How did a 30-year old Nigerian and a Ghanaian – Tunde Kehinde and Raphael Afaedor – grow their local e-commerce startup into a multimillion dollar company in less than year? VENTURES AFRICA – I was chatting with a colleague, as we drove to Jumia’s Lagos corporate office, when he asked rhetorically: “Why would JP […]

VENTURES AFRICA – Gilat Satcom, a leading provider of satellite and fibre-based connectivity services in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, has announced a new system which will provide high-quality voice connectivity to people working in underground mines. Traditionally, communication with underground workers has been via temporary coax cables which are prone to damage and […]

Total Eyes Greener Services with West Africa’s First Solar-powered Station

VENTURES AFRICA – French energy giant, Total has opened a $1.5 million environmental-friendly solar powered service station in Lagos, the first of its kind in the West African region, confirming its keenness to offer greener services across Africa. Total Nigeria said its decision to build a solar-powered service station which is furnished with SunPower solar […]

Giving Back: the Face of Africa’s New Donors

Editor’s note: This article was written by David Nicholson and was first published in Ventures Africa magazine’s #Richlist issue As a new generation of wealthy businesspeople make different choices, turning their backs on the one-off donations of the past, so the face of African philanthropy is shifting. VENTURES AFRICA – Rising from the depths of […]

Investing in Africa: the Abraaj Story

The Abraaj Group has invested $2.2billion in Africa to date. And they are just getting started. VENTURES AFRICA – In late January 2014, at the most recent World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting high in the snowcapped mountains of Davos, Switzerland, Tom Speechley, Sev Vettivetpillai, Mustafa Abdel-Wadood – three of The Abraaj Group’s partners – […]

Top 10 Tech Ceos in Nigeria

VENTURES AFRICA – Drawing from statistics of Nigeria’s rebased GDP figures, information and communication technologies (ICT) and its sub-sectors are key drivers of Nigeria’s impressive economic growth. And more interestingly, the major players in this tech-shift aren’t foreigners; Nigerians, and Africans at large, have taken the bulls by the horns, cashing in on the fortunes […]

Burundi Launches $25 Million National Fibre-optic Project

Burundi has officially launched its $25 million fibre-optic cable network project to widen access to broadband Internet to its population. The country still relies on some of the slowest internet speeds on the continent . The country ranks almost 136th out of 137 countries in internet connection speeds according to CIA World Factbook. The landlocked country […]

Local Internet Traffic Stressed in Zimbabwe As International Capacity Grows

Broadband Forum 2014, recently held in Harare, Zimbabwe, gave local entrepreneurs the opportunity to engage with other successful Zimbabwean businesses. The event also shed light on Zimbabwe’s broadband infrastructure, explained the importance of value-added services in the mobile broadband era, and highlighted opportunities for local data hosting. A presentation from Liquid Zimbabwe (owner of 8,000km […]

Africa’s Mobile Technology Revolution in Numbers

Mobile Technology is taking Africa to the next level. This is very evident in the mobile penetration rate in Ghana which currently stands 100%. There are now more than one million Ghanaians using Facebook, almost 90% of whom access the social networking site via their mobile device. The total number of active mobile phone lines in […]

Africa: Opportunity Awaits.

Written by Muchiri Nyaggah & Niti Bhan from Semacraft. Semacraft is a research and consulting company that focuses on Africa and everything digital in Africa. I looked up a Nairobi-based digital strategist Mark Kaigwa last month, smart and insightful, he’s become a voice to listen to on East African social media and internet marketing affairs. […]

Twende Twende: the Mobile App That Helps Kenyans Dodge Traffic

0 0 Speed Read   Vehicular traffic is estimated to cause loss of US$600,000 a day in Nairobi. A mobile application can send messages to drivers to avoid traffic in the city But a driver and an expert say the government should do more to avoid the menace Nairobi, Kenya: Twende Twende is a mobile application […]