The Africa SMME Tech Report

Issue No. 79. Africa SME tech news and insights for 3rd June 2024.

Charles Laughlin

Jun 03, 2024

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The Africa SMME Tech News Digest

SMME Tech News & Insights for 3rd June 2024

Paystack Leads Group to Acquire Nigeria’s Brass

Paystack, the Nigerian fintech that Stripe acquired for $200 million in 2020, is leading a consortium that will acquire the Nigerian small business banking startup Brass, according to TechCabal. Other members of the consortium include PiggyVest, Ventures Platform, and P1 Ventures. Terms were not revealed.

Brass was founded in Lagos in 2020 by CEO Sola Akindolu and CTO Emmanuel Okeke. According to TechCabal, both founders and head of Product Tolulope Saba will leave the company. A replacement leadership team has not been announced.

While Brass’s time as an independent company was relatively brief, its tenure was not entirely smooth. For example, in March TechCabal wrote about a persistent problem with withdrawal delays at Brass. In the article, Tech Cabal quoted Akindolu blaming the global VC funding winter, which has been acute in Africa, as the main reason for the delays.

Essentially Akindolu said the current funding environment did not support the robust capital requirements of a challenger digital bank like Brass. Brass raised roughly $2 million in 2021. Not nearly enough, Akindolu seemed to believe.

“You can say you want to disrupt banks; if you raise $1-2 million, you must raise $5-10 million in a few years. If it is overdue and you have not, things will get tricky,” Akindolu told TechCabal in March. “You need access to ridiculous capital.”

Based on Akindolu’s own statement above, it was about time for Brass to go out and raise $5 million or more. So it may be a reasonable inference that the company’s challenges in accessing sufficient capital are a factor in this week’s events. Things, it appears, did indeed get tricky.

From the 2024 BigFive Summit

The 2024 BigFive Summit (19-20 March) in Cape Town featured multiple high-impact presentations, panels, and fireside chats. We will continue to share a 2024 Summit video in each edition of this newsletter.

Today we feature a talk by Simon Bestbier, the CEO of Realm Digital, a South African digital consulting firm that helps organizations with everything from strategy to operational efficiency.

At the Summit, Bestbier gave a talk that addressed leading organizations through challenging times, which he framed as “Six Lessons from the Trenches.”

In this excerpt from his talk, Simon explains why it is important for a leader to anticipate and prepare for a “change in seasons.”

Please enjoy the full interview with Simon on our YouTube channel.

Found on LinkedIn

As usual, we like to share interesting infographics that we find while pursuing LinkedIn. This graphic, again courtesy of Axel Peyriere, shows us where Africa’s billion-dollar revenue companies are concentrated.

BigFive Digital Launches 2024 Virtual Event Series

BigFive Digital is excited to host a new virtual event series that brings together top thinkers and doers to unpack how the world’s biggest tech trends impact Africa.

The first event in the series takes place on 12 June at 4 pm East Africa Time. This event will address how African MSMEs (micro, small, and medium enterprises) are using emerging technologies. This includes everything from mobile payments to SaaS to artificial intelligence.

Is African tech adoption accelerating? Are these tools really helping MSMEs run their businesses more effectively? And where are the biggest opportunities to serve the MSME market with emerging technologies in 2024 and beyond?

This event will draw from the 2024 MSME Pulse technology adoption survey conducted by Africa 118 and GeoPoll. Thought leaders representing the full spectrum of technologies will join the event to share their insights on what the survey results say about the future path of MSME digital transformation in Africa. In addition to data from four African markets on emerging tech adoption (see below chart), the survey asks African SMEs about their current economic circumstances and outlook.

In addition to an overview of this compelling data, the event will feature SME-facing tech founders, investors, and software providers sharing how the data compares with their outlook on African SMEs.

Join these distinguished speakers at this important free online event.

Hilda Moraa, Founder & CEO, Pezesha
Rosie Afia-Ford, Senior Innovation Fund Manager, Caribou Digital
Veera Kumar N, Country Manager, Kenya, Zoho
Ezana Raswork, CEO, Africa 118
Frankline Kibuacha, Senior Manager, Marketing & Outreach, GeoPoll

Please stay tuned for announcements of future events in this series.

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