Hi guys,
It is a new week!
We are back here with the Big 5 Daily, giving you the best in African Tech News. We begin.
The MBTN Africa Innovation Accelerator program has opened its doors to submissions all over the African startup ecosystem. The MBTN is looking for founders that have both expertise and knowledge in their specific industries and are leveraging on technology to tackle problems. Each Startup will pitch to a room full of angel investors and will stand a chance to win funding, training, mentorship and a chance to network in a wide array of events. Submissions close 15th of February and the selected startups will be announced 10 days later.
Moving on, The World Bank’s Identification for Development (ID4D) which is hackathon that will assist in developing ways that will help people protect their privacy. The program is a part of Mission Billion Challenge and is powered by the MIT Solve Platform. The winning ideas will have the opportunity of getting up to $50,000 in prize money. They will hold 2 events — the Nairobi Solveathon which will hold on the 29th of January and the Cape Town Solveathon, which will hold on the 31st. Do you want to attend? Click here.
MainOne’s Nerds Unite 2019, which is an Invite-only tech conference will hold on the 8th of February, 2019 in Lagos, Nigeria. The program aims to aggregate the tech ecosystem and it will feature reputable speakers on both a global and African scale, shedding light on tech disruption in Africa and also, the role of connectivity and cloud services in driving growth. Do you want to attend? Click here.
Moving on, South Africa’s Sun Exchange raised $1m in their ICO (Initial Coin Offering). Sun Exchange is a buy-to-lease solar marketplace that allows individuals to invest in solar projects and make profit from these projects. They had initially targeted $5.4 million but they fell short citing “increasingly challenging ICO market conditions” as reasons. We wish them all the best in their future endeavors.
Finally, Disrupt Africa released their African Tech Startups Funding Report for 2018 and recorded a total of $334 million raised amongst 210 startups. The highest ever recorded. Nigeria raised the highest, totaling $94.9 million in funding and was followed by South Africa with $59.9 million. This is great news for the African Tech Ecosystem as a whole.
With this, we end the Big 5 Daily. Thank you for joining us.