TechNigeria: A weekly digest of what went down in Nigeria’s tech space

Young Ifeoluwa got the attention of the world after emerging as a star robotics engineer at age 11 with his agro solution design. Another interest is Seso’s expansion to South Africa and Ghana as it looks to scale beyond the borders of Nigeria.

The week also opened an opportunity window for startups with the Venture for Africa’s new call for applications. Reviewers noted that the organization did this as a way to help startup leaders to scale.

Below is a digest for the week, highlighting the major tech build up.

The Future Africa magic

Having supported 9 startups with $1m in Q3, the Future Africa initiative took its portfolio size to 28. As an entity, industry experts continue to hail the initiative -firstly for demonstrating the power of collaboration in Africa, with the example led by Aboyeji, Olabinjo Adeniran and Adenike Sheriff.

Reviews from press and stakeholders indicate an impressive turn of event for the funding platform. For instance, the first deal presented to the Future Africa Collective was oversubscribed by 28 per cent within 72 hours, and the second deal was oversubscribed by 68 per cent within seven hours. With this, there are further indicators that Nigeria, and by extension Africa, is on its route to absorb more funding to scale its various ventures.

11 year old tech whizkid

11-year-old Ifeoluwa Olusanya has emerged as winner of the Next Robotics Legend Competition. To the amusement of many, the young engineer’s product, a robot called Tropical Robotic Farming Solution (TRFS), solves key problems clogging the wheel within the agricultural sector.

With the robot, farmers can easily detect anomalies in soil. Before now, common challenges in agric include the inability to detect soil diseases promptly and the lack of ‘intelligent’ agricultural equipment to control the rate of plant nutrients and fertilisers needed for crops to grow maximally. Ifeoluwa, indeed, deserved the win.

The Seso’s expansion

Leading in the week was the news of Seso, a Nigerian startup that recently thrusts into South Africa and Ghana. Celebrated as one of Nigeria’s one-stop platforms for property management and transactions, Seso Global, develops customer relationship management (CRM) portal that enables property developers, agents and governments to manage their properties, documentation and transactions on a secure blockchain database.

There is much more space for Seso to scale even further as it continues to solve important challenges within the property space, facilitating and improving relationship between banks and clients. With funding from Mastercard and the Oppenheimer Foundation, the startup equally built an enviable portfolio for future investors to get in.

Opportunity window

In leading the way for emerging startup leaders to scale, Venture for Africa opened application for its 2nd cohort. Press described this as the initiative’s way of Pushing its ambition to connect talent to fast-growing African startups.

This time, the Venture for Africa initiative is calling for applications for its second cohort, as it looks forward to help connect top local and global talent with fast-growing African tech startups. The tech build-up will fill talent gaps at African startups via a three-month immersive fellowship programme.

The Google’s R2.2 billion investment

Such a big miss for Nigeria as South Africa won a new investment from tech giant Google. The funding is expected to go into investment in Cape Town and the Western Cape regions of the country. As the year wraps up, Nigerian tech players look forward to start the coming year on a better slate with funding and acquisition.

According to Tim Harris, CEO of Wesgro, the investment will go a long way to boost the confidence of those regions. To facilitate this such investment in Nigeria, attention needs to be paid on regional tech build up with support from the government.

Remarks

These stories, and many others, made headlines during the week.  Join us next week for another edition of TechNigeria.

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