Originally published on the MEST Africa Blog. On November 8, 2018, MEST Africa and Innocircle organized an Airbus Bizlab Aerospace Challenge Meetup in Abidjan to spotlight the budding aerospace industry in Francophone Africa, answer questions about launching a startup in the space, and introduce the Africa4Future initiative by Airbus to aspiring entrepreneurs. We were lucky to have Marouane Jebbar, Founder […]
Browsing Tag: Africa Tech
How AI Can Enhance Agriculture In Africa
Published on iAfrikan, TechNova and Top Farmer Kenya. I don’t want to live in a world where there’s no organic food. Do you? Listen, We will need to produce 70% more food than we do today to feed 2.3 billion people that will be added to the world’s population by 2050. And we will have to […]
How Andela Plans to Build more Female Technologists in Africa
Originally published on AfricaBusiness2020 via Skrife. Mercy Orangi is the Technology Evangelist at Andela. Here, she talks about Andela’s pan-African expansion plans and platforms they’re building to support more female technologists on the continent. Earlier this year, Andela held its Women In Technology (WIT) Summit in Nigeria. What was the motivation behind that event? This was the first WIT […]
The Rich Uncle Network
“Nigerian (tech) entrepreneurs need to show traction”…. I hear this all the time and whilst it is true, it still irks me when I hear it. They compare Nigeria to America and forget the myriad of problems that exist here. This diagram below shows a little bit of how tech entrepreneurship works in America. The […]
Innovation and the future of Africa: A tale of two countries
Published on Techpoint and Tech Nova. Too many times, when we speak about the future of Africa or the future of technology in Africa, we do so with an air of ignorant homogeneity. We speak of Africa like we speak of one country, and in so doing we [sometimes] forget that there are 54 countries […]
Are African Business Leaders Doing Enough To Prepare Employees For Future Work?
Published on TechNova, iAfrikan, Business2Community. While population growth determines the socio-economic prospects of a country, the age structure of the nation is just as crucial. By 2025, Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) will be home to almost a quarter of the global population aged 24 and below. And by 2035, SSA’s population will become the youngest in […]
Toxic masculinity and what it means for the burgeoning digital economy in Nigeria
I wrote this piece (in quotes below) a while ago and didn’t have the guts to share it. It was an expansion of a social media conversation I was having and I must say it was undoubtedly a difficult conversation to have. However, after recently being the only male on CNN’s #MeToo panel at social […]
Want to get into Africa tech?
A summary of my notes from the recent Women Techmakers Leads and Google Developers Groups (GDG) Summit held in Lagos, Nigeria. I woke up on Monday morning to an invite to the Summit from my friend, Aniedi Udo-Ubong, Developer Ecosystem Manager at Google (Sub-Saharan Africa). It was to a two-day gathering of Women Techmakers Leads and […]
Meet the Entrepreneur Who’s Built an Offline Addressing App for Africa
Originally published on AfricaBusiness2020 via Skrife. He is referred to as an ‘accidental entrepreneur’, one with no intention of starting a business who saw a problem and set out to fix it. Introducing… Sesinam Dagadu, the founder of a Solutions Company called tinyDAVID. tinyDavid was set up to develop solutions for the developing world, and SnooCODE, their first […]
Video + List: Equity-free Funding For Your Business Idea
In this video, I share info on how to get equity-free seed funding for your business idea or startup. I also share a list of accelerators around the world to help you get started on your journey. https://youtu.be/1jnqvbZDgdU < p style=”text-align: left;”>List of Equity-free Accelerators Around The World Ready to take a bold step into […]
The Rise – and Challenges – of Ghana’s Real Estate Leader MeQasa
Originally published on AfricaBusiness2020 via Skrife. Introducing… Kelvin Nyame, one of three Ghanaian entrepreneurs, (including Rashad Seini and Kofi Amuasi), who founded MeQasa after receiving US$90,000 seed-funding from Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) in 2013. MeQasa went on to raise US$800,000 from Frontiers Digital Ventures, a global VC firm in 2015, and is rising to be the […]
Paystack: The Nigerian Success Story Helping Businesses Get Paid
Originally published on AfricaBusiness2020 via Skrife. Introducing… One of the stars of Nigeria’s recent startup success stories – fintech startup Paystack. Paystack was admitted into Y Combinator’s (YC) accelerator programme in winter 2016, making them one of the first Nigerian startups to join the programme. This was no small feat and it ushered in an era of international exposure […]
For Women Entrepreneurs: We Are Hosting A Screening To Encourage More Women in Tech and Business
Published on MEST Africa Blog. Popcorn, big screens, and good conversation afterwards! On Friday, 21 April, join us for a special one-time screening of this new empowering documentary on female entrepreneurship titled: She Started It. She Started It aims gives a new face to the popular image of the tech entrepreneur: a female face. This documentary / film follows […]
Asoriba: The Mobile App Revolutionising African Churches
Originally published on AfricaBusiness2020 via Skrife. Introducing… Nana Agyemang Prempeh, one of four co-founders of Asoriba, a startup on a mission to revolutionise churches in Africa. Asoriba has been voted Best Startup in Ghana twice by Seedstars and Ringier/Pulse, Best Startup in Africa by Seedstars, and were participants in Techstars’ first cohort in Africa. How would you describe […]
Working with Girlfriends: Dziffa Ametam
Originally published on the MEST Africa Blog. Dziffa Akua Ametam is one of MEST’s new Communications Fellows. She’s also an entrepreneur, founder of Dziffa.com, a social enterprise that increases the global reach of local businesses by providing them with branding, marketing, and distribution services. Dziffa was awarded the 2014 Entrepreneur of the year by African Youth […]
Working With Girlfriends: Beavly
Originally published on True Africa. ‘There’s definitely no pampering’ – how women in tech drive each other to achieve more Beavly is an online platform that connects people who want to learn skills with professionals who want to teach these skills. Run by Ijeoma Oguegbu and Barbara Okoto, it is one of two African startups accepted […]
Working With Girlfriends: Tress App
Originally published on True Africa. Tress is a hair inspiration app targeted at black women. It was created by Priscilla Hazel, Esther Olatunde and Cassandra Sarfo in Accra where they came together due to their shared love for dreaming, learning, building, traveling and innovating. This June Tress, which was founded at the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST), was accepted to the Y-Combinator fellowship, […]
How big would these African startups be if they’d been founded in the US?
Originally published on True Africa. To run a profitable business or startup, you need steady electricity, something most African countries lack. You need the internet if you work with technology… or are in 2015 with the rest of us. You need a good transportation system, investors, a healthy financial system. You need a support system… people […]