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Saudi firm, Sary, acquires Egypt’s Mowarrid. 2 other things and a trivia

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This line-up of stories will help you discover the latest happenings around the tech world, today.

1. Saudi firm, Sary, acquires Egypt’s Mowarrid

Saudi B2B e-commerce startup, Sary, has consolidated the acquisition of Egyptian B2B marketplace Mowarrid.

The acquisition comes as Sary looks to expand its footprint across the MENA region.

Mowarrid was founded in Egypt by Ahmed Essam in 2018 focusing on the B2B food and grocery markets.

Before the acquisition, the startup allows more than 10,000 retailers to digitally procure all their needs across a variety of more than 1000 products on its platform.

Sary, on the other hand, connects MSMEs with the biggest international brands and regional players, and has reached more than 350,000 customers, going on to serve over 40,000 businesses in 15 cities across Saudi Arabia.

The acquisition deal follows a fund raiser milestone where Sary closed a Series C round in December, taking its total funding to US$112 million.

Tech Trivia: Which of the following is not a type of database?

A Excel
B Access
C FileMaker
D MySQL
Answer: See end of post

2. American initiatives launch programme to accelerate small businesses in Africa

The US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) has signed a partnership deal with the US African Development Foundation (USADF) to launch a programme to accelerate small businesses in Africa.

READ ALSO: Tech-led biofuel startup, Koko Networks, launches venture. 1 other thing and a trivia

Tagged African Small Business Catalyst (ASBC), the programme is a business accelerator for early growth-stage small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Sub-Saharan Africa.

According to the team, the programme “seeks to support SMEs in four countries – Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Senegal and Uganda – focused in key sectors including agriculture and food security, education, healthcare, and water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH).”

Towards supporting participating startups, the initiative will provide loans in amounts ranging from US$100,000 to US$1 million, complemented by both technical assistance and grants up to US$100,000.

Speaking on the development, DFC CEO Scott Nathan noted that the partnership was entered into to contribute into the development of smaller companies in an earlier stage.

“The African Small Business Catalyst is a landmark US government collaboration designed to bring together DFC’s and USADF’s unique and complementary investment tools to boost private sector-led development in sub-Saharan Africa,” he said.

“By partnering with USADF, DFC will be able to reach smaller companies in an earlier stage, accelerating development in industries key to Africa’s overall economic growth.”

3. Netflix, PayPal, Adobe, others suspend business in Russia

As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues, more tech companies are suspending their business in Russia to express their displeasure.

A new set of these companies include notable names, such as Netflix, PayPal, Mastercard, Visa and more.

Netflix said it’s suspending its service in Russia, and told news men it was pausing all future projects it had planned to produce in Russia.

In a similar fashion, Adobe announced that it will halt all new sales of Adobe products and services in Russia.

According to the company, it is doing this so its products and services are “not used in support of this unlawful war.”

Over the week, PayPal had said it’s shutting down services in Russia with game companies such as Epic Games and Nintendo joining the movement.

Trivia Answer: Excel

A database is a data structure that stores organized information. Nearly all e-commerce sites use databases to store product inventory and customer information.

These sites use a database management system (or DBMS), such as Microsoft Access, FileMaker Pro, or MySQL as the “back end” to the website. By storing website data in a database, the data can be easily searched, sorted, and updated. This flexibility is important for e-commerce sites and other types of dynamic websites.

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