Hello People,
Hope your day is going just fine?
We are excited to announce that two African Tech companies have been selected to be a part of the Techstars Impact 2019 class. Wella Health (Nigeria) and Cowtribe (Ghana) will join other startups from around the world for the 3-month program holding in Texas. They will receive seed funding, mentorship, and support to scale their business operations.
Now for the Big 5,
Popular music platform, Spotify has launched a lite version of its mobile app in South Africa. The new version is lighter, makes streaming faster, and occupies less storage space. It is also ideal for areas with limited bandwidth, older devices, and operating systems. The app is available for download in Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa.
Slyd, an on-demand electric scooter ride-hailing platform has launched operations in Egypt. The mobile app operated electric scooters can be picked up by the rider to drive to desired destinations. Interestingly, payments are made online and scooters are booked online. That sounds like a fun ride, right?
Next, on the Big 5, a Chinese phone manufacturing company plans to operate in Uganda. The manufacturing company is known as ENGO and the phone trademark would be called Simi Mobile. ENGO plans to spend $15.5 million on the project within the next five years.
During the Durban July which took place last weekend, Vodacom, LG, and Nokia showcased the first 5G commercial-ready technology for Africa. This was demonstrated using LG’s V50 ThinQ 5G smartphone, Nokia’s AirScale 5G radio network technology, supported by Vodacom’s cloud core network technology. A temporary spectrum license was granted to Vodacom by ICASA for the demonstration.
Finally, the government of Egypt has partnered with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization to develop a digital agriculture model over a period of two years. The project will help Egypt to maximize local food production and deploy digital technologies to increase farmer’s access to data and information.
Thank you for reading through the Big 5 Daily news of the day.
Enjoy the rest of the day.