African Tech Roundup Podcast

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Co-Creation Hub Nigeria's Femi Longe factors in on the #NotOurManifesto farce Dec 05, 2017

Show notes

This Medium blog entitled, "Startups4Africa: This is NOT OUR MANIFESTO" by Co-Creation Hub Nigeria Co-founder Femi Longe has caused quite a stir on social media: http://bit.ly/2AxCEMv. In this chat with Andile Masuku, Femi explains why he couldn't keep his pen still after he returned to Nigeria following the recent EU-Africa Summit, where a "collaborative" document entitled "Startups 4 Africa: Manifesto for the development of a thriving community of African-European startup ecosystems" was presented.

Khaled Ismail on how KI Angel and HIM Angel funds pursue inter-Africa startup growth Dec 04, 2017

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Khaled Ismail is the Chairman and Founder of two Cairo-based angel funds— KI Angel and HIM Angel. He also serves as advisor to Algebra Ventures, Egypt’s leading technology venture capital outfit, which focuses primarily on Series A and Series B investments in Egypt and the MENA region. In this conversation with Andile Masuku - taped at the fringes of African Angel Investor Summit 2017 (www.AAIS2017.com) - Khaled relates how he went from being a career technologist to founding seven tech ventures since 1991 (including a 4G mobile tech firm which was acquired by Intel) before accidentally falling into structured angel funding activities. Khaled also explains how he’s acting on his idealistic desire to tear down trade barriers linked to Africa’s colonial past. He's determined to normalise the interchange of both angel funding and startup founding talent across the continent.

Ido Sum explains how TLcom Capital got in on Andela's $40M Series C Nov 28, 2017

Show notes

Israeli investor Ido Sum is a Partner at TLcom Capital— a venture capital firm with a presence in Nairobi, Lagos and London. Since 1999, the firm has invested in Telecom, Media and Technology (TMT) companies in Europe, Israel and Sub Saharan Africa and currently manages total commitments in excess of €200 million. In this conversation with Andile Masuku - taped at the fringes of African Angel Investor Summit 2017 (www.AAIS2017.com) - Ido fields questions regarding the prevalence of investor bias, the appropriateness of certain VC approaches on the continent, and of course, TLcom's participation in one of 2017’s most well-publicised startup investment deals— Andela’s $40 million Series C, led by South African Pule Taukobong of CRE Venture Capital. Here's a link to Ido Sum's crowdsourced African Investment Landscape Database: http://bit.ly/2Abm8lj. If you are actively involved in early-stage investment efforts on the continent, Ido welcomes your contributions to the spreadsheet.

Kenyan post election reflections with PesaCheck.org Managing Editor Eric Mugendi Nov 22, 2017

Show notes

In this conversation, Andile Masuku asks PesaCheck.org Managing Editor, Eric Mugendi, to reflect on the unprecedented leveraging of digital technologies by leading actors in Kenya's controversial elections, and to factor in on how the country's emerging tech ecosystem is doing in the aftermath.

Should Africa-focused Investors Hunt Gorillas, Gazelles Or Unicorns? Nov 20, 2017

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Last week, Africa’s early stage investor community came together for the 4th annual African Early Stage Investor Summit (#AAIS2017). At this exclusive investor-only event, hosted at Workshop17 in Cape Town, South Africa, key stakeholders in the ecosystem exchanged insights on best practice, shared lessons learnt, and debated what the roadmap for the future ought to look like. In this African Tech Roundup episode, Andile Masuku and Musa Kalenga discuss some of the more contentious issues unpacked at the conference-- including whether or not the hunt for the "African Unicorn" is constructive and how Africa-focused investors might best go about investing with exits in mind. Music Credits: Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Music licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

Timothy Kotin on how SuperFluid Labs delivers business value via data analytics solutions Nov 10, 2017

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Timothy Kotin was born and bred in Ghana. He is the co-founder and chief executive of SuperFluid Labs-- an ambitious African data analytics firm which supports enterprise clients spread across multiple sectors. Superfluid has offices in Kenya, Ghana and Germany. Kotin holds an MPhil. in Engineering for Sustainable Development from the University of Cambridge and a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Harvard University. Prior to co-founding Superfluids Labs, he worked as a research scientist at IBM as part of a team which developed financial services innovations for multinational enterprise clients in Africa. Before that, he worked for Dalberg’s New York and Nairobi offices— playing consultant to key public and private sector development actors such as the U.S. Government, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Open Society Foundations and the UN Foundation. In this conversation with Andile Masuku, Timothy relates how he and his team at Superfluid Labs have built a sustainable business around delivering business value through developing and deploying data analytics solutions, and explains why technical founders in his line of work who fail to rope in solid business development-oriented co-founders are likely to choke when reeling in the big fish.

Do African Startup Pitch Competitions Offer Anything More Than Pre-allocated Peanuts? Oct 30, 2017

Show notes

The Facebook-sponsored TechCrunch Startup Battlefield competition which took place in Nairobi recently brought together fifteen African startups for a glitzy pitch session that offered entrants the chance to win $25,000, as well as the opportunity to go on and compete for $50,000 at the Disrupt Cup, which will be held in Silicon Valley next year. After the Kenyan logistics startup, Lori Systems, won the Nairobi event murmurings of alleged tournament rigging started doing the rounds and eventually surfaced in media reports. This palava has got Andile Masuku and Musa Kalenga wondering what, if any, value startup competitions are adding to Africa's emerging tech ecosystem, and has inspired them to interrogate the motives and modus operandi of various commercial interests who are looking to position themselves as enablers of Africa's tech industry. Also in this African Tech Round-up podcast, Musa and Andile discuss South Africa’s recent data breach-- the largest in the country’s history, ponder the merits of Kwese's partnership with VICE, and chat about SAP's diabolical admission of guilt made to U.S. authorities-- over a $6.7 million corporate bribe paid to secure a sizeable Transnet contract in South Africa. Music Credits: Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Music licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

Yannick Lefang of Kasi Insight reckons reliable market research is key to business success in Africa Oct 23, 2017

Show notes

Electrical engineer, Yannick Lefang, is the Founder and CEO of Kasi Insight-- a research and advisory firm that provides African consumer data and actionable insights. Since 2013, Yannick's firm has been intent on empowering business leaders and entrepreneurs with the game-changing insight they need to tap into the continent's fast-growing markets. In this conversation with Andile Masuku - taped at Afrobytes Tech Conference 2017 - Yannick explains why even some of the most-quoted macroeconomic statistics published by leading NGO's and top-flight global consultancies can be misleading. He also gives some real-world examples of how research conducted by his firm has helped clients meet business objectives.

Divercity's Sean Godoy says proptech could help Africa overcome post-colonial property challenges Oct 19, 2017

Show notes

Sean Godoy is the Founder and Executive Director of Divercity Property Solutions. He has cross-sector experience in the property industry in both South Africa and the UK. In this conversation with Andile Masuku, Sean explains why he's excited about the global rise of real estate tech aka proptech. He believes that this trend could facilitate the democratisation of land and property ownership in Africa and help iron out the continent's complicated post-colonial land and property situation.

Adebayo Alonge explains how RxAll's AI-driven spectrometer authenticates medicines Oct 13, 2017

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Adebayo “Ade” Alonge is the Nigerian co-founder of RxAll, a platform which provides patients in the developing world with authenticated and verified medicines. Prior to this, Ade was a strategy consultant with the Boston Consulting Group, and before that, he spent eight years working a Sanofi, Roche, and BASF. In this absorbing, not-so-quick chat with Andile Masuku, Ade unpacks the state of play within Nigeria's pharmaceutical mass market, and explains how RxAll is enabling direct access to affordable, high-quality medicines while helping to reshape drug purchasing habits within markets rife with counterfeit product.

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