African Tech Roundup Podcast

Brian Ondari is both the co-founder and Chief Operations Officer at AirKlip, a promising Kenyan startup that aims to become every university student’s personal assistant by creating a simple collaborative environment (app) for students and administrators.

Harry Hare is the founder and publisher of CIO East Africa, an ICT information platform that has a monthly print publication (CIO East Africa), an online ICT portal (www.cio.co.ke) and a series of events including the CIO Executive Breakfast Series, the CIO Golf Series and the CIO 100 Awards and Symposium. He is also the founder and Director of African eDevelopment Resource Centre, as well as the...

The French e-commerce startup, Afrimarket, has raised €10 million from the Global Innovation Fund and the private sector arm of the French Development Agency (AFD), Proparco, as well from as a handful of individual investors such as the co-founder of PriceMinister, Olivier Mathiot, who’s been granted a seat on Afrimarket’s board. At a glance, the company seems to have it made-- except that growth...

Lexi Novitske is the Principal Investment Officer for Africa at Singularity Investments. Lexi is based in Lagos and has interesting insights on picking winning investments as an outsider working in a continent with a notorious dearth of data. She strongly believes that Africa could very well deliver the world’s next unicorn.

Mark Zuckerberg’s much-publicised trip to the continent spawned dozens of think-pieces in the blogosphere this past week. Many pundits clearly view Mark’s 'surprise' visit to Nigeria and Kenya as an affirmation of the continent’s importance as a valuable source of under-utilised tech talent, and as a hot-bed of home-grown innovation. Others read it as a pre-cursor to a massive wave of foreign inve...

Farouk Jivani is a business consultant-turned angel investor who has invested in a couple of Kenyan startups-- one of them being the music downloads platform, Mdundo.com. In this chat, Farouk describes the allure of African markets to angel investors based abroad, and shares on what it's like to be a hands-on investor in early-stage businesses that have the potential to be the next big thing.

Tsholo Mogotsi in the Director for Economic Development Facilitation at the City of Joburg. In this chat with Andile Masuku Tsholo talks about the City of Joburg's commitment to lead the continent in providing it's citizens with the most advanced web-enabled infrastructure. He also sheds light on the role of public institutions in promoting innovation on the continent.

Amrote Abdella is the Director for Venture Capital & Start-ups and Africa Initiatives (Microsoft 4Afrika) at Microsoft. In this chat with Andile Masuku, Amrote shares what it’s like to be embedded in one of the world’s largest tech companies, and being deployed in arguably the world’s fastest growing tech market(s). Listen in to hear Amrote’s take on how Microsoft is responding to next generat...

Stephen Ozoigbo is the CEO of the African Technology Foundation and the Managing Partner of the US State Department-backed Lions @frica initiative. In this conversation with Andile Masuku, Stephen talks about his journey from investment banking to being one of Africa's foremost tech and innovation evangelists. Stephen's high-profile community-building efforts within the continent's burgeoning tech...

The gravy train may well be over at Africa’s largest tech company (by market value)— Naspers. Naspers CEO, Koos Bekker, told investors late last week that the coming year is going to be a trying one for the company. At this point, Naspers has only one card up its sleeve, and it’s called Tencent Holdings. After all, Naspers’ 33 percent stake in the Chinese technology company currently accounts for...

Econet Wireless has recently announced that all ±40 million of their subscribers in Africa will benefit from Shine’s ad blocking service— starting with those in Zimbabwe. This deal represents Shine’s first deployment on the continent, following partnerships they’ve struck with the likes of the Caribbean mobile operator, Digicel, and Three Group in the UK and Italy. There’s no doubt about it, life...

Safaricom and Craft Silicon both took an “L” this past week. As it turns out, they neglected to trademark the Little Cabs brand name before launching their ride-sharing service some weeks ago. And now, they’ve had to drop the word “Cab” from their brand after the “Little Cab” trademark-holder went to court to defend his right to use that name. From now on, they are to be known as Little. The whole...

Babusi Nyoni is a Cape town-based Zimbabwean digital all-rounder. Babusi is the Digital Creative Group Head at South Africa’s #1 ranked through-the-line agency, M&C SAATCHI Abel. Andile Masuku catches up with Babusi to discuss an AI-enabled campaign he recently masterminded and executed for a global FMCG brand, and to chat about the rise of machine learning and artificial intelligence in gener...

MTN Group’s warning that their interim financial results for the period ending June 30th 2016 would be unpleasant did a lot to absorb the shock when reality struck last Friday— the day the report eventually dropped. Despite revenue for the interim period improving by ±US$5.7 billion, MTN reported an after tax loss attributable to equity holders of just over US$401 thousand. That translates to a he...

Who knew that a little quarterly update by a publicly-traded Swedish investment firm could get Nigeria’s e-commerce fraternity all worked up? Not we. So, as Kinnevik was going about its business last week, the firm released its Second Quarter Report which detailed the performance of its subsidiaries around the world. That simple act of due diligence on Kinnevik’s part (which admittedly is somethin...

Data costs need to come down significantly if Africa is ever going to realise the dream of making access to the internet available to every single person living on the continent. As things stand, according to a new research report by Global Market Insights, an estimated 590 million Africans still do not have access to electricity, to say nothing of reliable web access. However, South Africa’s larg...

Jaco Van Zyl is the co-founder and MD of the South African startup, PulseIt— a company which is looking to give online voucher firms like Vouchercloud, Groupon and Shazam a run for their money. In this chat Jaco Van Zyl explain swhy so many VC’s and African tech firms seem quite bullish on the online voucher business, and why he thinks his startup has what it takes to steal market share from more...

There’s no doubt that online education is a hot ticket at the moment. While the folks at Andela are probably still celebrating landing $24 million worth of investment courtesy of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and others, the New York-based Codecademy has closed a $30 million Series C investment round led by Naspers, through its Naspers Ventures division. Codecademy plans to use the funds to exten...

Last week, the global digital behemoth that is Facebook announced that they’ll be rolling out the OpenCellular system worldwide. OpenCellular is said to be an inexpensive, weather-resistant and fully customisable platform that will be able to serve as a wireless access point for connecting devices using 2G, LTE or even Wi-Fi. While this move by Facebook is no doubt just a footnote in the company’s...

It’s the 4th of July, and in honour of the fact that our biggest audience outside of Africa is based in the USA, this week’s African Tech Round-up episode has a decidedly American spin. Playing guest-host in this instalment is very good friend of the show, aka “The American Homie”, Trevor Wolfe— Co-founder and CEO of Delvv.io. Trevor is fresh off a plane from Europe and the States where he’s succe...

One of the more surprising things that came out of a recent conversation Andile Masuku had with BT’s Managing Director for Sub-Saharan Africa, Oliver Fortuin is his answer when asked (somewhat unfairly) what disruptive trend could potentially render BT redundant in the next decade. His answer? The trend towards consolidated media ownership. Listen in to this week’s African Tech Round-up to hear Ol...

Despite the considerable push-back Uber has experienced in certain African markets, the firm’s march towards utter and complete world domination continued last week as they launched in Tanzania’s capital city, Dar es Salaam. Dar es Salaam is the 3rd African city Uber has taken to in as many weeks (following Luanda, Uganda and Accra, Ghana) and their 475th location worldwide. Since launching in Joh...

Ever wonder what it might be like to run a startup that’s owned by a successful tech company, backed by one of Africa’s wealthiest entrepreneurs? Well, one thing is for sure— it’s no walk in the park. At least, that’s according to Charles Murray. Charles is a director of a messaging and internet calling app called ttrumpet that’s looking to capture a big share of Africa’s digital vouchering market...

On Friday, June 10th 2016 MTN’s stock price on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange jumped by 20%. This happened in the wake of the news that the firm’s nine-month Nigerian nightmare might finally be coming to an end. MTN has reportedly struck a deal with the Nigerian government, and is set to pay the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) $1.7 billion over three years— significantly less than the $5...

If there were a race to being Africa’s largest media and internet company, out of fairness to other firms in the running, Naspers would probably be asked not to enter. After seeing its share price rise to an all-time high on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange last week— reaching R2,320.73 per share, pushing its market value to R1,02 trillion (±$6,7 billion), it’s now a matter of “catch me if you can”...