Village Capital backs two Ghanaian startups with $350,000 from latest fund
Village Capital, a global nonprofit that backs high-impact startups across emerging markets, has deployed $350,000 from its latest fund into two Ghanaian startups, marking the first investments from a vehicle designed to channel capital to early-stage African companies building essential services. The funding comes from the Africa Ecosystem Catalysts Facility (AECF), a $4 million investment fund launched in July 2025 in partnership with the Dutch Entrepreneurial Development Bank and the Netherlands Enterprise Agency. The facility targets startups addressing economic mobility and climate resilience through locally grounded solutions. The investment comes as funding from development finance institutions, which helped power much of Africa’s startup funding growth over the last decade, has started slowing across the continent. Deals like this show that investors are still willing to back early-stage startups building essential services in sectors like healthcare and logistics. Under the latest investment, the facility will invest $200,000 into Rivia Clinics, a tech-enabled primary healthcare startup, and a $150,000 investment into VDL Fulfilment, an e-commerce logistics platform, through a mix of convertible debt and performance-linked financing. “Rivia and VDL are strong examples of the businesses emerging across Ghana – founders building practical solutions to real, everyday challenges, from accessing quality healthcare to moving goods more efficiently,” said Heather Matranga, Managing Director of Venture and Investments at Village Capital. Rivia will use the funding to expand its clinic network, strengthen its sales efforts, and deepen its virtual care capabilities, while VDL will finance fleet expansion and warehouse infrastructure to improve fulfilment capacity. Village Capital noted that the funding works in partnership with locally-led Entrepreneur Support Organisations (ESOs), local ecosystem groups that help startups with mentorship, funding access, business development, and investor readiness. These organisations are known for helping to identify promising startups that may be overlooked by traditional venture capital firms. When the AECF was initially set up, Village Capital selected five ESOs in Ghana, Nigeria, and Tanzania as venture partners, including Reach for Change, Africa Fintech Foundry, Fate Foundation, Anza Entrepreneurs, and Ennovate Ventures. For the Ghana investments, Reach for Change and Innovation Spark helped shape the investment pipeline, ensuring capital is aligned with the realities on the ground, according to the company. Since its founding in 2009, Village Capital said it has helped mobilise over $7 billion in investment capital to support about 1800 startups. The latest investments are expected to be the first in a planned series of deployments across Nigeria and Tanzania as the facility continues backing early-stage African startups.
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Nahla Gamil was once unsure of her future. She now heads a tech team.
The story of Nahla Gamil’s tech career cannot be told without her foundation: school. Though a citizen of Egypt, she was raised in Saudi Arabia and after graduating from high school there in 2013, she appeared set for a conventional path in engineering She moved to Qatar in 2013 to study Electrical Engineering at Qatar University, a public research institution, but she says the environment did not suit her. “I did not really like it over there,” she recalls. “So I transferred to Eastern Mediterranean University [EMU] in Cyprus, and this is where I continued the rest of my studies.” In 2015, when Gamil transferred to EMU to continue her studies, she chose to continue the Electrical Engineering program. She specialised in Power, but admits to feeling adrift regarding her long-term career aspirations. “People my age did not know what they wanted to be,” she says, reflecting on the period before she found her niche. Despite her uncertainty, she says she excelled academically and feared that if she entered the workforce immediately, she would never return for further study. “I always heard stories of people who start working, and it’s harder for them to continue their Master’s after they start working,” she says. She transitioned directly into a Master of Science (MSc) in Electrical Engineering at EMU in 2018. During her postgraduate studies, Gamil shifted her specialisation to Communication Engineering, a field she says she preferred over Power. To support herself, she says she worked from 2018 to 2020 as a research assistant, a role involving academic support and teaching, at EMU. She taught C and C++ programming language courses. That immersion in programming development created an initial bond with software, though she remained unsure of how to translate this into a career. “I wasn’t really sure where I wanted to go with that [degree],” Gamil says. COVID, tech, and clarity The global COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 redefined Gamil’s trajectory just as she finished her final academic papers in EMU. With the world on hold, a friend at Microsoft, the US tech giant, advised her that the tech industry was the least influenced by the health crisis. “No one knows how the world would go; however, the tech world is very strong, and it’s full of positions that you can actually [fill],” she says. That conversation got Gamil thinking. She decided to “see what was happening in the tech world,” since it was related to what she had taught as a research assistant. In 2020, she started searching for a job in project management even before her Master’s graduation. “In a month, I got two interviews—one in the company I’m working in now, and then another at a company that happens to be our partners right now,” she recalls. In September 2020, he landed a role as a Project Manager (PM), a professional responsible for leading a team to achieve project goals, at Bit68, a Cairo-headquartered software development company. Bit68 had just 12 employees and a PM team of two at the time, according to her. “I got hired one week after my graduation, and I had this agreement with my manager that I would work remotely until I came back to Egypt,” she says. During her three-month probation period, which ended in December 2020, Gamil felt an immediate connection to her work. “Something clicked with the place; with the position; with what I was actually doing,” she recalls. She relocated to Egypt, her home country, in March 2021 to begin on-site operations, and to bridge her technical gaps, she took some online courses. She says she completed a Product Management Tech Fellowship at Knowledge Officer in August 2021 and an Agile Fundamentals course via Udemy in November 2021 to understand Scrum and Kanban methodologies used in project management. She says she completed a Full Stack Web Development Diploma at Route, a technical training centre in Egypt, in September 2022. While she had no intention of becoming a developer, Gamil wanted to speak their language to better understand blockers. “I knew how to speak the client’s language perfectly fine,” she says. “ I understood what they were saying. I understood the business side. But I also wanted to speak the developer’s language. I wanted to be able to understand when they had a problem.” That expertise, according to Gamil, helped her progress from managing two people in 2021 to becoming the Head of Project Management in January 2022. By 2023, Gamil was promoted to Vice President (VP), while retaining her leadership of the PM team. In September 2025, she became an official partner at Bit68. Navigating early mistakes Nahla Gamil. Image source: TechCabal Gamil’s career started out as a sharp learning curve that began with her own initial misunderstanding of the profession. Early in her career, she fell into the trap of viewing the job as mere coordination, which led her to believe she had enough free time to sign up for animation and French courses. “I thought it was time to learn new languages and new things, because [project management was] very easy,” Gamil admits. She made the “rookie” mistake of treating project management as a purely administrative task of asking for updates and setting meeting invites. This personal experience helped Gamil identify a significant misconception in the industry: the confusion between a PM and a Project Coordinator (PC). She notes that many people think the job is simply about “telling the client, ‘we will be delivering the sprint by next Tuesday’,” but she argues that “a project can go down the hill, even if the developers are very good… if the project manager is not good.” For Gamil, the myth that a PM does not need technical or business depth is dangerous. She argues that a true PM must understand the “business objective of the client” and “speak the language of the developers” to ensure the product’s future viability, rather than just coordinating requests. A case for staying Reflecting on her six-year tenure at Bit68, Gamil
Read MoreNamibia-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
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