Good morning, people!

Andela has appointed Clément Uwajeneza as Country Director for Rwanda, where its first pan-Africa hub is situated, per a press release we received. Prior to this appointment, Clément was the founding CEO of Irembo, an eGovernment service with over 15,000 daily users. In his new role, he will be providing strategic leadership and direction to the Kigali office and will be responsible for its programmatic and operational management. 

Nigerian automated savings platform, Piggybank, has partnered with health management organization, Avon, to launch AvonFlex, a service that’ll provide health insurance plans to Piggybank users using flexible monthly payments. Under 5% of Nigerian have access to any sort of healthcare cover and both companies hope their joint product will help improve access to healthc

London-based startup accelerator and incubator, Founders Factory, is expanding into Africa – first with a partnership with Standard Bank, the largest African bank by assets across 20 countries. Per this Techcrunch report, Founders Factory Africa says it will design, build and scale 100 disruptive tech startups across the continent over the next five years initially with five early stage startups and co-create two new companies every year within the incubator. Founders Factory has so far secured over £100m in funding for its 70 startups and implemented 60 pilots with its corporate partners with 30% securing enterprise contracts and five closing direct investments, according to the firm.

Venture Capital firm Village Capital has released a report titled “Beyond Payments: The Next Generation of Fintech Startups in Sub-Saharan Africa” where it identified 12 companies it determined were “building solutions in fintech subsectors outside of payments.” The report highlights four sub-sectors — agricultural finance, insurtech, alternative credit scoring and savings and wealth — including players, opportunities and challenges, recent raises and early-stage startups to watch.

“I believe that the Nigerian is the dumbest of all cybercriminals because they depend largely on numbers and brute force,” writes Victor Asemota in this piece “Getting Back From The Dark Side,” for Guardian Nigeria. 

The final shortlist for the 4th AppsAfrica.com Innovation Awards has been announced with Nigeria and West Africa ventures featuring heavily among the 70 finalists. Winners will be announced in Cape Town on November 12, 2018.

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