Afridigest Week in Review: 50 weeks down, 2 weeks to go

+Praying to the god of valuation +A good amount of investor activity +Equinix continues its march across Africa +It's the most wonderful time of the year 🎅🎄🎁

Emeka Ajene

Dec 19, 2022

The Afridigest Week in Review is a must-read weekly recap for Africa-focused founders, executives, and investors.

Welcome back, friends! The most clicked link from last week was Cyril Grislain’s 'Startup Restructuring 101.' And if you missed yesterday’s Fintech Review, it’s available here.

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If you’re new, welcome 🙌🏽 — you're among thousands of readers who receive this Week in Review on Mondays, the Fintech Review on Sundays, and (for those who've opted in) the French-language Revue de la Semaine on Wednesdays (which is on a temporary hiatus right now). And from time to time, an original essay/article goes out on Saturdays. For past essays and digests, visit the archive.

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» Today’s WIR is short & sweet — we’ve omitted the Deal of the Week.

Week 50 2022: December 11-17

🔦 Deals

FUNDRAISES ACROSS THE CONTINENT

Sun King, an American/pan-African provider of off-grid solar energy products, raised $70M in a Series D extension round led by LeapFrog Investments.
🇳🇬 Taiello, a Nigerian tech-enabled furniture manufacturing & e-commerce platform, raised $2.5M from Aruwa Capital.
🇪🇬 Suplyd, an Egyptian B2B food supply chain platform serving restaurants, hotels, and caterers raised a $1.6M pre-seed from Endure Capital, Seedstars, Camel Ventures, Falak Startups, Outlierz, Plus Ventures, Fort, Alex Angels, and others.
🇰🇪 MyHealth Africa, a Kenyan doctor booking & medical management platform, raised a $1M seed round led by the GIIG Africa Fund, with participation from Samurai Incubate and others.
🇹🇿 Swahilies, a Tanzanian payment processing & financial operating system for SMEs, raised a $50K pre-seed from the Baobab Network.

ADJACENT

8B Education Investments, an American fintech lender to African students attending global universities, raised a $3M seed round from Impellent Ventures, New York Ventures, Trueventures.org, and others.

M&A

Egyptian quick-commerce platform Appetito and Saudi-based grocery delivery startup Jumlaty merged to create NOMU. The combined entity will have a presence in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Tunisia, and Morocco, thanks to Appetito’s acquisition of Tunisia’s Lamma in Week 22 2022.
Egyptian healthtech EDAM was acquired by US-based PTS Investments Holdings in an undisclosed ‘six-figure’ deal.
Nigerian off-grid power service provider Daystar Power announced the formal completion of its acquisition by Shell. The acquisition was first announced in Week 39 2022.

INVESTOR ACTIVITY

Nigerian/pan-African VC firm Ventures Platform announced the final close of its early-stage fund at $46M, up from an initial $40M target. VP will lead pre-seed & seed rounds while participating and writing follow-on checks in Series A rounds.
The Transform Health Fund, a blended finance fund offering debt & mezzanine financing to health enterprises in Africa focused on supply chain, care delivery, and digital solutions, announced ~$50M in pledged commitments.
Egyptian angel investment group Cairo Angels rebranded to acasia group & unveiled its new strategy.
Nigerian healthcare-focused investment firm Flying Doctors Healthcare Investment Company rebranded to HealthCap.
Ethiopia’s Kazana Fund announced the launch of its angel syndicate.

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📚 Quick hits

FOR YOUR READING PLEASURE

Praying to the god of valuation — Mark Suster: “In the past 7 years we built cultures of quick money, instant wealth, and valuations for valuation’s sake… We all began to pray to the altar of the almighty valuation… Instead of growing revenue and holding down costs and building great company cultures, the market chased valuation validation.”
Why competitive advantages die — Morgan Housel: “Knowing you have a competitive advantage is often the enemy…, because doing well reduces the incentive to explore other ideas, especially when those ideas conflict with your proven strategy. Which is dangerous.”

PUBLIC BOOKMARKING

Latin America: The next frontier in supply chain innovation — Interesting to see how Menlo Ventures thinks about opportunities in LatAm
Own the problem, not just the solution — A useful framework from Lux’s Bilal Zuberi
ChatGPT is my co-founder — More from Wharton’s Ethan Mollick on using ChatGPT to generate, research, plan, and execute business ideas

👀 Visual of the Week

🕵️‍♀️ In case you missed it

NEWS

Equinix plans to enter South Africa with a $160M Johannesburg data center investment (This comes after its earlier entry into Africa with the acquisition of Nigeria’s MainOne)
Microsoft partners with Viasat to spread satellite internet access across Africa
Qualcomm announced the launch of its Africa Innovation Platform
Kenya to host the Kauffman Fellow Africa Venture Capital Summit in September 2023

PROFILES/INTERVIEWS

Farida Kabir, Group Head, Growth and Brand at Sudo Africa

🐤 Tweet of the Week

A thought on last week’s US-Africa summit:

David *OBJECTION!* Ngong @ProfDNgong

There will be decolonization when there's no longer US-Africa Summit because it is absurd for a country to have summit with a continent.

🗣️ Community Corner and Opportunities (feel free to send yours in)

🙌🏽 Congrats to Yinka Adegoke and the Semafor team on a successful inaugural Semafor Africa Summit.
🎧 Listen to Afrobility’s Creator Roundtable episode featuring The Flip Africa’s Justin Norman, Frontier Fintech’s Samora Kariuku, and your humble author. (Thanks to Bankole & Olumide 🙏🏽)
Applications are open until December 31 for Seedstars’ Enhancing Women Entrepreneurship for Africa program.
Applications are open until January 19 for the Japan-Africa Investment Drive accelerator which aims to match African startups with Japanese VCs.
The HBS Africa Business Club invites early-stage startups focused on Africa to apply for the New Venture Competition before January 2, 2023.
African startups with innovative health solutions are invited to apply for Making More Health Business Accelerator before January 13.
African startups working on climate solutions are invited to apply before January 2023 for up to $100K in equity-free investments from the UNICEF Venture Fund.

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