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On school mornings across Kenyan cities, transport handovers happen fast and mostly on trust, yet when something goes wrong, schools often lack verifiable records of who arrived, when, and through which entry point, a gap that creates risk for pupils, parents, and administrators and turns routine logistics into a safeguarding and accountability problem. Many school transport routines still rely on paper registers, phone calls between drivers and teachers, and scattered text messages, even as the new Traffic (School Transport) Rules, 2025, and National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) notices require proper records and reporting. Meanwhile, GPS‑based school‑bus apps and communication platforms raise questions under the Data Protection Act 2019 about children’s location data and consent. For most schools, the practical need is not a full‑day trace of a child’s movements but a reliable, auditable record of key handover moments where legal duty of care changes. TerraGO, a Kenyan school operations startup, built its system around logging these predefined handover actions rather than continuously following children. The platform focuses on creating time- and place-based records tied to specific school-defined touchpoints rather than producing a stream of location data. Each logged action answers a narrow question: did a registered band or tag interact with an approved reader at a known location within an expected time window? This gives schools a way to confirm that a pupil passed through a set checkpoint without building a full movement history. The hardware in the child’s bag or on their wrist Children carry a wearable in the form of a wristband or bag tag that uses near field communication (NFC), while schools install readers at bus doors, gates, and key entrances. Once students arrive in school, a tap on one of these readers creates a record linked to that device, that location, and that moment. According to co-founder Collins Muriuki, schools decide where those readers sit, whether at the bus step, the main gate, or reception, and the system treats each tap as a discrete entry in the school’s transport and arrival log. “NFC tap confirmations at school-defined touchpoints,” Muriuki said. How a school morning plays out A typical bus journey starts with a child tapping the reader as they board, which logs the boarding event. During the trip, the school can activate a temporary link that shows the bus route to both the school and the parent. The journey also includes a map tied to the vehicle rather than an individual child, which expires when the journey ends. On arrival, the child taps again when getting off the bus and once more at the gate or entrance, and each of these actions can trigger a notification if the school and parent have chosen to receive them, while children who walk or arrive by car tap at the entrance to create a single arrival record. The system stays focused on those taps, so if a registered band interacts with a known reader in the expected time band, the platform can report that the pupil was present at that point, without relying on a phone in the child’s pocket or a chain of GPS signals. What parents see and what they do not Parents can view confirmations for arrival and pickup events, and turn notifications on or off. Live map visibility appears only during an active bus trip and ends when the route ends, with no replay of past journeys and no scrollable route history inside the app. Image: Terra GO Outside those time-bound journeys, the parent view centres on event records rather than maps, which keeps the focus on handovers rather than continuous tracking. Pickup without biometrics At pickup, parents generate a short term code and name the adult allowed to collect the child, then share that code with the guardian, and at the gate a staff member checks the string and sees either a match with the child’s details and expected adult or a warning if the code has expired, is presented by an unlisted person, or appears at an unusual time. Codes reset daily and cannot be reused, and the system avoids facial recognition or fingerprint scans, relying instead on these time-limited digital passes. How schools use the dashboard Inside the school, administrators see a morning view that compares expected and confirmed arrivals by route and class, helping them spot pupils who boarded a bus but have not yet checked in at the gate, those who are late, and flagged exceptions. Staff open individual records when the dashboard signals an issue, and alerts go out only when set conditions match, such as the right band, reader, and time window, while unclear or partial data does not trigger a message. Data scope and control The system’s records depend on physical taps at registered readers, not on continuous location feeds. Schools control their operational data, while parents see only records tied to their own child. Access to past data is time-limited and linked to specific uses, such as reviews. The company says it does not sell child data, Muriuki insisted, and that access to live and historical records inside its systems is logged and restricted by role. “Even internally, Terra staff cannot casually explore a child’s historical data. Access is tightly controlled and logged,” Muriuki said. The process of onboarding a school Bringing a school onto the platform starts by mapping its classes, routes, gates, and policies, then importing student, guardian, and transport details into that structure. After that, staff run test scenarios such as mock bus runs and trial pickups before any live use. Rollout then takes place in stages, by route, grade, or entry point, which allows staff to adjust processes in smaller groups rather than changing everything at once. How much does the product cost? The product has a wearable and a subscription. Each child uses a Terra GO band, an IP68-rated wrist device, which the company claims can last for one year without recharging. The band costs KES 2,500 ($19). Parents pay KES 500 ($4) monthly for the software, which covers
Read MoreAfrica’s telecom bond market has spent much of the past decade caught between promise and perception. On one hand, demand for connectivity has surged, driven by population growth, urbanisation, data-hungry consumers and the steady transition from 3G to 4G and now 5G. On the other hand, global investors have often viewed African telecom debt through a lens of risk. Between 2021 and 2025, however, the narrative shifted more decisively. Across the continent, telecom operators returned to the bond market in size, refinancing maturing obligations and raising fresh capital for infrastructure expansion. While no single figure captures Africa’s total telecom bond activity, sector reports and landmark transactions suggest that several billion dollars were raised through corporate bonds and structured debt in recent years. MTN Nigeria pioneered the space in 2018 with a ₦200 billion ($146 million) bond programme aimed at diversifying funding sources and managing local currency exposure. However, other operators largely stayed on the sidelines until 2022, when Mauritius-based Axian Telecom issued a $460 million bond, signalling a renewed interest in the continent’s telecom debt market. In July 2025, Axian Telecom again issued a $600 million bond to scale infrastructure across Madagascar, Tanzania and Togo. The deal was twice oversubscribed, attracting an order book of more than $1.3 billion, a clear signal that investor appetite for African digital infrastructure had strengthened. Meanwhile, IHS Towers remained active in debt markets, reporting total indebtedness of approximately $3.9 billion as of mid-2025 while refinancing high-cost notes and preparing for maturities in 2026 and 2027. These transactions suggest that Africa’s telecom bond market is reopening in earnest. At the centre of this revival is a familiar but often underestimated player: the anchor investor. Typically, a major institutional player, such as a pension fund, mutual fund, or insurance company, an anchor investor commits to purchasing a substantial block of securities ahead of an IPO, helping to stabilise demand and build market confidence. This matters because the telecom bond market, where companies raise debt from investors by issuing tradable securities, provides the long-term, reliable capital required to build digital infrastructure at scale. Fibre networks, towers, data centres and 5G deployments demand heavy upfront investment that far exceeds what operators can fund from revenue alone. When the bond market works well, it gives operators access to affordable financing for network expansion, spectrum acquisition and rural coverage. “Bonds remain one of the most underused but strategic financing tools in telecoms,” said Rotimi Akapo, Partner and head of Telecommunications, Media and Technology (TMT), Advocaat Law Practice. “They allow operators to raise long-term capital at scale, match funding to the life of network infrastructure, and expand their networks and infrastructure without diluting ownership. In emerging markets, a functioning telecom bond market can be a real backbone for financing the digital economy.” Reframing the funding narrative A common misconception about Africa’s digital infrastructure is that the continent suffers from a chronic lack of capital. Folatomi Fayemi, Investment Specialist at Ninety One, which manages the Emerging Africa & Asia Infrastructure Fund (EAAIF), said the issue is less about the absolute availability of funding and more about structure, confidence and signalling. EAAIF was the anchor investor in the Axian Telecom $600 million bond issue. “There can be slight misconceptions as to the availability of funding because of the amount of demand that is required,” he said. “There is funding that’s coming. And there’s always going to be more funding because of the infrastructure divide we have on the continent. The demands keep growing; they don’t slow down. You just keep needing to deploy.” Two of the world’s ten largest telecom infrastructure companies by scale are African-focused tower firms. IHS Towers and Helios Towers are both listed companies that have built businesses centred overwhelmingly on Africa’s connectivity needs. In 2024 alone, IHS raised more than $1 billion in bonds, while Helios Towers executed a similarly large issuance. In 2025, these firms continued reshaping their balance sheets, refinancing debt and extending maturities. “These are businesses that are raising large bonds,” Fayemi said. “You’re talking about roughly $1.8 billion-plus going into two companies focused primarily on connectivity across Africa.” EAAIF anchored the IHS Towers and Helios’ combined over $1.8 billion bond issuances in 2024. For Fayemi, this scale underscores an important shift: telecom infrastructure in Africa is increasingly seen as a growth story anchored in demographic fundamentals. “Population growth matters,” he said. “When you step back and look at markets like Nigeria, where you already have three or four operators, it’s not about adding more players. It’s about meeting growing demand. For these businesses, this is growth.” The rise of specialisation One structural shift underpinning renewed investor confidence is the shift away from vertically integrated telecom operators toward specialised infrastructure providers. Globally, mobile operators are shifting away from owning every part of their networks. Towers, fibre, data centres and related services are now often run by specialist companies that can invest and operate more efficiently. This has led many operators to sell their tower assets to TowerCos to free up capital and reduce maintenance costs. Vodafone moved 55,000 sites into Vantage Towers, Deutsche Telekom grouped its towers under DFMG, and U.S. carriers like Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile sold large portfolios to American Tower and Crown Castle. Zain adopted a sale-and-leaseback model with IHS Towers, while Telefónica sold towers to KKR and partnered with American Tower. Africa follows the same trajectory. Tower companies focus on site acquisition and maintenance. Fibre operators invest in long-haul and metro networks. Data centre companies specialise in power redundancy and cooling systems. This specialisation improves capital allocation and creates clearer revenue visibility. For bond investors, clarity matters. Telecom infrastructure assets typically generate predictable, long-term cash flows backed by multi-year contracts with mobile operators. That predictability aligns well with institutional investors seeking duration and yield. In 2025, this clarity coincided with a broader financing pivot. Across Africa’s tech and telecom ecosystem, debt accounted for 41% of total funding, reaching a record $1.6 billion, a 63% increase from 2024, based on the 2025
Read MoreAfrican startups raised $174 million in January 2026, trailing last year’s tally by $102 million and well below the 12-month monthly average of $263 million, according to Africa: The Big Deal, a monthly funding tracker. While a month-on-month dip from December to January is routine in African venture capital (VC), what stands out this January is how few startups raised money, with only 26 startups raising above $100,000, just over half the recent monthly average and the lowest January tally since at least 2020. The data reveals how narrow Africa’s VC funnel has become and how unforgiving the path ahead may be for African startup funding. Over a third of the month’s funding went to Egypt’s lending startup, valU, which raised $63 million in debt from a local bank. Nigeria’s MAX, a vehicle financing startup, followed with $24 million in a mix of equity and asset-backed financing. The two transactions accounted for half of all capital deployed in January. Neither deal reflects risk-seeking venture capital, as they are structured around lending books, assets, and predictable cash flows. Instead, they emphasise a pattern of investor comfort with revenue and collateral and a clear unease with uncertainty, the very condition that defines early-stage startups and venture capital. “After a decade of asset-light evangelism, 2026 will mark the return of the balance sheet as a competitive advantage,” Olivia Gao, a principal at Verod-Kepple Africa Ventures (VKAV), a growth-stage VC firm, told TechCabal. “Startups that own or finance productive assets—vehicles, devices, and equipment—will outcompete pure marketplaces by controlling supply, monetising financing margins, and unlocking private credit partnerships,” she added. Nearly 40% of African startup funding now comes from local investors What does this mean for African startup funding If you strip out those two rounds, January looks very different. There was very limited equity activity, few first-time raises, and almost no early-stage momentum. The month reflects a deeper problem in African VC as the industry drifts toward safety. In the search for predictable returns, many firms are backing proven, familiar business models, with little appetite for riskier bets. African startup funding is beginning to look more like credit underwriting than long-term experimentation. This shift compounds an existing funnel problem in African tech. Many early-stage startups are already stuck in a capital valley, unable to raise growth-stage funding. If risk aversion now seeps further downstream, into pre-seed and seed investing, the damage will surface in 18 to 36 months. Fewer companies will have been funded, even fewer will reach Series A readiness, and exits will become scarcer, shrinking the ecosystem over time. As capital becomes more conservative, founders will be forced to optimise for early cash generation and focus on smaller, local markets, where expansion costs are lower. While this may produce leaner, more disciplined, and more profitable businesses, it also narrows the pool of venture-scale bets that deliver outsized outcomes and define a thriving startup ecosystem. It can be tempting to frame this shift as rational adaptation. Inflation is high, exits are scarce, and as the life cycle of funds ends, limited partners are demanding returns. Some African investors can argue that investing in asset-backed, cash-flow-driven models is a rational adaptation to these macro conditions and not a failure of imagination, but that thinking goes against what venture capital is. If this safety approach were prevalent during the boom of the early 2020s, startups like Paystack, Wave, and Moniepoint would likely never have raised their earliest institutional rounds. When safety becomes the organising principle of an emerging-markets risk capital, improvement at scale does not happen.
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