Fuzu among top ten tech companies to watch-out for in East Africa

Fuzu among top ten tech companies to watch-out for in East Africa

Our member Fuzu has been named among East Africa’s top ten tech companies to watch out for by I-DEV International.

The company is a one stop shop for the largest selection of open jobs and insights into the East African job market.

The company was named among other nine companies including Twiga Foods, Cellulant, Africa’s Talking, Sendy, Sokowatch, Flare, Lynk, Lori Systems and Apollo Agriculture.

Other highly-rated companies to watch include Branch, OkHi, Shortlist, Tala, KopoKopo, BitPesa, SunCulture, Moringa School, and PayGo Energy.

This great milestone comes at a time when the company just marked its 500,000 mark of registered users and also its entry into the second East African Market, Uganda.

The study by I-DEV International, under its ‘East African Technology Snapshot’ Series also showed that The tech startup scene in the African continent is experiencing record-breaking growth and increased international attention.

In 2017, African tech startups received over $560M in investment according to research by Partech Ventures (a 53% increase from $367M in 2016).

While South Africa and Nigeria still lead in attracting tech investments for the continent, East Africa is rapidly grabbing diverting more attention and investment dollars, catalyzed by strong innovation hubs and incubators. Nairobi stands as the pillar and anchor of East Africa’s interest, attracting 26% of total investments into Africa.

Results from I-DEV East Africa Tech Survey showed strong evidence that Kenya continues to take a lead in attracting attention and growing the ‘hottest’ companies to watch in East Africa, yet Rwanda and Uganda are beginning to attract investor interests as well.

The report further shows that the key driving Factors of Success for start-ups are:

Networks and Contacts: Without networks and contacts, even the most innovative product may never gain the right sales traction until a solid network is developed to help market and support the company for securing investment and business support.

Strong Management Team: The capacity and skillset of the management team are essential components for scale. A strong management team will develop the operational and financing plans needed to scale while also looking for unconventional solutions needed to achieve the shared vision.

Access to Advice and Mentoring: There are many startups that may have an innovative idea but are unable to find success within their first year. This is attributed less to a lack of financing and more due to a lack of structured mentoring. While East Africa has invested heavily in incubator programs to offer mentoring guidance, in many cases, strong technical and strategic support from experienced professionals is hard to reach and too expensive for early stage startups.

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