Hi everyone, and welcome back to This Week in StartupGhana! We’ve got an exciting edition for you, filled with news on funding wins, policy upates and product lauches. Dive into the key stories shaping Ghana’s startup ecosystem this week. Here are the top headlines:
GAYO wins the £1 million Earthshot Prize for championing clean air initiatives.
GAYO wins the £1 million Earthshot Prize for championing clean air initiatives.
5 startups secure €500,000 from develoPPP Ventures programme to scale their innovative solutions.
Oze secures strategic investment from Visa to double down on boosting SME growth.
Liquify secures funding from Emerald Africa to provide trade finance for African SME exporters.
Wahu Mobility partners with Letshego to accelerate electric vehicle ownership across Africa.
MinoHealth launches an advanced AI-driven tool to enhance healthcare diagnostics and research.
myCreditScore launched to provide a personalised credit reference and scoring system.
The Central Bank suspends Taptap Send over regulatory breaches.
Funding
GAYO wins the £1 million Earthshot Prize for championing clean air initiatives.
The Green Africa Youth Organisation has secured £1 million for winning the 2024 Earthshot Prize for pioneering efforts in promoting clean air and sustainable waste management across Africa.
Founded in 2014 by Joshua Amponsem and Desmond Alugnoa, GAYO is solving the escalating waste and pollution issues in Africa’s rapidly urbanizing cities. Through its zero waste model, which combines community involvement, education, and innovative recycling techniques, it tackles waste-related pollution, reduces greenhouse gas emissions, and fosters economic opportunities.
Oze secures strategic investment from Visa to double down on boosting SME growth
Visa, one of the world’s largest payment networks, has made a strategic investment in four African startups, including Ghana’s digital lending platform, Oze. This investment reflects Visa’s dedication to advancing digital innovation in Africa, aiming to foster fintech growth and enhance financial inclusion across the continent.
5 startups secure €500,000 from develoPPP Ventures programme to scale their innovative solutions.
Five Ghana-based startups (Aya Data, The Blue Penguin, Tendo, Wi-flix, and Swoove360) have secured €100,000 each as part of the fourth develoPPP Ventures funding programme cohort. The develoPPP Ventures programme is a growth funding program by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development to support high-growth startups.
Liquify secures funding from Emerald Africa to provide trade finance for African SME exporters.
The Techstars-backed fintech platform Liquify, has secured debt investment from the Emerald Africa Financing Facility to provide trade finance for African SME exporters. Founded in 2022 by Nadya Yaremenko and Alberta Asafo-Asamoah, Liquify is a trade finance marketplace connecting small and medium-sized enterprises in emerging markets with global capital markets. The investment will help grow its loan book to finance the working capital for agriculture-focused exporters.
Partnership + Product Launch
Wahu Mobility partners with Letshego to accelerate electric vehicle ownership across Africa.
Wahu Mobility, the fully integrated electric vehicle (EV) platform, has partnered with Letshego, the pan-African retail financial services company, to accelerate electric vehicle ownership in Ghana. Letshego Ghana will provide innovative financing solutions to Wahu Mobility’s end customers through this partnership. EV financing is crucial in Ghana and across Africa because it addresses the primary barrier to adopting electric mobility: high upfront costs.
myCreditScore launched to provide a personalized credit reference and scoring system.
myCreditScore, a new player in Ghana’s credit referencing industry, has outdoored its platform to allow individuals to demonstrate their creditworthiness transparently to access credit from financial institutions. Unlike the currency incumbents, the platform leverages data from the Ghana card, covering demographics, transactions, and utility payments to generate a comprehensive score for users.
MinoHealth launches an advanced AI-driven tool to enhance healthcare diagnostics and research.
MinoHealth AI Labs has launched two products, Moremi A.I and Moremi Bio to enhance healthcare diagnostics and biological research. According to the company, Moremi AI boasts high accuracy across several medical tasks, including screening, diagnosis, risk predictions, treatment planning, prescription, triage, and prognosis.
On the other hand, Moremi-Bio can perform several biological tasks, including toxicology, protein-ligand prediction, molecule generation, chemical property prediction, preclinical trial outcome prediction, and clinical trial outcome prediction, among others.
Policy
The Central Bank suspends Taptap Send over regulatory breaches.
The Bank of Ghana has suspended Taptap Send, a leading remittance fintech platform, for one month due to regulatory violations. The central bank reported that Taptap Send operated a “cedi remittance wallet” without the required foreign exchange license, violating guidelines for inward remittance services for payment service providers and failing to meet anti-money laundering (AML) compliance standards.
That’s it for this weekly roundup! Stay tuned for more exciting developments in the ever-evolving Ghanaian startup scene.
Until next time,
The GIJ Team
