Benjamin Dada Dada

National IDs are important for KYC, but frequent downtimes hinder their reliability, reports Smile Identity

Smile Identity, a leading digital KYC provider in Africa, was founded in 2017 by Mark Straub (CEO) and William Bares. Leveraging anonymised data from nearly 50 million KYC checks, the company has put together its second report on the state of KYC in Africa.

BD Funding Tracker 2023

Filter through our curated list of African startup deals since the start of the year 2023.

TeamApt’s evolution from a tech provider to a startup doing over $14 billion TPV in a month

In this article, I examine TeamApt's evolution and draw parallels for how tech companies and startups typically operate.

BD Insider, Letter 145: USSD in Nigeria, M-Pesa in Kenya, who should pay?

Read our analysis on the Safaricom lawsuit by a Kenyan on M-Pesa charges, alongside our report on Ethiopia's internet shutdown woes and MTN Ghana's $773 million tax fine.

Soyombo’s Voltron Africa invested in one startup every week of 2022. Here is our analysis

Could Olumide Soyombo's Voltron Africa have been the most prolific local VC firm on the continent for 2022? Here is a list and an analysis of all the 53 startups that Voltron invested in.

Benjamindada.com 2022 Year in Review: Coming of age

2022 was our coming-of-age year. We doubled our team, grew our user base by 50% and registered for tax. Find out more about what we did and how we performed.

Recap of how we executed SantaBen 2022

SantaBen 2022 has come to an end and the winners have been contacted. We had 284 applicants split almost evenly between male and female. Twelve people emerge as winners!

Santaben 2022 Application Form

Apply for SantaBen 2022

All you need to know about SantaBen 2022

Benjamin Dada returns with over $100,000 worth of tech scholarships, thanks to training and infrastructural partners. Participants stand a chance to win laptops, solar inverters and skill training.

BD Charts

Data about the state of tech in Africa.

November tech and startup events: London is the new Lagos

There were 10 key events evenly split across Lagos and London. While the ones in Lagos were more talent focused, those in London were business and investment focused. It's interesting to have these many events with a huge Lagos/Nigerian delegate representation.

Lagos to launch VC Fund writing bigger cheques than before

The Lagos state government has disclosed its plan to launch a venture capital fund to enable Nigeria's tech ecosystem.