Author: Elan

Africa’s startup funding activity slowed sharply in July 2026, with 47 startups raising a combined $102.2 million across disclosed deals. Data compiled by Nairametrics shows that the funding landscape remained heavily concentrated, as the top 10 funded startups attracted $88.85 million, accounting for 86.94% of all capital raised during the month. This means nearly nine out of every ten dollars invested in African startups during the month went to just ten companies. Three startups involved in merger and acquisition (M&A) transactions did not disclose the value of their deals during the period, as the deal values were not disclosed and…

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Bitcoin’s BIP-110-enforcing branch stalled at block 961,633 on Sunday after producing only two blocks, while the non-enforcing chain advanced to 961,721, widening the gap to 88 blocks. According to the BIP-110 monitor, updated at 10:19 am UTC, the branch’s latest block had been mined about 12 hours earlier. Ocean records show that a pseudonymous mining group called Roughnecks produced the branch’s first two blocks using Ocean’s Decentralized Alternative Templates for Universal Mining (DATUM) mining protocol. The divergence began after BIP-110 entered mandatory signaling at block 961,632 on Saturday. Only 51 of the preceding 2,016 blocks, or 2.53%, signaled support. During this window,…

Rest Essence never expected to watch a family friend come close to dying while giving birth. It was around 1 a.m. when she went into labour, and she was taken from one hospital to another. The first hospital refused to admit her for reasons that remain unclear, while the second had no electricity. Under the glow of handheld flashlights at the third hospital, she delivered her second child by caesarean section. She then began haemorrhaging, and for a moment, Essence feared she would not survive.  She did, but that experience changed the course of his own life. At the time,…

The gap between “you need a library for this” and “the browser does this” keeps closing. A practical guide to auditing your dependencies and finding what the web platform can now handle for you.Most of us install a dependency once and never look at it again. It does its job, the tests pass, and we move on. But the web platform keeps moving too, and a surprising number of the libraries sitting in your package.json today are now built into the browser.In a typical mid-sized JavaScript app, you can often find somewhere between 60KB and 90KB (minified and gzipped) of…

Cape Town, South Africa** For the best experience, download the free Africa Private Equity News app Android | iOS **A MESSAGE FROM OUR SUPPORTERSSAVCA VC Conference 2026: VC’s biggest stage. One unmissable day.On 10 September 2026, Southern Africa’s venture capital ecosystem will come together at Hazendal Wine Estate in Stellenbosch for the SAVCA Venture Capital Conference 2026. The conference brings together the investors, fund managers, founders, policymakers, advisers and industry leaders shaping the future of venture capital across the region. Read moreHere are summaries of the five most widely read stories from the past week on Africa Private Equity News.1.…

For years, African finance ministers have made the same case at investor conferences and multilateral summits: the continent is not short of bankable projects, it is short of affordable capital. This week, that case took a tangible step forward. Legal & General Asset Management, one of Britain’s largest institutional investors, launched the L&G LSF African Government Bond (USD) UCITS ETF — the first exchange-traded fund of its kind available to European investors — built on the iBoxx LSF USD African Sovereigns Index and developed in partnership with the Liquidity and Sustainability Facility (LSF). It is a milestone worth pausing on. For…

SOUK Farms’ main export markets are Europe and the Middle East.Our new book, How we made it in Africa II: Real stories of entrepreneurs turning opportunity into profit, is available here. The book was recently shortlisted for the Business Council for Africa (BCA) African Business Book of the Year Awards 2026.Entrepreneur Seun Rasheed is the founder of SOUK Farms, which supplies Rwandan-grown produce – including avocados, chillies and beans – to supermarkets in Europe and the Middle East. The company sources its produce both from its own farms and from about 2,000 smallholder farmers in Rwanda.Of Rwanda’s 10 largest agricultural…

Executive Summary Africa’s industrialisation challenge is not primarily a shortage of ideas, policy intent, or entrepreneurial energy, but a constraint in financial architecture and capital deployment. The continent’s ability to build factories, infrastructure, and value-added industries is limited by the cost, structure, and accessibility of long-term finance. Until capital markets are deepened and better aligned with industrial timelines, Africa’s development ambitions will remain difficult to realise at scale. In this sense, industrialisation is fundamentally a financial systems problem before it is anything else. Can Africa finally finance its industrialisation? For decades, Africa’s development agenda has been defined by a consistent…

For years, the Nigerian creator economy followed a familiar formula: build an audience, go viral, secure brand deals, repeat. But as the industry matures, some of the country’s most recognisable creators are beginning to play a different game. They are moving from promoting other people’s products to building their own. Having an audience and owning a business are two very different things. A creator can have millions of followers and still depend on algorithms, advertising budgets and brand partnerships for income. But when that same creator launches a skincare line, restaurant, technology platform or automobile company, the audience becomes something…