Hey Africa!
Let’s quickly run through today’s biggest news across Africa.
Insurtech start-up, Simply Financial Services, has received a multi-year funding commitment from a private investor group, Yellowwoods. The start-up offers Family Cover, Domestic Cover and Group Cover options, all underwritten by the Old Mutual Risk Transfer Ltd (OMART).
Angola based peer-to-peer ridesharing platform, Kubinga has won the Angolan leg of the Seedstars competition. With the win, Kubinga will now get the chance to pitch at the Seedstars global final in Switzerland in April 2019, and a chance to win up to US$1 million in equity investment.
In the same vein, 10 Nigerian start-ups have been selected to pitch in front of an investment panel and compete for the most promising seed-stage start-up of Seedstars Lagos 2018. The winning start-up will win an all-inclusive trip to Switzerland to compete at the Seedstars Summit for the title of Seedstars Global Winner and win up to $1million in investment.
Facebook has launched the Third-Party Fact-Checking to help curb the spread of fake news in Nigeria, and help reduce the spread of misinformation on its platform. Facebook will be partnering with Africa Check; Africa’s first independent fact-checking organisation, together with AFP, a renowned news organisation in Africa to achieve this.
In some other news from North Africa, Egyptian business publication Enterprise has reported that Egyptian Finance Ministry has notified the ecommerce platforms, including Souq and Jumia, that they are now required to charge value-added tax (VAT) on all the items that would be subject to VAT if sold offline.
Egypt had introduced 13% VAT in October 2016 which was increased to 14% in 2017. It had replaced the 10% GST when first introduced.
We draw the curtain of today’s big 5. See you guys tomorrow