African Tech Roundup

This week's African Tech Round-up is dedicated to sharing insights gleaned from the recent Internet of Things World Forum (2017IoTWF)hosted in London.

The Global IT and networking giant, Cisco, convened the invite-only gathering to facilitate dialogue among key stakeholders and innovators in business, government and academia and to “bring industry leaders together to collaborate, network, partner and solve the challenges facing IoT”.

To ascertain how the trend towards IoT adoption is likely to impact African enterprises and citizens alike we caught up with Dimension Data’s Global Director for the Internet of Things, Anton Jooste, David Meads, who heads up Cisco’s Africa business, Prathap Dendi, who is the general manager for emerging technologies at the application performance management and IT operations analytics start-up AppDynamics, as well as Alan Griffiths of Cambashi-- an analyst specialising in industrial IoT, cloud computing, and their effect on the technical software applications market.

Music Credits:

Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Music licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

Kenya's finest digital-head, Mark Kaigwa, joins Musa Kalenga and Andile Masuku on this week's African Tech Round-up for two glorious hours of straight-talk.

Using the biggest tech and innovation headlines from the past couple of weeks as a springboard, the trio chats candidly about everything from major broadband infrastructure developments to cyber security issues-- touching on the implications of M-PESA's imminent interoperability and even discussing the politics of Africa's startup funding scene.

Music Credits:

Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Music licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

Etop Ikpe and his team at the Nigerian vehicle marketplace, Cars45.com, are no doubt feeling great following the successful close of the company's $5 million Series A funding round a couple of weeks ago. Given the tough time Nigeria's e-commerce industry has been having of late, the significance of this achievement is not lost on us.

Previously the Commercial Director of Konga-- one of Nigeria’s largest online shopping platforms, and formerly the CEO and Co-MD of DealDey, Etop is unquestionably an e-commerce veteran at this point.

Etop joined DealDey after the startup acquired Three Stitches-- Nigeria’s first e-commerce website dedicated to fashion, which he founded in 2008. Prior to that, Etop founded Tinker Bell Media LTD, which produced We Run the Game-- a syndicated sports program broadcast terrestrially across 12 Broadcast Networks.

Cars45 is Nigeria's largest used car sales platform and runs local inspection centres in strategic locations around the country which help customers value and sell their cars within 45 minutes.

Etop Ikpe and his team at the Nigerian vehicle marketplace, Cars45.com, are no doubt feeling great following the successful close of the company's $5 million Series A funding round a couple of weeks ago. Given the tough time Nigeria's e-commerce industry has been having of late, the significance of this achievement is not lost on us.

Previously the Commercial Director of Konga-- one of Nigeria’s largest online shopping platforms, and formerly the CEO and Co-MD of DealDey, Etop is unquestionably an e-commerce veteran at this point. In this episode of the African Tech Round-up, he explains why Nigeria's e-commerce scene hasn't lived up to many of the lofty expectations that were set for it five or six years ago.

Also in this show, Andile chats with Ammin Youssouf, who formerly founded and helmed the celebrated creative agency, Big Youth, before co-founding and serving as CEO at Afrobytes Ventures. Listen in to hear what Ammin and his team have in store for those of us attending Europe's premier Africa-focussed tech gathering, the Afrobytes Tech Conference, on June 8th and 9th 2017.

Music Credits:

Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Music licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

Scientists have found a way to remove the HIV virus from the DNA in mouse cells using CRISPR/Cas9 technology. According to the journal, Molecular Therapy, use of the technique has led to the complete elimination of infection in mouse organs and tissue after just one treatment. Now, that's the kind of international tech news that really gets us excited around here!

And, yes! The team at the African Tech Round-up is back from a much-needed break, and we're super-stoked to catch up on news like this CRISPR HIV breathrough, as well as dive into some of the other significant headlines that dropped while we were away.

We're pleased to announce that Musa Kalenga will be joining Andile as a guest co-host on the show every fortnight starting this week to chat about the most important stories and to unpack major trends impacting Africa's tech ecosystem.

Music Credits:

Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Music licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

Monica Brand Engel is a Peruvian American investor and entrepreneur who has been involved with a number of investment vehicles and products aimed at broadening financial inclusion.

Monica spent her formative years in Silicon Valley and is a disciple of agile development and user-centered design. The financial inclusion businesses she helped launch include Quona Capital, Accion Frontier Inclusion Fund and its predecessor fund, Frontier Investments Group, Anthuri Catalysts (Cape Town venture capital accelerator), a Calvert index fund (Bethesda based socially responsible mutual fund), lending intermediaries sponsored by The Development Fund (San Francisco based) and new business lines with Compartamos (now Gentera, the largest microfinance institution in Mexico).

In this chat, Monica talks to Andile Masuku about Quona's recent investment in the South African fintech startup, Yoco, and comments on some of the criticism frequently levelled at the impact investment community.

Allard Luchsinger is the Director for Private Equity at the Dutch VC firm Velocity Capital Private Equity.

Allard supports all of Velocity’s portfolio companies as an active board member for TradeKing, an innovative US online brokerage firm; 8 Securities, Asia’s next-generation online broker based in Hong Kong; Five Degrees, a progressive banking software provider from The Netherlands; as well as Cellulant, a leading mobile commerce and payment technology provider from Kenya.

He joined Velocity Capital in 2011, after co-founding and serving as the COO of the groundbreaking San Francisco-based online brokerage firm Zecco. At Zecco, Allard drove all operations, growing the firm’s client base to more than 250,000 accounts. In 2012, Zecco merged with competing brokerage firm TradeKing in 2012 to create the industry’s sixth largest online broker, TradeKing Group Inc.

Previously, Allard served as associate partner at the Dutch strategy-consulting firm Boer & Croon, as well as co-founder and CEO of TradingCars.com, an online B2B marketplace for the trading of new passenger cars. He also co-founded Wannahaves.nl, an online lifestyle platform in the Netherlands. Allard started his career at Gemini Consulting as a strategy consultant.

In this conversation, Allard chats to Andile Masuku about what motivated the team at Velocity to land their very first African investment and he comments on some of the challenges he's encountered in terms of seeking out investible prospects to fund.

Andile catches up with Stephen Ozoigbo at the inaugural Enterprise Africa Summit that was recently hosted by the British Council in Accra, Ghana.

Ozoigbo is the CEO of The African Technology Foundation. He has dedicated his energies to addressing the obvious gaps in Africa’s tech startup pipeline by championing some of the most high profile ecosystem growth initiatives on the continent— not least, by serving as Managing Partner of Lions@frica, being an key executive supporter of DEMO Africa and helping to organise the Geeks on a Plane Africa Tour which ended in April 2017.

We’re still in celebration mode for crossing 100 weekly podcasts in a row. And so as promised, this week, we’re sharing more awesomeness from that event.

Enjoy this candid fireside chat with the talented digital specialist, marketing maven, author, former Africa Client Partner at Facebook, current Head of Brand at IAB South Africa, and Founder and CEO of a new adtech startup called Microtising, Musa Kalenga.

In this conversation, Musa shares loads of insights on starting up in Africa, and talks about the challenges of navigating Africa's corporate digital scene.

Music Credits:

Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Music licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution

Jacques de Vos is the MD of the Vodacom IoT subsidiary, Mezzanine Ware.

Mezzanine deploys mobile (GSM) enabled solutions and helps clients (primarily within the healthcare, agriculture and education services) develop innovative business models that harness IoT technologies to achieve cost efficiencies and improved accessibility.