Connect with us

Africa

Venture studio Adanian Labs fuels startup growth in Africa

Published

2 years ago

on

In February 2020, as the world was shutting down, and as businesses downsized on account of the COVID pandemic, John Kamara was busy establishing another new startup, Adanian Labs, in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital. It had taken him two years to finally make this dream a reality, and nothing — not even the pandemic — was going to derail him.

And so, swimming against the tides, he set up the venture studio in partnership with co-founders Irene Kiwia and Bendon Murgor.

“People thought we were crazy,” Kamara, who doubles up as Adanian Labs’ CEO, told TechCrunch.

It may have been a tough period to build a business, but they sailed through with their mission.

“We stay the course with startups and make sure they become successful businesses — we de-risk them from failure,” said Kiwia.

How Adanian Labs started

The idea to build Adanian Labs was conceived in 2018, when Kamara was living and working in Cape Town, South Africa, where he witnessed the fast growth of the startup ecosystem, and how, in most countries, accelerators were the default launch pads. He thought the continent was ready for better support, beyond the mentorship and training that most accelerators offered.

“The startup ecosystem was growing but I could not fail to notice the problem of accelerators. You know, startups come out of accelerators and most of them do not have a real opportunity to go to the next level,” said Kamara.

“I thought, there has to be a way I can build something that could empower African founders and provide a better support infrastructure to startups…and in a way retrofit it to also build a business.”

Compelled to offer more value to startups, the co-founders launched Adanian Labs in Kenya, joining other players, like Nailab, in the space.

Adanian Labs targets idea-phase tech startups, offering them all-round support, including capital, advisory and operational backing, building them from the ground up.

It makes equity investment of up to $120,000 in these startups.

By the end of the one-year venture building program, the startups should have launched a product, onboarded and have repeat customers, have a defined revenue model and have raised or are in the process of closing seed funding.

“We help these startups build their teams, iterate where needed, until we find a market fit product,” said Kamara.

“I’m not delusional that every startup has to succeed, but from the moment they become part of the Adanian Labs it means that they have the potential to succeed,” he said.

Venture studio Adanian Labs is accelerating the growth of startups in Africa

A team is captured brainstorming. Adanian Labs plans to help build 300 startups over the next five years. Image Credits: Adanian Labs

Africa-wide Growth

In a period of two years, Adanian Labs has grown beyond Kenya, by establishing a presence in Tanzania, Zambia, South Africa and Nigeria — some of the biggest startup and tech hubs in Africa.

It is eyeing a pan-African presence by 2025 as it races to help build 300 companies over the next five years. In the interim, the lab is planning on establishing a presence in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Senegal and Ivory Coast, and considering a franchise model to help it fast-track its growth.

Having an Africa-wide reach means that startups under Adanian Labs are able to scale in other markets easily as they tap the venture studio’s existing infrastructure as a launchpad.

“Our presence in multiple countries means that our startups can launch in a second country or even five countries without thinking too hard about it. This means we are focusing on innovations that are applicable across all markets. Not just one,” said Kiwia.

“The speed at which our startups are able to scale to these markets is like 10 times because we have a presence, have local partners and we understand the terrain and the legal aspect of setting up,” said Kiwia.

Joy Mwangi, co-founder of Ada animation, a startup in the first cohort, confirmed this to TechCrunch, saying the lab’s wide network has also enabled them to tap talent from other major animation markets in the continent like South Africa and Nigeria.

While Adanian Labs takes in idea-stage startups, they also help investor-ready startups, with scalable products, fundraise. The venture studio is planning on building a fund that will target startups in the growth stage.

“We have encountered startups that are not young for us to incubate, they are doing very well but would never get the attention of VCs because they lack that visibility that we are bringing to these startups. So, we have a short program to help them raise,” said Kamara.

The venture studio is currently incubating its second cohort of 20 startups drawn from the five countries. The group succeeds the first cohort of 12 startups, which included eCoBba, Paylend and AfyaRekod, all three co-founded by Adanian Labs founders.

The eCoBba is a platform co-founded by Kiwia to digitize savings groups, tapping their data to extend their range of financial services. Paylend, which was co-founded by Murgor, helps small and medium businesses access credit, while AfyaRekod, co-founded by Kamara, is a patient-driven health tech startup that ensures patient data mobility. All these startups have raised on average $2 million each in seed funding over the last few months.

AI and Blockchain

Beyond the venture studio, the lab is allied to the Artificial Intelligence Center for Excellence (AICE) and Africa Blockchain Center (ABC), headed by Natasha Ochiel and Jeff Mkungusi respectively, which are independent training and consulting businesses. The AICE has trained 100 data scientists and AI engineers, while the ABC, which is backed by Asia-based blockchain and consultancy business Next Chymia Consulting, has skilled a similar number of blockchain engineers so far.

Adanian Labs said such investments ensure that there are enough skilled persons to build the next-generation startups.

“We’ve lost engineers to bigger companies. And we feel that we have a bigger responsibility to keep training the techies to keep up with the demand. And so, at Adanian Labs, we are not only building startups, we are building the next generation of African tech experts,” said Murgor, also head of the labs tech team.

Tech skills gap in Africa has become a thorny issue as multinationals like Visa, Microsoft, Google and East Africa’s biggest telco Safaricom snap up the few talents available in the market, forcing entities like Adanian Labs to come up with ways of bridging the gap. Besides, as multinationals look to Africa for tech talent, it has become important to increase the digital and tech skills locally.

“Many companies in Africa and beyond outsource the AI and blockchain expertise from India. And we want to change that, and that explains why our capacity building component is so critical, because that’s a lot of lost value. Also, for us to build 300 companies, we need the capacity to be local. The world is also shifting towards Africa, and we are preparing young people on the continent to be able to work in the tech space of the future,” said Kiwia.

And they seem to be living up to their promises as Adanian partnered with U.S. tech multinational Nvidia last year to collaborate on projects and train 4,000 AI engineers (through AICE) in Africa over the next few years.

Adanian Labs also recently partnered with LBank, a cryptocurrency exchange, to build a community of crypto and blockchain developers in Africa. Through ABC they will also run a crypto accelerator to help build next generation startups in the continent.

The venture studio, which is raising its Series A funding, also counts itself as one of the first partners of Emurgo Africa, also one of its first investors. Emurgo Africa is an arm of Emurgo, the official commercial division of the Cardano blockchain that is pushing to have “Cardano’s blockchain adopted as the technological platform standard in Africa for socially impactful solutions.”

Looking ahead, Adanian Labs hopes to overcome the current phase, where the global flow of deals is on a slow-down, and rise to power more startups and conquer more markets across the continent.

Reiterating this, Kamara said, “We built and made it work with the little resources we had. We did not stop then, and we do not plan to stop or scale down now. Adanian Labs has turned into an ecosystem, a place where people come to find value.”

Texas Guardian News
Latest posts by Texas Guardian News (see all)
Related Topics:
Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Africa

Could South Africa be the first-ever country to provide a no-strings-attached universal basic income?

Published

2 months ago

on

June 9, 2024

By

South Africa suffers from severe income inequality — one of the worst anywhere in the world. Its unemployment rate, meanwhile, is over 30%.

But its government thinks it has a solution: a universal basic income .

The idea has broad political support and the country’s largest political party, the African National Congress, said recently it is committed to implementing a universal basic income within two years.

Once the figment of ideological dreamers, a universal basic income — regular direct cash payments to a population with no strings attached — has grown in legitimacy, especially after the success of COVID-era stimulus checks. Tech visionaries racing to develop ever-more advanced artificial intelligence have also suggested implementing a universal basic income. They say it would help mitigate the job losses from AI .

Several other countries have experimented with versions of a universal basic income. Kenya, for instance, offers unconditional payments to about 20,000 people in 200 different towns.

In the United States, numerous cities and some states are experimenting on a small scale with guaranteed basic incomes , which offer no-strings-attached payments but only to select groups of people in need. While studies have shown these American programs to be successful, they have also run up against significant political opposition .

But in South Africa, most political parties are all for it. They just need to work out the details.

“The ANC is committed to finalizing a comprehensive policy on the basic income support grant within two years of the new ANC administration, ensuring broad consultation and expedited action,” South Africa’s ruling party said in a statement .

That statement came a week before hotly contested general elections on May 29, which saw the ANC lose its majority in parliament. The ANC is now working to form a unity government and a commitment to implementing a universal basic income will almost certainly come up in negotiations.

According to the party, a study at the University of Johannesburg showed that a majority of South African citizens “fully support the introduction of a basic income support grant.”

While South Africa provides payments to certain groups living below the poverty line through its Social Relief Distress grant program, the ANC plan would open eligibility to all South African adults, the Guardian reported .

The ANC said it is “exploring” options, like new tax measures and a new social-security tax, to fund the program. The party also says its goal for the program is not to replace existing social-security programs, but to complement them.

If it follows through, the ANC plan would make South Africa the first country to provide a universal basic income.

Texas Guardian News
Latest posts by Texas Guardian News (see all)
Continue Reading

Africa

In a historic election, South Africa’s ANC loses majority for the first time

Published

2 months ago

on

June 2, 2024

By

JOHANNESBURG — South Africa’s ruling African National Congress party has lost its outright majority for the first time in a devastating blow for the party once led by Nelson Mandela. The ANC has dominated South African politics since winning in the first post-apartheid elections 30 years ago.

The ANC was braced for a disappointing outcome, predicted by polls before Wednesday’s elections, but the final results are even more sobering. It won 40 percent of the vote, falling from 57% in 2019.

Tessa Dooms, a director at Rivonia Circle, a think tank in South Africa, said it was a historic result that diminished the ANC’s three decades hold on power. “The election in South Africa is an important watershed moment that fundamentally changes politics,” she said.

According to the constitution, the party with the largest vote has two weeks from the result confirmation to form a new government. The ANC will now have to form a coalition government with one or more opposition parties for the first time, to remain in power.

Driving the party’s waning support is an all too bleak reality for millions of people.

South Africa remains one of the most unequal countries in the world, with 32% unemployed, along with soaring levels of crime. Immense frustrations with water and electricity shortages as well as corruption have led to growing criticism of the ANC government.

For many, the initial progress that followed liberation from white-minority rule has not been sustained. Despite significant achievements in Africa’s most industrialized nation, inequalities inherited from the apartheid regime have remained, and over the last decade, even worsened. The party’s vote share has fallen by a few percent in every election since 2004 — exacerbated by a generation divide, with younger voters born after apartheid, the so-called “born frees”, less likely to vote for the ANC.

“On the one hand, we overcame apartheid as a structural force,” Dooms said, “On the other hand, we have not actually changed many of the dynamics. We inherited inequality of one form, and we have doubled down on inequality in South Africa and another form going forward and it has hurt us.”

But in this election, the gradual decline in ANC support over the last 20 years grew more dramatic, Dooms said. “The ANC has in some ways imploded in the form of its former president, Jacob Zuma. The rise of the MK is certainly the biggest story of this election.”

The fall and rise of Zuma

The controversial, convicted former ANC leader’s new party, the uMkhonto weSizwe party, or MK, was the story of the election. MK was named after the disbanded military wing of the ANC, and registered just six months ago. But in a short space of time the party has soared above expectations. The party was bolstered by many former ANC supporters and a base of largely poor and ethnically Zulu South Africans who followed Zuma’s lead and left the ANC. It is now the third-largest party in South Africa, with almost 15%.

It caps a dramatic fall and rise of the 82-year-old leader. While a conviction bars him from being elected into parliament, as leader of the MK, he could now be a significant player in the negotiations to form a new coalition government, and could use his power to attempt to avoid a further conviction.

Zuma was forced to resign from the presidency in 2018, and was convicted in 2021 of failing to present himself at a corruption trial against him. He is also due to be tried again next year for corruption in an alleged arms deal in 1999.

The populist leader has accused his successor, President Cyril Ramaphosa, of being behind his legal troubles. Now Zuma has inflicted a major defeat on his rival, who is likely to face pressure from some in his party to resign.

Zuma’s daughter and MK member, Duduzile Sambudla, told NPR, “The MK is not willing to go into a coalition with the ANC of Ramaphosa,” she said, implying that a coalition would be possible without Ramaphosa.

The MK’s success against the ANC is most significant in South Africa’s second-most populous province, KwaZulu Natal (KZN). The party won almost 46% of the vote, against nearly 18% for the ANC in a landslide result.

Liberation icon Nelson Mandela first voted at the Ohlange High Schoolin Durban, KZN, in 1994, when he became president. Thirty years later, many voters at the same polling unit echoed a similar sentiment: frustration with the state of the country, and a desire for change.

Nqobile Khumalo, 24, arrived at the polling station shortly after polls opened at 7 a.m. on Wednesday and was voting for the first time. “We just really hope that there will be change,” she said. Tracy Bongiwe Zondo, 39, went further. “Before now I was voting for the ANC but now I’m voting for MK because I need a change in our community,” she said.

President Ramaphosa’s future is now an open question. He is the first ANC president to lose the party’s majority, has overseen the steepest fall in share of the vote (17%), and turnout has reduced to 58 percent. The ANC’s head of elections, Nomvula Mokonyane told NPR Ramaphosa would not step down. “Nobody’s going to resign,” she said. But Ramaphosa faces a major challenge to survive the duration of his second term, if he manages to form a government that based on the results, will likely be divisive.

Culled from NPR

Texas Guardian News
Latest posts by Texas Guardian News (see all)
Continue Reading

Africa

Congressional Black Caucus condemns Speaker Johnson’s treatment of Kenya’s president

Published

2 months ago

on

May 25, 2024

By

The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) shared a post online Wednesday condemning Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) for refusing to host Kenyan President William Ruto for a joint meeting of Congress, which is typically extended to other international leaders.

“While @SpeakerJohnson might not have given the President of Kenya the opportunity to address a Joint Session of Congress, the CBC was proud to welcome President Ruto to the United States Capitol today,” the CBC posted on the social platform X . “We were honored to present President Ruto honorary membership in the CBC.”

Ruto is in town for a state dinner Thursday, President Biden’s sixth state dinner since taking office.

He posted on X highlighting CBC’s role in “advancing social justice, human rights and economic development across the globe.”

“We implore the Congress to take lead in reconfiguring the global financial architecture where power is not in the hands of the few. A bold, robust and targeted approach will free Africa of the debt burden and transform the world,” Ruto said on X .

The Hill has reached out to Johnson’s office for comment; it released statement to USA Today that Johnson offered the Kenyan Embassy “over 90 minutes of engagement including a one-on-one visit with Speaker Johnson, bipartisan leadership meeting with Speaker Johnson, Leader Jeffries, and Committee Chairmen and Ranking Members, and a bicameral meeting.”

Ruto said he was honored to be recognized as an honorary member of the CBC and shared photos of his visit.

The dinner will honor the 60th anniversary of the United States’s partnership with Kenya, and Biden plans to designate Kenya as a major non-NATO ally , the first in sub-Saharan Africa.

The post from the CBC was meant as a dig against Johnson, who is planning to invite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address Congress. Johnson’s invitation has been met with pushback from some Democrats as the war between Israel and Hamas continues in Gaza.

Texas Guardian News
Latest posts by Texas Guardian News (see all)
Continue Reading

Trending