Annie Njanja

Reporter, Africa, TechCrunch

Annie Njanja covers startups and tech news in Africa for TechCrunch. She has experience in technology, business and health reporting and has written for multiple outlets including the Thomson Reuters Foundation, and East Africa’s economics paper Business Daily and the Daily Nation, a regional newspaper. Annie has a passion for data-led journalism. She holds a MSc. degree in Data Journalism from Columbia University. For tips, please reach out to her via annie.techcrunch@gmail.com.

Annie Njanja

Latest from Annie Njanja

Worldcoin — the crypto “proof of personhood” startup co-founded by OpenAI’s Sam Altman — has been given the green light to resume iris-scanning and other operations in Kenya after a…

Kenya closes its probe of Worldcoin, opening the door to a relaunch of its orbs after a year-long suspension

The global spend management sector is experiencing a tailwind of sorts. North America is arguably the biggest market in this space, but spend management companies have seen demand rise across…

Spend management startup SiFi raises $10M to grow further in Saudi Arabia

Maad, a B2B e-commerce startup based in Senegal, has secured $3.2 million debt-equity funding to bolster its growth in the western Africa country and to explore fresh opportunities in the…

Maad raises $3.2M seed amid B2B e-commerce sector turbulence in Africa

It is estimated that about 2 billion people, especially those in lower- and middle-income countries, lack access to quality and affordable essential medicines. The situation is exacerbated by low-quality or even killer…

Axmed raises $2M from Founderful to streamline drug supply chains in underserved markets

Productive Use of Renewable Energy (PURE) technologies, especially those in the solar irrigation and cold chain segment, saw increased investor interest last year, despite a 43% funding slump recorded in…

Productive solar technologies draw investors as global off-grid solar sector funding slumps

Kubik, a plastic upcycling startup, has raised a $1.9 million seed extension, months after announcing initial equity investment. The startup’s latest investment is from African Renaissance Partners, an East African…

Ethiopian plastic upcycling startup Kubik gets fresh funding, plans to license out its tech

Madica, an investment program launched by U.S.-based investor Flourish Ventures to back pre-seed startups in Africa, plans to invest in up to 10 ventures by the end of the year,…

Madica, a program by Flourish Ventures, steps up pre-seed investing in Africa

Kenyan B2B e-commerce company MarketForce is winding down its B2B e-commerce business that served informal merchants (mom-and-pop stores) after a turbulent two-year period that saw it scale down operations severely.…

MarketForce winds down its B2B e-commerce arm

Amira Rasool founded The Folklore in 2018 to help fashion brands from emerging markets like Africa, Asia and The Caribbean tap into the international market. In 2022, the startup introduced…

B2B marketplace The Folklore bags $3.4M seed to get brands into global stores

Since 2015, Pula, an insurtech based in Kenya, has been keen on enhancing the access to agricultural insurance by small-holder farmers across emerging markets, shielding them against losses from pests,…

Pula raises $20M Series B to provide agricultural insurance to farmers in Africa, Asia and LatAm

Verod-Kepple Africa Ventures (VKAV) plans to back up to 21 growth-stage companies across the continent after closing its first fund at $60 million. The pan-African VC hit the milestone following…

Pan-African VC Verod-Kepple closes its first fund at $60M

Climate tech VC Satgana has reached a final close of its first fund, which aims to back up to 30 early-stage startups in Africa and Europe. The VC firm reached…

Climate tech VC Satgana closes first fund that targets early-stage startups in Africa, Europe

Swiss fintech nsave, which is making banking in Switzerland accessible to people in countries with unstable banking sectors or facing high inflation, has raised $4 million seed funding. The round…

Swiss fintech nsave gets $4M to enable people from unstable economies to open offshore accounts

Globally, a third of the food produced is lost or wasted, and in Kenya, that figure stands between 20% and 40%. For Kenya, unlike the developed world, food loss, not…

Farm to Feed is cutting food loss and creating data platform to improve farming outcomes

Featured Article

Nala set out to offer remittance services, it’s building a B2B payment platform too

Payments company Nala pivoted to offer remittance service in 2021, tapping the growing money transfer market in Africa, and demand for reliable and affordable services. Nala founder Benjamin Fernandes said they intended to build their products on this premise right from the outset. Over the last two years, the Tanzanian…

8:06 am PDT • March 19, 2024
Nala set out to offer remittance services, it’s building a B2B payment platform too

Saudi Arabia is poised to become one of the largest global construction hubs, owing to its trillion-dollar infrastructure and the real estate projects that are underway in the country. Yet…

BRKZ, a construction tech startup eyeing MENA, emerges from stealth with $8M

Bfree, a tech-enabled debt collection startup based in Nigeria, was founded to automate and introduce ethical debt recovery processes after its founders witnessed the use and adverse effects of aggressive…

Bfree, a Nigerian startup enabling lenders to recover debt ethically, gets $3M backing

Roam, an EV startup based in Kenya, has raised $24 million in a Series A round, including up to $10 million debt commitment from the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation…

Roam raises $24M to scale electric vehicle production in Kenya

Ilara Health, a Kenya-based health tech enabling private clinics to access diagnostic devices and pharmaceutical products, has secured $4.2 million debt-equity in a pre-Series A round. The funds will be…

Kenya’s Ilara Health gets $4.2M backing to expand clinic-support services

Featured Article

Africa-focused funds find their feet amid a downturn

In the midst of a funding downtime last year, and with conditions getting tougher for fund managers raising capital as backers (limited partners) enhanced their focus on strategy and track record, some new African and Africa-focused funds still emerged, with several of the existing ones receiving fresh backing. Among the…

4:30 am PST • February 9, 2024
Africa-focused funds find their feet amid a downturn

Google has today said its cloud region in South Africa is operational, coming a year after the tech giant picked Johannesburg as its first site in Africa. Cloud regions allow…

Google’s first Africa cloud region now operational

Vienna-based early-stage VC Speedinvest has closed its fourth early-stage fund, Speedinvest 4, at €350 million (around $380 million at today’s exchange rate), surpassing the initial goal of €300 million ($325…

Speedinvest closes fourth fund at $380M to back early-stage startups in Europe

Featured Article

How African startups raised funding in 2023

After defying the global funding slowdown of 2022, VC investments in African startups dropped considerably last year, mirroring the situation in other regions where capital taps were significantly turned off. The drop, however, was not unexpected as months preceding the year, deals had become infrequent as investors began to pull…

4:06 am PST • January 23, 2024
How African startups raised funding in 2023

Shamba Pride has since 2016 worked to enhance last-mile distribution for farm inputs and tackle price exploitation and quality issues for farmers through its merchant network dubbed digishops. The agtech…

Kenyan agtech Shamba Pride raises $3.7M to grow its merchant network

Amazon Prime Video is said to be downsizing its Africa and Middle East operations in a move that will affect teams in the two regions; according to a report in…

Amazon Prime Video is discontinuing support for local originals in Africa and Middle East

Featured Article

Homegrown African VCs emerge to fill in the gaps foreign investors cannot

The African startup scene is expanding beyond the traditional markets of Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa, with accelerated activity now reported in other regions across the continent. As the market grows, there are calls for more local fund managers to unlock additional capital and support founders. This push arises…

3:40 am PST • January 17, 2024
Homegrown African VCs emerge to fill in the gaps foreign investors cannot

Seedstars Africa Ventures has received a $30 million capital commitment from EIB Global, an arm of the European Investment Bank, which becomes the first major institutional investment for its first…

Seedstars Africa Ventures gets $30M backing from EIB Global to invest in early-stage startups

Featured Article

Last year was a tough period for African growth-stage startups and 2024 presents a mixed bag

Last year presented a tough period for African tech startups. Venture capital was hard to bag (as predicted earlier), bridge and down rounds became the norm, and news of fire sales, layoffs and startup closures reverberated across the continent. With the overall amount of VC funding raised in Africa dipping…

12:12 am PST • January 5, 2024
Last year was a tough period for African growth-stage startups and 2024 presents a mixed bag

Egyptian B2B e-commerce startup MaxAB and Wasoko, a Kenya-based e-commerce player with operations in Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda and Zambia, are in talks to merge operations, TechCrunch has exclusively learned from…

Two of Africa’s largest B2B e-commerce platforms, MaxAB and Wasoko, in merger talks

The global re-commerce market is poised for growth as consumers increasingly settle for pre-owned goods to save on cost, and as some observe conscious consumption. With the global re-commerce market…

Re-commerce marketplace Soum gets $18M backing to scale in MENA