Welcome to This Week in StartupGhana newsletter. Blitz through what happened in Ghana’s innovation landscape over the last week. The big stories include:
- Zeepay closes its Series A.5 funding round to support its ongoing Africa expansion.
- Leasafric Ghana raises €700,000 to finance farmers and ride-hailing partners.
- Akwaaba Feeds, NorthLite Solar, and Wami Agro to benefit from a €16,000 technical assistance grant.
- Healthtech startup Rivia acquires Waffle to expand its digital healthcare network.
- eCampus donates GHS2m worth of subscriptions to the Abutia community.
- Bank of Ghana fines Payment Service Providers for onboarding financial institutions without approval.
Funding
- Zeepay has successfully closed its Series A.5 equity funding round to support its ongoing Africa expansion. The round was led by the global cooperative and social impact investor Oikocredit. Other investors in the round include the infrastructure investment platform Africa50, the local pensions-anchored fund, Injaro Ghana Venture Capital Fund, and Verdant Capital Hybrid Fund with a follow-on investment from Investisseurs & Partenaires. Although the amount raised was not disclosed, a blog post from one of the participating investors revealed that the transaction was a $14 million Series A.5 funding round.
- Leasafric, one of Ghana’s leading asset finance institutions, has secured a GHS 10 million (approx. € 0.7 million) facility from the global cooperative and social impact investor Oikocredit. Part of the loan will be used to develop an agri-leasing product for smallholder farmers, and the rest will be invested in its vehicle leasing business for its ride-hailing partners.
- Akwaaba Feeds, NorthLite Solar, and Wami Agro have been secluded to benefit from a €16,000 technical assistance grant under the Ghana SME Impact Investment Support Project. The program, implemented by Innohub, has been designed to provide pre- or post-investment technical assistance for investee companies of impact investors. Over 18 months, Innohub will support the selected companies in vital areas such as marketing, e-commerce, financial management, human resources, process optimization, resource efficiency, and health and safety.
Acquisition
- Rivia, a healthcare technology-enabled chain, has acquired Waffle, the SaaS hospital and inventory management platform, to accelerate its mission of supporting private clinics. The acquisition will bring Waffle’s software under Rivia’s umbrella and will be rebranded as RiviaOS. The RiviaOS platform is a healthcare-as-a-service solution that enables healthcare providers to access features like appointment scheduling, a booking engine, services storefront, video consultations, e-pharmacy, e-lab, vitals capture, billing, expense, and revenue and inventory management. The platform also offers cost-effective AI-powered health diagnosis on demand.
Regulation
- The Bank of Ghana has been busy dishing out “sticks” to various players in the financial ecosystem for a couple of months. This time, it has fined some Payment Service Providers (PSP)who onboarded microcredit and microfinance institutions without prior confirmation of their regulatory status with the central bank. This violates the Payment Systems and Service Act, 2019, Act 987. Conducting enhanced due diligence when onboarding financial partners requires PSPs to comprehensively assess license status and confirm whether the Bank of Ghana has authorised them to participate in the proposed activities.
CSR
- Mr. Cecil Senna Nutakor, Founder and Chief Executive of eCampus, has donated subscriptions worth GHS2m to the Abutia community. More than 1,300 students are expected to receive free year-long subscriptions to the platform, which enables teachers and other stakeholders to measure learning outcomes. eCampus helps to measure, analyse, and predict learners’ readiness for examinations, employment, and compliance. As part of its plans, eCampus will partner with traditional leaders to improve education at the community and rural levels.
