Nigeria’s Crop2cash and 9 African Startups to Pitch for US$500,000 at the Seedstars World Competition

After a series of competition at the country and regional levels, 10 startups from all over Africa have been selected to compete with other startups from other continents at the Seedstars world competition in Switzerland. The competition is slated for April 2020.

At the April Seedstars summit, the startups will have the chance to secure US$500,000 in equity investment as well as win other prizes. Here is the profile of the ten selected startups from Africa.

Crop2cash

Crop2cash is a Nigerian agri-tech startup based in Ibadan. With its artificial intelligence based softwares, the startup is solving the problem of connecting farmers and their crops to their end purchasers in the industry. By fully digitising the value chain, Crop2cash allows anyone of their users to get insights from past value chain activities.

The startup is the 2018 winner of the FCMB-Wennovation Hub Agri-Tech Incubation Startup Demo Day.

Pezesha

This Kenyan startup is a digital crowdlending platform that makes it easy for people to obtain loans without stepping in a bank. With its technology, investors can invest money with Pezesha while businesses can borrow from the platform at an interest.

Exuus

When Steve Shema founded Exuus in Rwanda, the target was to help local savings groups automate and save seamlessly on the go in communities. With its app, SAVE, people can sign up to be members of saving groups, and savings project can be created for different situations and people can make monetary transactions through USSD codes.

“In rural Africa, banks are considered to be for the rich only – they look at rural Africa as both a risky and non-lucrative customer segment. We wanted to create a beneficial relationship between the marginalised and the broader financial market by achieving a broad financial inclusion approach from the bottom up, availing a convenient and cost-effective distribution channel across the value chain, and providing an alternative decentralised credit scoring model for both underserved and unserved,”

Steve Shema

Teheca

This Ugandan health-tech startup focuses on reducing death rates of mothers and infants in developing countries in Africa. Through its blog, sms, social media and outreaches, Teheca educates mothers and families on the best health practices especially for first time mothers.

The startup has health packages it sells to mothers and families who value convenience and flexibility.

Nvoicia

The Ghanaian fintech startup helps businesses continue their operations while they expect their invoices to be paid. Nvoicia takes verified unpaid invoices from businesses and pays 80% of the amount to the businesses so that they can continue operations. After the client pays up, Nvoicia deducts its fee and gives the business what remains of the 20%.

Oko Finance

This insurtech platform emerged the winner from the Seedstars competition held in Mali. Oko Finance has developed a crop insurance solution for farmers.

Afrikamart

Afrikamart is a startup in Senegal that helps farmers to overcome the challenges of gaining access to market and the logistics surrounding it. By so doing, the startup aims to become the number one supplier of fresh farm produce from all over Africa without owning any farm.

Vectra

This is a South African digital commerce platform that helps businesses and organisations develop and deploy current products and services using current technologies like Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence to improve business operations and drive growth.

Nadjibi

Nadjibi was started in Senegal and focuses on providing sustainable and innovative solar solutions. It is specialised in Research & Development and in industrial manufacturing of impacts solar solutions, in rural as well as in urban area, and for households or agricultural uses.

Roque online

This startup from Angola helps informal market vendors and service providers market themselves as micro enterprises. Through its online marketplace, it connects vendors to a wider range of customers.

The above ten startups from Africa will pitch among startups from other continents at the world edition of the Seedstars competition scheduled for April next year in Switzerland. Good luck to them!