Author: Elan
This article is based on a conversation from Voices & Visions, a podcast produced through a partnership between Tutto Passa Agency and TechCabal, which explores the people and ideas shaping Africa’s innovation economy. The world’s biggest climate challenge at the moment may not be raising more money, but deploying the existing capital differently. In Africa, investors have committed $44 billion annually, up nearly 50% from a few years ago, yet founders building technologies to help farmers survive droughts, businesses reduce emissions, and communities adapt to changing weather patterns still struggle to access capital. According to Victor Ndiege, the CEO of…
Imagine you need to extract a simple number from a complex string, such as a product code with region-specific abbreviations or a column of phone numbers stored in four different formats. To make matters worse, because the data came from an external source, it might also contain trailing spaces, inconsistent formatting, or other small errors. To handle these problems, you could build a formula using MID and FIND, rely on Flash Fill to guess what you want, use Excel’s Find and Replace tool, or bring out the heavy hitters like Power Query or VBA UDFs (user-defined functions). While all of…
Mezzanine and Open Access Energy (OAE) have entered into a formal reseller agreement, bringing together two technology-driven businesses committed to advancing South Africa’s liberalising electricity market. Under the agreement, OAE will market, sell, and operate Mezzanine’s Virtual Wheeling Platform as part of its Energypro platform offering. The partnership enables corporate energy buyers, independent power producers, and traders to access virtual wheeling infrastructure through a single, integrated experience. Understanding wheeling — and why virtual wheeling matters Wheeling is the mechanism that allows a renewable energy generator to sell electricity to a buyer located elsewhere on the national grid, using the existing…
Musonda Chipalo, CEO of GIP Zambia** For the best experience, download the free Africa Private Equity News app Android | iOS **Growth Investment Partners (GIP) Zambia has made its fourth investment, committing ZMW 50 million (about $2.8 million) to Altus Financial Services.Altus provides public sector employees and micro-entrepreneurs with access to credit within 24 hours of a completed application.“Through this facility, we aim to support Altus in expanding its loan book, deepening its footprint, and reaching more underserved borrowers, particularly those often overlooked by conventional lenders,” the firm said in a statement.Musonda Chipalo, CEO of GIP Zambia, noted the partnership…
Editor’s note: This article is the second 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. Read Part 1, exploring the data on funding to Black founders, here. Part 3 will be published next week. Only around $942 million — or just 0.32% of total U.S. venture funding — went to startups with a Black founder or co-founder last year, per Crunchbase data. That’s one of the lowest shares in years, and…
SpaceX’s first week as a public company is starting to look less like a conventional stock-market debut and more like a high-leverage crypto asset.Shares of Elon Musk-led company, trading under the ticker SPCX, extended their post-IPO rally Tuesday as investors piled into one of the smallest public floats ever attached to a company valued in the trillions of dollars.The stock rose as much as 13% to $210 in early market trading, according to Yahoo Finance data.This frenzy has also crossed into digital-asset markets, where SPCX-linked perpetual futures have become one of the busiest contracts across crypto trading platforms.Tiny float turns…
Vozinha, the goalkeeper of Cape Verde’s national football team, has emerged as the player with the most followers on Instagram because of the 2026 FIFA World Cup. He gained 6.79 million followers in less than 24 hours following his exploits during his team’s Blue Sharks’ goalless draw in the opening match against European champions Spain. This represents a 21,500 per cent growth, according to data from MyBettingSites.co.uk. The score came as a major upset to the footballing world, with many analysts predicting that the European champions would easily defeat the World Cup debutants. But Cape Verde made it a day…
If you’re still relying on a mess of browser tabs, airline emails, and your own memory to keep a trip together, you’re doing far more work than necessary. There are dozens of travel apps, and most of them will disappoint you by day two. I’ve installed and deleted more than I can count. Fortunately, after years of traveling, I’ve cut the apps that overpromise and rely on the ones that actually hold up across trips—much like the gadgets I pack before every trip. The software on my phone deserves the same treatment, because gadgets are only half the equation. These…
Zachariah George (left) and Janade du Plessis, managing partners of Launch Africa Ventures** For the best experience, download the free Africa Private Equity News app Android | iOS **Launch Africa Ventures, a pan-African venture capital fund, has made its first cash distribution to its limited partners in Launch Africa Seed Fund I. The firm returned approximately $2.5 million, around 7% of paid-in capital. The distribution follows 11 completed portfolio exits.The 11 exits span seven sectors, six countries and five African regions.By sector:Fintech (5): embedded lending, debt recovery, digital credit infrastructure, remittances and credit intelligenceOne exit each across payments infrastructure, agritech,…
Young South Africans face socioeconomic challenges marked by high unemployment, ineffective education, and rising social tensions, necessitating urgent systemic change to ensure a hopeful future. This Youth Month marks 50 years since the 1976 youth uprising. The state and its social partners will rightfully commemorate that pivotal moment. It remains permanently etched in South Africa’s history – a time when many young people lost their lives, and many more had their futures brutally stripped away by violence and repressive laws. Their lives and memories deserve to be deeply honoured. However, the young people of today are becoming part of what…