Hello Africa, we round up this week’s big 5 Daily with investment news from South Africa as Fintec Labs, which is a financial incubator confirmed raising $2million series B fund from ABSA Bank. The company’s CEO, Daniel Van Tonder told Digest Africa that this round was closed on December 21, 2018.
The deal makes it the second investment round Fintec Labs raised last year as it had earlier raised $2.4 million in Series A funding from an undisclosed investor.
Also, in Nairobi, Kenya, Africa Tech Ventures (ATV) grabbed $7.5m from the African Development Bank (AfDB) to boost operations of highly scalable companies in Africa.
The equity investment is expected to be invested into early-stage start-ups that improve and facilitate access of essential goods and services to the underserved, effectively promoting inclusive growth in key areas like consumer goods, corporate services, education, logistics, energy, fintech, agriculture or healthcare.
Moving to Nigeria, the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) said it has streamlined and automated its processes aimed at fast-tracking Government’s IT Projects.
This clearance process is intended to “track Government spending in IT and ensure synergy in National investments, according to Director General/CEO, Isa Pantami. It is to ensure the availability of accurate statistics on Government’s IT assets and Investments to help them make informed IT decisions.
Quartz Africa ran a piece on young African innovators to watch out for in 2019. They include Sarah Diouf (Senegal) – founder of ready-to-wear brand Tongoro, Betelhem Dessie (Ethiopia) – a 19-year-old developer advocate, Kelvin Doe (Sierra Leone) – a techpreneur working on solar energy inventions, Silas Adekunle (Nigeria/US) – founder of Reach Robotics and a pioneer in gaming robots and Elvis Chidera (Nigeria) – software engineer. These individuals were ranked per criteria of technological innovation across the continent.
Huawei Technologies has released its 2019 growth strategy and it is mostly focused on ensuring business flexibility. In addition, they predicted a 21 percent growth in 2019.
In a new year message, Huawei Technologies Rotating Chairman, Guo Ping, described 2018 as an eventful year for the firm and announced that over 160 cities and 211 Fortune Global 500 companies preferred Huawei as their partner for digital transformation, shooting up their sales revenue to over $108.5 billion.
And that’s all for the week! Stay with us for our Weekly Roundup later today..