People have been creating websites with no prior experience for decades now. Some of us remember the early days of Angelfire websites that would now look hopelessly outdated. Some young website creators weren’t even alive during Angelfire’s reign! But one thing that has stayed consistent is the layman’s ignorance about web hosting. It’s understandable. Web hosting is not the most exciting topic of discussion. When you’re building a website it is something you just want to get out of the way. However, web hosting can make or break your website. With the wrong hosting, you can end up with an…
Author: Stella Kabura
Human resources plays an integral role in the growth of a business. After all, the people you hire to help grow your business are your greatest resource. Furthermore, human resources isn’t just about hiring and firing; it’s also about ensuring each employee is treated fairly and equally, as well as bringing the right people on board. Hiring mistakes costs companies millions of dollars every year. And employee management directly correlates with company culture—a critical area that impacts both internal and external perception of your brand. However, many businesses—especially startups and small businesses that are learning the ropes of running a…
Communications Authority of Kenya, the telecoms regulatory body, has appointed Mercy Wanjau as Acting Director-General effective today as Francis Wangusi’s second term comes to an end. Ms. Wanjau is the Director, Legal Services at CA and is a graduate of the University of Nairobi (LLB Hons), University of Cape Town (LLM) and Strathmore Business School. She is also a Certified Secretary and Professional Mediator. Ms. Wanjau has consulted with KPMG South Africa, PriceWaterhouseCoopers Kenya and also had a stint in commercial legal practice. ‘Ms. Wanjau is a commercial lawyer, regulatory and governance expert with a collective experience of over 15…
Techstars, the worldwide network that helps entrepreneurs succeed has raised $42M investment led by SVB Financial Group with participation from existing investors including Foundry Group to accelerate its global expansion. The firm will use the funds to help more entrepreneurs succeed through seed-stage accelerators, global startup ecosystem activations, corporate innovation, and entrepreneur-focused events. In addition to the financing, John China, President of SVB Capital, has joined Techstars’ Board of Directors. “The Techstars team is well-positioned to keep developing its platform and enable and support founders, investors and startup ecosystems around the globe,” said China. “SVB has a long history working with…
Techstars, a worldwide network that helps entrepreneurs succeed has partnered with Hub71, an Abu Dhabi-based global technology hub led by Mubadala Investment Company, to launch Techstars Hub71 Accelerator. The new 13-week mentorship-driven accelerator will provide hands-on mentorship and guidance as well as access to Techstars’ worldwide network, to help startups gain traction and accelerate their businesses for global success. The Techstars Hub71 Accelerator will be based at Hub71 in the capital of the United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi, and will be led by Vijay Tirathrai who has been MD Techstars Dubai Accelerator since 2017. The Techstars Hub71 Accelerator will accept 10…
India’s PayMate, a B2B payments in India has raised $25 million in a new series D round of growth capital to accelerate expansion within India and internationally to Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East, and Africa (CEMEA). The investors included Japan’s Recruit Strategic Partners, Brand Capital, existing investor Mayfair 101, and Visa. Visa and PayMate will extend their working partnership in India and Central Europe, Middle East and Africa regions. In a statement, Ajay Adiseshann, Founder & CEO, PayMate, “We are very excited to have Visa come onboard as an investor which will help complement our existing commercial partnership with…
Pioneer Credit, a Kenyan micro-lender has partnered Little Cab to provide taxi drivers with better quality smartphones via an innovative credit facility. Pioneer Credit will help distribute smartphones to as many drivers as possible at affordable lending rates and payment terms. According to Little Cab Managing Director Mr. Alex Mwaura,“This is indeed a wonderful day for Little Cab drivers as they will have access to better mobile phones that will enable them to improve on their service delivery. We thank Pioneer Credit for being our partner in this wonderful project and are very confident that this partnership will be impactful…
China’s ride-hailing firm Didi Chuxing (“DiDi”) has announced a partnership with Symphony Investment to provide linkages for entrepreneurs working across the MENA region and China. Didi has investments in both Bolt and Taxify in the region. The new JV headquartered in Abu Dhabi, with an aim to promote sharing economy and internet consumer services in the region, is likely to see Didi invest in many more local internet companies. The agreement was signed at the UAE-China Economic Forum, which was organized by the UAE Ministry of Economy and co-hosted by the Ministry of Commerce of the PRC. HE Sultan Bin…
Tiketi, a travel platform operating across Africa is sizing down on Kenya and South Africa with new local travel platforms to take advantage of the upcoming end of year holidays across the continent. The application provides in-depth knowledge of destinations, tours, activities and holiday packages to the users with an accurate estimation of tickets and detailed information about services required during holidays such as local transportation and booking, holiday packages and attractions tickets’. Tiketi has adapted the application as per local language to offer more easy comprehension of the content. The entire process is designed to give a boost to…
Major global operators are increasingly identifying Africa as a huge potential for market growth in pure network services. MEF is an example. In a few years, consumers of both local area networks (LANs) and metropolitan area networks (MANs) in the continent are expected to experience faster upgraded and world-class internet access as the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) anticipates exponential growth of Carrier Ethernet services in the continent backed with higher bandwidth connectivity and infrastructure. “In two to three years the market is likely to boom in Kenya,” noted Daniel Bar-Lev, MEF Certification and Strategic Programs Director during Nairobi’s first annual…
MTN Rwanda has partnered with the Bank of Kigali to improve access to mobile financial services (MFS) by enabling customers to transact money between MTN Mobile Money wallets and the Bank of Kigali accounts. Bank of Kigali customers can now use the MTN service centres and MTN Mobile Money agents to first load their wallets and then push funds from their wallets to their bank accounts. MTN Rwanda is part of the Y’ello family of 223.4 million subscribers across Africa, Asia and the Middle East. The newly launched Mobile Money platform is aimed at supporting the Rwandan government’s efforts to deepen financial…
Set to facilitate business opportunities and partnerships between North European and East African companies, at least ten entrepreneurs graduating from GrowthAfrica’s startup accelerator managed to present their business and showcased innovative products at the Green Pioneer Venture Forum yesterday. Participating companies were selected to join the Green Pioneer Business Accelerator Programme from 150 applicants from Kenya, with 50 per cent of the applicants coming from outside Nairobi and 20 per cent led by a female CEO. “As you can imagine, today is a very exciting day for us,” said Johnni Kjelsgaard, CEO of GrowthAfrica, in the Venture Forum welcome speech yesterday, “It’s been an almost five month journey. We’ve had…
Need pure drinking water? The long rainy season in Kenya is the best time for rainwater harvesting. A TDS meter now reads that rain water in Nairobi has the lowest levels of impurities in comparison to other water sources such as tap, bottle, well and borehole. Using an iSpring TDS meter purchased from Vutumob.com merchandise company, water samples collected from rain water sources in Nairobi area recorded an average of 10 parts per million of total dissolved solids. Bottled water samples and tap water samples from affluent areas like the Village Market Shopping complex, Gigiri recorded an average of 40ppm and 50ppm respectively.…
Launched in 2010, little was known about Nailab, a tech incubation hub founded by Sam Gichuru, a former Sales Technician at the heart of Nairobi’s suburbs. But today, it boasts of not only mentoring entrepreneurs that attract investor funds worth over $300,000USD but of creating more than 100 tech- related jobs for Kenyan youth in a few months. In the past 46 months, Nailab has thus far managed to incubate over 30 ideas turning a significant number of them into SME’s. Ideas like Ghafla, WezaTele have attracted millions in funding, with WezaTele exiting for 147 million shillings. Other startups such…
The Users and Survivors of Psychiatry in Kenya organization is appealing to Kenyan telecoms to install toll free call services to rescue individuals living with mental disorders, following increasing reports of suicide cases in the country and topped with limited intervention on mental health. “Many people in the streets are suffering from schizophrenia, with no one to assist them,” explained Macharia Njoroge during an annual USP Kenya meeting held on 13 February 2015, Nairobi, noting that local media has reported high cases of suicide and mental health. According to USP Kenya, mental illness is a risk factor for suicide with…
Manoj Kohli has finally resigned after holding several leadership roles in Bharti Airtel since 2002, including playing the role of MD of Bharti Enterprises, reports say. Kohli was currently the non-executive director. However, following his resignation, Shishir Priyadarshi has been appointed as Independent Director notes Airtel. Earlier this year, Airtel had announced Kohli’s resignation as International Managing Director & CEO of the telecom service provider, moving him completely out of daily operations of Airtel’s telecom business. Yet, During his time of operation, Kholi has had an impact on the company by increasing its customer base from one million to 140 million. Over the years,…
Little was known about Kumi Rauf’s ‘I love being black’ initiative that was launched in the late 90s. But thanks to Social Media, ILBB page was labeled the first “World’s biggest Black Facebook Page” to reach one million fans in 2010 and has over the past five years sky-rocketed to a 6.6 million fan base, retaining its title. “We’ve had an enormous impact on social media. We don’t just collect fans,” notes Kumi the CEO of the initiative, “we use this worldwide network to get the word out about a lot of things surrounding our three cornerstones: positivity, awareness and action.” With its…
NAPAfrica just announced that it has finally achieved its goal of reaching a throughput of 20Gbps with more than 180 members across its locations in Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg, South Africa. This follows its declarations of becoming one of Africa’s largest Internet exchanges with the help of its fast growing community of peers. “The understanding around the benefits of a neutral Internet exchange model has grown exponentially as a result of the NAPAfrica offering in sub-Saharan Africa. It is now a far more common and accepted model. Before its launch, the exchange market in sub-Saharan Africa was either a monopoly…
About a century ago, our grannies would dip silver pennies in gallons of milk for preservation purposes. Today, health practitioners are turning back suggesting that particles of silver not only have the ability to kill bacteria and viruses in milk, but to treat or prevent deadly diseases like Ebola through the use of silver generators. While Natural Health News notes that the US National Solutions Foundation is calling on 10 million individuals to inform government representatives to conduct Ebola clinical trials using nanosilver in Africa, many health practitioners suggest that it is even possible to make and use generators that…