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AI-powered social commerce startup, Elloe, exceeds $1M funding target, closes 7-figure pre-Seed round

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AI-powered social commerce startup, Elloe, exceeds $1M funding target, closes 7-figure pre-Seed round 
7 April 2022, Philippines, Kenya

– Elloe, a US-based social e-commerce startup focused on Kenya and emerging markets, announced today that they have raised an undisclosed amount in pre-Seed funding.

The new funds will give Elloe sufficient runway to grow its local Kenyan operations and fuel expansion into the Philippine and Southeast Asian markets well into 2023 and beyond.

Investors for the round were led by Philippines’ Mad Ventures, Inc.

Co-founded by Owen Sakawa, Abhijay Rao, and Aaron Madolora, Elloe is a first-of-its-kind AI-powered, social commerce platform which allows merchants to buy and sell products online across any messaging platform.

Elloe’s technology increases the sales and profitability of businesses by simplifying operations, logistics, payments, and marketing within a centralized merchant portal.

The subscription service is especially helpful for micro-SMEs who wish to sell their products and services online without having to pay high commissions to non-essential 3rd parties.

“We are very excited and humbled by the opportunity to partner with Mad Ventures, Inc and join its growing livelihood ecosystem as digital ambassadors to local Kenyan entrepreneurs and netizens,” said Elloe, Founder and CEO, Owen Sakawa.

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About Elloe

At Elloe, we bring together the powers of world-class e-сommerce technologies and make them easy and accessible to the masses. We allow retailers to provide a personalized experience on their consumers’ preferred apps. Through the Elloe platform, businesses get an artificial intelligence-powered tool that allows them to handle sales and build personal relationships, at scale, on Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram.

Headquartered in San Mateo, California, Elloe’s mission is to reduce a major logistical carbon footprint by developing new methods of e-commerce practices, starting by growing the local economy, utilizing renewable energies, and automated supply chains.

For more information, visit elloe.ai.

About Mad Ventures

Mad Ventures is a group of companies dedicated to providing digital livelihood as a service to entrepreneurs and micro, small, and medium enterprise businesses in the Philippines and throughout Southeast Asia.

Powered by the Mad Underground, our innovative products empower communities and promote digital and financial inclusion with humanity and compassion at our core.  From e-commerce to payments to logistics to marketing to building communities, we innovate and curate services to enable new and rewarding experiences for both consumers and merchants.

For more information, visit madventures.group.

How Edge Computing Can Benefit African EdTech StartUps

Sodiq Ajala
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How Edge Computing Can Benefit African EdTech StartUps

Smart organizations rely on data to provide significant insight and real-time processes and operations management. 

They routinely mine these data from sensors and IoT devices running in real-time from anywhere in the world.

With the ever-increasing 2.5 quintillion bytes (2.5 e+9 GB) of data created every day, the way organizations handle computation becomes extremely important. 

This is because the traditional computer architecture, which is based on a centralized data center and the internet, can not transfer the continuously flowing real-world data. 

So, edge computing surfaced to close this gap.

Edge computing is a distributed information technology (IT) architecture in which client data is processed as close to the original source as possible at the network’s perimeter. 

This relocates some storage and computes resources away from the central data center and closer to the data source.

In simpler terms, what this means is that, earlier, devices connect, receive instructions, and download updates from the cloud or data centers that are centrally located somewhere far away. 

However, with edge computing, the processors are placed local to the end devices so they do communicate without little or no transportation at all. The data collection, sorting, and preliminary analysis can be done on-premise, then being sent to a centralized database at a later time.

This results in reduced roundtrip and faster communication. And saves resources and efforts in critical cases.

Also, it will solve problems associated with bandwidth constraints, latency concerns, and unpredictably disrupted networks. 

Edge computing and the African edTech startups

Research by the University of Virginia: On the systematic review of Educational Technology in Developing Countries showed that the emergence of educational technology (“EdTech”) in developing countries is a promising avenue to address some of the most challenging policy questions within educational systems. 

The report classified EdTech interventions into access to technology, technology-enabled behavioral interventions, improvements to instruction, and self-led learning. 

As much as self-directed learning and instructional improvements are highly important for edtech interventions, making the associated data possible for real-time analysis would provide immeasurable insights for African edtech startups. 

This would not only create leverage of comparative advantage to address deficiencies within educational systems in developing countries, but will also fast track access to technology, and make data interact quicker. 

How edge computing can benefit African edTech startups

In augmented and virtual reality

Augmented reality (AR) uses a device camera to overlay digital elements to a live scene while Virtual reality (VR) involves a completely immersive experience that isolates the user from the outside world.

In both cases, users are transported into a variety of real-world and imagined situations using certain devices. Examples of some VR devices are HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and Google Cardboard.

As this happens, the device communicates with a cloud system or data center to incorporate that experience into your reality.

When using AR and VR for learning, your interaction with a particular device communicates or sends instructions to a decentralized system, which then responds with what you initiated. 

However, when you try to have these humanlike exchanges and there exists a significant drag in the communication, it makes cognitive processing difficult. This is when you introduce edge computing to improve the smoothness in the realism of augmented reality. 

As an edtech startup leveraging AR and VR to enhance teaching and learning, introducing edge devices for local computing and storage will make your process faster.

The inclusion in virtual classrooms will help students and teachers to engage rapidly and smoothly, and Learning won’t be hampered by choppy connections. 

In Internet of Things (IoT)

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a network of interconnected, internet-connected objects that can gather and transmit data without the need for human interaction across a wireless network.

In learning environments, it improves security, tracks important resources, and increases information availability in the classroom. Also, teachers can leverage the data and information to create “smart lesson plans.”

As much as all these takeaways are important, a prolonged round trip between devices and data centers would slow down getting information. 

Edge computing allows school districts with limited bandwidth to process data locally rather than sending it to the cloud. 

For instance, If your startup incorporates sensors into educational toys or classroom facilities to track learning behaviors and social dynamics, or sets up a low-power processing device on the playground to collect safety data.

You want the immediate stakeholder: teachers and school administration to make informed decisions (i.e to track attendance)  from the surface insights before you provide more details from your headquarters. 

When IoT device data is processed via edge computing infrastructure, information is processed faster allowing for optimum productivity and efficiency.

In student outcomes

The ultimate learning outcome is to cause a positive reaction, achieve learning, spur a positive reaction, and shift behavior.

In edtech, these can’t happen without real-time feedback capabilities that could power performance-enhancing learning systems. 

Edtech startups can employ machine learning and artificial intelligence to tailor the prompts and lessons to the learner’s learning style based on what the student enters into the learning management system.

Edge computing makes this faster and increasingly achievable at scale, it allows you to improve student experience and engagement while also driving learning growth. It would also lower operating expenses, and ease obtaining insights from collected data.

In saving costs

Without compromising quality and teaching time allocation, education management should be less expensive. Edge devices can help learning organizations save money over time. 

Edge computing is a less expensive choice for education organizations wishing to expand their computer capacity. It is expensive to send data to the cloud. Data sent to the edge has the potential to save you a lot of money. 

Though, investing in edge all at once could be a major financial risk. But the return on investment is always far better.

Summary

African edtech startups should understand that edge computing services, with their particular efficiency and reliability, can help them, and educational institutions with research centers, think tanks, and other entities.

As 5G gradually becomes evident in Africa, looking into edge dependency and utility will be a smart move for startups targeting the unicorn status.

During school hours, when many people are trying to use the internet at the same time, overloaded networks are more likely to occur. These overburdened networks can benefit from edge computing, so if you’re an edtech company that deploys IoT in schools, this is profitable leverage for you. It will assist your company in dealing with this problem.

And in the stance where educational institutions have been targeted by hackers, edge computing can help as it stores data locally rather than centrally, so a single security breach will not always result in system-wide consequences. 

Edge, in other words, comes with a layer of cyber security.

Kena Health Launches New App To Consult Doctors from Your Smartphone

Sodiq Ajala
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Kena Health Launches New App To Consult Doctors from Your Smartphone

Kena Health is a new health app located in South Africa that allows users to interact with a nurse, doctor, or mental health expert directly from their phone.

Kena Health is an app that connects users to a team of certified healthcare practitioners for guidance, diagnosis, prescriptions, sick notes, and, if necessary, referrals to a specialized pathologist or other locations of care. All of this is accomplished with their smartphone at a reasonable cost.

Everyone becomes sick at some point. But what happens when they can’t afford appropriate care and advice on a regular basis? What happens to people who don’t have the time or money to wait in a clinic line or to pay a doctor’s bill?

The all-too-common response is that people put off seeking medical help or rely on ineffective home remedies or “Doctor Google” for guidance. What if there was a better, more inclusive approach to providing quick and affordable access to high-quality healthcare?

Despite the fact that the country is gradually achieving the Constitutional right to healthcare, just 16% of the South African population has access to private medical services.

“Therein lies our burden and our opportunity.” according to Kena Health.

Providing high-quality healthcare for everyone

Based on a shared data perspective of that patient, Kena Health uses a team-based approach to assign the most appropriate healthcare practitioners to each patient’s specific needs. An experienced and qualified nurse can help with family planning, gastritis, anemia, allergies, UTIs, and common colds. A doctor’s prescription may be required for an infection, hypertension, or other chronic diseases.

In less than two minutes, users can download the app and register. They next have a brief conversation with Linda, Kena’s digital assistant, who gathers general information about their condition for the secure patient record. This eliminates the need for patients to repeat their medical history and details at every stage of the process.

Kena Health’s Costs and Benefits

Kena then links the user with a nurse or mental health professional, allowing them to receive medical care or guidance at a fraction of the expense of visiting a doctor — and for free at first. Within the app, consultations can be conducted by text, audio, or video, all of which are geared to keep data costs low. In cases where a doctor is needed, the nurses can transfer the call to the Kena team for a seamless connection.

The app lowers the cost of care while improving the patient’s health outcomes by combining technology and a team-based approach.

The app also uses technology to provide a human answer by generating scripts, sick notes, and referral letters, all of which are conveniently available within the app.

Users’ first three visits will be free as they get used to this new type of healthcare, with the following consultations costing as little as R160 each. Kena Health’s services are originally offered Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.

“Our goal is to improve access to quality care by lowering cost,” says Kena Health Founder and CEO Saul Kornik.

“By creating an app that focuses on team-based healthcare, we’re able to do this, while actually improving the quality of health outcomes for each patient. Imagine, a whole team of nurses, doctors, and mental health professionals looking after you! This means that no matter your income level or where you live, with Kena Health you are invited in to receive services that provide the care you need, all while making you feel cared for and reassured that you’re going to be OK,” he concludes.

In Kenya, Visa opens its first African Innovation Studio.

Sodiq Ajala
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In Kenya, Visa opens its first African Innovation Studio.

Visa, a global leader in digital payments, announced the opening of a new Innovation Studio in Nairobi, Kenya, today. Its first dedicated innovation site in Sub-Saharan Africa is the studio (SSA).

This facility will service the Sub-Saharan Africa area, according to a news release, and will join Visa’s network of innovation centers, which have been operating since 2016, in locations such as Dubai, Singapore, and San Francisco.

The facility is intended to build on the success of Visa’s flagship innovation center in San Francisco, One Market, by giving Visa’s partners access to tools that will help them improve their capabilities in generating innovative solutions.

“Sub-Saharan Africa is a fast-growing region with a tech-savvy population. As we continue to grow digital payments adoption in the region, our aspiration is to deepen our collaboration with clients and partners in developing solutions that are designed around the unique needs of Africa,” said Aida Diarra, SVP & Head of Visa in Sub-Saharan Africa.

“We are confident that the innovation studio will continue that legacy and cement Sub-Saharan Africa’s position as a leader in creating out-of-the-box solutions to deal with our most pressing challenges as a region,” added Diarra.

Sub-Saharan Africa’s Payments Revolution

According to Visa, businesses in Sub-Saharan Africa have been at the forefront of introducing new ways to pay and be paid by leveraging innovative technology. The Innovation Studio will look into ways to expand the growth of emerging payment areas like Tap to Phone and Pay on Delivery, as well as the continued development of cutting-edge smarter payment solutions that use blockchain, the Internet of Things, Virtual Reality, and biometrics.

The studio will work with Visa clients and partners all around Africa to expand its service offerings. The studio’s immersive environment will also equip customers and partners with tools to address some of their largest business difficulties while revealing new commercial avenues of potential, thanks to a human-centered approach.

Paga, which collaborated with Visa to co-create a platform that offers tools to small businesses, and Safaricom on a solution to enable 24 million M-PESA users to transact at Visa merchant locations and 150,000 M-PESA merchants to accept Visa card payments, are two companies from Sub-Saharan Africa that have already taken advantage of Visa’s innovation center capabilities.

At an event attended by leading banks, financial technology companies, and innovation specialists from across Sub-Saharan Africa, the studio was officially launched by Dr. Patrick Njoroge, Governor of the Central Bank of Kenya.

Rwanda establishes Africa’s first Fourth Industrial Revolution center.

Sodiq Ajala
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Rwanda establishes Africa’s first Fourth Industrial Revolution center.

According to Borge Brende, president of the World Economic Forum (WEF), who spoke at the center’s debut, Rwanda’s government has announced the launch of the Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (C4IR), the first of its kind to be formally inaugurated in Africa. The World Economic Forum worked with the Rwandan government to launch C4IR in Kigali.

C4IR’s launch, according to Rwanda’s Minister of Information, Communication Technology, and Innovation, Paula Ingabire, was prompted by the rapid innovation seen in Africa during the COVID-19 pandemic two years ago, as well as the arrival of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, a movement that has swept the continent.

“…there is an increased urgency to develop digital and technological capacities to build more resilient systems for a healthier society and more sustainable economy,” Ingabire said, quoted by Media24.

According to the WEF’s website, Rwanda will “engage with stakeholders around the world to build and pilot new approaches to technology governance that stimulate innovation in an inclusive and responsible manner.”

Formulating and examining the country’s laws and policies around artificial intelligence, as well as the protection of personal data and privacy, are among the new initiatives to be undertaken at the C4IR.

“The launch of this center is enabled by investments that we, as a country, have been making in science and technology. I hope the center will build on this by making the Fourth Industrial Revolution an equalizing force, and contributing solutions to some of today’s most pressing challenges. We are very happy to have the World Economic Forum as a partner in this crucial and other endeavors,” Rwandan President Paul Kagame during the launch of C4IR last week.

He went on to say that the center’s opening demonstrated how far the country has progressed in science and technology nearly 30 years after the country’s infamous ethnically driven genocide in the 1990s.

“This is the first center to be formally launched in Africa. It says a lot about the leadership in the country when it comes to leapfrogging and being visionary when it comes to new technologies,” WEF president Brende chimed.

“I think that this Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution Rwanda will play an important role to meet the ratio of Rwanda becoming an upper-middle-income country by 2035. The center, I hope, will be a key enabler of Rwanda’s goal of becoming an even more prosperous society,” he said.

“The time has come for Africa to put itself at the very center of a new technological revolution. Our continent has a unique competitive advantage that stems from an undeniably entrepreneurial spirit that is built into our young generations – that is an ability to innovate out of necessity,” added Ingabire.

Telecommunication Companies Bar 75-Million Unlinked SIMs in Nigeria

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Telecommunication Companies Bar 75-Million Unlinked SIMs in Nigeria

Telecommunication providers in Nigeria obeyed the Federal Government’s order on Monday to block any unlinked Subscriber Identification Module – SIM card without a National Identification Number (NIN) from being used on their networks, in an effort to reduce insecurity, extortion, and kidnappings.

Reports from The Guardian Newspaper present that the Federal Government had ordered the carriers to block all current calls to unlinked SIM cards in the country through the Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy.

President Muhammadu Buhari issued an order in December 2020 to link all phone lines to an identification number in order to better manage abductions in the country.

Officials from various telecom companies verified that they received letters from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and have subsequently begun blocking outgoing calls from all unlinked SIMs on their networks.

Despite Buhari’s plan to link phone lines, there has been a spike in terrorist assaults and kidnappers in the West African country who want ransom money from families.

Kidnappers use unregistered SIM cards to contact the victims’ families and demand a ransom. 75 million Sims that are not registered with NIN will be unable to make calls as a result of the new order.

Isa Pantami, Minister of Communication and Digital Economy stated that since the government began sanitizing its database, no individual or official with the legal authority to request bio-data and other information about NIN-SIM for a rescue mission has approached the ministry.

“President Buhari has approved for them to do it without even our intervention as a ministry. So, with that approval, NCC has conveyed that through my office to all relevant institutions that Mr. President has granted approval for such. So, with it, they can get databases even without our permission,” Pantami said.

“But since then, they (security agents) have never complained or come to me even once to demand information from the database. The only person that wrote a letter to me was the Minister of Defence, saying that we should try to finish the NIN-SIM exercise on time,” he said.

After Buying Nigerian Data Centre Firm for $320M, Equinix Expands to Africa

TWA Admin
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After Buying Nigerian Data Centre Firm for $320M, Equinix Expands to Africa

Equinix, an American digital infrastructure company, announced on Monday that it had completed the $320 million acquisition of MainOne, a West African data center, and connectivity solutions provider.

This new acquisition, according to Equinix, marks the start of the company’s expansion into Africa.

Equinix’s efforts to deliver a comprehensive range of technologies and connectivity to Nigeria, Ghana, and Cote d’Ivoire have been boosted by the completion of this transaction.

Platform Equinix will expand into West Africa as a result of this acquisition, enabling enterprises based both inside and outside of Africa access to global and regional markets. With around 142 million active internet connections, Nigeria has the greatest population and economy of any African country.

It has a great opportunity for the expansion of digital services because it is home to new innovative digital ecosystems in fintech, content, and digital media.

MainOne’s assets comprise four active data centers and 570,000 square feet of land for potential expansions, totaling more than 64,000 gross square feet of space for Platform Equinix.

A 7,000-kilometer submarine network connecting Portugal to Lagos, Accra, and the West African coast, with landing points in Nigeria, Ghana, and Côte d’Ivoire. The company will now be known as “MainOne, an Equinix company.”

Equinix has completed the latest in a series of strategic acquisitions with the closing of the MainOne deal. Equinix has announced growth in South America with the anticipated acquisition of three Entel data centers to accelerate digital transformation prospects for local businesses and global organizations, following the news of its plans to acquire MainOne in December 2021.

Both deals came after GPX India announced plans to buy 13 Bell data centers in Canada and two highly linked data centers in Mumbai in October 2020 and September 2021, respectively.

Credrails, Access Bank To Foster The Future Of Finance In Africa

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Credrails, Access Bank To Foster The Future Of Finance In Africa

Credrails, a rapidly developing financial infrastructure business, has collaborated with Access Bank, a leading African bank with the largest client base, to provide the future of finance on the continent. Access Bank and Credrails will work together to create open finance rails that will vastly improve the banking experience for consumers across Africa.

Credrails is a seed-stage firm that provides the infrastructure that integrates bank, mobile money, and offline data into a single API to power the next generation of fintech solutions. Developers can use the startup’s API to create breakthrough products with open and secure access to rich data sources. Furthermore, its technologies enable cross-service interoperability, resulting in faster and cheaper money transfers across Africa and beyond.

Credrails’ cooperation with Access Bank provides secure open banking connections, eliminating the need for illegal interconnections that could put end-users in danger.

As a result of the cooperation, developers will have access to the data and support they need to build novel finance solutions for customers.

Access Bank’s technological hub, Africa Fintech Foundry, is led by Daniel Babatola Awe, who says: “Access Bank, over the years, has positioned itself as a leader in the Financial Technology space by leveraging technology to reform business operations and drive performance.

To further harness the unending opportunities in the African Fintech ecosystem, Africa Fintech Foundry (AFF) – an initiative of Access Bank – was set up in 2017 to solve industry problems, identify and accelerate innovative startups and be recognized globally as the foremost technology hub in Africa.

“We have carefully identified and selected Credrails as our open banking partner, having raised a seed round, as the appropriate company to partner with on our journey to foster the future of finance in Africa.”

“This partnership will develop game-changing, technology-driven, financial solutions that will drive prosperity and encourage inclusivity. We believe that this will provide endless business opportunities to achieve the aforestated goal.”

In January 2022, Credrails raised $2.5 million in a seed round from Softbank, Precursor Ventures, Launch Africa, and super angels like Shefali Roy and V&R. The funds will be used to develop new product suites and expand into new markets.

“Credrails is very pleased to have this partnership with a leading African bank. We are rapidly expanding as a business, and this key partnership is further evidence of our commitment to provide Africa with the infrastructure needed to evolve fintech,” comments Clara Wanjiku Odero, Credrails CEO and Co-founder.

Credrails has access to 250 million accounts in 33 countries since its start in 2020, and it is seeking to connect all of Africa, providing fintech developers with extraordinary capabilities through a single API.

Frain helps developers ship APIs more quickly, How the Nigerian Startup is doing it.

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Frain helps developers ship APIs more quickly, How the Nigerian Startup is doing it.

Frain, a Nigerian startup, is developing Convoy, an open-source webhooks service that allows developers and businesses to design and distribute APIs more quickly and securely.

Developers have always had to construct and maintain these infrastructures in-house, paying for them with engineering time and money. Convoy, Frain’s service, helps enterprises to ship APIs faster and worry about one fewer infrastructure component.

Subomi Oluwalana, co-founder and CEO of Frain, abandoned his position as a backend developer at Nigerian fintech Tangerine Life in February 2021 to build APIs for fintech. For several months, the team tried to offer APIs to businesses with co-founder and COO Emmanuel Aina, but with little success.

While refining their solution to make it more economically feasible, the team discovered that webhooks were a common issue among startups looking to establish APIs. Webhooks are simply the glue that holds APIs together. They are a crucial infrastructure component for most API firms (like Stripe, Twillo, or Paystack).

“Essentially, a failed webhooks event has a direct customer impact. A failed event from Paystack means a customer won’t receive value for their purchase on Domino’s while the customer has received a debit alert,” Aina said.

Convoy, a cloud-native webhook solution that allows developers to push webhook events to their consumers in minutes, was born out of this realization. The adoption rate was extremely high.

“The reception for Convoy has been massive. It is currently being used by Termii, BuyCoins, Dojah, Getwallets and a few others. The developer community has also commented that it is indeed an essential tool,” said Aina.

Frain raised US$473,000 in pre-seed fundraising in January from Rally Cap Ventures, Musha Ventures, Future Africa, Eric Idiah, Tomiwa Lasebikan, Prosper Otemuyiwa, Odunayo Eweniyi, Timi Ajiboye, Opeyemi Awoyemi, and numerous other angel investors.

“We are currently operating in the African market with a particular focus on Nigeria. Our product is open to developers across the world. This funding will enable us to invest in our community locally and globally as well as build more products,” said Aina.

Frain generates money by selling its Cloud Platform to businesses that don’t want to manage Convoy infrastructure in-house.

“With this, they can offload all their webhooks infrastructure burden on us to provide reliability and security out-of-the box,” said Aina.

“For the most part, most companies have an implementation of webhooks in-house. So for many, they wonder why they needed to swap out what they currently have to usher in Convoy. But we’re confident we’ve built a product that is 10 times better than most in-house implementations and we’re still in the very early stages of fulfilling our mission. We think with time, the difference will be clear and more people will be willing to switch their current implementations as our current customers did.”

Nigerian Tech Startups Need To Focus More On Research

Ruth Torty
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Nigerian Tech Startups Need To Focus More On Research

Nigerian tech startups are increasing and growing at a fast rate. The Nigerian fintech startup, Flutterwave recently raised $250 million in its Series D round, pushing its valuation to $3 billion. For startups to create sustainable change in Nigeria and Africa by large, they will need more than investments.

As it stands, artificial intelligence and technology are the top trends and, in a few years, may become the regular trademark. And as this happens, Nigerian startups should build their products towards this innovation—not to be left behind in this new wave. Startups need to invest in science and technology research to achieve a much-needed edge in the coming years.

As science and technology research spans various disciplines, Nigerian tech startups must focus on data, emerging technologies, and health science research as these drive faster innovations.

Below are the deep dives on specifics to focus on during research.

1. Science Research and HealthTechs

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed Nigeria’s need for a strong science research system. Despite our unpreparedness, the timely sequencing of the coronavirus by the African Centre of Excellence For Genomics of Infectious Disease (ACEGID) facilitated testing and detection of Covid-19 cases.

However, Nigeria still felt the impact of having a weak science research system. We have had to rely on other countries for ventilators, testing kits, and vaccines.

HealthTechs have to collaborate with researchers to build the research system. 54gene, a health-tech company located in Lagos, recently launched the African Centre For Translational Genomics (ACTG) initiative.

This non-profit will fund and support training and internships for scientists and research on translational genomics and precision medicine. Furthermore, investing in research provides better solutions, innovations, and, most importantly, a high return on investment. An example is BioNTech. The German-based biotech startup invested in mRNA technology, a product that has made millions of euros for the company. The mRNA technology was also instrumental in creating the Covid-19 vaccine.

Moreso, collaboration can occur in specific science fields central to the HealthTechs focus. For example, Maternal care based HealthTechs can work with researchers on drug production, pre-eclampsia, and even chronic diseases.

Geriatrics (older population) based HealthTechs can also invest in chronic and neurodegenerative diseases research. The prospect of an improved healthcare and research system in Nigeria and Africa is too promising to overlook. However, if another pandemic occurs, will HealthTechs be able to change the narrative? Yes, if they invest in research.

2. Data is Key

Nigeria has one major problem: data. We either have insufficient data or underutilized data. The popular method to cover up this data gap is the use of estimates. Sadly, even the country’s current population is merely an estimate, based on the 2006 census—numbers that were heavily contested for their validity and authenticity.

Moreover, data collection in Nigeria is entrenched in politics and corruption, which throws a shadow of doubt on each publication. The country also lacks good equipment and resources to collect, clean, and analyze data. Unfortunately, most of the data we have about Nigeria is sourced from outside it.

For example, most of the data on maternal mortality in Nigeria is sourced from the World Health Organization and other foreign bodies. Despite the information being over three years old, several publications still reference it—since it is one of the few credible sources they know.

On the flip side, Nigeria also has sufficient data, as in the case of traditional banks. These banks have gathered years and years of customers’ personal data and demographics—all of which are unused. These data could change fintech operations overnight. Fortunately, the Open banking system in Nigeria is building a set of open APIs standards. These Application Programming Interfaces, known as APIs, will allow banks to share customer transaction history with third parties like Fintechs.

In turn, this allows these startups to design their products to meet customers’ needs and assist those working to improve data collection and analytics in Nigeria. AirSmat is a tech startup that helps farmers make data-driven decisions. This startup provides and analyzes data on weather trends, crops, and soil conditions using drones, satellite, soil-level, and IoT sensors.

The value of data to every organization can not be overemphasized. It reduces the risk of making errors and also helps startups save time and money. Moreover, Nigeria turns out many statisticians every year (unfortunately, there is no verifiable data on their number). Startups can invest in data resources and training for statisticians and data scientists to build a better structure.

3. Technology

Technology is beyond virtual realities like Metaverse. It also includes the fields of robotics and machines. Startups, particularly Agritechs, need more than optimized software to improve agriculture in Nigeria. Advanced equipment and infrastructure can drive agricultural innovation forward and increase food production. Releaf, an Agritech startup based in Uyo, Akwa-Ibom, is using its proprietary patent-pending machinery, Kraken, to revolutionize oil palm production in Nigeria.

The Kraken technology is used to crack palm kernel nuts, which are then supplied on a large scale to food production companies. This equipment helps to provide an easy market for both smallholder farmers and companies. The Kraken technology is to operate at 100 tonnes per day, 200 times faster than a smallholder farmer with a rock.

In Owerri, capital of Imo State, Nnaemeka Ikegwuonu established ColdHubs to help farmers avoid post-harvest losses. To give some context, Nigeria has an unstable power supply, which means smallholder farmers have no storage for their produce.

ColdHubs is a solar-powered walk-in cold room for smallholder farmers to store and preserve fresh produce. This equipment can extend the product’s shelf life from two days to more than 21 days. More inventions are needed to drive and push Nigeria to the next level. Startups need to invest in the infrastructure and manufacturing of their own equipment. Moreso, we can build a technology hub for Africa and the world.

Nigerian tech startups have a lot to offer in pushing the country towards growth. However, to achieve this, tech startups need to explore and maximize the power of science and technology research.

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