Afridigest Week in Review: The funding slowdown continues
+Africa needs SMEs more than startups? +Four archetypes of African markets +Nigeria is hiring a VC fund manager +Worth watching: an interview with Nclude's Basil Moftah +More
This Afridigest Week in Review is a recap of what happened across Africa's tech ecosystem for Africa-focused founders, executives, and investors.
Welcome back, old & new friends 👋🏽! The most clicked link from last Monday’s newsletter was the throwback piece, 'The hierarchy of venture opportunities in emerging markets.'
📌 Welcome to May, folks. April was another slow month for announced deals across Africa, and we’ll publish a recap rof the month shortly. (Here’s the March recap if you missed it.)
If you’re new here: welcome — this Week in Review is sent on Mondays, the Fintech Review goes out on Sundays, and an original essay occasionally goes out on Saturdays. For past essays and digests, visit the archive.
➜ If you appreciate our work, show your love by upgrading your subscription. And with that said, let’s get into what happened last week.
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Week 17 2023: April 23-29
🔦 Deals
If you’d like us to know about a fundraise, please submit it here:
EQUITY DEALS ACROSS THE CONTINENT
42Markets Group, a South African fintech incubation platform, raised $10M from the Convergence Partners Digital Infrastructure Fund. The bulk of the raise will be deployed in its mesh.trade trading platform subsidiary. Other companies in the group include financial and capital markets advisory platform Andile and foreign currency risk management platform FX Flow.
Maholla, a South African retail rewards app, raised a $1.5M seed round from Buffet Group, Castleton Capital, Praesidium Capital Management, and Galloprovincialis.
Drest.tn, a Tunisian e-commerce platform, raised $336K from 216 Capital Ventures.
Storspay, a Nigerian decentralized cross-border SME lending platform, raised $320K and announced its selection for the Techstars New York accelerator.
Mecho Autotech, a Nigerian vehicle repair and maintenance platform, raised an undisclosed amount from Global Brains.
Raise, a Kenyan/pan-African compliance & capitalization table management platform, raised an undisclosed amount from Carta.
ADJACENT
Zipline, a California-based drone delivery startup that began operations in Rwanda, raised/is raising $300M at a valuation of $4.2B. We’ve previously referred to Zipline and others as ‘Africa-to-the-world’ or ‘reverse innovation’ companies where tech first developed or deployed in Africa is then exported globally.
d.Light, an American provider of distributed solar energy solutions across Africa and worldwide, raised $1.9M from Swedfund.
MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS
JSE-listed South African fintech group Capital Appreciation acquired South African IT software & services group Dariel Solutions for $7.2M in cash and shares.
Africa-focused identity verification & digital KYC platform Smile Identity acquired its Ghanaian counterpart Appruve for an undisclosed amount.
Sun King, an American/pan-African provider of off-grid solar energy products, acquired PayGo Energy for an undisclosed amount.
INVESTOR ACTIVITY
Capria Ventures announced the first close of a $100M fund focused on tech startups across Africa and other areas of the Global South. Capria’s existing Africa portfolio includes Nigeria’s Max.ng and Egypt’s Paymob.
📚 Quick hitsFOR YOUR READING PLEASURE
Some mistakes I made as a new manager — From former Wave Mobile Money CTO Ben Kuhn
AFRIDIGEST ARTICLES
How (African) startups should think about growth — Oldie but goodie
PUBLIC BOOKMARKING
Fund size is still strategy: The growing disconnect between founders and VCs — From Precursor’s Charles Hudson