Itana, formerly known as Talent City, a Nigerian startup, has acquired US$2 million in a pre-seed funding round to assist its efforts to create Africa’s first Digital Free Zone, which aims to improve the country’s ease-of-doing-busines index, encourage foreign direct investment, and create jobs.
The pre-seed funding round was led by global venture capitalists LocalGlobe, Amplo, Pronomos Capital, and Future Africa.
Itana, founded by CEO Luqman Edu, founding investor Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, and COO Coco Liu, enables multinational tech and service firms to set up their African operations from Nigeria and benefit from internationally competitive business regulations and incentives.
“We are thrilled to announce this round of funding. It validates our efforts, and reiterates the aligned vision with our investors and partners to make it easy to invest and operate in Africa’s digital economy,” said Edu. “The African market is still largely untapped and Itana will provide the ideal business environment that will be fully online, for global and pan-African digital and service companies to use Nigeria as an anchorage to operate with ease across the continent.”
According to Aboyeji, Itana would allow entrepreneurs to establish a globally recognized company in Nigeria’s first digital free zone by taking advantage of perks previously available only to the traditional manufacturing or oil and gas industries.
Itana will be a completely online jurisdiction for the digital economy, with the best regulations, commercial services, and technology for international service and digital enterprises to operate remotely and expand with ease across Africa.
Itana will be integrated into an eco-friendly startup vicinity in the Alaro free-zone (Epe, Lagos) by 2027.
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