In recent years, the start-up ecosystem emerged as a new and important discipline due to the rapid advancement in technology. It can be viewed as an amalgamation of classical disciplines like lending assets and taking loans from financial institutions. However, as the saying goes an Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, with the new opportunities, there is a huge deck of challenges as well.
Africa presents an enormous long-term opportunity for investors. Its population grew by about 25% between 2007 and 2016 to 1.2 billion while GDP expanded at over twice that rate to $2.3 trillion, according to African Development Bank (ADB) statistics.
As for the country, we started from a lower base but catching up in terms of economic development and start-up culture. The government is slowly beginning to appreciate the new approach to problem-solving and in their bid to facilitate the digital ecosystem, we have seen them set aside innovation fund for start-ups through the National ICT initiative(NIISP).
So when I saw the Tweet from Maxime Bayen at the beginning of the week detailing the list of all African start-ups that have raised $1+ million in 2019 I was excited to see how we ranked as a country. How many start-ups from Uganda made it to the list and how much have they managed to raise? Well, it featured the usual start-us we’re all familiar with and here is the full list that made it to the document shared by Maxime.
| Start-up name | Launch year | Sector | Amount(Million $) | Date | Investor |
| SolarNow | 2011 | Energy | 9.0 | Jan 2019 | SunFunder with Oikocredit and responsibility |
| Tugende | 2012 | Fintech | 5.0 | Feb 2019 | PG Impact Investments |
| Neopenda | 2015 | Healthcare | 1.0 | Apr 2019 | Axel johnson inc and also includes SUNU Capital |
| Safeboda | 2014 | Logistics and Transport | N/A | May 2019 | Allianz X |
Other Start-Ups across East Africa
| Start-up name | Country HQ | Launch year | Sector | Amount(Million $) | Date | Investors |
| M-Tiba | Kenya | 2015 | Healthcare | 1.5 | Feb 2019 | AFD |
| Lori Systems | Kenya | 2016 | Logistics & Transport | 8.7 | May 2019 | N/A |
| Jibu | Tanzania | 2012 | Water | 1.5 | May 2019 | DOB Equity |
| Twiga Foods | Kenya | 2014 | Agriculture | 5.0 | June 2019 | Creadev |
| Lynk | Kenya | 2015 | Jobs | N/A | July 2019 | Lateral Capital, Cornerstone Group |
| Sokowatch | Kenya | 2013 | Retail | 2.5 | Feb 2019 | 4DX Ventures, Village Global, Lynett Capital, Golden Palm Investments and Outlierz Ventures |
| Shortlist | Kenya | 2014 | Jobs | 2.0 | Jan 2019 | Blue Haven Ventures, Zephyr Acorn, Compass Venture capital and Rafiki |
