This Week in African Tech 🌍

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Morning! Welcome to This Week in African Tech.

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Tech Roundup

• Kenya’s mobile money service Mpesa finally goes live in Ethiopia. This comes 3 months after Safaricom, the Telecommunication company behind Mpesa, received a mobile money license to operate in the country. Safaricom also launched its network in Ethiopia last year and has over 2 million active users.

• Mastercard is acquiring a minority stake in MTN Group’s fintech business. South Africa’s MTN is Africa’s largest Telecommunication company based on revenue and number of users. They’re also behind MoMo, which is Africa’s biggest mobile money service by number of users. This values MTN's Fintech arm at $5.2 billion.

• Tunisia's Dabchy takes its fashion e-commerce platform to Egypt. The Tunis-based P2P fashion marketplace, founded in 2016 enables online buying and selling of new and pre-used clothes.

• Nigerian fintech Moniepoint, previously focused on merchant payments, is now entering personal banking, launching a new consumer app and debit cards. This puts them in competition with OPay and PalmPay.

• Amazon Web Services (AWS) has established its first African Skills Center in Cape Town, South Africa. This center offers free programs to non-technical workers, focusing on cloud computing and career development in the industry.

• Kenya rejects petition to ban TikTok. The petition claimed that the platform is causing violence, explicit content, hate speech, and bad behavior in young people.

Deal Roundup

• South African accelerator Founders Factory Africa (FFA) raises $114 million from Mastercard Foundation and Johnson & Johnson Impact Ventures. They intend to expand their model to support startups across Africa.

• Kenyan retail-tech company MarketForce turns to crowdfunding to raise capital. They’re looking to raise up to $1 million using the online crowdfunding platform WeFunder.

• Ghana's Oyster Agribusiness, which uses tech to work closely with smallholder farmers raises $310,000 in grant and debt funding. Their focus is on sustainable agriculture, gender inclusion, and talent development.

• Cairo's Buguard, an offensive security, and dark web monitoring firm, raises $500,000 in seed funding. The seed funding was led by MENA venture capital firm A15, with contributions from angel investors. Until now, the startup had been bootstrapped.

• Nigerian startup PipeOps, an all-in-one DevOps as a Service web platform, has been accepted into the Techstars New Orleans accelerator program, powered by J.P. Morgan. It's the only African startup among the 11 selected for this inaugural cohort.

Events + Opportunities

• Get ready for the 8th edition of Nigeria's Innovation Summit in October, happening in Lagos! This event unites tech enthusiasts and offers Nigerian innovators a stage to showcase their solutions and creative ideas. Register to attend here.

• The 16th South Africa Innovation Summit is happening in Cape Town from September 26-29. Join over 3,000 innovators, entrepreneurs, investors, and thought leaders for an inspiring tech event!

• Hey founders! Are you looking for equity-free funding and global investor networks? Apply now for the Hello Tomorrow Global Challenge 2023! The challenge gives global deep tech entrepreneurs a shot at equity-free funding, global exposure, and connecting with key players. Past winners raised over $3B!

• Applications are now open for the 3rd MTN MoMo API Hackathon. MoMo, the mobile money service by MTN Group, Africa's largest telecommunications company, is calling companies, founders, and developers from 14 African countries to join this Hackathon. Sign up for a chance to win up to $10,000!

• Are you running a social enterprise in Africa? Apply for the Miller Center accelerator program to access funding, investor connections, and global scaling opportunities. Apply here before August 25.

• Get ready for the Africa Money and DeFi Summit in Accra, Ghana, on October 3-4! Hosted by the Africa Tech Summit creators, it's all about connecting African fintech and Web3 scenes with global players. Join experts, investors, regulators, and innovators for talks on the hottest trends and opportunities in African fintech and Web3.

PS - do you have any news, announcements, or opportunities I should know about? Email me and if they’re a fit, I’ll feature them 👌🏾

And that's a wrap for this week! We will be back with a feature story later this week.

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👋🏾 Caleb