Cartnshop, a Kenyan startup that helps African small businesses build up internet stores quickly and affordably, has secured $400,000 in funding as it prepares to launch next month.
Cartnshop was established in the year 2018. It’s an end-to-end e-store enablement engine that helps any retailer or corporation gain new customers.
Payment gateways, shipping and fulfillment centers, marketing and marketplace cross-listings, and business management capabilities are all part of the startup’s B2B and B2C channels.
“The Cartnshop ecosystem pulls stakeholders into the channels, including manufacturers, suppliers and distributors, service providers, and e-commerce enablers, providing a complete model of B2B2C,” stated Joe Wambugu, creator and CEO.
In late 2019, the startup launched engine one and onboarded 50 merchants. It released engine two with over 300 merchants after demonstrating the concept and receiving feedback.
In 2020, it embarked on a market proof of concept with Safaricom and EABL, gaining enough market feedback to develop engine three, which is currently ready to go live and can accommodate over one million merchants.
The rollout will be sponsored by a $400,000 investment from a group of business angels this month.
Cartnshop has made its platform available to some retailers in Botswana and Tanzania, but Wambugu says Kenya is the company’s major emphasis.
MTN has recently bought 144 plots of digital land in the Africarare metaverse Ubuntuland for an undisclosed sum.
According to a news statement on the company’s website, with this purchase, Africa’s largest telecom provider claimed to be the first African company to enter the metaverse.
The announcement states, “Africarare, which debuted in South Africa in October 2021, is the first African Virtual Reality metaverse containing digital land.”
Africarare and Mann Made Media are developing Ubuntuland, which will be available for public land sales later this year.
Ubuntuland will include the best of African art, fashion, entertainment, sport, technology, and innovation, as well as provide a platform for artists from all over the continent to exhibit their work.
Last year, Africarare sold out its debut Non-fungible token (NFT) art collection for about $50,000.
“The NFT space economy and Metaverses have seen tremendous expansion in the United States, Europe, and Asia, but there hasn’t been much from Africa.””
“We believe Africa has a huge opportunity to participate in this new world.” Mic Mann, the co-founder of Africarare, stated last year in an interview.
This move follows MTN’s recent brand revamp, which repositioned the company as a technology firm rather than a telecommunications one.
MTN noted in a statement that “this investment reflects MTN’s commitment to fostering African innovation.”
According to Bernice Samuels, MTN group’s chief marketing officer, MTN plans to boost its customer appeal through a succession of experiences integrated with consumer passion points, such as gaming and music, and its presence in the metaverse.
Along with MTN, M&C Saatchi Abel, a South African advertising agency, purchased its own plot of property in Ubuntuland.
Outside of Africa, firms including Samsung, Adida, and PricewaterhouseCoopers have also bought digital land holdings.
Cadana is a salary on-demand company that has partnered with flutterwave, Africa’s leading payments technology company to expand into Nigeria.
Cadana provides the services that allow small and large enterprises the ability to provide their employees with access to earned wages. Cadana also enables firms to digitize payroll, manage all people-related operations from onboarding through offboarding, and simplify compliance for People Managers. Following this partnership, Flutterwave processes payments for employers and employees on Cadana.
Unexpected bills might cause employees in Africa to become distressed from their daily tasks. Alternatives include short-term loans with interest rates as high as 300 percent and inadequate loan repayment schemes. Over 400 million African employees would benefit from a technology that allows them to obtain their earned earnings in real-time, pending employer permission. Cadana users may give their employees digital access to their earned money whenever they choose, rather than waiting until the end of the month.
Cadana assists African Human Resource Managers with digitizing payroll, statutory compliance, onboarding, offboarding, reports, time-tracking, and other processes. Cadana’s time-tracking technology instantly syncs with payroll from logging through payday, making disbursement easy for people management and small organizations. “Banking, startups, telecoms, education, non-governmental institutions, and indeed all enterprises in Nigeria have a significant employee base that our modern salary on-demand payroll administration software can serve”, Albert Owusu-Asare, CEO and Co-founder of Cadana said.
“Our work in Ghana assisted us to take feedback from employees and businesses to improve our work process. People Managers and business owners longed for a solution that will reduce the month-on-month money troubles, make their employees more comfortable, and empower them to achieve more with their wages. Presently, we partner with Tendo, KEK group: one Ghana’s largest insurance brokers, and Float. We are excited to have been able to easily launch into any other African country with the help of Flutterwave”.
Ameer Shujjah, CTO and Co-founder of Cadana said, “Partnering with Flutterwave was easy and offers us more flexibility than imagined. We are happy to be in Nigeria and as we further in our growth journey, we hope to continue counting on Flutterwave’s help to empower Africans. Cadana is a world of solutions created to improve productivity for workers in Africa. We handle the employee’s money issues, giving them more time and to be able to achieve more with their time and growing businesses in Africa. We have plans to build helpful personal money management solutions along with our human resources management platform to make it easier for African workers to build more wealth easily from their wages”.
The Founder and CEO of Flutterwave added, “We are thrilled to enable startups like Cadana to expand fast across Africa. Cadana’s work of providing real-time salary access to employees in Africa is admirable and we are glad that they are accomplishing their aims using Flutterwave. Our work with startups is part of our vision to grow businesses. We are proud to support their growth and expansion into Nigeria. We are happy to see their progress as they support workers in Nigeria.
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The Hatchery, an international clean-tech incubator that invests in technologies that increase productivity or profitability while reducing resource consumption or pollution, launched in Cape Town in November, with the goal of discovering and supporting cutting-edge entrepreneurs in areas such as smart utility metering, solar energy, and mobile financial platforms, according to Disrupt Africa.
The Hatchery will be able to expand its clean-tech infrastructure and support companies as they turn their ideas into viable businesses thanks to the cooperation with Valinor. Valinor is a Norwegian family-owned investment firm that makes early-stage investments in promising enterprises with the goal of leaving a lasting legacy.
The partners will pool their knowledge and resources to aid in the creation of infrastructure and technology that will incorporate sustainable frameworks to provide startups with dependable and inexpensive clean-tech resources.
“The world is facing code red in climate challenges, and we are trying to give a voice to this challenge with our recent collaboration with Valinor,” Jon Bøhmer, The Hatchery Global head said.
“Valinor is 100 percent committed to green investments and will indeed help the company fulfill its goal of supporting and developing startups.”
The alliance would help businesses get clean-tech investments faster by providing hands-on knowledge and milestone-based funding that will help founders focus on business growth and operations.
The FinTech Association of Nigeria (FintechNGR) has launched The Start-Up Marketplace, an innovative platform designed to provide start-ups in the fintech ecosystem with free and heavily discounted services in funding, legal, infrastructure, cybersecurity, data privacy, business development, and a variety of other areas, in order to help them grow faster.
Ade Bajomo, President, FinTechNGR, and the Executive Director, Information Technology and Operations at Access Bank Plc made this announcement at the association’s first conference of the year, tagged ‘Fintech Outlook 2022’.
He reiterated that “The Start-Up Marketplace will aid in the development and depth of Nigeria’s FinTech talent pool.”
“The platform will also encourage research and development to elevate innovators and start-ups, foster a supportive regulatory environment to grow the industry, facilitate local investors’ participation in FinTech funding, and position local start-ups and innovators to build and develop durable and strategic intellectual properties,” he added.
The rising rate of investment in Fintech start-ups demonstrates how much the industry has piqued the interest of investors and Venture Capitalists who perceive the industry’s growth and resiliency potential.
FinTechs dominated fundraising in Africa in 2021, accounting for about $3 billion of the roughly $5 billion raised by African digital start-ups.
Nigerian start-ups raised $1.09 billion in the same year, accounting for 73.5 percent of the $1.37 billion raised by start-ups worldwide.
Daniel Awe, the Head of the Africa Fintech Foundry, highlighted increased innovation as a crucial cause for the rising interest.
“We’re already seeing FinTechs innovate in areas like greentech, digital insurance, blockchain, and financial inclusion, to name a few.”
“That said, we must continue to create strategic alliances with other ecosystem participants in order to develop game-changing innovative solutions and uncover new opportunities for growth, consumer pleasure, and improved business practices.”
The Foundry is contributing to this growth by launching businesses that can compete in a variety of industry verticals by offering new and enhanced digital products to end-users, allowing for the establishment of new markets.”
The virtual event also revealed trends and forecasts across FinTech verticals, including lending, payment, mobile money, banking, infrastructure, regulation, partnerships, skillsets, wealthtech, insurtech, cybersecurity, data privacy, open banking, decentralised finance, and other sectors.
Prof. Okechukwu Ukwuoma, Director-General of the National Centre for Technology Management (NACETEM), has stressed the importance of incorporating and adapting technology into agricultural operations in order to increase production and reduce post-harvest losses.
Although Nigeria provided around 51% of West Africa’s overall food supply, post-harvest losses have climbed to an estimated N3.5 trillion per year, according to Ukwuoma.
He spoke at a stakeholders workshop in Nasarawa State on the role of Science, Technology, and Innovation (STI) in agricultural production and food security in Nigeria.
This is bad for the country, he said, as he called for an immediate halt to the trend so that agriculture can become a viable tool for Nigeria’s long-term growth.
Ubi Okoi, Director, Technical Services, Agricultural Development Programme (ADP), Calabar, remarked that with the present changes in global agricultural technical improvement, the workshop has become very timely for enhanced service delivery in the years to come.
The Green Exchange, an African Fintech is aiming to sell $5 billion in green bonds in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and other African countries over the next five years to support green bond projects across the continent.
Investors will be able to exchange debt on projects like wind turbines, electric vehicle charging stations, sustainable housing, and solar panel installations in a secondary market, according to the website.
According to Bloomberg, Egypt, Nigeria, and South Africa have thus far issued green bonds in Africa, while China and Chile have been key sellers in other parts of the world. The Green Exchange’s cofounders, Orla Enright and Diana Boadu Amoatin said they plan to raise $2 million to construct the virtual marketplace by July for both debt and equity financing, using crowdsourcing on the equity side and green bonds on the debit side.
Its Chief Executive Officer, Enright, said that Africa has been left out on a global boom in borrowing to fund projects that assist in diminishing climate change. She also said that the reactions of companies in the area of giving corporate green bonds are affirmative.
Global investment in green bonds hopes to get to $1 trillion before the end of 2022, according to Enright, but the African market gives only about 0.4% of the global market base for green bonds.
Citing a greater example of climate change by developed countries and investment funds for developing countries who already are making investments in Africa, Orla said, “We will aim for an increased number of North American and Scandinavian institutional funds using ESG as one of their major criteria of investment”.
Overseas Development Institute said green binds solutions would assist in arranging $5 billion every year to address these in Sub-Saharan Africa even when Africa stands at risk of climate change as well as they endure a high cost of finance.
Congo-based startup, Jambo, is building Africa’s web3 user acquisition portal through “learn, play, earn” and has secured $7.5 million in seed funding.
Jambo intends to onboard millions of users to web3 across Africa. This it will do through its applications, according to James Zhang, the company’s co-founder, and CEO.
In November 2021, after realizing the chance to replicate the success of web3 initiatives in Southeast Asia across Africa, he started the company alongside his sister, both Congo-born Chinese.
According to Zhang, Jambo works with telecom carriers to obtain a nearly 70% discount, which it then sells straight to its subscribers at a 50% discount.
“It’s one of our primary user acquisition techniques,” Zhang explained, “where we aim to quadruple every African’s airtime and data.”
Second, Jambo is working with social media businesses to allow users to earn tokens (which can be converted to money) by watching their content on its app.
Last but not least, there are games where you can earn money by playing. There are currently no well-known play-to-earn web3 games from Africa, owing to a lack of infrastructure for creating such through Guilds.
Jambo, according to Zhang, wants to construct such infrastructure.
Since the beginning of the year, Jambo has enrolled over 12,000 students from 15 countries (Morocco, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Equatorial Guinea, Uganda, Kenya, Congo, Uganda, Rwanda, DR Congo, Tanzania, Zambia, Namibia, Madagascar, and South Africa) in a curated web3 curriculum that can be completed both online and offline.
Students will be able to explore potential in play-to-earn gaming and decentralized finance, according to the company (DeFi).
Hundreds of ambassadors sign up students at colleges and 600+ physical partner locations where the 10-week programs are offered.
With recent web3 upstarts in Africa, it appears that educating Africa’s young population about web3 and decentralization is a common subject.
The main difference between Zhang’s platform and others is that, while traditional platforms assist Africans save and send money, new upstarts are enhancing users’ income and wealth potentials.
Jambo plans to deploy its beta version in the second quarter and go live in the third quarter.
In order to construct its super app, the 60-man team, which is distributed across Sub-Saharan Africa, Santa Clara, and Shenzhen, received a party round from investors who had previously funded prominent web3 businesses such as Avalanche, Dharma, BlockFi, and Polygon.
Coinbase Ventures, Alameda Research, Tiger Global, Delphi Ventures, AllianceDAO, DeFiance Capital, Yield Guild Games, and Polygon Studios are among others.
Sandeep Nailwal, co-founder and CEO of Polygon; Santiago R Santos, ex-ParaFi partner; Do Kwon, co-founder and CEO of Terraform Labs; and partner at Delphi Digital Piers Kicks are among the web3 ecosystem’s angel investors.
“Jambo will do in Africa what WeChat did in China.” In a statement, Santiago R Santos, a web3 investor, and former ParaFi partner said, “Excited to back this A+ team in becoming the Web3 super app of the continent.”
Assume you’re on a road trip and realize you haven’t switched off the lights. What if, instead of returning home, you could use your smartphone to confirm and maybe turn off the lights? Isn’t that fantastic? This is possible with the Internet of Things.
The Internet of Things (IoT) makes life much easier for us. It allows us to monitor and operate almost all appliances remotely.
IoT is a network of physical objects (things) integrated with sensors, software, and other technologies to communicate and exchange data with other devices and systems over the internet.
The following are good examples of IoT that have been making life easy;
Smart Agriculture
IoT can be applied in farming to make for easy management. In the case of watering farmland, IoT can be adopted for automatic watering when the moisture level drops by installing sensors that transfer the soil information to the IoT gateway with the help of communication protocols like MQQT or HTTP. The gateways aggregate data and feed it to the cloud using WIFI.
Nowadays, farming may be a reasonably high-tech business. Farmers are increasingly turning to IoT-enabled technologies to keep track of the weather, soil composition, and soil moisture levels. They also use IoT gadgets to evaluate crop health, growth, and livestock behavior. We can also use the information to determine the optimal time to harvest plants and establish fertilizer profiles and schedules. Drones can also be used to capture images and data about the weather.
Smart Cities
People are going crazy with smart cities, one of the most powerful IoT applications. Everyone aspires to live in a smart city with smart monitoring, automated transportation, and various other innovative features.
IoT will be used to address a variety of issues that city dwellers face, including pollution, traffic congestion, power shortages, and many others. Smart cities use IoT equipment such as connected sensors, meters, and lights to evaluate and collect data.
For example, by using web applications or deploying sensors, you can quickly locate free parking spaces across the city at any given time. In addition, smart transportation, energy, infrastructure, data, IoT devices, and mobility are just a few of the essential technologies that smart cities rely on to function.
Automated Cars
Tesla and Ford are the two carmakers who have already made smart cars a reality. Before now, having a smart car used to be a big deal, but today we live in a time where almost everyone owns a smart car.
Tesla is one of the most successful companies in this industry. Tesla automobiles have wowed the public with their unique features, such as a car that can open the garage gate for you before you arrive, as well as the ability to manage the lights, temperature, and charging of the vehicle remotely.
It also offers an App model that allows you to design your own app to track the car’s position, speed, and battery level from anywhere.
The Tesla Model S, for example, has a constant 3G cell connection to the internet, making it part of the “Internet of Things.” It also boasts Wifi, Bluetooth, a built-in garage door opener, and a rear camera.
The Ford Figo is equipped with cutting-edge technology that keeps you informed and engaged. It offers built-in navigation, rain-sensing wipers, automated headlights, and push-button start.
Smart Homes
Smart homes are a great illustration of the Internet of Things. Nest, Ecobee, Ring, and other smart home businesses are preparing to release something unprecedented. Smart houses are expected to become as prevalent as smartphones soon.
Refrigerators, speakers, water heaters, smoke alarms, televisions, and lighting are examples of smart home appliances. When your alarm goes off in the morning, you can also open the window blinds to enjoy a stunning sunrise view.
IoT Data Analytics
More businesses now rely on IoT data analytics to determine trends and patterns by analyzing large and small data sets.
Different electronic gadgets are connected to the internet and share data via sensors daily, but this data is useless unless it is analyzed.
Nonetheless, the company collects and stores data with the help of IoT analytics, resulting in better-optimized operations at all levels. As a result, IoT data analytics software may look at structured, unstructured, and semi-structured data to extract useful information.
IoT Analytics is the key to constructing helpful information from the massive amounts of data that arrive daily, just as IoT is the core of an IT system.
For example, we can see how businesses might use it to improve operations, automate procedures, attract more customers, and authorize staff.
It is possible to develop result-based pricing and subscription models using IoT analytics to improve a company’s business by predicting consumers’ demands by evaluating their data and collecting accurate information from various sources.
Barcode Scanners
Retailers benefit significantly from IoT barcode readers since they aid in managing inventory.
Cloud data connections are emphasized by IoT-based bar card readers to communicate with other systems. As a result, employing the attached bar code reader will streamline the inventory management process.
IoT barcode readers could be integrated into shopping carts to detect items as they are added or discarded. As a result, customers and sellers save time and have a more effortless experience.
The barcode scanner’s sensor detects reflected red light from the illumination system and sends an analog signal to the decoder. The decoder recognizes that signal and validates the barcode using the check digit before converting it to text.
Wearables
Large corporations are heavily spending on the development of these devices. IoT includes any gadget connected to the internet, such as a smartwatch or a Fitbit.
Smart jewelry, AI hearing aids, fitness trackers, and body-mounted sensors that track and communicate biological data for healthcare analytics are all examples of wearable tech.
These devices contain sensors and software that may track user information. These devices are mainly used for exercise, health, and recreation. As a result, these gadgets can transmit data to present you with the most precise information about your preferences.
In a fitness tracker, IoT assists in continuously sensing the body’s movements on a three-axis accelerometer and recording the data anytime you wear it and turn it on, allowing the tracker to determine if the person is jogging, walking, or just standing.
Smart healthcare
Different health ecosystems have emerged to provide better care and lower healthcare costs. Within the healthcare ecosystem, many IoT applications have emerged, including remote patient monitoring, personal healthcare, smart sensors, medical device integration, pharmaceutical industry, healthcare insurance, smart pills, and so on.
The entire healthcare system can keep patients safe and healthy while improving physician services. Healthcare encourages patient-doctor interaction and provides satisfaction to patients by allowing them to spend more time with their doctors.
Shipping container tracking and logistics management
Many businesses use IoT solutions to track their assets. IoT asset tracking devices use GPS or radio frequency (RF) to track and monitor properties. Smart gadgets can be used to identify and verify assets over great distances.
Microchips
Microchips are well-known and are utilized for various applications, including safety and defense. Microchips are typically employed to track something or detect data. However, you can now use it to keep track of your pets’ activities.
Microchips are tiny, run-on-a-low power source, and have limited computing power.
People working in shelters, for example, can scan a chip for an animal’s unique ID number and assist chip-carrying pets in locating their owners.
You could implant a tiny IoT-based microchip in your pet or attach it to its collar so that you don’t have to physically seek for them and can quickly track their movements. As a result, your pet will feel free, and you will be able to keep track of their medical history.
Microchips are also beneficial in other ways. They can be used by biologists to monitor wild animals and learn about migration. Credit cards are getting a lot of chips to make them more secure for payments. Thirsty plants can potentially utilize chips to alert people when they require water.
Supply Chain Management
Smart routing and rerouting algorithms can help supply chain managers make better predictions. In addition, smart IoT devices connected to shipments can provide real-time after-the-event information via GPS and RFID signals, allowing supply chain managers to make more informed decisions.
IoT applications can aid in the reduction of supply chain management risks. As a result, supply chain managers can use smart supply chain management solutions to reduce variance, save money, and boost profits.
The programs can help with inventory management, vendor relationships, fleet management, and scheduled maintenance.
Amazon and Volvo are two good instances of how the Internet of Things (IoT) is revolutionizing supply chain management.
Detecting Motion
Sensors can detect subtle disturbances and trends that could lead to catastrophic breakdowns in large-scale structures like buildings, bridges, and dams. In places prone to landslides, avalanches, and earthquakes, networks of detectors are also deployed.
Household Safety
The Internet of Things (IoT) is the driving force behind a smart and safe home. The Internet of Things (IoT) connects a variety of sensors, alarms, cameras, lights, and microphones to provide security 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and 365 days in a year—all of which can be controlled from a smartphone. The Ring doorbell video security system, for example, enables users to see, hear, and speak with visitors at their doors using a computer, tablet, or smartphone.
Activity Monitors
These sensor devices are intended to be worn in the daytime to track and transmit critical health indicators such as fatigue, appetite, physical mobility, oxygen levels, blood pressure, fall detection, and medication compliance in real-time. At-home health monitoring helps elderly or disabled persons live more independently by reducing the intervention of an emergency doctor or hospital visits.
Digital Twins
A digital twin is essentially an identical digital replica of a physical object in the manufacturing industry. Using technology such as the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, the digital twin may update itself when the actual object changes in response to its surroundings. As a result, engineers can make tweaks or test updates using the digital twin rather than the physical device.
Self-Correcting Machines
Manufacturing equipment can be built to notice and rectify irregularities in its own operation using hundreds of sensors, artificial intelligence, and machine learning before they become problems that require shutdowns and maintenance. This keeps costs down for businesses and allows personnel who ordinarily monitor equipment and perform maintenance to focus on more critical activities.
AR Glasses
Augmented Reality Glasses are gadgets that combine a front-facing camera with software to recognize specific anchors and landmarks -and create tangible objects.
The following are a few examples of AR features that various firms are working on:
AR glasses with a microphone can communicate with Alexa or Siri for voice-controlled searches, with the results appearing directly in front of your eyes.
Your smart AR glasses can gauge the area around you using simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) algorithms, allowing you to control the visuals you view using hand gestures.
Without taking your phone out of your pocket, you can acknowledge and reject message alerts that appear inconspicuously in the field of vision.
Virtual arrows will float up into view thanks to embedded GPS technology, assisting you in finding your path, so you never get lost again.
Ingestible Sensors
Swallowable electronic devices, about the size of a pill and equipped with a power source, microprocessor, sensors, and controller, can be used to monitor illness states and transmit data from within the gastrointestinal tract — for example, to identify bleeding or medicinal absorption. The first pill with a digital tracking device to be approved by the US Food and Drug Administration was Abilify MyCite (aripiprazole tablets with sensors).
Contact Lenses With Built-In Intelligence
Smart contact lenses that can collect health data or treat specific eye problems are the subject of extensive research. For example, SENSIMED, a Swiss startup, has created Triggerfish, a soft smart contact lens with a sensor built-in soft silicone eyewear that senses small fluctuations in an eye’s volume, which can be a sign of glaucoma. Data is wirelessly transmitted from the sensor to a sticky antenna worn around the eye.
Industrial Safety and Security
IoT has made it possible to employ sensors and cameras to keep an eye on the border of restricted zones and catch lawbreakers in unlicensed regions. Small chemical leaks or pressure accumulations can also be detected and repaired before they become severe issues.
Spotting and repairing fluid leaks decreases corrosion and lowers maintenance expenses. Chemical plants, nuclear power plants, and mining operations are all monitored by IoT-enabled detection systems.
Overall, the Internet of Things is a game-changer, the one technological breakthrough that the world has been waiting for. Although it is still being developed and improved, it is here for the long haul and to make our lives easier.
