For the second time this year, the LaunchLab initiative is offering entrepreneurs the opportunity to pitch their ideas to win their share of R80 000 in seed funding. With a slight change this time round, Stellenbosch University has partnered with the University of the Western Cape to make the Pitching Den "bigger and better" than the previous round help earlier this year. With a Microsoft BizSpark sponsorship, the pitching venues will be taking place on three university campuses, namely Stellenbosch University, ...

In the run-up to the 2014 South African eCommerce Conference, which will be held on 4 September in Johannesburg, uAfrica has just announced the top 30 shortlisted sites. Apart from announcing the top ecommerce store in South Africa, the event promises to excite and inspire attendees with a line up of international and local speakers who will be covering topics pertinent to the ecommerce industry. Currently in their ninth year, the eCommerce Awards received over 116 000 eCommerce survey responses, the results ...

Bitcoin in Africa is brewing with potential. From Ghana to Kenya there are interesting startups trying to tackle the issue of remittances, while in South Africa popular payment gateway PayFast recently introduced bitcoin integration to more than 30 000 of its ecommerce clients. But although this is very exciting, the adoption rate of the cryptocurrency is still very slow due to an abundance of misconceptions and a lack of infrastructure. South African startup Xoin (pronounced with the Xhosa click) is hoping to ...

Yup, you heard right. Money management platform 22seven is now free, according to an email from founder Christo Davel. The move to take the platform free will start today. "We’ll no longer charge a subscription fee for the current service," the email to users reads. The platform has been slowly moving toward making the service free since its inception. Previously users were charged R70 a month to access its money management system but this was later reduced to R25. "We’re doing this because ...

The day has come. You've founded, built and decided to sell your company. It's been your baby for a few years and you're happy to let it go for new challenges, whatever your reasons. Already up for sale and marketed by business brokers, a few buyers have expressed interest. Now this is where it get very interesting. I have sat in meetings selling my own company or project and I have sat in meetings potentially buying or investing in companies. I ...

Nigeria's Co-creation Hub (ccHub) is kicking things up for the next two years with the launch of a US$500 000 seed fund to support early stage startups. Located in Lagos' up-and-coming tech neighbourhood, ccHub is a social innovation centre dedicated to providing a space and accelerating tech startups. "We leverage a community of progressives -- software developers, organizations, government officials, businesses, academics who bring their creativity and knowledge into play in crafting novel ways to address the myriads of social ...

Nigerian consumer internet company Iconway today announced the launch of PricePadi, an online shopping service that allows customers to search for and discover products available from different sources in Nigeria along with their current prices. The service will be going head-to-head with South Africa's PriceCheck, which has expanded across the continent with the help of a partnership with MTN. As mentioned by a recent press release, PricePadi features over 10 000 product items under categories of mobiles devices, electronics, computers and appliances ...

M-Days' recent pitch event saw two South African mobile startups win an all-expenses paid trip to Frankfurt, Germany where they will be given a chance to showcase their products to an international audience next year. Micro-jobbing service, M4JAM from Cape Town, and community network KaasLaam from Johannesburg, were dubbed the winners out of a total batch of 20 startups that pitched. With the local conferences running with the theme “Mobile in Africa Rising — Wake up World", supported organisations such as ...

DEMO Africa, arguably the continent's biggest annual startup competition, is right around the corner! Microsoft has recently announced that it's taken up platinum sponsorship for this year’s edition to be held in Lagos, Nigeria from 22 to 26 September. The tech company will participate in the event for the third time under the Microsoft 4Afrika initiative. Microsoft will offer financial support for DEMO Africa which will see 40 tech startups from across the continent pitch to a group of investors, media ...

There are a lot of music tech startups popping up across Africa. It shouldn't be that surprising when you look at Nigeria, which boasts the largest music industry on the continent. According to CNBC, the country's industry produces 550 albums of different kinds of music annually. It's even said that the entertainment industry would pass the US$1-billion mark by 2016. Similarly echoed in other parts of the continent, Africa's music industry faces many obstacles like an ever-changing infrastructure, piracy, and lack ...