DAWN

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Investment Tech Investments

from page 75

The only way to address this is to have more angel and venture capital that’s rooted in the local economy, said several interviewees. “Ultimately you need to strengthen a local investor class that cares about the market,” said Ashebir. “Foreign founders are not going to stop coming to the continent.” Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, founder of Future Africa, who has focused on building a venture fund with a mix of local and foreign capital to back local founders, argued that foreign investors in Kenya need to show more accountability for how they’re using funds. “You’ve come to Nigeria or Kenya, and want to invest in local businesses, but you barely live in the country, or live in an exclusive enclave of the country. Who’s holding these investors accountable when they claim there’s no pipeline of [entrepreneurial] talent, but they’re barely engaged with the ecosystem?” said Aboyeji, a Nigerian who co-founded Andela and Flutterwave. “If it’s not our capital, we can’t argue, even if we see it’s not

being well-allocated.” Indeed, Lagos has now eclipsed Nairobi’s early tech boom, benefiting from not just a larger national economy and talent pool, but also the rise of homegrown tech entrepreneurs like Aboyeji who, alongside local angel networks, have given back to the next generation of founders by investing in their ideas. Which brings us back to that Ngũgĩ line on selfbelief. The second half of that quote perhaps captures what’s at stake for Kenyan tech leaders who want to rebalance the local ecosystem both in terms of founders taking chances and local capital flowing to venture funding. “Value yourself and others will value you. Validation is best that comes from within.” https://restofworld.org/2021/kenya-hasnt-figuredout-how-to-put-its-local-founders-first Image credit: restofworld.org

A Nigerian Oil Palm Startup Raised $4 Million to Build a “Smart” Factory By Alexander Onukwue BESIDES BEING A KEY INGREDIENT for cooking jollof rice, vegetable oil is used industrially in paints, soaps, biofuels, and lubricants. But getting the oil from palm nuts can be a hassle for manufacturers if they have to engage smallholder farmers directly. In most cases, the Nigerian farmer cracks palm nuts with large stones, an inefficient process that makes eventual finished goods more expensive. Nigeria-based startup Releaf intends to solve this problem by processing produce from farmers, and also delivering the oil to food manufacturers. The startup has raised $2.7 million from a number of investors including Samurai Incubate, a Japanese venture capital firm, and Nigeriabased firms Future Africa, and Consonance Investment Managers. Stephen Pagliuca, chairman of Bain Capital, and Twitch co-founder 76

September-Octobert 2021

Justin Kan are also on board. Releaf also won a $1.5 million grant from the Challenge Fund for Youth Employment (CFYE), a program by the Dutch ministry of foreign affairs, and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Why is it difficult to turn palm nuts into processed oil? “A big challenge in the food processing industry in Africa today is that factories are too far from farmers,” Ikenna Nzewi, CEO and co-founder of Releaf, tells Quartz. “A lot of the money a farmer should receive for crops ends up being eaten up by logistics costs.” Releaf’s operation begins after farmers harvest palm fruits from trees and remove the flesh for red oil. The company buys nuts from about 2,000 farmers, and crushes the kernel to produce vegetable oil at DAWN

www.africabusinessassociation.org


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Articles inside

The History of Congo's Leopard Men Society that Inspired Marvel's Black Panther

3min
pages 112-114

Netfl ix and Disney Have a Major Disadvantage in Africa’s Streaming Wars

2min
page 108

Agoodjie Warriors: The Black Women Amazons that once Protected Benin

3min
pages 110-111

LIN CROWLEY FINE ART

2min
page 109

Meet the Book-Obsessed Entrepreneur

2min
page 101

How Digital Beauty Filters Perpetuate Colorism

12min
pages 102-105

World-Famous Ghanaian Artist Will Be First to Have Artwork Featured in Outer Space

2min
page 100

Tracking the Future of Tennis

3min
pages 98-99

Undefeated: First Black Girl Duo Wins International Debate Competition at Harvard

1min
page 97

Barack Obama to Join NBA Africa as Strategic Partner

1min
page 96

African Languages to get More Bespoke

6min
pages 86-88

The Promise of the African Genome Project

5min
pages 94-95

A $2 Billion Fintech Startup has Become Africa’s Fastest Unicorn

2min
page 82

Covid-19 is Changing the way African Countries are Collaborating with Each Other

3min
pages 92-93

Alphabet’s Project Taara Laser Tech Beamed 700TB of Data Across Nearly 5km

2min
page 83

Welcome to the Age of Wireless Electricity

7min
pages 89-91

Ethiopia to Build Local Rival to Facebook

2min
page 84

3 Takeaways from Melinda French Gates and MacKenzie Scott Teaming up to Fund Women’s and Girls’ Causes

3min
pages 80-81

IMF OKs Big Increase in Funds to Alleviate Pandemic Impact

7min
pages 77-79

A Nigerian Oil Palm Startup Raised $4 Million to Build a “Smart” Factory

2min
page 76

Kenya Hasn’t Figured Out How to Put its Local Founders First

5min
pages 74-75

African Stock Exchange/Bourse

2min
pages 72-73

Remittance to Africa Projected to Decrease

4min
pages 68-69

Conferment of Sierra Leonea Citizenship

1min
pages 70-71

West African Regional Bloc Adopts New Plan to Launch Eco Single Currency in 2027

1min
page 67

Ghana, Hub for Doing Business

4min
pages 63-65

The UK has Committed to Making Africa’s Landmark Trade Agreement Successful

2min
page 66

Lab-grown Coff ee Cuts Out the Beans and Deforestation (and the farmers)

3min
pages 52-53

Moderna’s mRNA Vaccine for HIV is Starting Human Trials

4min
pages 58-59

Pfi zer and BioNTech in Agreement to Manufacture COVID Vaccine for Distribution in Africa

2min
page 56

Kenyans on Twitter (#KOT) Fill Vaccine Information Gaps

1min
page 57

Novavax’s Eff ort to Vaccinate the World, From

5min
pages 54-55

Madagascar is Suff ering from a Climate Change Famine

2min
pages 50-51

This Wildly Reinvented Wind Turbine Generates Five Times More Energy than its Competitors

4min
pages 44-45

Economist Magazine calls for Georgieva to Quit IMF over World Bank Data Scandal

2min
page 33

7 Business Models that will Rule the Next Decade

6min
pages 26-27

Why You Want to be Market-Driven Rather Than Marketing-Driven

4min
pages 28-29

Elon Musk’s new Satellites Could Sneak Internet Past the Taliban

4min
pages 46-47

IPCC Scientists Still Haven’t Cracked Africa’s Biggest Climate Mystery

3min
pages 48-49

Empowering African Women Entrepreneurs

4min
pages 34-35

The Skin Lightening Business is Booming in Kenya—Though No One will Admit it

6min
pages 30-32

7 Easy Ways to Use PowerPoint Templates to Power Your Content Marketing Campaign

11min
pages 16-20

A Bank at Every Corner Store

10min
pages 21-24

21-Year Old Becomes Ghana’s Youngest Female Commercial Pilot

1min
page 25

Betting on a Future 'Made in Cameroon'

3min
pages 8-10

Linktree Partners with PayPal to Allow Users Globally to Accept Direct Payments

1min
page 12

Amazon Inaugurates its First Logistics Centre in Egypt

1min
page 13

Publisher's Message

4min
pages 4-7

Kenyans Lead the World in Peer to Peer Crypto Trade

2min
page 11
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