This Week in African Tech 🌍

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Welcome to This Week in African Tech!

Tech roundup

• Nigeria has launched its own multilingual large language model (LLM), similar to ChatGPT and Bard, as part of its National AI Strategy. This AI model will be trained in five local languages and accented English.

• Thepeer, a Nigerian Fintech, has shut down and returned $350,000 to investors. But investors are calling for an audit, saying $500,000 is still unaccounted for.

• This week was for mobility partnerships as Nigeria’s MAX and Ghana’s Kofa Technologies partner to make bike financing easier for riders.

• South Africa goes bullish on crypto as the government approves licences for Luno, VALR, and 73 other companies. This license will allow them to provide crypto advisory, intermediary services, and investment management to customers.

• Bolt, the ride-sharing app, and M-Kopa, a Kenyan fintech company, are partnering to launch 5,000 electric bikes in Kenya. The partnership allows riders to finance their bikes with M-Kopa while working on Bolt.

• Nigerian fintech startup, Anchor, has launched Ondeck with Anchor, a YouTube series which gives an insider’s perspective on the fintech industry. Each episode looks at a specific aspect of fintech, from payments and cards to regulation and emerging technologies. Watch the first episode here and subscribe to Anchor’s YouTube channel.

Deal roundup

• Africa-focused VC fund, TLCom Capital, closes its second fund at $154 million, beating its initial target of $150 million. Its investors include the European Investment Bank, AfricaGrow, IFC, Visa Foundation, and Bertelsmann Investments. The fund will remain focused on seed-stage and Series A investments.

• Renew Capital invests an undisclosed sum in Kenyan AgriTech startup, Farm to Feed, a Kenyan B2B platform that finds new uses for surplus and less-than-perfect food.

• Egyptian Fintech, Bokra, raises a $4.6 million pre-seed round from DisrupTech Ventures, SS Capital, and other undisclosed investors. The funds will be used to launch the Bokra app and scale operations across the MENA region.

• Bluworks, an Egyptian HRTech for blue-collar employees, closes a $1 million pre-seed round. Khawarizmi Ventures, Camel Ventures, Acasia Ventures, and a pool of angel investors led the round. Bluworks plans to use this capital to enhance its product and grow its team.

• South African EdTech startup, HyperionDev, raises $5m in funding to expand tech education into new markets globally. The company hasn’t announced who its investors are.

• Three African startups secure $200,000 each as Madica makes its first African investment. Madica, a pre-seed investment vehicle, opened applications last month to startups from different industries on the continent.

Events and Opportunities

• Latitude59 is the flagship startup and tech event in Estonia, and it takes place in the capital, Tallinn, from the 22nd to the 24th of May 2024. We’ve got a special discount code for our Kenyan community: Use KENYAtoL59TALLINN when buying your ticket and you’ll get a 20% discount. Get your tickets here.

• Applications have opened for the Global Startup Awards Africa, an award for innovators solving critical global challenges. It’s open to African startups working in green-tech, e-health, mobility, agri-tech, fintech, and women in tech spaces. Apply here by the 5th of May, 2024.

• The Home-Grown Solutions Accelerator for Pandemic Resilience is now open to applications from African healthcare businesses. This accelerator supported startups like Drugstoc, MDaaS Global, and Zuri Health in their early stages, and will be doing the same for selected startups. Apply here by the 4th of May 2024.

• The next Infobip Connect Meetup takes place at the Nairobi Garage Kilimani on the 30th of April, 2024. The speakers include Wayne Gakuo, from Sky Garden, Caleb Maru from Tech Safari, Kendi J, a Flutter developer, and Duncan Mochama, an Account Executive at Infobip. Sign up here to book your spot.

And that's a wrap for this week!

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