Southern Africa Last Week [19th-25th November, 2018]
Here is a recap of highlights of some of the major happenings in the Southern African startup ecosystem in the past week;
News
Microsoft To Open An Azure Region In Africa
Microsoft South Africa’s Director of Commercial Partners, Lionel Moyal, has announced that two Azure datacenter regions are going live “within weeks” before the end of 2018. Lionel Moyal termed the centres “a cloud for Africa”, and stated that “latency will not be an issue any more.” This development follows from Amazon’s announcement in October that Amazon Web Services (AWS) was to open Data Centers in South Africa by 2020.
Events
Microsoft Launches Head Start Program In South Africa
Microsoft recently introduced an initiative designed to help startups at this year’s Global Entrepreneurship Week in South Africa. The company launched Head Start; an initiative to provide the package it offers its partners to Startups in South Africa.
While making the announcement, Lionel Moyal, Director Commercial Partners Ecosystem said; “It is an exciting day to take what Microsoft does with partners in South Africa and extend it to what startups actually need. We get how critical entrepreneurship is especially in the South African context where job creation is vital if we are to improve our economy.”
Funding
South Africa’s FinChatBot Startup Secures USD 500 K Investment
Kalon Venture Partners and Mauritius-based Compass Venture Capital; a South African venture capital firm, has made it known that they have invested USD 500 K (over R7 million) in FinChatBot, a financial services chatbot provider.
FinChatBot develops chatbots to help businesses in the financial sector acquire finance customers through artificial intelligence-powered conversations and also engage in real time with their audience through their preferred communication channel.
Image Courtesy: microsoftcaregh.com
