UK-Nigeria Tech Hub, Google Collaborate to Support Women Founders
THE UK-Nigeria Tech Hub, a significant part of the UK government’s broader Digital Access Programme (DAP), recently announced a collaboration with Google for Startups Africa to support women founders in technology.
As part of the collaboration, the commission said $3 million in Google Cloud credits would be awarded to women founders in Nigeria, subsidising cloud technology-related costs for startups and enabling them to focus on innovation, customer acquisition, and growth.
It said the joint effort by UK-Nigeria Tech Hub and Google for Startups Africa would help promote digital inclusion and jointly support technology businesses run by women entrepreneurs.
Speaking on the collaboration, the Country Director, UK-Nigeria Tech Hub, Justina Oha, said: “We are thrilled to announce our collaboration with Google for Startups, which comes at a time when the world is celebrating International Women’s Day.
“This partnership is a testament to our commitment to supporting women founders and helping them reach their full potential. Partnerships like this are one of the great ways that stakeholders can come together to advance Nigeria’s tech ecosystem at an accelerated pace.”
On his part, Head of Startup Ecosystem Google Africa, Folarin Aiyegbusi, said they were excited to partner with the UK-Nigeria Tech Hub to empower women entrepreneurs in Nigeria.
Aiyegbusi said the collaboration was a unique opportunity to provide women founders with the support and resources they need to scale their businesses and contribute to the growth of Nigeria’s tech ecosystem.
“We believe that empowering women founders is key to building a more diverse and inclusive tech industry,” he said.
Dating App, Trueflutter Hits 250,000 Subscribers
Nigerian startup Trueflutter, a dating and matchmaking app specially designed by Africans, has about 250,000 subscribers and plans to hit one million by the end of 2023.
Two brothers, Dare Olatoye and Ayo Olatoye, created the app to help people overcome loneliness.
Unlike most dating apps offering users only profile pictures, Trueflutter allows users to add a voice note to their profile.
Trueflutter generates revenue through its app and matchmaking service. It also raised pre-seed funding in 2022 and additional funding to scale in 2023.
Because 92 per cent of its users have never used a dating app, the company says it constantly solicits input from its clients on enhancing their user experience.
It is currently setting up a marketing team in South Africa and Kenya as it also plans to expand its operations to these countries.
The CEO of Trueflutter, Dare Olatoye, said, “We have over 40,000 organic subscribers from Kenya alone, and we have had a lot from South Africa, so that is why we are hitting those markets.”
People who value their privacy and do not want to be recognised online use private matchmaking services.
Before a user pays for the matchmaking service, Trueflutter consults with them via Zoom. After payment, they fill a form that captures their information, including genotype and preferences.
It connects Nigerians with people from the diaspora, and users are assigned a personal matchmaker who matches them with others with similar interests.
“You can chat and do a few other things. It doesn’t limit you, but if you want to access more features, you must pay for them,” Dare explained. “If you also want to meet people from the diaspora, for instance, you must pay to change your location.”
FG Launches Fund to Support Startups
The federal government of Nigeria has launched a $618 million fund to support its tech startups.
This comes amid the disruptions in the tech ecosystem caused by the recent collapse of three key US banks.
The fund was launched recently under the government’s Digital and Creative Enterprises (iDICE) by Vice-President, Yemi Osinbajo.
The African Development Bank (AfDB) will contribute $170 million, Agence Francaise de Developpement will provide $116 million, and the Islamic Development Bank will contribute $70 million. Through the Bank of Industry, the Nigerian government will provide $45 million, while the country’s private sector has pledged $217 million.
The three now-defunct US-based lenders, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), Silvergate Bank, and Signature Bank, had been supporting tech-focused venture capitalism in Africa.
Nigeria’s new fund, which targets founders aged between 15 and 35, has been created to help its tech industry avoid growth contractions.
AfDB’s funding is expected to attract direct investments in more than two hundred tech startups in the West African nation and provide non-financial services to some 450 small and medium digital technology enterprises.
For the second year running in 2022, Nigeria was Africa’s most funded country, with 180 startups receiving up to $976 million, almost 30 per cent of the $3 billion the continent received.
Nigeria has the largest number of startups in Africa – mostly in tech and fintech – which have pulled funding from overseas banks and venture capital firms.
Meta Launches Whatsapp Desktop App for Windows
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced a brand-new WhatsApp application for Windows. This new app will enable group video calls with up to 8 people and audio calls with up to 32 people from desktop applications.
On his Facebook account, Zuckerberg said, “Launching a new WhatsApp desktop app for Windows. Now you can make E2E encrypted video calls with up to eight people and audio calls with up to 32 people.”
WhatsApp has claimed that the new windows desktop app loads faster and is built with an interface familiar to WhatsApp and Windows users.
WhatsApp has also promised future increments to these limits over time.
The app also claimed that it offers faster device linking, better syncing across devices, and new features such as link previews and stickers.
The company also revealed WhatsApp is also increasing support on more devices. It has also just introduced a new WhatsApp beta experience for Android tablets and will also introduce a new, faster app for Mac desktops that is currently in the initial stages of beta.
The app also offers end-to-end encryption for messaging, media, and calls across devices, with improved syncing and new features.
Multi-device capabilities rolled out to WhatsApp in 2021, allowing users to sync messages across devices even if their phone was off or offline. That functionality raised the profile of WhatsApp for the web and WhatsApp on Windows.
While WhatsApp has been usable on PCs for years in some format, such as the web, the new Windows app feels like a concerted effort to bring WhatsApp on Windows to parity with the app on other platforms.
HouseAfrica Closes $400,000 Seed Funding Round
Proptech startup, HouseAfrica, has announced the closing of $400,000 in funding.
The company, which Nnamdi Uba and Ndifreke Ikpoku founded, also unveiled their flagship product, sytemap.com.
They specialise in providing Real estate digitalisation and transparency tools for property developers and their customers.
Sytemap leverages proprietary blockchain and map technology to create a private land registry, digitising real estate project sitemaps.
The product increases transparency and enhances trust by enabling instant land transaction authentication while growing sales for real estate companies.
Sytemap simplifies buying and paying for properties, enabling more people to become digital realtors effortlessly.
Speaking about the raise, HouseAfrica CEO and cofounder Nnamdi Uba said the funding would assist the startup in deepening its technology and growing adoption and its team.
He stated, “Close to 95 per cent of lands do not have verifiable titles, which expose genuine retail investors to fraud. Our solution enables buyers to make informed decisions when buying lands.”
In a statement, founder and general partner Future Africa, Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, said, “HouseAfrica is helping to create and digitise private land registries. I always thought it was only the public land registries that were slow, inefficient, and murky until I heard about the experience of a friend who had to pay two different sets of people to buy land within a private estate. I am super excited about how by helping private landowners and estates digitise their land records, they can start to help create transparency and value that should hopefully soon inspire government land registries to follow suit.”
HouseAfrica is backed by leading African and global investors like Future Africa, SSE Angel Network (SSEAN), ARM Labs and others.
Tech Personality of The Week
Douglas Kendyson
This week’s tech personality is Douglas Kendyson.
Douglas is the CEO and founder of Selar, an eCommerce tool creatives and entrepreneurs use to sell their content, products, and services across borders without any hassle.
The platform supports African creators in all ways possible, training and empowering them to be digital entrepreneurs, monetising their knowledge through digital products like ebooks, courses, training, and monetising their audience and community through membership subscriptions.
Douglas is a software engineer with experience in the fintech and payments space. He has worked for the top YCombinator-backed payment startups in Africa, like Flutterwave and Paystack, and a Robo-advisory firm in the UAE (Sarwa) and Dapi, building the payment infrastructure for the Middle East.
Selar is impacting and empowering a new generation of entrepreneurs of digital products and becoming the largest creator platform in Africa.
According to the company, they have been up since 2016, but over 80 per cent of their growth happened in the last two years.
It has over 300,000 registered users, 55,000 creators selling products and monthly transactional revenue of over $350,000.
Selar makes it easy for anyone to convert their knowledge to money via ebooks, courses, training, etc. It is live in 13 African countries presently.