Nigeria’s Paga hits 11 million unique users
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Nigerian logistics startup Kobo360 has raised $6 million in seed funding in a round led by the IFC. Other investors are YCombinator, WTI, Cardinal Stone Partners, Chandaria Capital, and TLcom. The startup, launched in July 2016, also raised $1.2 million in a pre-seed round back in July. |
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Nigerian mobile money startup Paga now has 11 million unique users. Per this blog post making the announcement, the company has also been adding new users at an increased pace: it took 141 days to go from 8 million to 9 million users, 79 days to go from 9 million to 10 million users, and 37 days to go from 10 million to 11 million users.
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Paystack CEO Shola Akinlade said the Nigerian payments startup is growing (its transaction volumes/merchant base?) by 20% month-on-month, per this tweet from Quartz Africa Editor Yinka Adegoke. Shola also reckons the startup has “barely scratched the surface.”
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South African telco Telkom had a countrywide network downtime on Friday due to an issue with one of its service routers. My Broadband has more. |
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Uber has raised prices in South Africa by 5% on its UberX and UberXL tiers, Hypertext Africa reports. Per the report, Uber is making the increase on the back of “in-depth earnings reviews” for its drivers.
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Egyptian healthtech startup Vezeeta has raised a new, undisclosed investment from the International Finance Corporation (IFC), per Ventureburn. It also closed a $12-million Series C funding round led by Saudi-based STV less than three months ago.
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Econet-owned Liquid telecom has announced that it will invest $400 million in Egypt over the next three years via a partnership with Telecom Egypt. Following an initial investment of $50m in data centres and cloud services, Liquid Telecom plans to invest an additional $350m in broadband and financial inclusion initiatives, as well as high capacity data centres.
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Fresh out of the Google Launchpad Africa accelerator, South African insurtech startup Pineapple has been accepted into the US based Hartford InsurTech Hub, powered by StartupBootcamp. |
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UN Women, the African Union and the UN’s Economic Commission for Africa have launched the African Women Leadership Fund. The fund will work with and support women-owned and run fund management companies, as well as women-focused impact funds. Learn more here.
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TechCrunch is headed to Lagos to host its second Startup Battlefield Africa competition tomorrow! Sub-Saharan Africa’s best innovators, makers and technical entrepreneurs are invited to attend this year’s TechCrunch Startup Battlefield Africa. Don’t miss it. |
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All Done.
Have a great week ahead. We’ll see you tomorrow.
– Akindare.
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