africa

African fintech has taken center stage for the Catalyst Fund, a JP Morgan Chase and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-backed accelerator that provides mentorship and non-equity funding to emerging m

Ethiopia is flexing its ambitions to become Africa’s next startup hub. The country of 105 million with the continent’s seventh largest economy is revamping government policies, firing up angel net

Nigerian motorcycle transit startup MAX.ng has raised a $7 million funding round led by Novastar Ventures, with participation from Japanese manufacturer Yamaha. Based in Lagos, the company’s app

From the venue and the flashy event website, Waterloo, Ontario’s True North conference (in its second year) doesn’t seem all that distinct from a laundry list of other major tech events th

Days after Ethiopian ICT officials made public pledges to improve net access, the government began playing on-again, off-again with the internet — shutting it down (almost completely) to coincide wi

Investments by U.S. venture capital firms into Latin America are skyrocketing and one of the firms leading the charge into deals is none other than Silicon Valley’s Andreessen Horowitz. The firm

IBM launched its Quantum computer program in Africa today, announcing a partnership with South Africa’s Wits University that will extend to 15 universities across nine countries. Quantum — or IBM

Startups in East Africa have a new source for investment and mentorship. Sweden’s Norrsken Foundation — a co-working space and investment fund based in Stockholm — opened its tech fund and e

Bolt, the Uber rival formerly known as Taxify, is taking a significant step this week in its effort to build out its transportation-on-demand business across the biggest cities in Europe and Africa, w

Synapse, a San Francisco-based startup that operates a platform enabling banks and fintech companies to easily develop financial services, has closed a $33 million Series B to develop new products and

The wheels are turning on Didi Chuxing’s first major expansion in Latin America after the Chinese ride-hailing firm announced moves into Chile and Colombia to double its presence in the region.

Google has employed its network of street-view vehicles to also measure street-level air quality in recent years, through an initiative it calls “Project Air View.” Today, it’s makin

Jumia held its first post-IPO earnings call and weathered a short-sell assault in May, with Wall Street showing confidence in the Pan-African e-commerce company. On the numbers, key takeaways were tha

Jumia may be the first startup you’ve heard of from Africa. But the e-commerce venture that recently listed on the NYSE is definitely not the first or last word in African tech. The continent has an

We are very pleased to announce that the new and improved Crunchbase Unicorn Leaderboard re-launched today after nearly a year’s absence from TechCrunch. Venture investors did a lot of handwringing

DHL is expanding its DHL Africa eShop business to 9 additional markets, upping the presence of the global shipping company’s e-commerce platform to 20 African countries. DHL went live with the d

In many large cities across Africa, motorcycle taxis are as common as yellow cabs in New York. That includes Lagos, Nigeria, where ride-hail startup Gokada has raised a $5.3 million Series A round to

To become a global fintech player, locate your company in San Francisco and Africa. That’s the approach of payments company Flutterwave, digital lending startup Mines, and mobile-money venture Chipp

Facebook last week purged a network of hundreds of pages, groups and Instagram accounts it labeled as producing “coordinated inauthentic behavior” toward Africa. The activity originated in Israel

With a valuation of over $1 billion and $190 million in new financing, Zipline has become the latest contender to be the leader in the game of drones. The competition to be a leading vendor of deliver