Posts by Alastair Tempest
Three Recent Successful Funding Examples
CompariSure, a Cape Town-based fintech company founded in November 2017 has raised a multimillion-rand funding deal for a minority stake from UW Ventures and Allan Gray. CompariSure is a financial services provider that distributes financial…
Read MoreFunding for startups in East and West Africa
Novastar Ventures Africa Fund II has held its final close at US$108 million, which will be used to back breakthrough businesses in both East and West Africa. With offices in…
Read MoreRwanda improves its ease of business
Rwanda has made a number of reforms that have improved the ease of doing business and is top of the 128 governments in the World Bank ranking. Rwanda introduced a record 314…
Read MoreNedbank Joins Others in Rush For Ecommerce Business
AVo, Nedbank’s new digital platform, has been launched. Avo is a “super app” (a multitude of apps aggregated into one), supported by artificial intelligence, safe and secure payments, and bank-grade…
Read MoreAfrica’s TopCompanies
This year’s Top 250 Companies survey highlights the overall carnage in African share valuations in the last few years and even more so since March 2020. The survey ranks African or Africa-focused…
Read MoreFrance And Spain 2020 Ecommerce Country Reports
The Ecommerce Foundation has published an in-depth analysis of the French consumers’ expectations and behaviour, including internet usage, marketplaces and payment options. Download France 2020 Country Report. And also a report on…
Read MoreCreative Skills and Digital Technologies Drive Growth
Because of its reputation as a creative city, Cape Town was chosen for a pilot study on how clusters of creative firms can drive growth (the study also includes events and skills). A cluster of 349…
Read MoreShopify improves its offerings to help e-shops
Shopify has introduced several tools designed to help e-merchants operate their businesses and make online sales. The sudden focus on ecommerce caused by the pandemic has increased the number of merchants looking to improve their online performances by…
Read MoreProtection Against Twitter Bots
NortonLifeLock Research Group, the R&D division of antivirus vendor NortonLifeLock, has released a browser extension called BotSight that is designed to detect Twitter Bots in real time. BotSight is intended to highlight the prevalence of bots and disinformation…
Read MoreFraud Monitoring for Fintechs
Nigerian data science startup Voyance has launched Sigma, a fraud monitoring platform for fintech companies that aggregates data in order to block fraudsters. Sigma helps fintech companies to block known fraudsters from…
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