Telecom
Meet the 11 Disruptive Startups Selected for Cohort 3 of ASIP Accelerator Program
Startupbootcamp AfriTech, Africa’s leading tech Accelerator, together with founding partner and leading telecom giant, Telecel Group have selected the participants of the much-coveted Accelerator Program, the Africa Startup Initiative Program (ASIP).
The intrinsic value of startups in Africa lies in their ability to build fast and effective solutions to pressing challenges. Over the years another key aspect has come to the fray; scaling across borders. The ASIP Accelerator has managed to help founders fine-tune their business models while also facilitating entry into new markets such as Senegal.
This has been possible through a historic partnership with DER/FJ, which was established to advance Entrepreneurship for Women and Youth in Senegal by the President of the Republic, His Excellency Macky Sall. Giving a keynote at the event, Senior Innovation Lead Adrien Schwarz said; “We are impressed with the work that the ASIP and Startupbootcamp AfriTech are doing and are excited that there were three times more Francophone founders compared to the previous years. This validates the caliber of startups in Francophone countries and shows that their exposure to acceleration has improved. It is also wonderful to see the progress that the past Senegalese startups namely Proxalys, Parcsmart, and Yobante have made”
Founded by telecom giant Telecel, the Africa Startup Initiative Program (ASIP) aims to support the next generation of early-stage African tech startups that are disrupting key industry verticals that include FinTech, InsureTech, AgriTech, Climate-tech, eCommerce, Digital Health, and CleanTech, Mobility, Micro-leasing, and digitizing the informal economy.
Eleanor Azar, Executive Deputy of the Group and ASIP Director said:” we are very proud of the great effort that was put into this cohort 3 of the ASIP Accelerator Program powered by SBC AfriTech – we have exceptional startups with innovative and positively disruptive ways of treating the African challenges that they have set out to solve and build their Startups around. We are also exceptionally proud that the number of female founders has increased. And to those who did not make it into the top 10, we wish you all the luck, you should be very proud that you have come out on top of more than 2,000 applications received into the program in cohort 3.
Other partners include the Dutch Entrepreneurial Development Bank (FMO), AWS, Freshworks, Google, and Firstbase.
Participants will receive an intensive three-month coaching and support program to accelerate their growth and benefits worth $750,000 USD. Startups will also have access to the global Accelerator Squared platform which has a complete library of content, group workshops, 1:1 mentoring, collaborative sessions with Entrepreneurs in Residence, and invite-only discussion forums with founders from around the globe.
The program will take place in Dakar, Senegal and startups will be hosted at the D-hub, – a space commissioned by DER/FJ.
“We’re excited by the quality of startups in this cohort,” commented Program Director Henry Ojour. ”About 30% of them have applied before, 60% applied on the recommendations of an alumni founder and 50% of them have monthly revenues above $50,000.00. Cohort 3 companies are building in over 12 verticals we have a 30% female-founder ratio. It’s going to be 13 weeks of far-reaching progress & impact.” He added.
We are honored to announce that the following startups will be joining the 2023 ASIP cohort 3:
Kyanda Africa; is a revolutionary Kenyan fintech platform that provides businesses and individuals with convenient and reliable money transfer solutions. The startup has a network of agents, API gateway, and various access channels such as USSD, Mobile App & WhatsApp Chatbots making the services customizable dependent on the users’ needs
PharmaServ; is a Nigerian SaaS product, which automates the process of sales orders, tracking sales team performance, and reconciling incoming purchase orders, payments, and invoices for health brands. This is a labor-intensive process that is still predominantly manual for most local companies in emerging markets.
Sodishop; is a Malian marketplace, an online sales and purchase platform, present in 4 countries in West Africa, we deliver thousands of orders per month across Mali, Senegal, Guinea, and Côte d’Ivoire.
BD Waste; is a Ghanaian GreenTech startup that combines fintech and sustainability to recover Plastic waste from communities. Their Digicycle product allows customers to directly deposit plastic waste into their digital wallets and receive credit for it. This credit can be used to purchase data packages, airtime, food items, stationery, and health insurance.
Limawa; whose Senegalese founder operates in Côte d’Ivoire aims to tackle the issues of food conservation and transportation through solar-powered split air conditioners that can reach -2°C (designed in CI by our team). Limawa offers an innovative and cost-efficient alternative to industrial compressors for the cold chain industry. This solution is suitable for trucks, containers, and trailers.
Parkwell; is a Nigerian online sharing platform that matches drivers with available, safe parking spaces and helps property owners list their parking spaces for optimum use. The digital parking platform integrates parking facilities and connects it to mobile for a seamless experience.
Jand2Gidi; also from Nigeria, offers ‘Logistics As A Service’ to B2B and B2B2C customers whose users are engaged in cross-border trade. They have built shipping APIs to provide the same hassle-free, transparent, and trackable shipping services to their B2B merchants to enable them grow faster after nearly a decade of building robust, cutting-edge freight forwarding and last mile delivery services
Moja Ride; from Côte d’Ivoire has made its mission to enable better and cleaner mobility services to African cities by making financing easy and accessible for all transportation professionals. Drivers and transport companies can easily qualify for new car loans and car repairs by simply working with Moja Ride’s advanced digital fare payment and booking technologies.
SafeTrack; is a Moroccan technology startup that allows a 75% reduction in water consumption for irrigation at 20% of the price of its competitors. Their IoT solution of geolocation and monitoring is 100% mobile, has simple maintenance and does not require any IT infrastructure. Composed of revalued smartphones and sensors and other affordable devices, and a cloud software platform developed internally.”
Chestify AI Labs; from Ghana provides an AI platform that gives a highly accurate algorithm for diagnosing chest X-Ray pathologies. Two-thirds of the world’s population of over 5 billion people with no access to a radiologist and radiologic diagnostic support tools and Chestify’s mission is to aggressively tackle the socio-economic and health distress created by inadequate radiology Infrastructure and the presence of fewer radiologists in Africa.
Yoonema; is a Senegalese social e-commerce platform that offers a frictionless, unique, and simplified experience to e-buyers who desire quality products and B2B players who offer a full global e-commerce experience to their clients.
The ASIP Accelerator powered by SBC AfriTech will culminate in a Demo Day on 25 May 2023 where startup founders will pitch their disruptive solutions to a broad audience of media, investors, corporate partners, and industry stakeholders.
African women remain among the most digitally excluded globally, with smartphone affordability and digital literacy among the key barriers. New data from the 2025 GSMA Mobile Gender Gap Report, launched recently, reveals a persistent global gender gap in mobile internet use across low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).
It further notes that literacy, digital skills, safety, and affordability of data also remain critical barriers. The report highlights that 885 million women across these regions still do not use mobile internet, with nearly 60% of them living in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
While mobile internet is the primary way women in LMICs access the internet, offering critical lifelines to health, education, and financial services, the pace of female adoption has stalled, leaving 235 million fewer women than men connected.
Claire Sibthorpe, head of digital inclusion at GSMA, highlighted that the gender gap had narrowed significantly between 2017 and 2020, but progress flatlined in recent years.
Although 2023 brought a slight improvement, restoring the gap to 15%, 2024 saw minimal change, with the gap settling at 14%.
The disparity is most severe in Sub-Saharan Africa, where women are 29% less likely than men to use mobile internet.
“It’s disheartening that progress in reducing the mobile internet gender gap has stalled. The digital divide is driven by deep-rooted socio-economic and cultural factors that disproportionately impact women,” said Sibthorpe.
GSMA projects that closing the gender gap by 2030 could add $1.3 trillion to GDP across LMICs and deliver $230 billion in revenue to the mobile industry.
The report, funded by the UK FCDO, Sida, and the Gates Foundation, stresses the urgent need for targeted investment and policy action to bridge the digital divide and ensure that no woman is left offline.
“The mobile internet gender gap is not going to close on its own. It is driven by deep-rooted social, economic, and cultural factors that disproportionately impact women,” said Sibthorpe.
Nigeria may bring back a 5per cent excise tax on telecom services, according to the 2024 Finance Bill passed by the Senate last week.
Gbenga Adebayo, chairman, ALTON
The tax would apply to data transmission and voice calls.
First introduced in 2020 under the Mohammadu Buhari administration to widen the tax base, the measure was suspended in 2023 by President Bola Tinubu due to rising inflation.
With the budget under pressure, the government is now considering reinstating it.
Telecom operators warn that the tax would raise service costs and make it harder to close Nigeria’s digital divide, which still leaves more than 40% of the population without internet access.
Gbenga Adebayo, chairman, Association of Licensed Telecoms Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), said the proposal lacks detail and would increase the financial burden on users.
“We’ve had no clarity on how the 5% tax would be implemented, but the burden will fall on the consumer. Telecoms should be treated as a social good, not taxed like luxury items. No one taxes telecoms like this in countries where infrastructure is taken seriously,” he said.
ALTON also noted that operators are already subject to 54 different taxes nationwide.
The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has not yet received the official version of the bill for review.
Telecom
GSMA Urges Governments to Prioritise Affordable Spectrum Costs to Support Global Digital Growth
The GSMA released its latest ‘Global Spectrum Pricing Report’, highlighting that average spectrum prices have not reduced in line with operator revenues over the last decade — putting significant pressure on their ability to invest in essential network infrastructure.
The report shows that, whilst both consumer prices for mobile services and the average cost of spectrum have fallen, the overall cost burden on mobile network operators (MNOs) has actually risen sharply. Global cumulative spectrum costs now account for 7% of operator revenues, a 63% increase over the past ten years.
Meanwhile, the average revenue generated per megahertz (MHz) of spectrum has declined by 60% over the same period. Although costs per MHz have fallen by up to 75% in some bands since 2014, operators have increased spectrum holdings by 80% over the same period to cope with bandwidth demand, driving up the overall cost.
A gigabyte of data is far more affordable today than ten years ago, with operators experiencing a staggering 96% fall in revenue per GB between 2014 and 2024. However, these falling revenues, when combined with the proportionately high cost of acquiring spectrum, restrict operators’ ability to invest in expanding and improving mobile networks, particularly 4G and 5G. The report shows that higher spectrum costs correlate directly with lower network coverage and reduced mobile speeds, impacting consumers and slowing the development of digital economies worldwide.
Vivek Badrinath, Director General of the GSMA, said: “The mobile industry sits at the heart of the digital economy, enabling services and opportunities that transform lives. But a dollar can only be spent once, and high spectrum costs can choke investment at a time when the need for affordable, reliable connectivity has never been greater. Governments and regulators must prioritise spectrum pricing that reflects market realities and fosters long-term digital growth. By ensuring spectrum is affordable, they can unlock faster network expansion, better service quality, and greater digital inclusion for all of their citizens.”
The Global Spectrum Pricing Report also highlights that public policy choices — such as setting artificially high reserve prices, creating artificial scarcity, and attaching onerous licence obligations — have often contributed to inflated spectrum costs. In some countries, spectrum costs can reach as high as 25% of operator revenues.
The GSMA urges policymakers to adjust spectrum prices in line with current market conditions and the economic realities faced by operators. With nearly 1,000 spectrum licences set to expire worldwide by 2030, upcoming renewals present a critical opportunity to reset pricing policies to drive investment in the next generation of mobile networks.
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