenya’s Twiga Foods Closes $10.3M Series A Investment Round Led By Wamda Capital

The last few weeks have seen three promising African tech startups land significant investments-- namely, the Nigerian digital payments firm, Flutterwave ($10 million), the Kenyan mobile-driven food supply platform, Twiga Foods ($10.3 million), and the South African fractional investments service, EasyEquities ($7.5 million). In this installment of the African Tech Round-up, Andile Masuku and Musa Kalenga discuss the merits of the Flutterwave and Twiga deals, but somehow, we forgot to chat about the EasyEquities transaction on this episode (our bad). That particular transaction stands out somewhat, owing to the fact that 30% of the company was acquired by the South African financial services giant, Sanlam. Here's to hoping that the Sanlam-EasyEquities deal signals a trend towards African institutional investors becoming savvier at identifying and financing home-grown start-ups before their overseas counterparts swoop in to snap up promising businesses from right under their noses. Music Credits: Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Music licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
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African Tech Roundup - Charlene Chen reckons Bitpesa is well-positioned to surf the blockchain wave

Charlene Chen is the Chief Operating Officer of BitPesa-- an online payment platform founded in Kenya that leverages Blockchain settlement to lower the cost and increase the speed of business payments to, from and within sub-Saharan Africa. In this chat with Andile Masuku, Charlene explains how BitPesa helps clients, that range from African businesses and multinational companies paying suppliers as far as China and Dubai to international remittance companies, use their API services for white-label payments to dozens of bank networks and mobile money operators across Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Senegal, and the DRC. She also unpacks why BitPesa hasn't gotten caught up in speculation regarding Bitcoin and sheds light on the company's prospects following the successful close of their $2.5 million Series A in January 2017.
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African Tech Roundup - Eunice Baguma Ball explains why the Africa Technology Business Network is backing #FoundingWomen

Eunice Baguma Ball is the Ugandan Founder and Executive Director of the Africa Technology Business Network (ATBN). For over 10 years, Eunice has worked at the intersection of tech and social enterprise - leveraging her engineering background to build an impressive reputation as a tech and innovation specialist. In this chat with Andile Masuku, Eunice gives her take on the state of African women in tech, comments candidly on some of the cultural hurdles women continue to face in what is still largely an unwelcoming, male-dominated industry, and gives us the low-low on a ground-breaking book she hopes to publish in December 2018, called Founding Women. Founding Women will put the spotlight on African Female founders who are building technology businesses across Africa and the Diaspora-- with the aim of creating visible role models to inspire young African women to reach their full potential as innovators and tech leaders. Listen in to hear how you can contribute to an ongoing Indiegogo crowd funding campaign that will not only help the book get made but also ensure that many promising African women founders and innovators access it for free.
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African Tech Roundup - Kenya General Election 2017: The fake news factor with Eric Mugendi of PesaCheck.org

Eric Mugendi is the Managing Editor at PesaCheck.org. In this chat with Andile Masuku, taped on Monday, August 7th, 2017 - a day before Kenya's General Election - he factors in on how fake news has influenced public sentiment in the lead up to the highly-contested polls. We deliberately asked Eric to weigh in on the fake news situation before his insights were clouded by the election results. We've also been intentional about waiting for the official outcome to be declared before releasing this podcast, in respect for Kenya's democratic process.