Connect with us

Business

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

Published

on

The week did not only end the month of February but went ahead to end Jack Ma’s hold on the title as being the richest man in China.

Opening the new month of March, one Zhong Shanshan is China’s current richest person, with a wealth of $550 billion yuan ($85 billion).

He climbed to the top spot, displacing techpreneur Jack Ma, after an incredible growth of his bottled-water company and vaccine maker, Beijing Wantai Biological Pharmacy Enterprise.

Also, Lagos governor launched Lagos Ride as a new ride hailing service provider to compete with Uber, Bolt, EkoCab etc.

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


Lagos Ride launch

Launched to rival Uber, Bolt, and other ride hailing service providers, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, during the week, launched ‘Lagos Ride’ with 1000 units of brand new Sport Utility Vehicles.

The governor unveiled the scheme on Thursday, March 4, 2021 during the signing of a partnership agreement with CIG Motors Company Limited.

Venture analysts pointed out that the new launch came barely a year after the launch of Ekocab, another new player currentlyonboarding traditional yellow taxi operators in the city of Lagos.

More than anything, this development will stifle operation and market growth for a player like EkoCab.


The Autochek-Okra partnership

In a new signing, Nigerian startups Autochek and Okra have entered into a partnership deal to offer users of the former access to digital car loans facilitated by the latter.

READ ALSO: Moroccan prop-tech firm, Mubawab, raises $10m funding. 2 other things and a trivia

Autochek, through the partnership, looks to deliver on its ambition to build digital solutions that will enhance and enable a seamless and safe automotive commerce experience across Africa.

Reviewers noted that this will further help that company use technology to transform the automotive buying and selling experience for African consumers.


The equity feature

During the week, a Nigerian startup featured alongside other startups listed by the Africa Online Safety Initiative as part of its 26 solution winners.

The initiative, which seeks innovative solutions to online safety challenges, was launched by South African social impact advisory firm Impact Amplifier, Google.org and the UK-based ISD.

While the Africa Online Safety scheme was designed to support organisations that address safety issues around the internet, these winners was selected from specialisations to include identity theft, bullying and harassment, sex trafficking, hate crimes, terrorist recruitment and promotion, misinformation and disinformation, and financial scams.


Pre-seed for ImaliPay

Also during the week, Nigerian startup ImaliPay secured a round of pre-seed funding towards servicing gig workers’ financial needs.

This will boost the company’s status as it continues to leverageartificial intelligence (AI) and big data to offer tailored financial products.

Analysts, therefore, expect that this will go a long way to help the less than a year old startup promote the inclusion of gig economy platforms and workers across Africa.

Remarks

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

 

Join the conversation

Opinions

Support Ripples Nigeria, hold up solutions journalism

Balanced, fearless journalism driven by data comes at huge financial costs.

As a media platform, we hold leadership accountable and will not trade the right to press freedom and free speech for a piece of cake.

If you like what we do, and are ready to uphold solutions journalism, kindly donate to the Ripples Nigeria cause.

Your support would help to ensure that citizens and institutions continue to have free access to credible and reliable information for societal development.

Donate Now