Startups are not the only ones going through changes. Techpoint Africa is too. We’re making changes on our editorial team, revamping some existing series and starting new ones in some cases. We discussed this in addition to Ayoken’s pre-seed funding and Swvl’s employee layoffs.
For the series, Monday will see you reading How I Work from Samuel Okike, The Experts by Oluwanifemi Kolawole on Tuesday, while Emmanuel Paul and Chimgozirim Nwokoma bring you East Africa Weekly and Equity Merchants on Wednesday.
Bolu Abiodun will be writing People in Emerging Tech and you’ll round up the week with Ogheneruemu Oneyibo’s Everyday People.
Moving on from this, we explored Ayoken’s $1.4 million pre-seed. Ayoken is an NFT marketplace for creatives to increase their earnings.
While transactions in other marketplaces are done with crypto, Ayoken is bringing mobile money to NFTs, but we spoke to NFT specialists, and they raised some interesting questions.
Henry-Coco Bassey feels such a product is great for creatives as they could make more money from their art. Prodigeezy, who helps BNXN manage his NFT collection, shares the same opinion but points out that it is not yet mainstream, potentially impacting income for creatives.
The second story centred around Swvl’s announcement that it was laying off 32% of its workforce. This is coming less than three months after the company went public through a SPAC.
While the jury is still out on whether Swvl qualifies as an African company, this is the first layoff announced by an African company since the global downturn began. I pointed out that startups in Africa do not seem to be affected by the global downturn, but it may be too early to draw conclusions.
With Swvl pointing out that some of the roles they were laying off had been automated, it raises questions about how technology could contribute to rising unemployment in Africa.
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