Bonjour,
I'm thrilled that it's the weekend; the day we've been waiting for.
The Lagos Startup Expo will be held tomorrow, Saturday, May 20, 2023, at the Landmark Event Centre, Victoria Island, Lagos. I’m sure you’re prepared and are looking forward to it.
See you tomorrow! 😉
And if you won’t be attending, do well to exercise!
Here's what I've got for you today:
- Nigeria to build a digital platform for registering the dead and newborns
- Amini gets $2m pre-seed
- Africa Data Centres to build a facility in Ghana
Nigeria to build a digital platform for registering the dead and newborns
The Federal Government of Nigeria has approved the plan to build a digital platform for registering births and deaths.
The Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC) said that ₦5.3 billion ($11.5m) would be used to build the Electronic Civil Registration and Vital Statistics System (eCRVS), which will efficiently maintain electronic records of birth and death registrations in Nigeria.
According to the ICRC, the project's objectives include providing people with certificate attestation and verification while recording and verifying births and deaths in Nigeria.
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If this works, it could mean the end of manual registrations, which have low coverage and insufficient data.
The National Population Commission will be the project grantor, and concessionaire, Messrs Barnksforte Technologies will fund the project.
What’s more, the concession agency also revealed that the formation of an aviation leasing company (ALC) through a public-private partnership (PPP) has received approval from the federal government.
Ifeanyi Nwoko, the Acting Head of Media and Publicity of the Commission claimed that the approval was made to increase private sector investment in infrastructure construction and the growth of the country's economy.
Amini gets $2m pre-seed
Kenyan climate startup, Amini, has secured $2 million in a pre-seed funding round.
Pale Blue Dot led the oversubscribed round with participation from Superorganism, RaliCap, W3i, Emurgo Kepple Ventures, and some angels.
Kate Kallot founded Amini to close Africa's environmental data gap using artificial intelligence and satellite technology.
The startup says it has created a data aggregation platform that pulls in different data sources — from satellites and other existing data sources such as weather, sensors, and proprietary customer data — down to a square metre.
It then unifies and processes this data before providing it via APIs to local and international companies that require it.
Amini's current customers, primarily corporations and multinationals, are involved in agricultural insurance and supply chain monitoring, particularly at the "last mile," or the initial stages of the global supply chain.
The company provides farmers with data ranging from crop planting and harvesting cycles to the amount of water and fertiliser used.
According to Kallot, the platform can help organisations understand the impact of natural disasters, flooding, and drought across the continent "in a few seconds." It can also draw on nearly 20 years of historical and current data produced every two weeks.
Africa Data Centres to build a facility in Ghana
Africa Data Centres is set to begin building a new facility in Accra's Central Business District in Accra, Ghana.
Depending on demand, the facility will have a starting capacity of 10 MW and an expansion capacity of 30 MW.
Tesh Durvasula, CEO of Africa Data Centres, stated that the new data centre in Ghana represents an important step toward closing the digital divide in West Africa.
ADC is already present in South Africa, Zambia, Kenya, Rwanda, Egypt, Morocco, Senegal, Ivory Coast, and Angola.
The construction of this new facility is a component of Africa Data Centres' plans to expand across the continent.
Besides, the expansion is a significant effort to speed up private sector-led digital infrastructure and services in Africa. The project is partially funded by the US government's International Development Finance Corporation (DFC).
It will take 12 months to finish the first stage of construction. Interestingly, the new site will be completed in the first half of 2024 and will have five times the capacity that is currently in place.
According to Durvasula, ”Hyper-scale data centres, preferred by major US tech companies, multinational corporations, banks and other local enterprises, are the speciality of Africa Data Centres.
Additionally, our data centres are supported with independent solar and battery storage power, enabling us to bring digital technologies whilst mitigating our environmental impact.”
In case you missed it
- Frequently asked questions (FAQs) on the Lagos Startup Expo
- You will soon be able to train your iPhone to sound like you. Is Apple subtly entering the AI race?
- Here are the new USSD codes for network providers in Nigeria
- Inside Unyte’s ambitious plan to provide insurance for all Nigerians
- Oshone Anavhe, VP, Operations at ThriveAgric will be teaching you how to move your startup from surviving phase to thriving at the Lagos Startup Expo masterclass session
What I'm reading and watching
- Twitter now allows paid users to upload two-hour long videos
- YouTube is bringing 30-second unskippable ads to TVs
- Why incompetent people think they're amazing
Opportunities
- Access Bank and Udacity have partnered to offer free courses in Product Management, Programming for Data Science, Business Analytics, Digital Marketing, and Programming. Apply here.
- Applications are open for the Academy Women Entrepreneurs in Lesotho, Eswatini, and South Africa. Apply here.
- If you are a software engineer, creative designer, product manager, design researcher, or a techie looking for an internship role, please, check out this website.
Have a good time this weekend!
Victoria Fakiya for Techpoint Africa.
