🎙️ Welcome to Season 3: New Beginnings, New Brand, Same Mission In this special season premiere, we unveil our new brand positioning as The African Pre-seed Podcast Powered by 54 Collective. While our mission remains the same—delivering rich insights for Africa-focused founders and investors—this season reflects our partnership with 54 Collective, a venture capital firm redefining investing across Africa. Together, we aim to help founders to build without boundaries. This episode, recorded...

🎙️ This month's episode takes us to Tunisia, speaking to Mariem Sellami, a founder and former program manager at Startup Tunisia to understand what it’s like running a venture in Tunisia. 🇹🇳 Like most nascent tech ecosystems, the government plays an important role in the Tunisian ecosystem, with legal frameworks like the Startup Act—passed in 2019—helping founders get indirect funding and promoting the ecosystem on a regional and international level.  There are quite a few interesting things...

🌍 Creating impact in the African tech ecosystem takes many stakeholders, and while venture dollars might grab the biggest headlines, foundation and impact partners also play a crucial role. You might even argue—correctly—that these impact partners have influenced traditional VC players and shaped how they think about investing on the continent.  🚀 This month’s podcast is a conversation with Dr. Nina Smidt, the Spokesperson for the Board and the CEO of the International Siemens Foundation, an...

📍 The end of the year's first quarter is typically a time for companies—and their founders—to take stock of what has been accomplished so far. So for public companies, we huddle over investor calls and try to understand performance. For private companies, we hope and pray a media publication somehow finds their numbers and shares them with us. 🎯 For this month’s podcast, Adam Wakefield speaks to Dr. Kirti Ranchod, a clinical neurologist and the founder of memorability.co. The conversation...

💡 Join our host, Loraine Achar, featuring esteemed panelists Bruce Nsereko-Lule (General Partner, Seedstars Africa Ventures), June Odongo (Founder & CEO, Senga Technologies), Jason Musyoka (Chief Financial Officer, Rology), as they go bar-for-bar on the topic of discussion, “The Good and Bad of Funding - Choosing the Right Capital in 2024.” 💸 📍 Choosing the right capital for your startup is a crucial decision that can significantly impact a company’s trajectory. Beyond financial support,...

🎙️ In this episode, we talk about how founders can focus on solving real problems instead of building ventures that prioritise fundraising first and solving user pain points second. With fundraising harder and founders finding themselves in a pinch, the macro seems to be exerting overt influence on how founders position and build their businesses.  To be clear, there are other arguments for raising money, one of which is the idea that somtimes founders are working on incredibly difficult...

🇿🇦 This month's podcast was recorded at the Africa Early Stage Investor Summit 2023 (AESIS 2023), held in Cape Town between 30 November and 2 December 2023. Featuring sector heavyweights Aly El Shalakany (Advisory Board Member, AESIS), Eleni Gabre-Madhin (Chief Innovation Officer, UNDP Africa), Tracy Kimathi (Founder, BARIDI), Ben White (Director and Founder, VC4A) and Maxime Bayen (Operating Partner, Catalyst Fund) breaking down several themes they believe will strongly influence investor...

🎙️ In this month’s podcast, the final one for the year 2023, we talk about how iteration leads to success and also touch on the Zambian tech ecosystem.  Gilbert Lungu, the Country Manager for Cellulant, one of Africa’s “OG” fintech startups that has raised $55 million to date. Lungu has the chops to help us understand the Zambian tech ecosystem, having served as Head of Enterprise Sales for Airtel Zambia and Acting Network Enterprise Manager at MTN Zambia. He has led Cellulant Zambia since...

African Pre-seed Podcast S2 Ep8: Investing in Francophone Africa’s tech ecosystem 🎙️ In this month’s episode of the African Pre-seed Podcast, Lorraine Achar speaks to Benoit Delestre, Managing Partner at Saviu Ventures, a venture capital fund that invests in early-stage startups in Francophone Africa. Yep, you read that right… Francophone Africa, a region with 34 countries and 470 million people.  Yet, most conversations about Africa’s startup ecosystem focus on the ‘Big 4’: Kenya, Nigeria,...

African Pre-seed Podcast S2 Ep7: Is Fintech the one true ecosystem vertical? On the 2nd of November, the African Pre-seed podcast partnered with the Africa FinTech Summit in Lusaka, Zambia, to host the first-ever edition of APS Live, where our host, Hope Ditlhakanyane had three amazing guests on the couch in front of a live audience to discuss whether Fintech is indeed the one true vertical within the African tech ecosystem. Thanks to the Africa Fintech Summit and Lusaka Zambia for hosting...

African Pre-seed Podcast S2 Ep6: Passionate Dissent   In this exciting podcast episode, Ebele Okobi, Venture Partner at Ada Ventures, shares their journey into the tech ecosystem and their insights on leadership, diversity, and more. As someone with many hats, Ebele speaks about the decisions that founders make that can shape success, creating an atmosphere where ideas are challenged and where people believe in the company’s vision. Finally, they discuss exercises founders can adopt to get...

This months #APSVibecheck Podcast episode features Peter Muhumuza, CTO of Ugandan telecommunications company, Roke Telkom. In Uganda, home-grown Roke Telkom is one of the first tier three carrier-neutral data center at the forefront of cloud computing revolution, helping businesses to leverage the full potential of telecommunications backed by cloud and data services to drive growth and success.  Their cloud and data services have been designed to help businesses achieve their goals by...

🇩🇿 This months #APSVibecheck Podcast episode features Kamel Haddar, CEO and Founder of temtem ONE, the 1st digital gift card solution for B2C and B2B in Algeria – a wide and curated offer of products and services for Diaspora and Businesses alongside a fintech offer of digital payment through QR codes and cashback programs.  That's it for now. See you next month! — Olumuyiwa 💡 Top 5 insights unpacked in the episode:  Kamel's founder journey and insights that led building the Temtem One...

This month's special #APSVibecheck Podcast episode features live conversations from the GITEX AFRICA Morocco tech startup showcase, which shone a spotlight on the collective technological progress of Morocco, the Middle East and the Africa as a whole. We caught up with Co-founder and CEO of Impact Lab Africa, Salma Kabbaj, Africa Editor at Rest of World, David Adeleke, Reporter at Techcrunch, Tage Kene-Okafor, Founder of Autochek, Nizar Abdallaoui Maane, and Mayokun Fadeyibi and Etop Ikpe,...

This month's #APSVibecheck Podcast episode features Ahmed Kadous, the co-founder and CEO of Pharmacy Marts, a healthtech startup based in Egypt.  While healthcare is a critical need across the continent, it can sometimes feel like healthtech doesn’t get much attention compared to fintech, e-commerce or energytech. This conversation with Kadous is filled with gems that may get you itching to get into the healthtech space. One of the things Kadous shares early in the conversation is that for...

In this first episode of season two of the African Preseed podcast, Maria Pienaar, an operating partner at Unicorn Growth Capital, offers a new perspective on thinking about failure, innovation, and the societal differences that can affect founders' thinking and offers practical steps for changing one's mindset. “Failure is not seen as a disaster but something to build upon.” - Maria Pienaar When you cover Africa’s tech ecosystem, you quickly become familiar with everyone’s visceral fear of...

In this special edition #APSVibecheck episode, the African Pre-seed podcast travels to Cairo, where we speak to five players in the Egyptian tech ecosystem about what is happening on the ground in Cairo and the broader tech environment. These players are Karima El Hakim, Country Director Egypt, Plug and Play Tech Centre; Diego Garcia, Investor Africa Ventures at Plug and Play Tech Centre; Mahmoud Sabbour, Founder at Baggr; Nour Ahmadein, Founder of Bluworks, and Mohanad Elhartany, Senior...

Lesotho-born Medtech entrepreneur and CEO of Thola, Nneile Nkholise, joins us on this Agritech-themed #APSVibecheck instalment of the African Pre-seed Podcast. Thola is accelerating auditing and global export compliance certification for farmers and their products for climate sustainability and quality standards through a mass decentralised 'Certification-as-a-Service' software solution.  One of the things that shines through in this conversation with Nkholise is grit and the importance of...

In this e-commerce-themed episode, Co-Founder and CEO of Omnibiz Africa, Deepankar Rustagi, shares his insights about measuring success in the African e-commerce space and the business models that are best positioned to succeed within the broad online market. 🤔 B2B e-commerce asks that you throw away vanity metrics Hi there,Olumuyiwa here again. You may remember me from the previous edition of the APS newsletter. 😉 Last week, I was moderating a Twitter space conversation about the evolution...

Ethiopian tech investor and CEO of Arifpay, Bernard Laurendeau, joins us on this fintech-themed #APSVibecheck instalment of the African Pre-seed Podcast. ArifPay is Ethiopias first universal mobile Point of Sales (mPOS), an electronic payment platform designed for use by merchants, banks, and consumers in Ethiopia that any business, merchant, or consumer can use to transfer money, make invoices, or pay taxes. Arifpay’s story feels familiar because some of the best startups are the result of...

In this episode, Desiree Joule-Adam takes us through her entrepreneurial journey that began at a young age and how it has shaped her perspective on African women-led entrepreneurship.

Founder and CEO of Big Cabal Media, publisher of TechCabal and Zikoko, Tomiwa Aladekomo talks about all things media within the African VC ecosystem and its vital role in shaping the African tech ecosystem narrative.

In this episode, we trace the roots of Africa’s Communications Revolution to learn how two game-changing technologies – mobile calling and the internet – have changed the lives of millions of people across sub-Saharan Africa.

In this #APSVibeCheck episode, Gugulethu Siso distils insights based on her mixed entrepreneurial experience as a logistics tech startup founder.