MFS Africa rebrands to Onafriq

Companies

Swvl is driving stealthily. 

The Dubai-based mobility company quietly filed its annual report for 2022 on October 31 after previously missing a NASDAQ deadline for submissions.

Dig in: Swvl's bus-hailing services for business customers grew rapidly in 2022, generating $37.9 million in revenue, a 132% increase from the previous year. 

This growth outpaced that of the company's mass transit business, which brought in $13.6 million. Swvl booked a total of 45.7 million rides across both businesses in 2022, up from 25.9 million the year before. The company processed $56.5 million worth of ride tickets in 2022, compared to $38.4 million in 2021.

The biggest takeaway from Swvl’s 2022 annual report is the company’s financial health. In 2021, Swvl reported total liabilities of $149 million, including $118 million in short-term convertible debt. By the end of 2022, it had successfully converted much of its debt obligations into equity, shaving liabilities worth more than $124 million. Swvl also raised $20 million in equity financing after it successfully sold 12.1 million shares at $1.65 per share in August 2022. The report represents a major turnaround for Swvl, which has endured a turbulent life as a publicly traded company. 

Lights out: While Swvl is yet to become profitable, its 2022 financials paint a picture of improved financial health. The changes in its financial results also alleviate much of its business pressures, giving it the breathing space it needs to become a stable and profitable enterprise.

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Fintech

MFS Africa is having a makeover. 

The African fintech platform has rebranded to Onafriq.

Why? Per CEO Dare Okoujou, the facelift was due to trademark challenges in the US. Aside from the challenges with the trademark, the Onafriq CEO says the group wanted a name that reflects its true ambition as the business had expanded beyond just mobile financial services and had become an omni-channel platform across Africa and beyond. Last year, Onafriq acquired US-based fintech company Global Technology Partners (GTP) for $34 million in cash and shares.

Onafriq? The name draws inspiration from “Ona”, the Yoruba word for pathways and “Afrique,” the French word for Africa. With a hidden reference to IQ, the name also alludes to the startup's goal of becoming a leader in intelligent African fintech. 

Zoom out: As MFS Africa rebrands as Onafriq, the fintech continues its journey to connect global and regional businesses, mobile network operators, money transfer operators, banks, fintech firms, global development organisations, and online and offline merchants. In November 2022, Onafriq obtained three licenses from the Bank of Uganda (BoU) one year after it acquired Beyonic, a Ugandan-based digital payments services provider for enterprises operating in Ghana, Tanzania, Kenya, and Rwanda.

In this longform Decode Fintech piece, Paystack explores agent networks in Africa, how they converge with SMEs, and what the future of agency banking means for how money moves across the continent.

Read the blogpost.

Funding

Nigeria-based agritech AFEX has secured $26.5 million in funding. 

Yesterday, the British International Investment (BII) signed a new partnership with the agritech that will see the investor commit $26.5 million to the company’s activities. 

Founded in 2014, AFEX presently trades over nine commodities across Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda. The company reportedly has 200 warehouses across these locations, and claims to process over $300 million worth of crops on its platform per annum. 

Moving forward: AFEX has BII's investment for the development of 20 modern warehouses strategically located in Nigeria, Kenya, and Uganda. The new warehouses are expected to offer an additional storage capacity of 230,000 metric tons for AFEX. This expanded storage infrastructure will make it possible for approximately 200,000 more farmers to access cost-effective storage solutions and optimise their crop sales.

The potential impact is also noteworthy, with the possibility of boosting farmer incomes by over 200%. 

Zoom out: So far, AFEX is hitting its goals. The company also doubled down on its plans for an African expansion with CEO Ayodeji Balogun stating that the company has plans to expand to seven more countries including Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire and Ethiopia by 2024. To meet this goal, Balogun, in May, announced the company’s plans to raise $65 million which would help it boost its storage capacity to 1 million tons.

Companies

The South African franchise of WeWork has announced that its operations are independent of WeWork Global’s bankruptcy filing in the US.

What’s happening? On Wednesday evening, Reuters reported that global coworking space provider WeWork Global was planning to file for bankruptcy in the US. The company, which was valued at $47 billion in 2019, was reportedly struggling to repay debts over $15.9 billion.

The company has struggled since it announced its plans for an IPO in 2019 when questions were raised over the viability of its business model which involves WeWork acquiring properties on long-term leases, and renting them out to others on a short-term basis. 

News of WeWork Global’s plan for bankruptcy is not new. In August 2023, the company warned that it could go bankrupt after recording $700 million in losses in the first six months of 2023. So far, the company has recorded over $10.7 billion in losses since 2020. 

Its South African franchise isn’t affected: After the announcement—which tanked WeWork’s stock by 38%—WeWork South Africa, the South African franchise of the company, announced that it would not be affected by WeWork Global’s bankruptcy filings. 

While WeWork launched its first South African location in 2019, the South African branch, in March, entered a franchise partnership with African real-estate investment company SiSebenza which transferred full ownership of WeWork South Africa to SiSebenza. The partnership also gave SiSebenza the right to open WeWork locations in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and Mauritius. 

“This means that the recent global actions undertaken by WeWork Global will have no impact on our local operations in South Africa,” the company said in a statement to TechCabal.

Zoom out: It’s unclear at this point when WeWork Global will file for bankruptcy but experts say it could be as early as next week. The company’s other franchise in India has also distanced itself from the bankruptcy filing stating that WeWork India is primarily owned by real estate firm Embassy Group which owns 73% of the company.

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Internet

More domains are coming to South Africa, and Africa at large…and they may not be in English too.

Yesterday, South African publication MyBroadBand announced that ICANN has launched a new campaign that could see South Africa get top-level domains other than .za.

Side bar: ICANN is short for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers and they coordinate who gets to call themselves what across the World Wide Web. 

The application will see South African businesses and organisations register with domains tailored to their languages. According to Dandjinou, ICANN hopes to introduce new South African TLDs within 2–3 years.

To achieve this, ICANN is also calling on South Africa to implement its Universal Acceptance policy and enable the use of non-ASCII scripts and characters in domain names, such as Arabic, Chinese, Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, Japanese Hiragana and Katakana, Korean Hanja characters, and Vietnamese script. 

The present domain names popular today rely on alphabets and characters available on your keyboard, most of which are Latin-based. While non-Latin scripts have existed in domains for some time, they are relatively rare in Africa. Accepting the Universal Acceptance policy and non-ASCII scripts would make it possible to have domains like .sê, tša, or ḓisa.

The big picture: ICANN wants to start with South Africa but it’s hoping the rest of the continent starts to adopt policies that make the internet accessible to people whose first languages aren’t English. If there are keyboards and websites for Arabic and Chinese websites, why can’t African countries have theirs? Would this improve internet penetration across the continent?

Earlier this year, PiggyVest surveyed thousands of Nigerians about their saving and spending habits. They also asked about debt, unplanned expenses, and plans for the future. The results are in and now available in their first-ever savings report. Get it here. 

Crypto Tracker

Source:

Coin Name	Current Value	Day	Month
Bitcoin	$34,770	+ 0.40%	+ 28.37%
Ether	$1,843	+ 1.65%	+ 10.31%
Celestia	$2.55	+ 5.08%	+ 21.40%
Solana	$42.44	+ 16.57%	+ 76.88%

* Data as of 21:35 PM WAT, November 1, 2023.

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Written by - Faith Omoniyi

Edited by - Timi Odueso