African New Startups in the credit scoring space

African startups with solutions in the credit scoring and financing space will have the chance to secure a testing phase for their technologies with French utility company ENGIE at Africa Tech Summit Kigali in February. Taking place for the third time on February 4-6, Africa Tech Summit Kigali brings together tech leaders, MNOs, banks, investors, entrepreneurs, governments, trade bodies and media to drive investment and collaboration in the African tech space. For the second year, Disrupt Africa has reprised its partnership with Africa Tech Summit Kigali to host the two-day Africa Startup Summit,…

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Mali based insurtech new startup OKO Finance

Malian insurtech startup OKO Finance has helped many rural farmers to access crop insurance for the first time ever. Founded in 2017, OKO develops affordable mobile-based crop insurance products to provide smallholder farmers with the financial security they need, regardless of unstable climate trends. CEO Simon Schwall, spoke to ITBusinessDirect about their plans and activites, here is the conversation What is the story behind OKO Finance? Before starting OKO I worked for a very successful micro-insurance provider called BIMA. I was their local CEO in Papua New Guinea and Fiji…

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New Startup food delivery Yumi Foods fed another $8M

Yumi foods

Babies have options these days when it comes to what goes in their mouths. No more is it just the standard mush in a jar. Now they have got everything from pouches to organic purees delivered right to their parents’ door and Yumi Foods is one of several startups cashing in. The company has just announced that it raised another $8 million from several of Silicon Valley’s household names, including Allbirds, Warby Parker etc. But it’s a tough and saturated market full of products all vying for mom and dad’s attention, and that’s not…

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Ethena Startup creates a New Sexual Harassment Software

Ethena

Ethena, a software startup, is making it easier to customize sexual harassment training for employees. The company is aiming to make the delicate topic of sexual harassment training more engaging and less uncomfortable for both employees and executives. It believes that something as important as sexual harassment training certainly should not be a cookie-cutter experience. Instead, the software, which is currently set to be released in January of the new year, promises to offer a unique educational experience for each employee and one that just might make them look forward…

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Tala Microloan New Startup gains $110 Million In latest Funding

Tala, a Los Angeles startup that makes microloans to consumers and small business owners in emerging markets, is announcing today that it has raised $110 million in funding. The new Silicon Valley venture capital firm RPS Ventures, cofounded by Kabir Misra, former managing partner at Softbank’s $100 billion Vision Fund, is leading the round. Tala’s backers include PayPal, billionaire Steve Case’s VC firm Revolution, Chris Sacca’s Lowercase Capital and Data Collective, among others. The new funding values Tala at nearly $800 million, according to an investor. Tala has raised more…

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New Startups and Partnerships, EurAfrican Forum

Dr. Precious Lunga, CEO and Co-Founder of Baobab Circle, will be joining the 2nd edition of the EurAfrican Forum in Portugal as a speaker, taking place on July 4-5. The EurAfrican Forum exists to explore and promote the power of diasporas as a connecting force between cities, regions and continents, between cultures, companies and people. It is an action-oriented gathering of leaders that aims to foster stronger collaboration between Europe and Africa to promote a shared green and inclusive growth for the two continents, fostering mechanisms for collaboration and creating…

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New startup that helps you scan, send and print yourself

Kat Kinkead and Peter Weijmarshausen met at their old company, Shapeways. Weijmarshausen recently stepped down as CEO and was looking for something cool to do when he and Kinkead realized that the most popular application of 3D scanning and printing was in 3D figurines. These tiny action-figure-like representations were wildly popular print subjects back at Shapeways but they were notoriously difficult to capture and print. Now, thanks to improvements in scanning, color printing, and software, they’re surprisingly easy. Thus Beheld was born. Kinkead, the CEO, has an MFA in industrial…

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LinkedIn loses legal right to block startup from public profile data

A Judge on Monday ruled that an analytics company has the right to scrape data from LinkedIn . HiQ, the data gatherer, has been processing publicly available data from LinkedIn and using it to train AI models, until May when LinkedIn demanded it stop.  U.S. District Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco granted a preliminary injunction request brought by hiQ Labs, and ordered LinkedIn to remove within 24 hours any technology preventing hiQ from accessing public profiles in a test of how much control a social media site can wield…

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Microsoft launching a new AI startup program in Paris

Microsoft is making efforts to give space for the new start-up ventures that are going make changes for the coming years. The Tech giant is set to focus on artificial intelligence. More and more startups are trying to grasp the AI field and most are new startups. This will certainly create a major impact on the AI startups. This may lead to Microsoft to start their new program for AI at the Station F. Microsoft has had a startup accelerator in the Sentier neighborhood for a few years now. When…

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In 2017, 17% of startups have a female founders

The percentage of startups that have at least one female founder was flat in the first quarter of 2017. From 2009 to 2012, the percent of venture-funded companies with women founders increased by nearly 8 percent; however, the percentage of women-founded venture-backed companies has plateaued at approximately 17 percent since 2012. And as we look at Q1 2017 data, that percent doesn’t appear to have changed. For those who are keeping track, that’s nearly five years with no percentage growth in women-founded venture-backed startups. The absolute number of companies (along…

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