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- 💰 Sun King's $156M record.
💰 Sun King's $156M record.
💰 Sun King closes a record $156M | Lipa Later’s $5M rescue bid 🪦 | 🎙️ Meta acquires voice AI startup PlayAI | Egypt’s Flend raises $3M |
Gitonga Mwaura
July 30, 2025
In partnership with
Good evening,
Welcome to this week’s edition of The Startups Chronicle, proudly brought to you by Startup Hub Africa 🚀—your trusted pulse on the deals, pivots, and platform plays shaping Africa’s startup frontier.
In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity..
Here’s what’s been moving Africa’s tech scene as July closes out:
💸 Lipa Later’s $5M rescue bid surfaces after administration
Barely two weeks into administration, Lipa Later’s co-founder Eric Muli tried to raise a $5M invoice factoring facility from UK-based AGC.
The proposal (at 14% annual interest) aimed to save a company already stripped of board control and struggling with months of unpaid staff, creditor pressure, and a stalled BNPL model.
It’s the latest chapter in Kenya’s most-watched fintech implosion.
🌏 Afriex expands into Asia’s $200B remittance corridor
Lagos and San Francisco-based Afriex has opened payment corridors to India, Pakistan, and China, enabling 2-second settlements for 90% of transactions. With African SMEs increasingly sourcing goods from Asia, Afriex is going after the trade-and-diaspora cross-border money flow.
💼 HAVAÍC hits $25M second close on $50M Fund III
Cape Town’s HAVAÍC has locked in a second close for its African Innovation Fund 3 and added new investments: SAPay (digital taxi payments), Sportable (sports analytics), NjiaPay, and SwiftVEE. The fund targets 15 early- to growth-stage startups with global potential.
🔆 Sun King closes a record $156M securitisation to scale solar access
Kenya’s Sun King has completed Sub-Saharan Africa’s largest securitisation outside SA, unlocking financing for 1.4M low-income homes and small businesses to switch from kerosene and diesel to affordable pay-as-you-go solar energy.
🎙️ Meta acquires Egyptian voice AI startup PlayAI
Meta has acquired Cairo-based PlayAI, the voice AI startup behind “Play Dialog,” a multilingual real-time speech model. Backed by $21M in funding, PlayAI will strengthen Meta’s generative AI push with voice-first capabilities for AI assistants, wearables, and characters.
💵 Egypt’s Flend raises $3M to finance SME supply chains
Licensed by Egypt’s FRA, Flend has secured $3M (equity + debt) led by Egypt Ventures and Plus VC to expand embedded lending for SMEs. The platform integrates directly into supply chains, financing small businesses at the point of transaction.
From BNPL rescues and global expansions to big bets on solar, AI, and SME financing, Africa’s startup ecosystem is proving that even in late July, the deal flow stays hot.
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⟹ 🚀 STARTUPS WATCH 🚀 ⟸
Here are the 3 top startups in the African ecosystem I think you need to know:
 | 🌟 Name ➜ AquaRech 🏭️ Industry ➜ AgriTech 📆 Founded ➜ 2018 📍 Location ➜ Nairobi, Kenya 🇰🇪 💰️ Funding Raised ➜ $850K 🧑🤝🧑 No. Of Employees ➜ 11-50 👥 Founders
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Kenya’s AquaRech is reshaping aquaculture with a tech-driven platform that empowers small and mid-sized fish farmers to grow, sell, and scale sustainably. Through its mobile app, farmers can buy high-quality floating feed, access training, and connect directly to reliable markets, cutting out inefficiencies in the value chain.
With $350K+ in early backing, AquaRech is more than a marketplace; it’s a growth engine for Kenya’s fish farming economy. By improving yields, ensuring fair trade, and promoting environmentally friendly practices, the startup is boosting incomes, closing the protein gap, and building a stronger, tech-enabled aquaculture ecosystem across the region.
 | 🌟 Name ➜ Go1 🏭️ Industry ➜ E-commerce 📆 Founded ➜ 2015 📍 Location ➜ Gauteng, SA 🇿🇦 💰️ Funding Raised ➜ $270M 🧑🤝🧑 No. Of Employees ➜ 201 - 500 👥 Founders
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Launched in South Africa, Go1 is redefining workplace learning with a single, easy-to-use platform that brings together 250+ global content providers into one subscription. Trusted by over 10,000 organizations worldwide, it gives companies everything from compliance courses to upskilling content, delivered on-demand and seamlessly integrated into existing workflows.
By streamlining corporate training and offering content in 40+ languages, Go1 is helping teams stay ahead in fast-changing industries. With its focus on accessibility, simplicity, and continuous learning, the platform is shaping how businesses upskill their people—making professional growth scalable, engaging, and measurable across Africa and beyond.
 | 🌟 Name ➜ Thrive Agric 🏭️ Industry ➜ Agriculture 📆 Founded ➜ 2016 📍 Location ➜ Abuja, Nigeria 🇳🇬 💰️ Funding Raised ➜ $50K 🧑🤝🧑 No. Of Employees ➜ 11 - 50 👥 Founders
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Nigeria’s Thrive Agric 🌾 is building one of Africa’s largest networks of profitable smallholder farmers by combining technology, finance, and market access. Through its platform, Thrive Agric channels capital from institutional and individual investors into farmers’ hands, providing quality inputs, precision farming guidance, and guaranteed offtake agreements that translate into higher yields and predictable incomes.
With 850,000+ farmers onboarded, 420,000 hectares cultivated, and partnerships with global giants like Nestlé and Dangote Foods, Thrive Agric has traded over 1.7M MT of grains while creating 9,000+ jobs.
Backed by Y Combinator and Google Launchpad, the startup is driving food security across Africa by turning small farms into scalable, tech-enabled agribusinesses that feed both the continent and the world.
⟹ 💼 💰️ VENTURE CAPITAL WATCH 💼 💰️ ⟸
🚀 This Week in African VC: Infra, Shutdowns & Strategic Capital.
3️⃣ Structured Finance Goes Local: Sun King closes $156M securitisation
Kenya’s off-grid solar giant Sun King just locked in a KES 20B ($156M) local-currency securitisation—the largest in Sub-Saharan Africa outside SA.
Arranged by Citi with Stanbic Bank as placement agent, this structure pools future pay-as-you-go solar repayments into tradeable securities, unlocking long-term, shilling-denominated capital from 8 banks and DFIs.
Impact: 1.4M households and SMEs will transition from kerosene/diesel to solar.
VC Signal: This is a template for climate infra financing, where long-duration local capital (not just VC) will dominate scaling models for energy access. Sun King has already disbursed $1.3B in solar loans to 10M customers; this move extends its dominance without diluting equity.
2️⃣ Dry Powder Gets Deployed: HAVAÍC hits $25M second close of $50M Fund III
Cape Town-based VC HAVAÍC has now raised $25M (second close) of its African Innovation Fund 3, with anchor participation from Sanlam Multi-Manager, Fireball Capital, and the SA SME Fund.
Target: $50M, with 15 early-stage, post-revenue African tech investments (seed to Series B).
Recent deals:
$1M into SAPay – digitising cash-heavy taxi fares into digital payments
$1M follow-on in Sportable – sports analytics scaling globally
Plus Q1 deals in NjiaPay (fintech) and SwiftVEE (livestock trading).
Portfolio reach: 22M customers in 183 countries.
VC Signal: Fund III is all about African-born IP with global pull. Expect more SaaS, fintech infra, and B2B bets.
1️⃣ Strategic AI Exit: Meta acquires PlayAI (Egypt)
Meta just acquired Cairo-based PlayAI, an AI voice tech startup backed by $21M from Kindred Ventures, YC, Race Capital, Soma, 500 Global, and others.
PlayAI’s core asset: Play Dialog, a multilingual speech model trained on hundreds of millions of conversations—plus a no-code voice agent platform and realtime APIs.
Strategic play: Meta wants voice-native AI for Meta AI, AR/VR, and audio content, directly competing with OpenAI and Google.
VC Signal: This is an important validation: global AI giants are hunting African IP and teams early. For investors, it’s a reminder that deep-tech exits in Africa can be driven by talent/IP long before Series B.
👀 Investor Spotlight: Olive Tree Capital 👀
📍 Boston, USA 🇺🇸 | Est. 2013
Olive Tree Capital is an evergreen global investment firm with a flexible mandate and no time horizon constraints. Known for backing bold founders early and staying patient through growth, Olive Tree invests across frontier tech, AI/ML, blockchain, fintech, life sciences, and climate-focused innovation, with a portfolio spanning companies like Boom Supersonic, Axelar, LemFi, Curacel, Ramp, and Uber.
🧠 Thesis: Olive Tree believes breakthrough innovation isn’t bound by timelines or geography. They partner deeply with entrepreneurs building platform-shifting technologies, combining long-term capital with domain expertise in software, life sciences, and advanced industries.
🌍 Geographic Focus: Global, with a strong footprint across Africa, North America, and frontier markets.
💸 Stage & Check Size:
Early to growth stage (seed → Series C+)
Flexible investment size (no fund structure = no fixed limit)
Multi-asset class: equity, venture, and growth capital
🔗 Approach:
Evergreen model: no pressure to exit fast
Hands-on partnerships: strategic guidance, global connections, and operational expertise
Focus on mission-driven, durable companies that can scale internationally
💡 Vibe: Patient capital with a global lens. Olive Tree is the kind of partner that lets visionaries think in decades, not funding cycles, fueling some of the world’s most ambitious bets from deep tech to fintech.
⟹ 📺️ MEDIA WATCH 📺️ ⟸
Here are the 5 key things in the news this week that you need to know:
Lipa Later sought $5 million from UK lender two weeks after entering administration - Techcabal
Kenya’s Sun King closes $156m securitisation to scale off-grid solar - Disrupt Africa
Afriex expands to Asia to tap booming cross-border payments market - Techcabal
SA’s HAVAÍC announces 2nd close of $50m 3rd fund; makes 4 investments - Disrupt Africa
Egyptian SME lending startup Flend raises $3m seed funding - Disrupt Africa
And that’s your weekly dosage of the African startup ecosystem; thanks for reading.
Have a lovely rest of the week.
Gitonga, the Stoic Founder at StartupHub.Africa 🚀
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