Namibia-based firm to back early-stage Southern African startups with $10 million fund
Bellatrix Investment Managers, a Namibia-based alternative investment firm, has launched the Ndjaba Seed Fund, a $10 million venture capital vehicle to support early-stage startups across Southern Africa. Named after the Oshiwambo word for “elephant,” the Ndjaba Seed Fund, launched on Wednesday, will target a diversified portfolio of between 35 and 50 startups over a ten-year investment horizon. The fund will focus on sectors including fintech, agritech, healthtech, education, clean energy, e-commerce, and enterprise software. The fund’s launch comes at a time when early-stage funding remains one of the biggest challenges for entrepreneurs in Southern Africa. According to TechCabal Insight’s State of Tech in Africa 2025 report, startups raising below $1 million attracted just 2% of total capital deployed on the continent in 2025. The challenge is more pronounced in Southern Africa, where most of the region’s $933 million in startup funding was concentrated in South Africa, leaving founders in Namibia and neighbouring markets with limited access to early-stage capital. Bellatrix said the fund aims to help close that gap while supporting startups with the potential to scale across the region. “Southern Africa has a strong pipeline of entrepreneurs with the potential to build impactful businesses. However, access to early-stage capital remains limited. The Ndjaba Seed Fund is designed to bridge this gap by providing both funding and the support needed to scale,” Managing Director Jesaya Hano-Oshike said. Founded in 2020 in Windhoek, Namibia’s capital, Bellatrix Investment Managers focuses on financing startups and small businesses through investment vehicles spanning SME debt funding, seed-stage financing, and impact investment initiatives across Southern Africa. The firm described the Ndjaba Seed Fund as its first dedicated venture capital vehicle, but said that it has previously deployed more than $30 million in debt and concessional financing to over 500 businesses in the past five years. According to Bellatrix, startups at the pre-seed stage will typically receive between $25,000 and $100,000, while seed-stage companies can access between $100,000 and $350,000. In select cases, initial investments may reach $500,000, with additional capital reserved for follow-on funding in high-performing companies. While the fund primarily invests through equity, Hano-Oshike said the firm can also provide early-stage startups with flexible financing options, including convertible debt and Simple Agreement for Future Equity (SAFEs). The fund is being structured to raise $10 million and will deploy capital progressively as it builds its investment portfolio. Bellatrix said the measured approach is intended to establish a strong performance track record before launching larger venture capital funds. Beyond capital, the fund plans to provide operational support to portfolio companies through strategic guidance, governance support, mentorship, business model development, and access to investor and partnership networks. It would also leverage the Basecamp Business Incubator ecosystem, an innovation hub supporting Namibian startups through mentorship, training, and investment facilitation, to help startups improve investor readiness and market access. Hano-Oshike said the fund is already engaging founders through existing networks ahead of a formal application process expected to roll out alongside the launch.
Read MoreOver 13,000 Nigerian bank employees earn $526/month as salaries climb in 2025
Four of Nigeria’s biggest banks paid and hired more in 2025. Access Holdings, United Bank for Africa (UBA) Plc, Zenith Bank, and Wema Bank grew their workforce by 12.75% to 33,675 employees, while total wages and salaries rose 27.49% to ₦1.05 trillion ($769.09 million), an analysis of their audited financial statements shows. These banks collectively made ₦2.36 trillion ($1.73 billion) as profit for 2025. The data shows that workers in the mid-to-upper income bracket, with 13,790 employees, the largest group, earned at least ₦718,125 monthly ($526) or ₦8.62 million ($6,314) annually. Nigerian Bank Pay Explorer Select a bank, then enter a salary to see where you’d rank. Access UBA Zenith Wema Total Workforce – – 2025 Wage Bill – – Where would you fit? (Monthly ₦) Simulate Reported Salary Bands Insight: Select a bank to view insights. Source: 2025 Audited Financial Statements via TechCabal
Read MoreFincra expands Ghana presence with new payments licence approval
Fincra, a Nigerian payments infrastructure provider, has secured a Payment Service Provider Licence (Enhanced Category) from the Bank of Ghana, which will allow the company to connect to the country’s financial system and process local transactions. The licence allows Fincra to collect payments from customers in Ghana, process transactions locally, and receive money sent into the country in Ghanaian cedis, according to the company. The approval comes two months after Fincra obtained a Payment Service Provider licence in Canada. It also builds on CEO Wole Ayodele’s thesis that Africa’s next fintech phase will be defined less by optimism and more by infrastructure, including licenced and regulated rails that move money at scale. Ghana has now become another proof point of that strategy. Ghana has seen strong mobile money adoption, with the market processing GH¢1.912 trillion ($170 billion) in transactions in 2023. Informal cross-border trade between Ghana and its land neighbours was valued at GH¢7.4 billion ($661 million) in the fourth quarter of 2024, according to the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS). “Ghana’s digital economy is accelerating rapidly, but the infrastructure to support enterprise-scale payment aggregation and inbound transfers is still too fragmented,” said Ayodele. “Getting the green light from the Bank of Ghana means we can finally give our merchants a direct, high-speed rail into this market. Whether a business needs to collect mobile money locally, or a global platform needs to drop remittances directly into Ghanaian bank accounts, we are removing the friction,” he added. With the licence, merchants using Fincra’s platform can accept payments directly through local channels such as MTN MoMo, Telecel, AirtelTigo, and local bank transfers, according to the company. It also allows global remittance companies and payroll platforms to send money directly into Ghanaian bank accounts and mobile wallets The company added that the licence supports automated business-to-business (B2B) payments by allowing companies to create local collection accounts in cedis and automatically reconcile incoming payments. Through a single Application Programming Interface (API) integration, companies can use these capabilities without needing multiple local systems, Fincra added. Fincra joins a small group of Nigerian fintechs that have secured a similar licence in Ghana, including Flutterwave and Paystack, as competition shifts toward building localised payment infrastructure across African markets. Founded in 2021 by Ayodele and Gideon Orovwiroro, Fincra operates in over 20 markets in Africa and powers payment networks across Africa, Europe, and North America. As it continues to expand its regulatory footprint across key markets, the company is betting that the future of African fintech will be built on interoperable systems that make cross-border payments feel less fragmented.
Read MoreCashAfrica taps ChamsSwitch to fix tap-to-pay compliance gap
CashAfrica, a Nigerian contactless payment infrastructure provider, has partnered with ChamsSwitch, a licenced switching and electronic payment processing company, to resolve the compliance bottlenecks stalling its tap-to-pay infrastructure. Under the partnership, CashAfrica will handle the contactless experience when a customer taps a phone or card on a point-of-sale terminal. ChamSwitch will then route the transaction between banks and update balances. The partnership is the company’s attempt to solve the compliance problem in scaling its contactless payment solution. CashAfrica said it had deals in progress with PalmPay, AltBank, and Sterling Bank, but each stalled as partners ran into extended due diligence and regulatory concerns. Without a licenced switching partner, the company lacked the compliance credibility that financial institutions require before integrating new payment infrastructure. With the ChamsSwitch deal, it hopes to remove that blocker in one move. “The partnership directly removes the compliance friction that has been the single biggest blocker across capital raising, partnership launches, and partner integrations,” said Malik Asamu, CashAfrica’s CEO. “With that foundation now in place, CashAfrica can pursue fundraising with a stronger story, activate integrations that were previously stalled, and approach new banking and fintech partners with the regulatory credibility they require.” Founded in 2024 by Asamu and Bello Opeyemi, CashAfrica provides a tap-to-pay infrastructure using Near Field Communication (NFC), a short-range wireless technology that allows devices a few centimetres apart to communicate. Its product, CashTap, allows customers to pay by tapping a phone or contactless card on a PoS device. Contactless payments remain rare in Nigeria, where the Central Bank has historically applied the same regulatory rigour to new payment infrastructure as it does to digital wallets and POS terminals. A 2025 CBN policy that restricted POS terminals to a 10-metre radius of their registered address and tied them exclusively to one financial institution illustrated the level of scrutiny operators face. Nigeria already has real-time payment infrastructure—the Nigeria Quick Response code system allows QR-based payments through bank apps—but contactless payments require something more: merchant trust, financial institution buy-in, and a compliance foundation that can withstand banking-sector due diligence. CashAfrica is betting the ChamsSwitch partnership delivers all three. “ChamsSwitch has been part of Nigeria’s payments infrastructure for years, and this partnership reflects our commitment to enabling the next generation of digital payment experiences, said Mudiaga Umukoro, CEO of ChamsSwitch.
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JoonaPay wants to fix how businesses in Francophone West Africa handle money
5 mai 2026 Hello , Welcome back to Francophone Weekly by TechCabal, your weekly deep dive into the tech ecosystem across French-speaking Africa. For readers who want to understand Francophone Africa beyond headlines—through markets, startups, and systems. New editions of the newsletter will land directly in your inbox every Tuesday at 12 PM WAT. By default, this newsletter is in French. If you’re reading this in your email inbox, click the “Read in English” button below to switch to the English version. If you’re reading on our website, you can either click the button below or toggle the language selector at the top right-hand side of the page to view the English edition. Read in English Entrez dans le département financier d’une entreprise agroalimentaire de taille moyenne à Abidjan et vous trouverez une scène familière : un responsable trésorerie qui jongle entre trois portails bancaires distincts, un directeur financier qui court après les validations de factures sur WhatsApp, et un comptable qui réconcilie manuellement des feuilles Excel en fin de mois. Les outils existent. Ils ne communiquent tout simplement pas entre eux. C’est le problème que JoonaPay, une startup fintech dont le siège est à Abidjan, cherche à résoudre. La startup se positionne comme la première plateforme de finance numérique B2B unifiée d’Afrique de l’Ouest francophone : un tableau de bord unique qui centralise les paiements, la gestion de trésorerie, le contrôle des dépenses et l’infrastructure bancaire pour les entreprises de taille moyenne à grande et les banques de la région. 1. Le problème de fragmentation que les entreprises ont appris à vivre Source de l’image : Getty Images via iStockphoto « L’idée de départ était simplement de résoudre ça », a dit Lova Diakité, fondateur maliano-américain et PDG de JoonaPay. « L’entreprise est née d’un problème vécu de l’intérieur. J’avais des membres de ma famille qui géraient des entreprises à Abidjan et qui ne pouvaient pas recevoir leurs paiements de façon fiable. C’était une friction opérationnelle mineure, mais le genre qui étouffe silencieusement une entreprise. » Ce qui avait commencé comme un problème de paiements a vite révélé quelque chose de plus large. « Une fois qu’on a vraiment passé du temps avec d’autres entreprises sur ce marché, le problème s’est élargi », a dit Diakité. « Elles géraient leurs paiements, leur trésorerie, leurs réconciliations, leur facturation et leurs transactions transfrontalières sur des outils fragmentés qui ne se parlaient pas. Réparer un seul maillon ne résout pas le problème de fond. C’est ce qui nous a conduits à construire un système d’exploitation financier plutôt qu’un simple agrégateur de paiements. » Selon Trade Finance Global, la plupart des PME africaines sont exclues du commerce international non pas par manque de potentiel, mais en raison de systèmes financiers obsolètes et fragmentés. Et le coût de cette fragmentation n’est pas seulement opérationnel ; il va bien plus loin. « La plupart des entreprises normalisent la douleur au départ », a dit Diakité. « Mais le coût est bien réel, et il se manifeste de différentes façons. Nous avons un prospect dans l’agroalimentaire qui traite des millions de FCFA de volume mensuel et qui passe plus de 10 heures par semaine à retrouver des reçus mobile money, à les associer à des factures et à réconcilier manuellement. Ce sont 10 heures de temps de cadres financiers consacrées à de l’administration plutôt qu’à du vrai travail de finance. » Le deuxième coût est plus difficile à aborder. « C’est plus difficile à aborder, mais ça revient plus souvent qu’on ne l’admet », a dit Diakité. « Des employés qui font sortir de l’argent de l’entreprise discrètement, en le masquant par des doubles écritures. Nous avons récemment parlé à une entreprise qui avait mis en place un outil de suivi, mais les employés impliqués dans la fraude l’ont saboté. L’entreprise continuait de payer pour un logiciel que personne n’utilisait pendant que la fraude se poursuivait. Sans source unique de vérité, on ne voit pas où l’argent fuit. » Le schéma est constant : la plupart des entreprises vivent avec des opérations fragmentées jusqu’à ce que quelque chose cède, puis commencent à chercher un système qui regroupe tout. « C’est généralement là qu’on arrive dans la conversation », dit Diakité. Le choix de s’implanter d’abord en Côte d’Ivoire est délibéré. En 2024, la Côte d’Ivoire contribuait à hauteur de 40 % au produit intérieur brut (PIB) de l’Union Économique et Monétaire Ouest-Africaine (UEMOA), selon S&P Global, et affiche une croissance soutenue proche de 6 % depuis plus d’une décennie. « Nous avons démarré en Côte d’Ivoire non seulement à cause de ce problème vécu de l’intérieur, mais aussi parce qu’Abidjan est le centre de gravité commercial de l’Afrique de l’Ouest francophone », dit Diakité. « Si vous construisez quelque chose qui fonctionne pour les entreprises ivoiriennes opérant à travers l’UEMOA, vous avez une base qui peut s’étendre à l’ensemble de la région. » La newsletter continue après cette publicité. Touchez les acteurs qui font bouger l’écosystème technologique et commercial francophone. Faites de la publicité dans la newsletter hebdomadaire francophone de TechCabal et présentez votre marque aux décideurs, opérateurs, fondateurs et chefs d’entreprise qui comptent le plus pour votre croissance. Prêt à vous lancer ? Envoyez un e-mail à ads@bigcabal.com. 2. À la rencontre de l’équipe qui construit pour ce marché Source de l’image: JoonaPay Le directeur technique (CTO) de JoonaPay, Ben Ouattara, est Ivoirien et dispose d’une solide expérience en architecture fintech, ayant dirigé l’ingénierie de systèmes traitant plus d’un milliard de dollars de volume de transactions en Afrique de l’Ouest, selon ses propres dires. « Ben a construit à la fois pour des contextes de la Silicon Valley et d’Abidjan », a dit Diakité. « Les hypothèses d’infrastructure qu’un ingénieur de la Silicon Valley tient pour acquises ne tiennent pas toujours ici, et Ben a construit pour les deux. » Les deux se sont rencontrés dans la scène tech abidjanaise, et leur première conversation a contribué à définir la portée de l’entreprise. « L’arrivée de Ben a aidé à consolider le passage d’un agrégateur de paiements rapide à quelque chose de plus large »,
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8 essential tips to free up your iPhone storage
Managing storage on an iPhone can be a struggle, especially as high-resolution media and sophisticated applications consume more data and storage than low-resolution files. When an iPhone reaches its storage limit, performance often slows down, and users find themselves unable to download essential updates or store new files. A few targeted adjustments to your settings can reclaim gigabytes of space. To find the most effective methods for clearing digital clutter, TechCabal spoke with Desmond Francis, a phone expert and salesman who runs Desontechhub, a gadget device store in Computer Village, Lagos. Francis shared that the process for clearing storage is universal across the ecosystem, noting, “It’s the same process for all the iPhones.” 8 ways to free up your iPhone storage 1. Reset all settings One of the most immediate ways to refresh a device is to reset the system configurations. Unlike a factory reset, this does not wipe your personal data like photos or contacts, but it can clear it. “When you reset all settings, all the things will not be deleted. Is boy, if you reset, it will actually reset some unnecessary things,” Francis said. Tip: Go to Settings > General > Transfer or Reset iPhone > Reset > Reset All Settings. Screenshot from an iPhone 12 Pro. Image source: TechCabal Screenshot from an iPhone 12 Pro. Image source: TechCabal 2. Delete old iMessages Text-based messages consume very little space, but years of attachments, stickers, and shared media within the iMessage service can result in massive storage consumption. Francis explained that all the iMessages that a user has received since the first day of use till date, “occupy a lot of space, and you might not need those messages. So you have to delete everything.” Tip: Open the Messages app, tap Edit, and choose Select Messages to remove large threads. Screenshot from an iPhone 12 Pro. Image source: TechCabal Screenshot from an iPhone 12 Pro. Image source: TechCabal 3. Automate message deletion If you do not want to manually clear your iMessage history, you can set your iPhone to handle it automatically after a set period. “You can go to settings, to turn on ‘keep message for just 30 days’, or ‘less than 30 days’, so as the message comes in, they can always be deleted,” Francis says. Tip: Go to Settings > Messages > Keep Messages and change the duration from Forever to 30 Days. Screenshot from an iPhone 12 Pro. Image source: TechCabal Screenshot from an iPhone 12 Pro. Image source: TechCabal 4. Remove unnecessary applications We often download apps for one-time use and forget they exist. These applications continue to occupy space and may even run background processes. Francis advises users to “delete unimportant and unnecessary applications on the iPhone.” Tip: Go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage to see which apps occupy the most space and delete those you no longer use. Screenshot from an iPhone 12 Pro. Image source: TechCabal Screenshot from an iPhone 12 Pro. Image source: TechCabal 5. Clear the Safari cache The Safari mobile browser stores data from every website you visit to speed up loading times. However, over time, this cache, which stores copies of the website data, becomes a burden on your internal storage. “You have to clear Safari caches,” Francis noted. Tip: Go to Settings > Apps> Safari > Clear History and Website Data. Screenshot from an iPhone 12 Pro. Image source: TechCabal This applies to any other browser you use on your iPhone. For instance, if you use Google Chrome, go to Settings > Apps> Safari > Clear History and Website Data. 6. Manage WhatsApp media and group chats WhatsApp, an app primarily for communication, has default settings that often lead to storage crises due to the sheer volume of shared media in group conversations. “Your image pictures and videos on unnecessary groups or on WhatsApp groups, you have to mute them. You also have to clear the chats on WhatsApp groups that have heavy photos or videos on them. You turn [the auto-download feature] off,” Francis said. Tip: In WhatsApp, go to Settings > Storage and Data > Media Auto-Download and set all options to ‘Never’. Screenshot from an iPhone 12 Pro. Image source: TechCabal Screenshot from an iPhone 12 Pro. Image source: TechCabal Screenshot from an iPhone 12 Pro. Image source: TechCabal 7. Delete duplicated photos and videos The photo library on an iPhone often fills up with nearly identical images, especially from multiple photo takes. Francis suggested that to free up space, users should “delete some duplicated videos and photos. Get rid of those things.” Tip: In the Photos app, go to ‘Collections’ > scroll down to ‘Utilities’> select ‘Duplicates’ to merge or delete identical media. Screenshot from an iPhone 12 Pro. Image source: TechCabal Screenshot from an iPhone 12 Pro. Image source: TechCabal 8. Clean up voice notes and mobile services Voice notes are frequently overlooked as a source of storage exhaustion, despite being heavy audio files. “Of course, unnecessary voice notes have to be deleted,” Francis said. Tip: Go to the Voice Memos App> Select “All recordings”> select the items you want to delete. Additionally, certain background services can be adjusted to prevent further accumulation of audio storage. Screenshot from an iPhone 12 Pro. Image source: TechCabal Screenshot from an iPhone 12 Pro. Image source: TechCabal
Read MoreOmniRetail launches new platform to digitise FMCG distribution and financing
OmniRetail, a business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce platform that operates in Nigeria, Ghana, and Côte d’Ivoire, has launched OmniOne, a digital platform designed to help fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) manufacturers scale their distribution network and operations. OmniRetail already operates a B2B e-commerce marketplace for retailers through OmniBiz, its core commerce engine. OmniOne is the company’s attempt to extend that infrastructure to manufacturers by turning its distribution network into a system that also delivers data visibility and financial services. According to data from NielsenIQ, a market research and consumer insights company, Nigeria and Kenya’s FMCG market grew by 18.1% in value in 2023 compared to the previous year, with traditional trade contributing 98% to the retail landscape in 2023. Still, the distribution layer powering this market remains fragmented. Manufacturers rely on a network of distributors, sub-distributors, and informal retailers, where orders are often placed by phone or during in-person visits, and payments are split across multiple channels, resulting in delays and missed sales opportunities. OmniRetail is betting that by connecting these processes, it could unlock value across the chain. “OmniBiz has earned the trust, built the network, and generated the data that makes OmniOne possible,” said Deepankar Rustagi, founder and CEO of OmniRetail. “Manufacturers, distributors, and financial institutions can now plug into what we have built and scale faster alongside us.” OmniOne itself is not a replacement for OmniBiz, the company noted. While OmniBiz continues to drive orders and fulfilment, OmniOne aggregates that activity into a single interface for manufacturers and gives them real-time visibility into demand, manufacturing units, distributor warehouses, and retail sell-through rates. OmniRetail explained that a manufacturer can access a consolidated view of business performance through the OmniOne dashboard, including customer analytics, new, returning, and churned customers; leads; customer interactions; surveys; order value; quantities sold; total orders; and new customer orders. For distributors, OmniOne can be used to check their ledger or wallet balance, view Stock Keeping Unit (SKU) availability and pricing, place an order, make a payment using the wallet balance or approved credit, and track order status, according to the company. “The overall journey connects four things that usually operate separately in traditional trade: goods, payments, credit, and data visibility,” Rustagi said. “This helps manufacturers make better decisions and helps distributors reduce manual follow-ups, payment delays, blocked working capital, and stockouts.” An integral part of OmniRetail’s new product is embedded access to financial services. Through partnerships with over 14 financial institutions, including banks and fintechs, OmniRetail said that OmniOne embeds working capital support, digital payments and collections, interest on account balances, fixed and flexible deposit options, and point-of-sale (POS) solutions directly into trade activity. Creditworthiness on the platform is determined using transaction and behavioural data, including purchase history, order frequency, repayment patterns, and inventory movement, rather than relying solely on traditional collateral, according to the company. This allows distributors and retailers to access financing based on actual business activity. The product launch comes one year after OmiRetail’s $20 million Series A. Launched in June 2019, OmniRetail said it has visibility into over 500,000 FMCG orders worth ₦250 billion ($182 million) monthly, across 10,000 distributors and 100,000 retailers. When asked if OmniRetail would be launching additional features for retailers and manufacturers, the company said it will deepen its AI capabilities to strengthen the connection between commerce, finance, and data visibility. “Our focus is to continue building OmniOne as the operating layer for traditional trade, helping businesses move goods, access financial services, and make decisions with better data,” Rustagi added.
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Kenya’s best coffee was always for export. This founder kept it.
This article is based on a conversation from Voices & Visions, a podcast produced through a partnership between Tutto Passa Agency and TechCabal, which explores the people and ideas shaping Africa’s innovation economy. For decades, Kenya exported its best coffee and drank its lower grades. The country’s highest-grade beans—globally sought after for their physical density, vibrant acidity, and distinctive aroma—were shipped in burlap sacks for roasters in Europe, the US, and Japan, where value was added and margins captured. At home, what remained were lower-grade or instant coffees. Ritesh Doshi, the CEO and owner of Spring Valley Coffee, a Nairobi-based specialty coffee roaster, is trying to change that. The first time he realised something was wrong with Kenya’s coffee industry, he was drinking a cup in Brooklyn. The best lot of that harvesting season. Ritesh is Kenyan. He had never tasted that coffee at home. In a recorded conversation on Voices & Visions, a podcast backed by Tutto Passa Agency and TechCabal, Doshi said the simple question of why Kenyan coffee tastes better abroad than it does in Nairobi led him into the business. The answer, he recalls, was direct. Producers kept little of their best output for the domestic market; most was exported for processing and consumption elsewhere. “I’m Kenyan,” he says. “Why am I not drinking the best coffee here?” Doshi did not set out to build a coffee company. His early career followed a more predictable path: investment banking, private equity, and a stint with HSBC in the Middle East. But the shift back to Nairobi in 2012 exposed something practical—and, in its own way, more revealing about the gaps in the local economy. It began with a late pizza delivery. Orders took upwards of 90 minutes to arrive, sometimes longer. In cities he had lived in before, that kind of delay would have been unthinkable. So he built what was missing: a delivery network. Without reliable digital maps, his team sketched their own—large, wall-sized layouts marking roads that had no official names, sometimes identified only by landmarks, including one known internally as “UN Tank Road.” What emerged was less a food business than a logistics system. By 2016, it had been acquired by Pizza Hut, along with its fleet, routing infrastructure, and operational backbone. “It ended up being a logistics business,” Doshi says. “We just happened to sell great pizza.” Coffee came later, and almost incidentally. When Doshi encountered Spring Valley Coffee, it was as a customer. Founded in 2009 as a small café and roastery in Nairobi, the company had built a quiet reputation for quality. What distinguished it, he realised, was not branding or scale, but something more fundamental: it kept some of Kenya’s best coffee in Kenya. That, in itself, was unusual. A worker sorting coffee beans at Spring Valley Coffee roastery in Nairobi. Image source: Tutto Passa Buying the supply Doshi’s entry into coffee was neither immediate nor inevitable. After selling his logistics business, he deliberately sought something rooted in Kenya’s real economy, not dependent on imports or abstract capital flows. “I wanted to take the best of what Kenya had,” he says, “and take it to the world.” At the time, Spring Valley Coffee was still small: a café, a modest roastery, and a team of fewer than 10. Doshi had become, by his own telling, a “fanatic customer,” drawn less by branding than by the product’s consistency. When he first approached the founders about investing, they declined. Months later, as they prepared to relocate abroad, the conversation reopened. Doshi acquired the business. “We joke now that I didn’t want to lose my daily supply,” he says. The remark might be light, but the underlying shift was not. Doshi was moving from consumption to control, from buying coffee to shaping how it was sourced, processed, and ultimately experienced. What premium means Coffee, like wine, has its own internal hierarchy. On a 100-point scale, anything above 80 is classified as “specialty”—a threshold defined by clarity, balance, and the absence of defects. By most industry accounts, Kenya consistently produces beans in that upper tier. Yet the domestic market has historically captured little of that value. Export markets pay in hard currency, while domestic consumption has been shallow. For years, brewed coffee accounted for a fraction of beverage consumption in Kenya, with instant coffee dominating what little demand existed. Doshi says Spring Valley’s proposition sits in that gap. He resists calling it luxury. The word, he argues, implies distance—something aspirational but out of reach for most consumers. The goal instead is to make high-quality coffee part of everyday urban consumption, not an occasional indulgence. That ambition, however, runs up against price. Specialty coffee is more expensive by design—farmers are paid more, traceability is tighter, and the roasting process itself requires precision. The challenge, therefore, is whether enough consumers are willing to consistently pay for quality. Ritesh Doshi roasting coffee at Spring Valley roastery. Image source: Tutto Passa The long chain To understand that challenge, it helps to look upstream. Kenya’s coffee industry still operates, in large part, through a centralised auction system. Smallholder farmers—many cultivating less than an acre—deliver cherries to cooperative societies. The beans are processed, milled, and graded before being presented at weekly auctions in Nairobi, now regulated by the Capital Markets Authority (CMA). From there, they move through a layered chain: agents, dealers, exporters. Payment can take months to reach farmers. “It’s a long chain,” Doshi says. “And a lot gets lost along the way.” Yet the system also offers traceability, something rare in global coffee markets. Each lot carries an out-turn number that links it to a specific factory, week, and production batch. “It’s not blockchain,” he says, “but it works.” Spring Valley buys both through this auction system and, where regulations allow, directly from producers. The aim is not to bypass the system entirely, but to navigate it more efficiently, retaining quality while improving margins at multiple points in the chain. Roasting at origin The more radical shift
Read MoreWhy more exits don’t mean more liquidity for Africa’s tech ecosystem
For the first time in years, capital is finding its way back to investors in African ventures, according to a new report from Stears and Ventures Platform that tracked 181 verified VC-backed exits across the continent between 2011 and 2026. The report shows that Africa’s tech ecosystem is producing more exits than ever, but the improvement is driven as much by a 33% decline in funding as a 36% rise in exits. If you combine this with less participation from foreign investors and acquirers, the dominance of acquisitions (73%), and the concentration in four countries (81%), the result is a backlog of companies that raised large rounds and now need to provide liquidity in a market that cannot provide it. For fund managers who have to return money to their investors, the importance of planning for liquidity from the outset can not be overstated, a shift from it being currently treated as an eventual outcome of ecosystem maturity. International buyers made up 56% of disclosed exits in 2020. By 2025, that share had fallen to 33%, the report said. Acquisitions now account for 73% of all exits, more than four times the next most common route. Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt, and Kenya together account for 81% of disclosed exits. Financial services alone delivers 30%, more than the next two sectors put together. “The problem is not too few exits,” Dr Dotun Olowoporoku, the managing partner at Ventures Platform, noted in the report. “It is that exit routes are narrow, buyer pools are shallow, and the broadening that should accompany maturity is not happening fast enough.” The recycling mirage The capital recycling ratio, exits divided by investments in a given year, climbed from 0.032 in 2022 to 0.065 in 2025. While that’s an improvement on paper, in practice, it’s mostly arithmetic. Funding volumes fell 33% over the window as exit volumes rose 36%, meaning the ratio improved mostly because the denominator shrank. For the companies that raised money during the 2019-2022 boom, less funding has created a stockpile of companies that will eventually need buyers, but the market has not widened to receive them. Peer markets offer useful context. Southeast Asia runs at 0.03 to 0.05, but exit activity there has scaled alongside investment. Latin America boomed, corrected, and still settled at meaningfully higher exit levels even as funding fell sharply between 2022 and 2025. Africa has yet to show it can sustain exit activity independently of the funding cycle. A new way to measure liquidity The report also introduces the Stears-Ventures Platform Liquidity Index, the first composite measure of African venture liquidity. It separates liquidity volume (80% of the score) from liquidity quality (20%). The quality component draws 60% from international buyer share, 20% from fresh liquidity intensity, and 20% from route diversity. The baseline is 2020-2023, with quarterly updates. West Africa leads with 86 recorded exits, an unadjusted Liquidity Quality Index of 87.03, and a Diversity Score of 85.80 – top of the table on both. North Africa scores well on quality, almost entirely because of Arab and European buyer participation. Southern Africa, despite South Africa’s deep corporate base, posts a Diversity Score of just 32.81 as 89% of its VC exits run through trade sales. Central Africa, with only 10 recorded exits, sits at the bottom across every metric. The most interesting signal in the data The most encouraging thing in the dataset is venture-backed companies buying other venture-backed companies. Flutterwave’s all-stock acquisition of Mono Technologies, Risevest acquiring Chaka in Nigeria and Hisa in Kenya, and OmniRetail’s 2024 acquisition of Traction Apps. They all show that parts of the ecosystem, particularly West African fintech, are beginning to generate buyers from within, and this is the closest thing African VC has to structural improvement. When buyers come from inside the ecosystem, dependence on external capital cycles eases, and the effects compound. Companies that grow through acquisition scale faster, become more attractive targets themselves, and set valuation reference points along the way, which is very useful for investors. But, just like exits, it’s still concentrated. These acquisitions are most visible in financial services, faint elsewhere, and not yet at the scale needed to shift the overall buyer mix. The report combines the Stears Transactions Database with direct submissions from 16 participating funds: Ventures Platform, LoftyInc, Future Africa, Acumen, Microtraction, Golden Palm Investments, Launch Africa, Enza Capital, VestedWorld, DOB Equity, HoaQ, Norrsken22, Atlantica Ventures, Consonance Capital Managers, Serena Ventures, and MaC Venture Capital.
Read MoreMoonshot by TechCabal returns to Lagos for fourth edition in October
TechCabal, Africa’s leading technology media publication, today announced that Moonshot by TechCabal, its flagship pan-African technology conference, will return for its fourth edition on October 28 and 29, 2026, at the National Theatre Nigeria in Lagos, Nigeria. Since its inception in 2023, Moonshot has grown into Africa’s fastest-growing technology conference and one of the most important convenings of the global tech ecosystem. The 2025 edition welcomed 6,000 attendees from 39 countries across 6 continents, bringing the three-year run to more than 12,650 participants from 44 countries since the conference launched in 2023. “Moonshot has become the moment each year when African tech meets itself to take stock, to make deals, and to decide what comes next”, said Tomiwa Aladekomo, CEO, Big Cabal Media. “We are excited to be bringing the ecosystem back to Lagos for a fourth edition and to share more about what this year’s conference will look like in the coming weeks.” What Moonshot has built Across three editions, Moonshot has become a genuine economic and ecosystem event for African technology. Investors attending the conference have collectively raised and deployed over $5 billion through their funds, while startups exhibiting on the Moonshot floor carry an estimated combined market valuation exceeding $15 billion. More than 2,000 unique organisations have been represented across editions, with one in seven attendees a funder, investor, or ecosystem enabler with active capital to deploy. The conference has also become Africa’s most prominent stage for early-stage startup discovery. TC Battlefield, Moonshot’s flagship pitch competition, has attracted 960 applicants, named 14 winners, and awarded $105,000 in prize money since 2023, alongside structured pre-accelerator mentorship and direct access to top-tier investors. Beyond capital, Moonshot has anchored continental policy alignment. The 2025 edition convened ministers and dignitaries from Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Mauritania, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, and others across six major policy roundtables, with stakeholders pledging over $120,000 to support the newly formed Tech Ecosystem Alliance. What’s coming In the weeks ahead, TechCabal will announce: The headline sponsor for Moonshot 2026 The conference theme and editorial direction for this year’s edition The content tracks, session formats, and confirmed speakers Ticket tiers and pricing, including bundle access to co-located events Past editions of Moonshot have featured speakers including Dr Bosun Tijani, Nigeria’s Minister of Communications, Innovation & Digital Economy; Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, Director-General of NITDA; Dr Jumoke Oduwole, Nigeria’s Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment; Iyin Aboyeji, Founding Partner of Future Africa; and Marlon Nichols, Co-founder and Managing General Partner of MaC Venture Capital, among others. Moonshot 2026 will once again anchor a week of African tech and investment programming in Lagos. Off-conference activities, side mixers, and co-located events will run through the week of October 28. To stay updated on speaker announcements, ticket sales, and programming details, visit moonshot.techcabal.com and subscribe to TC Daily, TechCabal’s daily newsletter. About TechCabal TechCabal is Africa’s leading technology media publication, providing reporting, data, and context on African technology, business, and innovation since 2013. TechCabal covers startup funding, mergers and acquisitions, fintech, policy, the creative economy, and the people building the continent’s digital future. TechCabal is part of Big Cabal Media, which also operates Zikoko, Cabal Creative, and TC Insights. For more information, visit techcabal.com and moonshot.techcabal.com.
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