We’ve traced the highs than lows and embraced positivity in the wake of the challenges facing millions in Africa. Along the way, we’ve empowered many start-ups to tell their stories, recruited the best journalism and business talent on the continent, and had the most fun building a credible media company that will blaze a trail into the next decade. Come with us as we track TechCabal’s 10-year journey with this timeline.

What’s in a name?

Why TechCabal?

The name TechCabal has a short backstory. It arose out of a conversation tech blogger Bankole Oluwafemi had with his co-founder, Seyi Taylor, a businessman who had a company called Big Cabal. The name stuck, and the rest (as they say in the classics) is history.

31/03/2013

TechCabal is born

Using his wonky Nokia E63 phone, TechCabal co-founder Bankole Oluwafemi publishes a story that would become known as the first story ever published on TechCabal.

3/1/2014

TechCabal Battlefield launched

TechCabal Battlefield changed the trajectory of the publication. It was one of the first tech startup competitions in Africa, with the largest prize money at the time: $20,000

31/1/2015

TechCabal becomes one of the most influential tech blogs in West Africa

By 2015, TechCabal had become the biggest and most influential technology blog in the West Africa region, attracting the best journalism and business talent in Africa.

1/2/2016

TC Daily Newsletter launches

A daily tech newsletter is launched as “TechCabal Daily” and proves to be a hit with readers. It explores the tech news of the day in a more personal way that resonates with readers, by telling them all the need to know.

1/5/2016

Radar by TechCabal launches

In May 2016 TechCabal launched Radar, an online chat forum where tech people debated and asked critical questions about the tech ecosystem.

1/1/2018

TechCabal 2.0 – Aladekomo arrives

Tomiwa Aladekomo becomes CEO of Big Cabal Media, taking over from Bankole Oluwafemi and Seyi Taylor. It was at this point that the business came of age and saw its first real fundraising round, which allowed it to increase its capacity and hire more talent in all departments.

31/3/2018

TechCabal turns 5

Before long, TechCabal turns 5 years old, slowly establishing itself as a publication to be reckoned with.

1/3/2019

Tech Women Lagos

TechCabal hosts a portrait series and exhibition of tech women in Lagos.

1/1/2020

TechCabal Insights launches

Lanre Odunowo, reporter and analyst at TechCabal, is appointed to lead a new data and events arm of TechCabal: TC Insights

1/1/2020

The Next Wave Newsletter launches

TechCabal launches a new newsletters aimed at C-suite professionals, called The Next Wave. Distributed on a Sunday, it details the latest trends and developments that affect CEOs and founders in the tech economy.

1/1/2021

January: TC 3.0 launches with a new website and a new team.

A new year and a new website as well as new faces. TechCabal begins to pick up steam and expands its team.

1/7/2021

TC hosts first Ecosystem Hangout

We love to hang out with the cool kids, so TechCabal organised Ecosystem Hangouts with the industry’s movers and shakers, helping us stay in touch with everything that is happening in the space. Catch us at the next one!

1/9/2021

Future of Commerce launches

In 2021 TechCabal launched what has become one of our most popular events, Future of Commerce. Here business leaders, experts, and operators discussed how social media, payments, and logistics are powering the growth of Africa’s commerce. They were joined by over 5,000 players and enthusiasts across Africa, virtually and in-person.

1/9/2022

The Next Wave TV show launches on CNBC Africa

The Next Wave is a CNBC Africa show produced by TechCabal. It seeks to explore the business and impact of technology across Africa, highlight how big tech and the fastest-growing startups are changing the continent, and decipher who the key players are as well as what’s driving their growth and strategic approaches.

1/10/2022

TC Daily reaches 100,000 subscribers

What started as a humble newsletter in 2016 is now a fully fledged TechCabal property, attracting advertisers, sponsors and voices clambering to be included.

1/1/2023

TechCabal shifts into a new decade

As part of our ambitious pan-African expansion plans for 2023, TechCabal appoints experienced South African journalist Adrian Ephraim as Editor-in-Chief and Olumuyiwa Olowogboyega as Newsroom Editor. Other appointments to our new-look editorial team include the introduction of two senior editors and a deputy newsroom editor, along with some senior reporter appointments.

Oluwafemi had no intention of practising law. He had every intention, instead, of immersing himself in Africa’s tech ecosystem, a passion that consumed him day and night. At the time, Oluwafemi was a jack of all trades in the digital space, a self-styled graphic designer, social media coordinator, and a website builder. 

TechCabal at the coalface of tech changes

In 2011, while doing his national youth service, he started blogging and showing up at tech events and writing about technology on the continent, even though it frustrated him no end because tech in Nigeria was far behind compared to the rest of the world. Back then, it took around six months for the latest phones to enter the Nigerian market; by the time a tech writer got to review these phones, they were “not new” models anymore.

A lot has changed since those ancient times, and TechCabal now finds itself at the coalface of tracking tech changes in Africa’s bustling tech ecosystem. 

In March 2013, TechCabal was born out of Oluwafemi’s Nokia E63 because his computer was broken. He would log into C-Panel from his phone, do site configuration, and write using the WYSIWYG editor, a process as painstaking as it sounds.

Oluwafemi and Taylor found TechCabal

The name TechCabal has a short backstory. It arose out of a conversation Oluwafemi had with his co-founder, Seyi Taylor, who had a company called Big Cabal. The word “cabal“ has negative connotations, often viewed as sinister or political, but that didn’t deter them. They intended for people to do a double take, sit up, and notice what they were building, exactly what players in Africa’s tech space are doing a decade later. 

This spirit of rebellion and wanting to stand out has raised the profile of TechCabal over the past 10 years. A lowly blog from nowhere is now recognised for having a strong and discerning journalistic voice.

“The idea was everyone was invited,” Oluwafemi told TechCabal. “We were trying to start a conversation. We were trying to build a community to discuss how we’re solving problems and creating value and opportunity using software and technology.” 

In 2014, a competition called The TechCabal Battlefield changed the trajectory of the publication. It was one of Africa’s first tech startup competitions, with the largest prize money at the time: $20,000, sponsored by Stanbic IBTC Bank and iROKING.com. Out of 92 applications and a shortlist of 20, seven finalists were chosen, and they were: 500Shops, Adugbo, Callbase, CasaGrupo, Decoded, Autobox, and Prepclass, were the eventual winners. 

“It was mostly me doing the running around, and when we realised we were going to launch into the events space and do something much bigger than our skills, we realised we needed help,” Oluwafemi explained. 

TechCabal is bigger than they imagined

Oluwafemi and Taylor realised that this competition was bigger than they could have imagined, and it would change the way people viewed TechCabal forever. “To execute that event, we had to hire a bunch of temps to help us pull the event off in terms of comms, logistics, and helping the startups figure out what they needed to do. We also got a lot of support from the community — mentors, sponsors, and benefactors.” 

By 2015, TechCabal had become the most prominent and influential technology blog in the West Africa region. The mission was to scale, and with just the two founders on board, the company needed to fundraise as the need for more staff became apparent.

Advertising and business development alone weren’t enough to make the company more sustainable, so TechCabal had to hire operational and editorial talent. Oluwafemi resorted to devising a training programme to upskill anyone interested in writing for the publication, using the classic journalism book by Matthew Winkler, The Bloomberg Way: A Guide for Reporters and Editors. It would become the foundation on which TechCabal’s quality journalism was built in those days.

With very little money coming in TechCabal’s entrance turned into a revolving door—not an uncommon feature in many media houses. If the company couldn’t afford to keep an employee, Oluwafemi made a point of finding them alternative employment before letting them go.

TechCabal’s design hasn’t fluctuated much over the years since Oluwafemi used CorelDraw to develop the first iteration of the logo. He used minimalist WordPress themes that gave the site a classic feel and longevity by playing with iconography for images. The only significant change to the design came in 2018 when the brand colours changed from black and white to red and white, and the business went through a major reset with the arrival of Tomiwa Aladekomo as CEO of Big Cabal Media, the publisher of TechCabal. At this point, the company came of age and saw its first real fundraising round, which allowed it to increase its capacity and hire more talent in all departments.

Aladekomo brought a savvy business and media mind and positioned the company as a major player in the African tech media landscape, illustrated by significant audience numbers and commercial revenue growth.

Breaking records

Despite the challenges of running a media business in a hostile business environment, TechCabal has stayed the course and landed significant partnerships across the continent and beyond, including with Bloomberg, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Google, and CNBC Africa. The website has grown significantly over the past three years, breaking previous records in page views and user numbers.

A significant reason for TechCabal’s success over the past 10 years has been that we have always shown up again and again, taking the initiative to broach the most important conversations about tech in Africa. Technology will be the biggest growth driver across all industries in Africa in the foreseeable future. Few publications have documented the changing face of tech on the continent, like TechCabal. 

Into our next decade of existence, we at TechCabal take with us that spirit of hustle demonstrated by Oluwafemi all those years ago. We’re gazing on new horizons to the North, South and East of Africa as lands of opportunity for TechCabal’s growth. We’re delving into new and deeper subjects like Web3, AI, and the Internet of Things. Under new editorial leadership in Editor-in-Chief Adrian Ephraim, Newsroom Editor Olumuyiwa Olowogboyega and Deputy News Editor Kelechi Njoku, we hold onto that spirit of entrepreneurship and endeavour shown by Seyi Taylor and Aladekomo, and we look to the future with courage and optimism. 

Most importantly, we will take you, our reader, into the future with us as we rouse the forces of change driving Africa forward and challenge those ideas and individuals who will hold the continent back. We’ll shine a light on Africa’s successes and tell the stories of the grit, grind, and some inevitable failures.

At TechCabal, everyone is invited as we continue to build a community of tech enthusiasts and dreamers who share our passion for Africa’s future while living in the moment.

Happy 10th birthday, TechCabal!

1. Kenya became the first African country to teach coding as a subject in schools

In August, former Kenyan president, Uhuru Kenyatta, announced the addition of computer programming as a subject in its primary and secondary schools curricula. This announcement was well received because computer programming teaches children to experiment and gives them the confidence to be creative. It’s also seen as a move to ensure that Kenya continues to maintain its place as one of the hotbeds for digital innovation on the continent. 

The South African Department of Education made a similar announcement earlier in the year about introducing coding and robotics to schools.

2. Nigeria and DRC Congo now have startup acts

Across Africa regulation is seen as an essential tool required to foster innovation. This has led to a clamour for supporting regulation for the tech ecosystem through startup acts. A startup act is a legal and institutional framework for the advancement of startups in a country. It helps to create an environment that encourages the formation, growth, and operation of startups within a country.

In December 2019, Senegal became the second African nation to enact a national startup act, following Tunisia’s landmark bill that passed in April 2018.  This year Nigeria and DRC joined that list of African countries that have startup acts.

Over 10 African countries, including Kenya, Rwanda, Ghana, and Ethiopia, are still in the process of drafting their startup bills.  

3. The Central African Republic became the first African country to make bitcoin legal tender

Bitcoin has gained worldwide popularity and use in the past decade—with global adoption growing by 2,300% since 2019 and 103 countries allowing crypto trading. (Governments and regulators worldwide are still debating its safety.) 

In April, the Central African Republic (CAR) became the first African country to make bitcoin legal tender, and the second country in the world after El Salvador. This means that bitcoin must be accepted as payment alongside the Central African CFA franc.

Closely related to this, South Africa’s Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA), through the Financial Advisory and Intermediary Services (FAIS) Act, in October declared that cryptocurrency assets are classified as financial products, allowing them to be regulated.

These two African countries are outliers, compared to many African countries that have banned crypto or restricted its use. Four African countries—Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia—have banned all forms of crypto trading, while seven including Nigeria, Cameroon, and Gabon, have some forms of prohibition regarding crypto trading. These governments have cited numerous reasons for the bans, from fraud and money laundering to tax evasion and terrorist financing. 

4. A massive wave of layoffs

Layoffs are a common occurrence during an economic downturn and African startup employees weren’t exempt from experiencing them this year. 

Data from layoffs.fyi, a crowdsourced database of tech layoffs, shows that 1,495 tech companies have sacked 246,267 employees since the onset of COVID-19. Over 50,000 of such layoffs happened in 2022, with at least over 1,000 tech workers in Africa laid off. 

The layoffs started with Egyptian mobility startup Swvl laying off about 400 people in May. Startups such as Twiga foods, Quidax, Vendease, 54 Gene, Sendy and many more also carried out a similar exercise, attributing it to the economic downturn.

5. Nigerian fintech companies battled with fraud allegations in Kenya

Nigerian startups were under scrutiny by Kenyan Government agencies, particularly the Central Bank of Kenya and its Asset Recovery Agency (ARA), over allegations of card fraud and international money laundering.

Flutterwave Payment Technology Limited, Boxtrip Travel and Tours Limited, Bagtrip Travel Limited, Elivalat Fintech Limited, Adguru Technology Limited, Hupesi Solutions, Cruz Ride Auto Limited, Korapay, and one Simon Ngige were all accused of money laundering. 

A number of these fintech companies such as Flutterwave, Kora Pay and Kandon have been cleared of these fraud charges.

6. Over $4 billion raised in venture capital funding

The jury is still out on how much exactly African startups raised in 2022, but from all indicators, it’s close to what was raised last year. Over $4 billion has been raised so far in 2022 according to the Big Deal.

While there was no unicorn minted this year, a number of notable investment deals were made. Tanzanian startup, Ramani, raised a $32 million Series A, the largest Series A ever from the country; Wasoko (formerly Sokowatch), closed a $125 million Series B at a $625 million valuation;  Algerian Yassir raised $150m Series B;  Nigerian Fintech TeamApt raised $50 million; and Congo-based crypto startup Jambo raised $37.5 million cumulatively this year.

7. African companies embraced the Metaverse

In the past 12 months, the popularity of the Metaverse has soared with many companies making a play into the space through patents or experiments carried out.

In February, after its rebrand Africa’s largest telco MTN bought 144 plots of digital land in the Africarare metaverse Ubuntuland for an undisclosed sum, becoming the first African company to do so. Later in the year, Nedbank and South African retail Game, also followed suit.

8. 5G is here to stay, with more African countries getting access to this technology 

For long 5G has been touted to revolutionise the connectivity space; some analysts predict that 5G will add an additional $2.2 trillion to Africa’s economy by 2034.  This has led many African countries to begin trials with Gabon starting as early as 2019, but few have commercially launched 5G. This can be largely attributed to challenges around spectrum regulation clarity, commercial viability, and deployment deadlines.

This year MTN launched its 5G services across Nigeria and Zambia in the fourth quarter. Orange also launched 5G in Botswana. These commercial launches are a positive step forward as the continent battles with low citizen purchasing power of 5G-enabled smartphones and expensive internet.

9. Global tech companies set up African offices 

A physical presence speaks volumes of an organisation’s commitment to a country. This year a number of global tech companies set up their first African offices.

In March, Microsoft opened a new African Development Centre at Ikoyi, Lagos. The centre, which is a $100 million investment by the multi-billion dollar firm, is where software engineering solutions are expected to be provided to Africa. 

In April, Google announced its first African development centre in Nairobi. The centre is expected to help create transformative products and services for people in Africa.

In April, Visa opened its first African innovation studio in Kenya. This facility will serve the sub-Saharan Africa region and joins a network of innovation centres operated by Visa since 2016, in cities including London, Dubai, and Singapore. The Nairobi studio is the first in Africa and sixth globally.

In July, Bolt launched its first African headquarters in Nairobi, a regional hub for the seven African countries in which Bolt is operational—Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, and Tunisia.

10. Techstars Accelerator programme returned to Africa after five years

In April, Techstars announced the launch of the ARM Labs Lagos Techstars Accelerator Programme focused on helping fintech and proptech startups with products that serve an African audience.

The announcement signified a break from the five-year hiatus the accelerator with over $500 million assets under management (AUM) had taken in Africa. Techstars earlier ran an accelerator programme in South Africa from 2016 to 2017, in partnership with Barclays Bank where they invested in 21 startups, out of which three have been acquired, five have gone out of business, and 13 are still running. 

11. Swvl became the first African company to get listed via SPAC  

Egypt-born and Dubai-headquartered mobility startup, Swvl, merged with Queen’s Gambit Growth Capital in April at a valuation of $1.5 billion, becoming the first African startup to go public via a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC).

Since getting listed, however, Swvl’s valuation has crashed, and the startup is now valued at less than $40 million. 

12. The race for African data centres and cloud continues

At the start of the year, Oracle, the world’s largest database management company, opened its first cloud region (a cluster of data centres) in Africa. Other global cloud and database service providers followed suit later in the year.

In October, Google declared its intention to establish the first African Google Cloud region in South Africa. Amazon Web Services (AWS) in November opened its first office in Lagos, Nigeria, five years after its first office in Johannesburg was opened in 2017. In December, Liquid Intelligent Technologies officially launched operations in Nigeria, having earlier expanded to Zambia in August.

13. Amazon Prime Video became more pronounced in Nigeria

Amazon’s Prime Video has been strategically expanding its Nigerian content offering in the last few years, but this year pushed more aggressively with marketing and offering Nigerians the opportunity to pay for the service in local currency, the naira. Prime Video was previously unavailable to Nigerians, as many had to use VPNs to access it.

In January, the company struck a multi-year exclusive licensing deal with Anthill Studios, a Lagos-based company behind a couple of well-received movies including Elevator Baby and Day of Destiny. A year ago, it closed a similar deal with Inkblot Studios which produced the commercially successful The Wedding Party films. 

In June, Amazon Prime Video commissioned Nollywood’s Nemsia Films, makers of God Calling (2018) and Journey of an African Colony (2019), to produce three films.

Recently, Nigerian Highlife singer, Flavour, was reported to have signed an exclusive deal with the streamers for the release of a biopic. 

With these moves, Amazon Prime Video joined Africa’s video-on-demand (VOD)  streaming war.

14. Vodacom pulled the plug on its video streaming service

The entry of new players to the African VOD scene also means there were some exits. Video Play, a video streaming service launched by Vodacom in August 2015, was shut down in July 2022.

The services had over 1 million downloads on the Google Play Store alone and was made recently free. The company had in 2019 secured the rights to live-stream the English FA Cup on the service as well as securing rights to broadcast American film production studio company Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)’s content in 2020.

The streaming service joins a lengthy list of South African streaming services by mobile network operators to be discontinued, as competition in the on-demand content streaming space continues to get tougher.

15. Google’s Africa internet cable arrives in Africa

Equiano, a subsea internet cable running through Portugal to South Africa, arrived in Africa in 2022. The cable runs through Togo, Nigeria, Namibia, and South Africa. It’s expected to become operational this month. 

This project marks a milestone in Google’s plan to provide affordable internet access in Africa by building global infrastructure to help bring faster internet to more people and lower connectivity costs.

The project, which is named after Nigerian-born writer and abolitionist Olaudah Equiano, is expected to help support further digital transformation on the continent and accelerate economic growth with GDPs of Nigeria expected to rise by $10.1 billion, South Africa $7 billion and $260 million in Namibia.

Closely related to that, Elon Musk’s Starlink received approval to provide internet service in Nigeria and Mozambique.

16. Meta-backed 2Africa Subsea Cable internet lands in Africa

At 45,000km, 2Africa Pearls is the world’s largest subsea internet cable and is set to connect 33 locations at 46 locations across Africa, Europe, and Asia once it’s complete. In December, the cable landed in Cape Town. The 2Africa project aims to provide Africa with better internet access.

Launched by Meta in May 2020, the 2Africa project is done in collaboration with MTN, Orange, Vodafone, and China Mobile. Unlike Equiano, the 2Africa cable will eventually encircle the entire African continent, with the first part of the system scheduled to go live next year.

17. Meta quietly shuts down its low-cost internet programme across Africa

After more than five years in operation, Meta shut down Express Wi-Fi, a programme designed to provide low-cost internet in developing countries through partnerships with local communities, mobile operators, and businesses. The Express Wi-Fi program was operational in countries such as  Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Kenya, Côte d’Ivoire, Zambia, Cameroon, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Madagascar, South Africa, and Uganda.

18. Workplace culture issues and scandals

In addition to layoffs and the economic downturn, scandals rocked the booming African tech ecosystem in 2022.

This year saw a number of tech startup CEOs being challenged for misconduct. 

In March 2022, the alleged toxic behaviour of Ebunoluwa Okunbanjo, Bento Africa CEO, was exposed after a series of interviews with former and current employees. In light of these revelations, Okunbanjo was asked to step aside from the company for a few months by the board of directors. He later returned to the helm of the company as CEO.

In April, Flutterwave CEO Olugbenga Agboola was in the spotlight for a myriad of allegations ranging from harassment to insider trading, based on different revelations. Flutterwave has denied these allegations. Other notable startups that faced scandals include Egyptian B2B e-commerce Capiter, Kloud Commerce, Risevest, and Healthlane.

19. A wave of acquisitions 

There’s been a rise in acquisition deals happening on the continent this year. In the first half of 2022, TechCabal tracked 26 acquisitions; meanwhile, in Q3 2022, we tracked 17. Some of these acquisitions are: 

B2B marketplace TradeDepot’s acquired Accra-based GreenLion;  Silvertree’s $12.3 million acquired South African meal kit delivery startup Ucook; MFS Africa’s $34 million bought Global Technology Partners; Liquid Intelligent Technologies acquired of Israeli Telrad; Belgium-based Dstyn’s purchased Egyptian Tactful AI; Nigerian home concierge startup Eden life acquired Kenyan-based Lynk; UK-based power company Bboxx acquired West Africa-based solar energy provider Peg; Moroccan B2B e-commerce Chari acquired Ivorian B2B e-commerce startup Diago;  and mPharma acquired a majority stake in HealthPlus. 

20.  A South African was charged in the largest fraud scheme involving bitcoin

In July, 2022, the U.S Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) charged South African resident Cornelius Johannes Steynberg in a bitcoin fraud scheme case totalling $1.7 billion. Sternberg was recently detained in Brazil on an Interpol arrest warrant. 

21.  Zanzibar launched Silicon Zanzibar 

Zanzibar, a semi-autonomous island in East Africa, launched its plan to be Africa’s leading tech hub, through its Silicon Zanzibar project.

Led by the Zanzibar Ministry of Investment and Economic Development alongside several African tech companies, Silicon Zanzibar aims to attract technology firms and workers from across Africa and beyond. To lure tech companies, Zanzibar is dishing out work visas for relocating tech workers, something that has been problematic in mature markets like Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, and South Africa.

Other incentives in the Zanzibar Free Economic Zone include exemption from corporate tax for 10 years.

22. MTN exits the Middle East

In November, Africa’s largest wireless carrier, MTN Group announced that it sold its Afghanistan business to Beirut-based M1 New Ventures for $35 million as it continues to reduce its presence outside the continent. 

This move is in line with MTN’s strategic priority, since 2020, of narrowing focus on its home continent. The group has earlier abandoned its Syrian business and transferred its Yemen unit to a partner. MTN remains present in Iran.

Decades of ethnic conflicts and political crises have made the second-largest country in Africa fall short of its potential. However, the country’s government and members of its tech ecosystem are working to change this, with the recent approval of the country’s startup bill “DRC Start-Up Act” being a major step in the right direction. 

“We are putting in place the necessary framework to transform DRC’s advantage into economic dividends,” Félix Mangwangu, CEO of Ishango startup centre, one of the largest incubators in DRC, told TechCabal. “The misconceptions about DRC that we’re a country at war with no opportunities or interesting startups to finance are false.”

The startup bill was signed into law on September 8, 2022 by President Felix Tshisekedi and published in the government’s official journal on November 2. The official launch of the startup act took place at the Hotel Pullman in Kinshasa on November 23. This landmark event took place three years after the idea for this bill was conceived at the pre-hackathon of Lubumbashi Digital Story in November 2019 and the Kinshasa Policy Hackathon in February 2020.  

The act was designed through a participatory process involving the collaboration of different stakeholders in the DRC ecosystem. In February 2020, the promoters of the bill collaborated with i4Policy, a pan-African entity specialised in the formulation of startup acts and Patrick Muyaya, then a member of the Congolese parliament and now the minister of communication. 

In August 2020, a national workshop was organised to consolidate and validate the working version DRC startup bill. This process which was led by the Ministry of Entrepreneurship and SMEs brought together members of the private and public sector in order to reach a consensus. By June 2021, the bill was sent to parliament and integrated into two draft bills on the promotion of entrepreneurship and startups. 

After over a year of the bill being in the parliament, President Tshisekedi passed the bill into law on September 8, 2022.

What’s in the new act?

This new act is expected to provide a legal and regulatory framework that supports and promotes entrepreneurship and innovation among tech startups in DRC. 

The bill, which is over 60 pages long, contains many laws with a few key highlights being: a clear definition of startups and incubators; tax benefits for startups, incubators, investors and investment groups; intellectual property protection; funding for research and development; days off work for startups founders who are currently employees in order to work on their startups.

The new act defines a startup as “an innovative venture with a strong potential for exponential economic growth which has been operating for less than seven years, that is in need of substantial capital investment to operate and scale its business model.”

Although the act is law, there’s still one more hurdle left as the law only establishes the general guiding principles and still needs decrees to clarify the specifics of these new laws. For example, it’s not clear how much tax incentive investors would get or how many days off work startup founders can get from their current employers.

Junior Luyindula, a regulatory expert and co-founder of avocats.cd, explained to TechCabal that this is a normal process in francophone countries where laws need accompanying decrees to be signed by the prime minister and minister for entrepreneurship. 

Luyindula added that the creation of the decrees and implementation of the startup Act will be done with input from founders, investors, incubators and other relevant ecosystem players. 

Putting DRC back on the map

Across Africa, startup acts are emerging, with Kenya, Rwanda, Ghana, Ethiopia and a few other African countries still in the process of drafting their startup bills. DRC joins an elite list of a few African countries such as Senegal, Nigeria and Tunisia which have startup acts. 

With this act, it’s expected that DRC will be able to better support tech innovators and entrepreneurs contributing to the country’s digital transformation. 

Alongside the act, there are other measures being put in place to improve the business climate in DRC. These include a bill on digital technology and online rights, which is currently in parliament; and the transformation of the National Agency for the Development of Congolese Entrepreneurship ANADEC, which has been endowed with financial resources to implement support measures for Congolese entrepreneurs.

In terms of financial incentives, the World Bank recently launched a $300 million Transform project, which will support the creation of up to 2,500 formal businesses and 28,000 new jobs in Congo. The Congolese government also established the Entrepreneurship Guarantee Fund in Congo (FOGEC) whose mission is to facilitate and guarantee access to Congolese financing.

These efforts combined with a fairly stable political climate are critical elements that the DRC tech ecosystem will be banking on to help restore investor confidence, considering that one of the biggest challenges facing Congolese startups is access to finance.

In 2021 Congolese startups raised less than $1 million from VC firms according to Partech 2021 funding report with the major deal being $350,000 raised by female-founded fintech Maxicash, a paltry sum when compared to $353 million raised by neighbouring francophone counterpart Senegal which had its startup Act in December 2019. 

Fortunately, these different efforts appear to be bearing dividends as Congo-based cryptocurrency startup Jambo raised $37.5 million earlier this year and, more recently, B2B food marketplace Wenzemobile raised a $60,000 pre-seed from DRC Impact Angels and Catalytic Africa, a matching fund by the African Business Angels Network (ABAN). 

“This act and other steps by the DRC government will help put the country back on the map of credible Africa tech ecosystems with a visible legal framework, making it easier for investors to come in,” Hannah Subayi, co-founder of DRC Impact Angels, told TechCabal.

“We are all very excited to show the innovative scalable tech solutions developed in DRC.”

The announcement was made today by minister of communications and digital economy Isa Pantami, who shared on Twitter that Nigerian president, Muhammadu Buhari, has signed the bill into law.

This news comes a year after the draft bill was first submitted to the Presidency and the Federal Executive Council (FEC). It also comes almost three months after the Nigerian senate passed the bill.

With the new Act, Nigeria’s tech ecosystem should see an improved enabling environment in the near future. Tech startups in Nigeria face a number of regulatory hurdles, and suffer from a lack of basic amenities like constant power supply and limited funding. 

Crypto startups, for example, have had to innovate since the Central Bank of Nigeria reinforced a ban on crypto trading in 2021. In 2020, state regulations also banned bike-hailing startups in Lagos, Nigeria’s most populous city, and sent mobility startups like ORide, Max.ng, and Gokada running from the city. 

One of the 3 objectives of the Nigeria Startup Act is to bridge the engagement gap between startups and regulators and ensure that harmful regulations like these are shut down. Among other things, the bill also seeks to encourage the establishment, development and operation of startups in the country via incentives like tax breaks, government loans, and credit guarantee schemes. 

The NSB—now NSA—has provisions for tax breaks for new startups, and also provides tax incentives for foreign service providers. It also delineates requirements for registration and licensing or labelling of startups. 

The timeline of the bill

June–September 2021: The Nigeria Startup Bill draft is created by the Nigerian presidency, in collaboration with 30 tech leaders including Ventures Platform founder Kola Aina and Future Africa founder Iyin Aboyeji, NITDA officials, and the minister of digital economy Isa Pantami.

October 2021: A draft of the bill is submitted to the Presidency and the Federal Executive Council (FEC).

December 2021: The Federal Executive Council (FEC) approves the bill.

February 2022: Nigerian president, Muhammadu Buhari, passes the bill to the National Assembly.

March 2022: The bill reaches the National Assembly and is received by the Nigerian Senate.

June 2022: Lagos, Nigeria’s most populous state, announces plans to domesticate the bill at state level.

July 2022: Nigerian Senate approves the bill and passes it to the House of Representatives. 

July 2022: The House of Reps passes the bill to the president for approval. 

October 2022: President Muhammadu Buhari signs the bill into law.

“The evidence presented to the panel could not prove sexual assault by Eke Urum. However, the evidence presented to the panel including admitted sexual relations with an employee and unwanted, inappropriate jokes and conversations revealed sexual impropriety. It also showed a pattern of abuse of power, intimidation, retaliation and workplace bullying by him,” the statement reads.

A member of the investigation panel, Toun Tunde-Anjous shared that the panel recommended that Urum should not be reinstated as CEO. Instead, Tony Odiba, the acting CEO, will remain in that capacity until the newly constituted board appoints the next CEO.  Urum will transition into a non-executive member of a new board and will lead the startup’s investment strategy and provide guidance on technology.

“As a leader, I have grown a lot over the years and still have a lot of growing to do, which is why I’m going to be taking additional coaching and executive training,” Urum told TechCabal in response to the findings of the investigation. “I regret the distraction that my actions may have caused and fully respect the integrity of the process the Risevest investors and the panel underwent to identify the gaps in our systems and my leadership.” 

It took the investigation panel, comprised of Odun Longe and Toun Tunde-Anjous, and chaired by Tomi Davies, speaking with almost 60 current and former employees over the course of six weeks to reach a conclusion. 

The investigation panel also recommended that a board of directors comprised of Urum, Tony Odiba, two investor representatives, and one independent member approved by both founder and investor groups, is immediately constituted. Risevest didn’t previously have a board of directors. The panel called that after the board is formed, the conversion of currently-held (simple agreement for future equity) SAFEs into equity should take place. 

Back in August, Urum was asked to step aside by investors at the company, despite owning the largest part of the company, until the end of the investigation by panel members appointed by the investors.

“Following allegations of sexual and non-sexual impropriety from someone who can be reasonably expected to have knowledge of such, investors of Risevest have asked Eke Urum to step aside from his role as founder and CEO and an independent investigation is ongoing,” a statement shared with TechCabal then reads. 

Urum expressed his desire to support Tony Odiba in his position as acting CEO while implementing the changes needed to ensure Risevest’s culture is inclusive, safe, and welcoming. 

Update: The statement shared with TechCabal by Risevest’s investigation panel was added to the article for clarity. This update was done at 3:45 PM on October 06, 2022.

“Following allegations of sexual and non-sexual impropriety from someone who can be reasonably expected to have knowledge of such, investors of Risevest have asked Eke Urum to step aside from his role as founder and CEO and an independent investigation is ongoing,” a part of the statement reads. 

TechCabal has since established that Eke was first notified of the allegations against him by the investors on August 1st. 

“I was told on the evening of August 1 by investors that someone reached out that there were allegations of bullying, sexual harassment, and intimidation,” Eke told TechCabal over a call. “They didn’t say by whom, but I was told to step aside so an independent panel could carry out an investigation.”

He stepped down two days later.

Eke claims he doesn’t know who’s behind the allegation and is patiently waiting for the outcome of the investigation.

“We [investors, investigative panel and the Risevest team] all agreed that it’s best for the panel to complete their investigation without any external noise, else it’ll add bias to the investigation or preempt the outcome,”  Eke said.

Founded in 2019 by Bosun Olanrewaju, Eke Urum, and Tony Odiba, Risevest allows Africans to invest in foreign investment opportunities. The company’s last funding was an undisclosed seed round in March 2021. And its disclosed funding to date is a $120,000 seed round from July 2020. In August 2021, Risevest, which then had over 12,000 people present in its Telegram learning community, was one of four fintech companies whose accounts the Nigerian central bank froze for 180 days for engaging in speculative trading that allegedly weakened the naira against the dollar. Two months later, in October, the company overturned the order. 

In his place, the company’s current head of operations, Tony Odiba, will be acting CEO. Otasowie Evbuomwan, will lead its US operations. Investors have committed to supporting them settle into their new roles in light of the ongoing investigation. They have also assured the company’s stakeholders that depositors’ funds are safe, as the ongoing investigation does not concern financial impropriety. 

Back in February 2021, TechCabal published a story where a former employee of Risevest, Efe, accused Eke in a Medium post of creating a stifling work environment where criticism was unwelcome. Efe, who before leaving the startup, was its head of marketing, accused Eke of a breach of contract because he had fired her for not wanting to work at the startup’s physical office due to COVID concerns. Eke had initially called the allegations “blatant half truths”. But in another interview with TechCabal, he took responsibility for the allegations and apologised.

This incident is the latest in the trend of Nigerian tech CEOs being ousted for misconduct. 

In August 2021, Favour Ori, CEO of WeJapa, a tech talent-matching startup, was asked to step aside by Microtraction, the startup’s investor, for allegedly underpaying and refusing to pay freelance software developers; and berating and undermining them over disagreements.

Earlier this year, TechCabal’s investigation into the activities of Ebunoluwa Okunbanjo, founder and CEO of Bento Africa, a payroll management startup, culminated in a decision by the company’s board of directors to make Okunbanjo take a backseat in the management of the company. 

During the same period that Okunbanjo’s story came out, Eke was accused by an unknown person of sexual harrassment, an accusation he publicly disputed. 

“There’s a part of me that’s wondering if it’s the same situation coming up again. I don’t know whether its the same person or a new person,” Eke said. “But my response to that situation was very public. It was a lie and it wasn’t someone who worked with me at Rise, it was someone I hired to do some personal research.”

Throughout the conversation with TechCabal, Eke maintained his intention not to preempt the outcome of the investigation.

The investigation panel set up to look into allegations includes TVC Labs’ Tomi Davies (TD) as chair; TLP Advisory’s Odunoluwa Longe as legal adviser, and The People Practice’s Toun Tunde-Anjous as people and culture adviser. 

“Risevest’s investors strongly oppose any form of harassment and impropriety and will carry out extensive measures to investigate all allegations,” the remainder of the company’s statement reads.  “To this end, the panel is allowing for a period of time for former employees of Risevest to share information that may assist with the investigation, whilst simultaneously speaking with current employees of Risevest.”

Fifty-four percent of African startups founded between 2010 and 2018 shut down, according to the 2020 Better Africa report. Globally, 90% of new startups fail and 75% of venture-backed startups fail, per Zippia. Under 50% of new businesses make it to their fifth year, and 33% of startups make it to the 10-year mark. 

Despite this high failure rate and the arduous nature of building startups, Africa’s foremost eCommerce platform, Jumia celebrated its tenth-year anniversary in June 2022. 

Over the years, Jumia has become a poster child of startup success on the African continent. It became Africa’s first tech unicorn in 2016 and then went on to get listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) three years later. The company has also provided thousands of jobs for Africans. It currently has 1,000 employees, more than 10,000 independent sales agents, and 350 third-party logistics partners. Jumia has also helped over 100,000 SMEs come online across Africa since its inception. 

“From the beginning, we wanted to improve people’s lives through the internet, we had a big ambition and we saw potential in Nigeria and Africa,” Massimiliano Spalazzi, CEO Jumia Nigeria, told TechCabal over a call.

These noteworthy feats have made many describe Jumia, which operates across 11 African countries, as the Amazon of Africa, a description Spalazzi would rather not adopt. 

“I’d refer to us as Jumia,” he said.

Ade Atobatele, CEO of Remarkable Ideas, agrees with this as he believes Jumia started off as a clone of Amazon but hasn’t become all that the $1.3 trillion multi-sector behemoth is. 

“The imitation of Amazon is a trap that restricts Jumia. It has to look beyond the Amazon model,” Atobatele said.

To understand what makes Jumia different from many other African startups and what the next 10 years could look like for the company whose sole mission is to improve the lives of people through the internet, let’s take a walk down memory lane.

Remember Africa Internet Group?

In 2012, two Mckinsey consultants, Sacha Poignonnec and Jeremy Hodara, alongside Raphael Kofi Afaedor and Tunde Kehinde who held marketing and sales roles at Notore Chemicals Industries and Diageo came together to co-found Jumia.

Jumia was initially a prominent business under Africa Internet Group (AIG), a parent company that housed 71 different companies across 26 African countries, including the online delivery service, Hellofood, a hotel booking company called Jovago, and the ride-hailing service, Easy Taxi. 

AIG’s model was seen as a clone of its main backer, Rocket Internet, a European company which incubated and invested in companies. The strategy was to back startups which replicated the business models of other established, successful companies around the world. The expectation was that these startups would grow to dominate the markets they existed in or be acquired by the likes of Amazon or Uber.

Jumia, which was the biggest of the group’s businesses, was launched in Nigeria and within the first three years expanded to Algeria, Cameroon, Egypt, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Morocco, Senegal, Tanzania, and Uganda. Within its first four years, AIG raised $493 million from Goldman Sachs, AXA, MTN, Orange, and Rocket Internet, reaching a $1 billion valuation (unicorn status) by March 2016.

Prior to the attainment of its unicorn status, there was some restructuring and rebranding at AIG. This included staff lay-offs and the replacement of the heads of Kaymu, Jovago, Easy Taxi, and Lamudi. The group’s brand name was also changed to Jumia, and the other companies adopted the Jumia brand name. Jovago became Jumia Travel, Lamudi became Jumia House, HelloFood morphed into Jumia Food, Carmudi became Jumia Cars, Vendito became Jumia Deals, and Everjobs became Jumia Jobs.

After Jumia was listed on the NYSE in 2019, it exited a few markets such as Cameroon and Tanzania in the bid to consolidate its efforts and resources on more profitable markets. The company also handed over the reins of its Jumia Travel subsidiary to Travelstart through a distribution and commercial agreement.

Losses and challenges on the path to profitability

These changes were important for Jumia’s growth and survival as the company was hemorrhaging millions of dollars annually. 

Jumia has been making losses since its inception, losses it could afford to make because it raised almost half a billion in venture capital funding. This heavy loss-incurring route is often seen as a conventional one taken by VC-backed startups on the journey to conquering the market.

To put this into context, it took Amazon nine years to break even; and, as for Uber, throughout its existence, the ride-hailing giant has only reported profit once, in 2018.  Jumia’s closest competitor on the continent, Konga, which raised a total of $79.5 million in VC funding, was acquired by Zinox for an undisclosed sum—an amount rumoured to be at a great loss to investors. 

Jumia recorded a net loss of $226.9 million last year, about 11% less than the $254 million it incurred in 2019.  The company’s revenue, which was $179 million in 2019, took a nose dive in 2020 due to the pandemic ($159 million), but appears to be recovering with the company recording $177.9 million in 2021, and is projecting a $200 million revenue this year. 

The company is now keen on reducing the losses as it’s aggressively pushing towards profitability. 

Atobatele, who is a tech consultant with over 15 years’ international experience, believes that Jumia’s top executives and its Research and Development being based in Europe is an avoidable cost driver.

“For a company that makes all its revenue from Africa, incurring these costs is having a pull effect on the company’s expenses,” he said.

Notwithstanding all these, Spalazzi, who has been with Jumia since inception, attributes the company’s survival and growth over the years to focus and consistency.

“Since the beginning, we have really focused on the customers. I know it appears cliche to say this, but that’s the reality,” Spalazzi said. “If you look at our products you’ll see that we focus on making our customers happy, as well as our vendors and logistics companies.”

Ecommerce companies on the African continent have had to deal with the lack of functional addressing systems, poor road networks, a general preference for cash payments, worries about fake products, and escalating security concerns. A battle Jumia is still fighting until this day.

“We were consistent in waking up every morning knowing that it’s going to be a battle,” Spalazzi said. 

Jumia’s biggest hurdle came after it went public. The company’s stock price started off at $14.50 per share when it listed in 2019, then within 4 days rose to $49.77. This climb didn’t last as allegations of fraud and concealed losses based on a scathing report by a notorious short-seller which came a few weeks later, led the company’s share price to take a nosedive to an all-time low of $2.15 per share. 

The company addressed the fraud concerns, by carrying out internal investigations, suspending three management staff and then paying $5 million to settle class action lawsuits related to the fraud claims. 

Experiments and new verticals 

Jumia which started as an e-commerce company has evolved to become a four-headed online giant: a marketplace with one billion annual visits largely dominated by third-party sellers; a logistics arm that handles shipments and deliveries for itself and as a service to other brands; a payments platform that’s the bedrock of its fintech ambition; and an advertising platform that plans to connect advertisers with African consumers.

“We started with eCommerce, then we expanded with Jumia Food and created Jumia Pay,” Spalazzi said. “We then realised that we’ve been delivering so many packages across Africa, and in the process have built a very solid business delivering last mile. So we started to offer our logistics services to anyone.”

The company also tested the idea of using drones to deliver packages, recently offering same-day delivery and free delivery. 

“Looking at logistics, we have over 350 pickup stations across populated cities and remote areas in Nigeria,” Spalazzi said as he made references to different experiments carried out by Jumia. “We also experimented with the JForce team, an independent team of agents that are making money through commissions while educating customers on how to buy online from Jumia,” 

Amidst the plethora of experiments and new product launches, some of them have so far worked out well and impacted the company’s bottom line positively. In Q2 2022, Jumia’s active consumers reached 3.4 million and its gross merchandise volume (GMV) reached $271 million, recording the highest GMV growth in the past two years. Jumia’s co-CEO, Hodara, shared on the company’s Q2 earnings call that 60% of shipped packages reached consumers within 24 hours of placing the order, a 3% increase from Q1. 

Its logistics-as-a-service arm generated $1 million in Q2 2022. In the first quarter of 2022, Jumia delivered 3.5 million packages for other companies, compared to 800,000 a year later.

Jumia Pay, the company’s fintech product, processes a significant portion of transactions on the platform and is used to pay for bus rides in Nigeria and university tuition fees in Egypt. 

Competition and the next 10 years

In the past decade, the adoption of online shopping has increased. The pandemic accelerated this trend. An improvement in internet penetration and payment methods has also increased the addressable market for eCommerce companies on the continent. 

These factors have led to the rise of the use of eCommerce sites and also social commerce platforms such as Instagram, Pocket by Piggyvest, Elloe, Gifty, Tushop. It has also stirred up rumours about the entrance of global eCommerce giant, Amazon, on the continent. 

How will Jumia respond to its competitors?

Atobatele is of the opinion that Jumia doesn’t have any worthy competitor on the continent, as it is miles ahead of the other players in the space in terms of products and scale. Konga, Jumia’s closest Nigerian competitor, recently launched its food delivery arm, two years after Jumia Foods was launched.

Spalazzi believes that while the company cannot control where people go, Jumia is banking on building an ecosystem of products that meet the needs of customers.

“Once we’ve built the base of eCommerce, food delivery, payments, logistics and advertising, we can build several other services on that,” Spalazzi said. “So our roadmap and our vision is the same as the first day, we want to improve people lives through the internet and satisfy their needs as much as possible.” 

The possibilities are endless with Jumia, which has made it this far as a result of its focus on customer needs, being financially buoyant to bear the losses, and constantly experimenting and launching new products to unlock new revenue streams.

“The problems are always the same: How do we make customers happy?” Spalazzi said.

For Jumia to truly earn its stripes, Atobatele believes it must introduce products and features that aren’t in the Amazon model. He suggests that the company can adopt the model of Bangalore-based startup Dukaan or Shopify by giving merchants tools and software to run their business.

“If you give me tools and my online store is connected to your marketplace, it’s difficult for another marketplace to come in and get me to move,” Atobatele said. 

First, there was some drama around the Ghanaian government sending $3 million cash by chartered plane to Brazil to pay the appearance fees owed to the national team. Then, the national team was eliminated a few days later at the group stage, a worse performance than its impressive quarter-finals appearance at the 2010 world cup.

Meanwhile, Aryee, co-founder of Ghana-based podcast network Gold Coast Report (GCR) was getting other ideas. “As sports fans, we wanted to write something about the whole episode which was the talk of the town. We wanted to start a conversation so we started to reach out to writers. But it was very difficult to get people to come together and write consistently,” he told TechCabal.

After 2 years of many failed attempts at kicking off an online publication, Aryee and his co-founder Cyril Afeku turned to podcasts. In 2017, Aryee and the GCR team launched 3 podcasts: The Other Room, a women-focused show, After the Whistle, a sports show and Free your mind, a general talk show that covers lifestyle, culture and arts. They ended up launching 3 podcasts because he realised there were many other stories he wanted to tell through the medium. 

Today, GCR’s network of podcasts has 19 shows, a growth that mirrors the rise of podcasting in Africa and the World. Per Insider Intelligence, there are currently over 2 million podcasts and 424.2 million podcast listeners worldwide in 2022, a 10.6% increase from the previous year. As of 2020, the global podcasting market size was valued at $11.46 billion. It grew to $13.785 billion in 2021 and is expected to be a massive $153.07 billion in 2030, according to Acumen Research and Consulting.

This growth has been spurred by the proliferation of new shows (many of which involve celebrity talents), investments from large companies like Spotify, and the increased affordability and availability of technologies such as smartphones and smart speakers that boost awareness and access.

While more Africans on the continent are getting into the podcasting space, it remains more of a passion project that takes many years to become a profit-making venture. Maurice Otieno, Executive director of Kenya-based Baraza Media Lab, believes that Africa’s struggling infrastructure is a major reason for this.

“The internet is not widely distributed and the cost of data is still very high. Once this is sorted, either through investments in the infrastructure or in innovation, then it can become easier to monetize,” Otieno said.

To add, advertising revenue from sponsors is not the same in Africa as in the rest of the world, because Africa receives less than 1% of the global ad spend. Per Insider Intelligence, global ad spend last year was $780 billion while ad spend in Africa was an estimated $5.11 billion. This minuscule ad spend is split across different media platforms in Africa, with TV and radio attracting a larger share of the audience and ad spend.

In Africa, while the radio is still a critical channel for audio content, podcasting is providing African creators with a new way to tell their stories. From Johannesburg to Nairobi, Accra and Lagos, audio creators are starting conversations about their lives and work while tackling social, political and cultural issues like gender norms and inequality head-on. 

The first global African podcast festival happened virtually in February 2021, and the organisers shared that the event reached 1.1 million people from 43 countries. Further validation that Africa has a thriving podcast culture. 

“Before, when you tell people about podcasts and explain what it is, they immediately reply that it’s the same as radio but now they know better,” Aisha Salaudeen, co-founder of  Lagos-based audio and visual storytelling company Twenty-Seven Productions said. 

How did we get here? 

People love podcasts’ audio familiarity, convenience and lower barrier to entry. 

“I think from an audience perspective the biggest attraction to podcasts is that they’re something you can listen to passively—in the car or at the gym,” said Johannesburg-based Justin Norman, founder and host of The Flip Podcast. “And so, as a podcaster, you have a captive audience for that period of time.”

An important factor behind Norman’s decision to choose podcasts as his medium of communication was that audio helps bridge the gap of familiarity between speakers and their audience.

“The podcast format was really important for me because I wanted the audience to hear directly from the expert,” Norman said. “Obviously, I could do that in a newsletter but I thought audio media was really important, from a representation perspective. [For example, listening to] Shola living in Nigeria, talk about Paystack in this Nigerian accent makes a difference.”

Can anyone start a podcast?

Compared to traditional radio which requires operating licenses and videos which demand more technical expertise, podcasts arguably have a lower barrier to entry. You only need to have ideas you wish to share and the right equipment—anyone can start a podcast. 

But not all podcasts are the same. Though the ubiquity of smartphones might have lowered the barrier to podcast creation through podcast-making apps, there’s still demand for a well-equipped studio for recording podcasts.

Lagos-based Mosope Alabi-Oyo, host of the Truth Booth podcast is one of such people making studio-grade podcasts. She prefers to carry her recording kit wherever she’s going to interview a podcast guest. 

“I know you can record podcasts over an online call but the Nigerian internet network will embarrass you,” Alabi-Oyo said. “Online calls don’t meet the quality I want. I can tell the difference when it’s recorded online and It just doesn’t feel like it.”

38-year-old Nairobi-based musician Dan Aceda saw this market demand for high-quality, studio-produced podcasts and set up SemaBOX, a specialist podcasting studio. The Kenyan-based company offers podcasters and vloggers a range of recording services that are priced between Kes 2,000 ($16) to Kes 35,000 ($292) per episode. 

“When you want to be a podcaster or vlogger, there’s a requirement for you to now become a sound engineer or cinematographer,” Aceda said. “You have to learn all these things [if you’re on your own] and that’s what we are taking out.”

Aceda shared that SemaBOX has recorded 700 podcast episodes since it opened up its studio to the public in November 2021. Its top 70 podcasts generated $48,000 cumulatively within the past year, in addition to a $2,000 grant the studio received from Baraza Media Lab.

Aryee’s Ghana-based GCR offers similar assistance to aspiring podcasters. To cater for the growing interest of aspiring podcasters, GCR created an incubator programme where the company picks the 5 best podcast ideas from applicants and helps them develop these ideas into podcasts. The second edition is scheduled to take place in 2023.

“We call them in and then take them through topics such as how to develop a podcast show, recording techniques and social media promotion,” Aryee explained.

The shows on the GCR network are a mix of co-developed shows between aspiring podcasters and GCR experts, as well as already developed shows that want to join the network for support and visibility. Both GCR and SemaBOX offer their incubation services in exchange for a revenue split agreement.

Growing a podcast

Anyone might be able to start a podcast but it takes more to grow the listenership.

For Justin Norman who hosts The Flip Africa, producing quality content makes all the difference. He put out two seasons which garnered thousands of listens before monetising it. In Aryee’s case, the GCR podcast growth was a result of compelling graphic artwork and an effective social media strategy. 

African podcasters are exploring innovative ways to distribute their podcasts, from YouTube videos to listening parties and live events. 

Take the I Said What I Said podcast for example. Its hosts, Feyikemi Abudu and Jola Ayeye, threw an owambe party in December 2021. Salaudeen of Twenty-Seven Productions explains that: “On the surface, you might be thinking, what are they doing, but people are having fun. They’re building a community for the podcast so that people who missed the party will feel like they should have been part of it.”

This past decade has seen podcasters increasingly take up a video-first approach: creating podcasts for YouTube and then distributing them on other podcast platforms. According to Norman, this new approach is effective because YouTube offers greater distribution than other podcast platforms and a more attractive monetisation potential through AdSense. YouTube currently has more than 2.6 billion monthly active users and generated $7.4 billion from ad revenue in Q2 2022.

For many Africans, YouTube, which comes pre-installed on many android devices, is a primary entry point into the internet, compared to any other podcast app. The fact that it has a visual component also makes it more appealing to Africa’s youth population.

Jola Ayeye, co-host of Nigerian-based podcast I Said What I Said (ISWIS) confirmed the validity of these assertions in an interview with Communiqué. She shared that adding video as a distribution channel in 2021 helped the podcast grow exponentially. “There’s a whole new segment of our audience that doesn’t even know we have an audio podcast. They think it’s just video,” Ayeye said.

Monetising podcasts 

Podcasting often starts as a passion project that’s later monetised or a medium to build brand equity. Among 7 podcasters TechCabal spoke to, the most popular means for monetisation were advertising and sponsorship. 

“Advertising is the most popular means of monetisation. Brands are paying money to get heard on certain podcasts because people tend to skip fewer ads on podcasts than they do on mediums like video,” Salaudeen said.

Aryee shared that a large podcast listenership helps attract more advertisement revenue, a claim that Norman agrees with but added that it depends on the type of podcast and the target audience.

Norman’s first sponsorship offer came in 2020 after he did a podcast episode on MFS Africa acquiring Beyonic. This got the attention of the pan-African fintech company, MFS Africa, which reached out later for conversations on sponsorship.

“In the case with MFS Africa, they sponsored one season just to start, and after that season they were interested in continuing, so I signed them up to sponsor multiple seasons,” Norman said. 

SemaBOX found out that podcasts with a small but loyal audience tend to command high bargaining power and earnings than podcasts with high but fluctuating numbers. 

“If a podcast has only about 4,000 listeners, but they always listen and every episode consistently has about 4,000–5,000 listeners, sponsorship partners tend to be very interested.” Aceda, the Kenyan musician said. “This is because they consider this podcast as a nano influencer in that particular space. And so it may seem counterintuitive, but those types of podcasters are making more money than some big podcasters.” 

Advertisers also look to the size of the podcast’s social media followership. 

Other revenue channels open to African podcasters include live events such as ISWIS’s owambe party, cultural funding opportunities such as Spotify’s $100,000 grant for African creators and even joining advert networks, despite its shortcomings. 

At what point do you monetise?

There’s no generally accepted threshold for monetising but Aryee suggested a show with 1,000 listens can start engaging sponsors.

“It depends. For smaller shows that are coming up, you can have a conversation with smaller brands that would just be interested in the kind of numbers that you have,” Aryee said.

Salaudeen, who also hosts and produces the I Like Girls podcast, piloted the first season before reaching out to sponsors. She was able to sign two Nigerian fintech companies Piggvest and Paystack as sponsors for the second season of I Like Girls.

“After the first season, I was able to go to these brands and say, these are the numbers. Let’s talk,” Salaudeen said.

Though sponsorship fees differ among podcasters, a popular approach podcasters admitted to is to compute the cost of production and distribution and then add a margin.

“I just calculated how much I needed to create the number of episodes I wanted,” Salaudeen said. “How much will it cost to hire a team and pay them monthly for six months? How much do we need to distribute the podcast, not just on the podcast distribution platform Transistor but also in terms of getting it to radio, running ads and having a listening party.”

Salaudeen’s case of getting sponsors early on is an exception to the norm for many African podcasters. 

Many podcasters like Alabi-Oyo, who’s been running Truth Booth for almost 2 years, are hopeful that soon their passion project will become a profit-making venture.  Until then the sense of fulfilment derived from doing something their passionate about is enough to keep at it.

“I like to talk but more importantly, I see the podcast as something I should continue because it’s beyond me. It’s my way of contributing to people’s lives,” Alabi-Oyo said.

Though signed paperwork exists, the acquisition is still subject to customary closing conditions, including an agreement with lenders. Where arrangements are concerned, institutional lenders like Nairobi- and London-based Sunfunder and Swiss ResponsAbility, which both finance PEG’s operations, will need to take their time to move entities (aka debt) from PEG to Bboxx. These moving parts may take another 3 weeks to go into effect, according to the source.

According to one source, Bboxx’s overarching ambition is to become one of the biggest next-generation utility companies in the world. Since Africa is a significant focal point—followed by Asia, which it has expanded into—Bboxx is ready to consolidate its position by merging with or acquiring existing energy startups. 

Bboxx was founded in 2010 by Mansoor Hamayun, Christopher Baker-Brian, and Laurent Van Houcke to bring electricity into homes across Africa through an affordable pay-as-you-go renewable energy supply. The company has since added clean water and clean cooking to its line of offerings. According to our source, Bboxx has helped more than 5 million people access clean energy. 

Tracing back the company’s traction since inception, to have served more than 5 million people couldn’t be a tall order. The company is present in 7 African countries—Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Rwanda, DR Congo, Togo, Guinea, and Kenya. Bboxx has won grants, secured loans from local and international banks, and raised tens of millions in venture funding. It’s also in partnership with several private companies and governments, including DR Congo, which just renewed its partnership last month. 

Bboox became the first company to introduce a government solar energy payment subsidy in Africa when it forged a partnership with the Togolese government in 2019. 

In 2019, the company raised $50 million in series D from Mitsubishi Corporation and Engie Rassembleurs d’Energies, two leading global energy companies. After the funding announcement, there were questions about what would happen with this relationship and how Bboxx would deal with the interests of its investors. Bboxx’s position was that it would use the money to fuel its global expansion but many questions were raised about its investors’ game plan: Would the Japanese Mitsubishi push to acquire the startup’s burgeoning Asian operation? Would Engie, which already owns 2 of Bboxx’s African competitors Mobisol and Fenix, acquire Bboxx too to become the undisputed market leader on the continent? Even though these questions haven’t been answered yet, this new development shows that Bboxx is bullish on its expansion and growth. 

PEG Africa was founded in 2013 by Hugh Whalan and Nate Heller to do the same thing Bboxx set out to do—provide a pay-as-you-go alternative to electricity to over 700 million Africans without access to electricity. The business kickstarted in Ghana and expanded into Mali, Senegal, and Ivory Coast. It has collectively served more than 2 million people and raised $65 million in funding. 

Even though Whalan and Heller are Australian and America, respectively, a significant chunk of their entrepreneurial career is rooted in Africa, especially Whalan the CEO, who’s already co-founded and exited two startups. PEG Africa is now Whalan’s third acquired company. 

One of the most strategic points of this deal is that the 2 companies, Bboox and PEG aren’t currently operating in the same market. So it’s a perfect way for Bboxx to enter these markets. According to our sources, it’s likely that PEG will keep its brand name and talents, and will continue operating independently for now. 

Though we’re yet to receive full details about this deal yet, the acquisition is a move to fuel growth and expansion ahead of a planned IPO by Bboxx, according to our source.

TechCabal reached out to Bboxx to confirm the news of the acquisition and received a response from the company’s public relations agency, which stated that Bboxx does not comment on market rumours—a response that hints that Bboxx is waiting for the ink to dry before any formal announcements will be made.

As the Africa startup ecosystem continues to mature and attracts more funding, it will continue to record more local and international acquisitions and exits. Bboxx has now joined the likes of MFS Africa, Flutterwave, Chari, and others that have closed acquisition deals on the continent.

Update: The initial headline has been changed: A new information has come to light and PEG wasn’t acquired for $200 million but its acquisition has pushed Bboxx’s valuation to be over $300 million. The error is regretted.