Dropifi, founded in Ghana, who joined VC4Africa after the 2011 Startup Weekend Accra , has been selected to join Silicon Valley based seed accelerator and investment fund 500 Startups! Here’s an inspiring infographic of how MEST Ghana’s Dropifi made it to Silicon Valley’s 500 Startups:

See Dropifi’s VC4Africa venture profile and the interview we had with the Dropifi team at the 2011 Startup Weekend Accra.

Tags: 500 Startups, africa, Dropifi, silicon valley, startup
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Today’s featured member of the VC4Africa platform is entrepreneur Olubayo John of Ecobuild Nigeria, with a vision to become the leading provider of green affordable homes in sub Saharan Africa. Ecobuild Nigeria is looking for early stage investors to provide seed capital for a smooth take off.

What is your background and what’s the story of how you’ve set up this company?

“Ecobuild Nigeria was founded by three friends and business associates: Tunde Sobayo, a businessman and trained building engineer; Dotun John, an IT professional and businessman; and myself, an ex-banker turned property developer. My partners have sold over $12m worth of land in a previous venture. I have over 10 years banking experience having worked in two of the top 50 banks on the [...]

Tags: africa, building, business, capital, construction, Ecobuild, entrepreneur, housing, nigeria, SME, social, venture, venture capital for africa
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Today’s featured member of the VC4Africa platform is entrepreneur Sarah Fazendin of Globa.li, a travel tech startup that was selected as one of only three winning companies to participate in the 2013 Telluride Venture Accelerator, dedicated to the acceleration of high-growth potential businesses in travel and tourism. Globa.li secured a lead investor and is now fundraising on VC4Africa – see Globa.li’s venture profile. Only registered investors can review documents, see details for this deal, and express their interest to participate.

What’s the story of how you set up Globa.li?

“In 2001 my co-founder, Maisa Fernandez, and I were managing the Kenya Tourist Board’s North American marketing together. While global travel came to a near standstill after 9/11, we were able to grow travel from North America [...]

Tags: africa, boutique hotels, business, capital, fundraising, Globa.li, hotels, international, investment, tourism, travel
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This interview by Beth Pitts originally appeared on TheNextWomen and is published with permission.

Buni TV, a part of Buni Media, is a web and mobile distribution platform for independent African videos. See the VC4Africa venture profile of Buni TV.

Below, founder Marie Lora-Mungai tells about the challenges facing female entreprenuers in Kenya; about the dangers of producing a political satire in Africa; and the African leaders she most admires (who are also fans of her show!). 

What are your hopes and aspirations for 2013, both personally and for Buni Media?

“My focus in 2013 will be to continue to grow our new video streaming platform Buni TV, which I launched in April last year. Buni TV’s goal is to revolutionize the way African films and other [...]

Tags: africa, Buni, buni tv, investment, venture capital for africa, video
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Today’s featured member of the VC4Africa platform is entrepreneur Natalino Mwenda of Rasello. Rasello is a Relationship Management System (RMS) based in Tanzania, that is being utilized by hundreds of businesses, managing close to 500,000 people across Africa. Rasello secured a lead investor and is fundraising on VC4Africa – see Rasello’s venture profile. Only registered investors can review documents, see details for this deal, and express their interest to participate.

The last time we interviewed you was in March 2012. What has happened in the mean time and what have you achieved with Rasello to date?

“Rasello as a product has advanced tremendously. In March 2012 we were focused mainly on SMS communication and people being able to follow businesses they loved. Due [...]

Tags: africa, business, entrepreneur, equity, finance, funding, Fundraisin, internet, investment, investor, investors, network, rasello, RMS, tanzania, venture capital for africa
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The energy crisis in Africa is immense. Around three quarters of the population in Sub Saharan Africa have no access to electricity, and also companies express access to power as their biggest obstacle. At Venture Capital for Africa, the biggest online community connecting African entrepreneurs and investors, many startups are focused on offering (green) energy solutions. See the selection below, and follow the ones you like!

 GreenEnergyPark™ – South Africa – Philipp Steiner
GreenEnergyPark™s are small commercial developments in rural areas that convert biomass (agricultural residues) into energy, chemicals and commercial products. They’ll provide rural jobs, contribute to food security (additional farming revenue) and its goods replace fossil based products. See their VC4Africa profile >>

 Solarkiosk Solutions PLC – Ethiopia – Sasha Kolopic
Continue reading 10 African startups offering green energy solutions »

Tags: africa, business, community, continent, energy, entrepreneurship, green, history, solutions, startups, venture capital for africa
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What is Africa’s gaming and animation industry up to? At Venture Capital for Africa, the largest online community connecting African entrepreneurs and investors, we’ve put together a list of great ventures in gaming and animation on VC4Africa, including video’s! Check them out and follow the ones you like:

Maliyo Games – Nigeria 

“At Maliyo Games, we have a simple philosophy; to share the experiences of everyday Africa with the world through interactive multimedia content, published for web and mobile distribution.” See their VC4Africa profile >>

Bino and Fino – Nigeria
“We want to cater to a global market that’s crying out for good quality African animation.” Bino and Fino is a cartoon series about a brother and sister named Bino and Fino who [...]

Tags: africa, animation, business, community, entrepreneurs, gaming, startups, technology, VC4Africa, venture capital for africa
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This interview originally appeared on Anya Schmidt’s blog AfricanStartupVoices and is published with permission.

The other day I had the great pleasure of talking to splinter.me founder Ahmed El.Hussaini. The idea behind splinter.me is to provide a system that automatically collects your personal information, available on different social platforms. splinter.me aims to provide optimized search results for recruiters, as the knowledge of individual users goes far beyond the average CV details. See the VC4Africa venture profile of splinter.me.

What is splinter.me about and who are you focusing on?

“splinter.me is a social recruiting platform. The idea started out when my brother asked me to update his CV for him in 2011 as he wanted to change jobs. The first thing I asked my brother was if he had a LinkedIn [...]

Tags: africa, business, capital, community, egypt, Innoventures, recruiting, social, splinter.me, venture capital for africa, web
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Today’s featured member of the VC4Africa community is entrepreneur Toni Maraviglia of MPrep, incubated at the m:Lab in Nairobi, Kenya. Mprep sells mobile educational tools to schools across Kenya. Over 8,000 users at over 400 Kenyan schools are using their tools, and impact studies show that MPrep helps students increase their exam scores in English, Math, Kiswahili, and Science more than the average student.

We understood from a Bloomberg article you have secured investments from angel investors. What have you secured and what are you still looking for?

“Last year we were able to survive off $80K we made in competition money. We just accepted our seed round of investment, which was $200K. Our goal was to raise $150K for one year of [...]

Tags: education, entrepreneur, kenya, mobile, MPrep, Toni Maraviglia, venture capital for africa
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Today’s featured member of the VC4Africa platform is entrepreneur Désiré Nshimirimana of Soft Center, Burundi’s market leader in business management software. Soft Center provides a in-house developed management software package QuickSoft and a number of complimentary services. To expand its sales into Kenya, Tanzania and other East African countries, Soft Center is now looking for investors to raise $630,000.

Please describe your products and target market?

“At Soft Center we develop, sell and implement business management software. The company employs 30 people. In the past years we have developed our own management software package called “QuickSoft Applications”, the first really integrated management system for SMEs. It is the first system that integrates functions like account management, book keeping, stock management, payroll, HRM etc. This makes [...]

Tags: africa, burundi, business, capital, entrepreneur, History, investment, SoftCenter. quicksoft, technology, venture capital for africa
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