News Update: Solar-powered airships, debt-for-nature swap, cultivated meat, and more

Aug 18, 2023

Hi Exseede-Community,

welcome to our update on industry and investment news!

My personal highlights from this week’s news include:

Founders Factory Africa has secured $114 million in funding to expand its support for African startups, aiming to address gender imbalances in the tech ecosystem and offer non-dilutive capital, with a portfolio spanning fintech and healthtech across 11 African countries.
The African Development Bank's Board of Directors has invested $20 million in the Pembani Remgro Infrastructure Fund II, aiming to attract up to $400 million from private investors to support industrial and infrastructure projects across African nations, focusing on energy efficiency, renewable energies, logistics, transportation, waste recovery, and regional value chains.

Ghana: Oyster Agribusiness has raised $310,000 in grant and debt funding from Root Capital and grants to support its mission of empowering smallholder farmers through sustainable inputs, improved practices, and reliable markets.
South Africa: Newform Foods (formerly Mzansi Meat) developed a cost-effective bioproduction platform for cultivating meat. Africa's first cell-cultured meat company aims to produce meat products tailored to traditional African dishes.

Gabon: First $500mn debt-for-nature swap completed: Conservation in return for lower interest rate and longer repayment period on Gabon’s national debt.

Kenya: Koko Networks has utilized over $100mn in carbon finance to provide clean cooking fuel to 1 million households by subsidizing clean energy cooking (using bioethanol instead of charcoal) and issuing audited carbon credits on international markets.

South Africa: Team from Stellenbosch University collaborates with Rham Equipment to test the country’s first-ever electric taxi. The initiative seeks to encourage retrofitting of existing minibusses with electric propulsion
South Africa: Cloudline is developing solar-powered autonomous airships optimized for long-duration and long-distance with cost advantages over traditional unmanned aerial vehicles, with regulatory approval in South Africa, Namibia, and soon in Kenya; the company aims to provide aerial monitoring services to remote communities and has raised $4.1 million in pre-seed funding to launch initial deployments and explore commercial opportunities.

Ghana: Ghana has approved a green-minerals policy to manage the extraction and processing of lithium. The policy demands that no raw lithium be exported and emphasizes local processing.
Battery metals: Amid the race to control electric-vehicle supply chains, Western companies are investing in processing battery metals within African nations like Tanzania, Mauritius, and South Africa, aiming to reduce dependency on China for these critical resources.
E-vehicle production: The DRC-Zambia trans-boundary Special Economic Zone aims to create battery and solar panel plants, laying the foundation for an African-wide regional value chain that aspires to manufacture electric vehicles, beginning with the introduction of mini-buses.

Our ambition is to produce electric vehicles on the continent. - Antonio Pedro, Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa

South Africa: Amazon launched first AWS skills centre outside of the US to provide free training in cloud computing and AI for learners in the region.
Tokenisation: According to PwC the tokenisation market in Africa will reach $100bn by 2025. The tokenisation of real assets such as real estate or commodities offers opportunities for economic efficiency, increased liquidity and financial inclusion .

Do you have feedback for us? Please let us know! We’d love to hear from you!

Best,

Carolin

for the Exseede Team

Exseede - Africa