Increase funding for Africa e-learning platforms, Surge in Ghana's e-payment usage
Hello, This is your weekly 4 minute brief of the most important news dominating the world of business and finance in Africa. Please tell a friend or colleague.
1) Ghana has seen a significant increase in the use of electronic payment system with an 81 per cent growth in the first quarter of 2020. The total volume of transactions in the first quarter of this year stood at over 13 million compared to about 7.2 million transactions in that of 2019.For the full story see link
2) African finance ministers met on Thursday to discuss debt-relief proposals, according to a top United Nations official. This includes using special-purpose vehicle to exchange their sovereign debt for new concessional paper to avoid using funds needed to battle the fast-moving coronavirus to pay private creditors. For the full story see link
3) Four South African renewable energy companies given a green light. The guarantees—in support of the construction, ownership and operation of two solar photovoltaic power plants and two wind power plants in South Africa— have been issued by MIGA, a member of the World Bank Group. For the full story see link
4) Weza.io a Kenya Fintech provider of credit scoring and fraud mitigation solutions to B2B customers, exceeded expectations with their new credit scoring solution.The start-up creates tools on credit score and fraud mitigation through the adoption of Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, and statistical data modelling. For the full story see.link
5) Nigerian Agri-tech start-up, Farmcrowdy, this week opened its e-commerce food platform which is being promoted as a one-stop digital marketplace giving consumers high quality food options while at home during this time of lock down.link For the full story see link
Private Equity Deals:
Vantage Capital to exits Vumatel after seeing it become South Africa’s largest fibre to home network provider. link
Côte d'Ivoire based Cauris Management has received an additional €12 million from the African Development Bank (AfDB) for its Yeelen Financial Fund aim at financial companies based in the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU). link
Venture Capital Deals :
Tanzanian based East African Fruit Co secures more than $2 million in Series A equity funding to address its farm-to-market distribution.link
Nigerian start-up Helium Health secures $10m in Series A funding lead by Dubai venture capital fund investment.link
DOB Equity, a Dutch family-backed impact investor, has made a further investment in Kenya based Moringa School, the technology learning institute to accelerate their transition to providing remote on-line learning which is increasing in demand due to COVID-19.link
M & A
Private equity fund Fanisi Capital has acquired a minority stake in in St Bakhita Schools for $2.5 million. link
US private equity firm Berkshire Partners LLC acquires a stake in Johannesburg based Teraco Data Environments Pty Ltd in Africa’s largest data-centre to capitalise on growing demand for internet and cloud-based services on the continent.link
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