The $2 million ticket into the Guinean fintech is modest, but it signals growing development-finance appetite for the unglamorous plumbing that connects global money-senders to mobile wallets and cash agents on the continent
At the heart of Journify’s model is a simple but timely proposition: helping brands across the Middle East activate and monetise first-party data — the data customers willingly share with them — across platforms like Meta, Google, TikTok, X, and Snapchat.
Growers receive not only high-quality seedlings (5.3 million distributed in 2024) but also technical training, site visits to mills, and access to guaranteed offtake agreements.
Launched in 2021, it provides non-traditional financing models—such as concessional loans and revenue-based investments—to plug the financing gap for early-stage social businesses beyond what conventional grants or equity rounds can offer.
There’s also a chronic geographic imbalance. Cities like Lusaka, Douala, and Bamako appear only sporadically on the accelerator map, despite emerging tech scenes. And of the few programs based in Somalia, Cameroon, or Tanzania, nearly all are inactive.
Rutakangwa and Sewankambo both cut their teeth at Kampala-based Owino Solutions, where they built web systems for East African clients and dabbled in digital media to amplify local culture.
The $2 million ticket into the Guinean fintech is modest, but it signals growing development-finance appetite for the unglamorous plumbing that connects global money-senders to mobile wallets and cash agents on the continent
The Nasdaq-listed South African fintech has quietly added another small enterprise-focused company to its portfolio, paying cash for a fintech business as it continues to widen its offering for large-scale clients.