Eco vs Naira, Hello My Old Friend and Tech Fundraising is Booming

“Every night before going to sleep, we must ask ourselves: what weakness did I overcome today? What virtue did I acquire?”

– Seneca

“You don’t have to be worried if you didn’t get something right because it just gives you an opportunity to improve the idea.”

- Professor Clay Christensen (Rest in Peace professor)

The Lagos State government recently revealed that it has procured 5,000 drones to monitor the Lagos waterways as well as search and rescue operations. The waterways are a major transportation thoroughfare which sees around 70,000 passengers daily.

The Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) announced on Friday 17 January the acquisition of “up to 100% of the shareholding of Transnational Bank Plc by Access Bank”. But Transnational apparently has a slightly “murky past”. Check it out!

“If you had ₦100,000 on the first day of the 21st century, it would be worth less than ₦10,000 today (₦9,554, to be exact) thanks to inflation. Likewise, ₦100,000 would have gotten you $950 at the start of 2000; today, you get just $280. ”

Check out this break-down on the Eco vs the Naira from the good people at Stears Business.

If the above piques your interest on the relation between the CFA and the Eco, read this.

Last week we reported on Isabel dos Santos, the daughter of Angola’s former dictator José Eduardo dos Santos, running into trouble over leaked documents which implicated her and her family in the systematic plundering of Angola’s wealth.

This week we are happy to say Ms dos Santos has been indicted for mismanagement and embezzlement during her tenure as head of the state-owned oil company Sonangol from June 2016 to November 2017.

Don’t you just love a happy ending? :)

Several subsea cables were damaged this week which led to spotty internet access across much of the continent.

The subsea cable systems which are called WACS and SAT3/WASC lie in the Atlantic Ocean and connect South Africa and many other African countries to Europe. While the cause of the outage is unknown, South Africa’s Vodacom says a ship has been sent to fix the problem. 

The UK re-embraces Africa.

The UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has promised investment, a greening of development aid and visa reform to delegates from 21 African countries, gathered at the UK–Africa Investment summit.

This is part of the push by the UK to pivot to Africa after Brexit in the hopes of finding other avenues of economic growth and development, and to build the new partnerships which was a key promise of the Brexit campaign.

In line with this the CDC, a UK development finance institution, has announced an extra £2bn ($2.6bn) in funding for African companies.

However, with other global actors such as China, Russia and the United States already interacting with various African countries, the UK might find itself at the back of a long line.

Africa-focused venture capital TLcom Capital has received US$15 million in funding from CDC Group (the development finance institution and impact investor of the United Kingdom) to boost its TIDE Africa Fund. The fund is focused on early-stage and high-growth startups from sub-Saharan Africa. TLcom will invest between US$500k to US$10 million per venture, to enable high-growth companies achieve scale and attract later-stage funding from global VC investors, regional PE firms, and strategic partners. 

Flutterwave, the Nigerian fintech company, has raised a US$35 million Series B round. The round was co-led by Greycroft & eVentures with additional participation from CRE Venture Capital, FIS, VISA, and Green Visor. The new funding will be used to support its expansion across Francophone and North Africa.

Skynamo, a South African cloud-based software company, has raised $30 million Series A funding from Five Elms Capital. Skynamo is a sales management and customer relationship company. 

(our segment where we highlight the most outrageous story we have come across while scraping the web for news articles for you).We have taken to using what we call the Ehn scale. The longer the Ehn the more incredulous. For example, President Buhari is not Nigeria’s most prolific travel blogger: Ehnnnnn? Got it?

“Impose ta chance, serre ton bonheur et va vers ton risque. A te regarder, ils s’habitueront.” - Rene Char

(Translation: “Impose your luck, squeeze your happiness and go towards your risk. Looking at you, they’ll get used to it. ”)