Lovely new day Africa!
We are back with our Big 5 daily and today, we begin with the big news from Nigeria’s Paystack.
Following it’s major $1.3m funding in 2016, the Nigerian based Fintech company has raised $8 million Series A funding from Stripe, Visa, and Tencent. This fund will energize Paystack’s expansion, building of payments infrastructure, and growth of their engineering team.
This is good news for Paystack and big motivation for other Fintech start-ups across Africa.
After Google’s Project Loon sealed a deal with Kenyan telecommunications operators to “provide balloon-powered internet to regions of central Kenya, the firm is working to extend its services to Uganda.
Another one on Google. The tech company has declared 11 start-ups that made it into the second cohort of its LaunchPad Accelerator Africa program. For the next three months, the selected start-ups will receive intense mentorship and support from Google to launch them into global competitive businesses.
Meanwhile, Facebook’s express Wi-Fi initiative has launched Express Wi-Fi Certified. The Express Wi-Fi initiative is currently available in five countries; Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria, India and Indonesia. Express Wi-Fi Certified will allow manufacturers build Wi-Fi hardware that is compatible with Express Wi-Fi.
The Cape Innovation and Technology Initiative (CiTi) is calling on women founders and company heads to apply for the incubator’s 10-week long Top Tech Tools for Women in Business programme.
The free programme, which kicks off on 19 September at the Khayelitsha Bandwidth Barn, is aimed at women founders and CEOs from the Western Cape between the ages of 25 and 50.
That’s all for today’s big 5. Thank you for reading.
See y’all tomorrow!
