Local technology company Africa’s Talking has closed an $8.6 Million series A funding. The round of funding was led by the IFC, a member of the World Bank Group. Other investors in the round included global venture capital funds, Orange Digital Ventures and Social Capital.
Africa’s Talking is headquartered in Kenya, and recently expanded to Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, Malawi, and Nigeria. The company provides telecommunication infrastructure via APIs targeting software developers across Africa. The company boasts of over 20,000 developers signed on the platform and serves over 1,000 businesses.
The firm intends to use the funds in an expansion strategy as well as build innovative products including IoT, analytics, payments, and cloud according to the firm’s CEO Samuel Gikandi. “We believe that we can build the foundation and environment that developers need to build successful African businesses,” said Samuel Gikandi, CEO and Co-Founder of Africa’s Talking.
Africa’s Talking was started in 2010 by Two MIT graduates. What started as an e commerce company, pivoted in 2012 to become an API company with a sole focus on providing developers in Africa access to local infrastructure on a unified platform.
