Author: Elan

Editor’s note: This article is the first in a three-part series on the state of venture investment to Black-founded startups in 2026. Driving these reports is data from Crunchbase’s Diversity Spotlight feature, which offers insight into diversity in startups’ and investment firms’ leadership teams. Parts 2 and 3 in this series will be published in June. The share of U.S. venture funding going to companies with Black founders in 2025 remained low, even as overall startup investment ticked slightly higher, Crunchbase data shows. Only around $942 million — or just 0.32% of total U.S. venture funding — went to startups…

Banking behemoths dominate the 20th African Banker Awards – African Business Banking behemoths dominate the 20th African Banker Awards – African Business

Wasoko founder Daniel Yu has launched the Africa Jobs Fund (AJF) to create jobs in Sub-Saharan Africa. The initiative, with a $100 million backing, aims to close the unemployment gap and back companies creating high-productivity jobs across Sub-Saharan Africa.  According to the statement seen by Technext, the fund, led by Daniel Yu, will be backing founders in this region to create jobs that raise incomes and transform the quality of life for workers. Reports noted that about 600 million of the world’s extremely poor population will be living in Africa by 2040, provided the current rate of 3 million formal…

In cities like Lagos, Nigeria, and Nairobi, Kenya, delivery is not just moving food or products from one point to another. It is also navigating traffic snarl-ups that can take hours, some streets that digital maps still struggle to recognise, and consumers who demand convenience while living inside deeply informal economies. Dima Rasnovsky, who oversees operations for global on-demand delivery platform Glovo across six African markets, told TechCabal in an interview in early May that those frictions are not obstacles, but the foundation of a distinctly African model for online commerce. In his view, the continent’s delivery economy is unlikely…

USB-C feels like the sensible ending to a long story, and not all of that story made a whole lot of sense. USB took plenty of strange detours before getting there, and some ideas were genius, while others didn’t stand the test of time. The next time you complain about needing a USB-A or micro-USB cable, think back to these USB standards that tried to make USB smarter and more flexible, but ultimately all gave way to what we all crave: convenience. USB OTG Your phone briefly became the computer USB On-The-Go, usually shortened to just USB OTG, was one…

South Africa’s tourism sector received a major vote of confidence this week as government leaders, tourism stakeholders and Club Med executives gathered at the upcoming Club Med South Africa Beach & Safari Resort on KwaZulu-Natal’s North Coast ahead of Africa’s Travel Indaba. The event highlighted the landmark development’s anticipated contribution to tourism growth, job creation, skills development and regional economic upliftment, while positioning the resort as one of the country’s most significant tourism investments in recent years. Olivier Perillat-Piratoine, Managing Director of Club Med South Africa; Minister Patricia de Lille, South African Minister of Tourism; Chris du Toit, Project Director…

Phatisa has invested in Artcaffé, a casual dining and gourmet food business in Kenya, via a mezzanine debt growth facility.We highlight five East African private capital investments over the past 12 months, as featured in our Dealmaker’s Log, a database of reported investment deals, exits, and fundraising milestones. Subscribe to this service here1. AfricInvest backs Kenyan medical oxygen providerAfricInvest, through its blended-finance impact vehicle Transform Health Fund, has invested $10.5 million in HewaTele, a Kenyan medical oxygen provider.Access to medical oxygen remains one of the most pressing but under-addressed challenges in East Africa’s health systems. In Kenya alone, over 70%…

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In December 2023, Keji Pius was stranded in Lusaka, Zambia, with a crypto wallet full of USDT—a digital currency pegged to the US Dollar—and no way to spend it. Pius, a Nigerian founder who earns in both Naira and stablecoins, said she ran out of the Zambian Kwacha she exchanged at the airport. “I had a problem spending USDT because I couldn’t simply walk into a store, buy something, and pay with my stablecoin,” she recalled. Left with no choice, Pius had to convert her USDT into a currency that Zambian merchants would accept. She opened an app on her…

For years, the average African retail trader has had to make peace with a difficult trade-off: access the global financial markets through an offshore broker and absorb the friction — overnight swaps that eat into long positions, spreads that widen at the worst possible moment, commissions on every entry and exit, and withdrawal pipelines that quietly assume you live somewhere else. The product was never built with Lagos, Accra, Kigali, Johannesburg, or Nairobi in mind. Assexmarkets Global Limited is one of a new wave of brokers explicitly trying to fix that — and it is doing so by removing the…