Two South African tech startups recently announced their partnership to better the country's transportation industry by furthering the idea of smart cities. GoMetro and Mellowcabs will be working together to drive collaboration, awareness and adoption of the two services in major urban areas of South Africa and beyond. GoMetro provides South African commuters using the MetroRail train service with crucial information via their mobile phones. Through this new partnership, GoMetro will provide the eco-friendly taxi service Mellowcabs with a Driver App, ...

TechCabal Battlefield 2014 has come to pass, and after much hype and excitement the Nigerian startup competition ultimately looked to three ventures as the winners. Out of the 92 applicants and initial seven finalists, these are the top startups: PrepClass, who got first place, is an e-learning startup that describes itself as an online portal that helps students prepare for exams. PrepClass literally prepares students for popular tests such as the nationwide JAMB exams. PrepClass received US$20,000 and some extra goodies. In second ...

African start-ups Momentum Core and Leti Arts will this year showcase their apps optimised for Intel Architecture at Mobile World Congress. Momentum Core will showcase its Simiyu the Chicken gaming app while Leti Arts will showcase their Leti Center. The two apps were developed with support from Intel's Software Services Group in Africa which has been training developers in the last 6 months, enabling them to create and port Android apps for Intel Android devices. Urging developers across Africa to take advantage ...

"What exactly is a business plan?" a startup says to me. Life in Nigeria's booming startup scene is not like any other. "We don't really take on a lot of risk," he says to me, but the business he is running will probably hang on risks that he will have to start taking soon. A business plan is not really a fully formed idea for some of the startups I have met. I ask about business models and revenue projections -- ...

Spark, the Nigerian "company builder" founded by Jason Njoku, Bastian Gotter and Mary Remmy-Njoku (all of iROKOtv) has reason to be happy as one of its initial investments: bus ticketing website bus.com.ng has become Nigeria's largest bus travel site taking people to over 200 destinations around the country. Collaborating with more than 65 bus operators, and offering departure points in seven states in Nigeria, bus.ng.com is now also in partnership with mobile payments solution PAGA, ensuring that its offering is convenient ...

South African startup Webfluential, a platform that aims to connect South Africa's most influential web users, announced recently that it now offers more brands and marketing agencies access to 620 social media influencers who in turn have access to over 6 million South Africans. The concept is simple: online personas with over one thousand followers on YouTube, Twitter, Instagram or what have you, sign up to Webfluential which then connects them with marketing agencies. Agencies, on the other hand, will ...

Ventureburn can officially confirm that the African division of MIH, Naspers' online investment arm, is in the process of shutting down a number of its South African ecommerce properties. Earlier today we reported that the emerging markets internet and media giant was preparing to shut down a number of its smaller ecommerce properties, including online fashion outlet Style 36, digital camera store SAcamera and baby product outfit Kinderelo. Most of the sites affected are part of the company’s African ...

Emerging markets media and internet giant Naspers looks set to shut down a number of ecommerce sites run by its online investment arm MIH. At least three of the sites affected are part of the company's African Internet Accelerator (AIA) programme. Ventureburn sources say that the collapse of the sites will come with job losses and a major restructuring. According to a well placed source, a number of the South African ecommerce investments made by MIH in the last few ...

Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada announced the creation of fellowships for student entrepreneurs from top South African universities. The initiative aims to help students develop their businesses at one of the university's incubators, including one of Canada's largest digital incubators, Digital Media Zone. After undergoing assessment, eight applicants will be chosen from the University of Witwatersand, University of Johannesburg, Stellenbosch University and University of Venda. These aspiring entrepreneurs will then be provided with transportation, mentorship, accommodation and a three-to-four-month ...

Starcom MediaVest Group South Africa (SMG) has announced that its parent company -- Publicis Groupe -- has acquired the digital consultancy, Lighthouse Digital. As part of the merger deal, Lighthouse Digital co-founder Aaron van Schaik will be the CEO of the newly rebranded SMG Lighthouse, and report to SMG President, Dynamic Markets, Iain Jacob. Jacob says that this follows a few acquisitions announced by the Publicis Groupe of late, and "fortifies our position as the continent's leading digital marketing operation." Lighthouse Digital was ...