Hi guys,
It’s mid-week and a few days to the weekend. Whilst we look forward to the weekend, we bring to you another interesting edition of the Big 5 Daily.
We have big news that, Jumia, an African E-commerce platform has made a move to go public, as it filed for an Initial Public Offering (IPO) on the New York Stock Exchange yesterday. The filing, as confirmed by Jumia’s CEO Sacha Piognpnnec was under the United States’ Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). This move by Jumia is in a bid to secure a stronger hold than they already have and not sink in like their competitors. This is a very nice move by the company, don’t you agree?
There is also news that, Africa-based Ampion and Berlin-based Plutos Ventures Holding announced their intention to build accessible Digital business in selected African countries by providing seed capital and expertise support to Startups. This project, ‘Ampion Ventures’ will invest 6-digit tranches into African startups operating in Kenya, Rwanda, Nigeria and other selected African countries. Founders focused in agriculture, energy and the fintech sectors in Africa may apply. All intending startups must have early stage tech start-up or a background in the Agritech, Fintech or Energytech sector and have a solution with potentials to quicken Africa’s tech and business revolution. Deadline for the first round of applications is March 15th, 2019. Interested? Click here.
Next on the Big 5, TeamApt, a Lagos-based fintech firm that recently closed a 5.5 million USD Series A round led by Quantum Capital Partners has made moves to expand to Latin America in the third quarter of the year. This is in conjunction with the announcement they made last month during their investment funding- that they will be deploying the funding to product development, talent acquisition and internal operation expansion.
Moving on, Winch Energy, a UK based firm signed a contract with the Ministry of Energy in Sierra Leone to provide Solar mini-grid powered energy to 24 villages in the country. The energy company intends to become fully operational in June 2019, with aims to power over 6,000 people directly from the first phase. 12 mini-grids have already been installed and 12 larger mini-grids will be installed by the company in the 4th Quarter of 2019. The larger mini-grid will provide direct electricity connections for 24,000 people. This project will first power a total of 40000 people whose power capacity is about 1.2MW.
Finally on the Big 5, Safaricom’s M-PESA a mobile payment service provider has secured a deal to launch on online shopping website ‘Aliexpress.com’ to enable Kenyans who make use of the M-PESA App make payment in Kenyan Shillings. While shopping on Aliexpress.com, they will be presented with M-PESA as one of the payment options and once M-PESA is selected, they will key in their phone numbers, with which they will receive the pin for final authorization.
Well, there you have it for today’s edition of the Big 5 daily.
Thanks for joining!