Eight African tech startups raised funding rounds at the recently-concluded SpeedUPAfrica bootcamp hosted by Silicon Valley VC firm DraperDarkFlow in Ghana.
DraperDarkFlow partnered accelerator 500 Startups to host SpeedUPAfrica, a four-day bootcamp with hands-on workshops, live experiments, A/B testing, growth hacking, and one-on-one mentor sessions.
Major global investors Tim Draper and Mark Iwanowski attended the bootcamp, for which a total of 93 startups from 16 countries were chosen to take part.
Eight of these companies raised funding at the end of the event, from DraperDarkFlow and its management team Toro Orero and Tim Draper. Draper made two direct investments, only his second and third ever investments in Africa.
Three Nigerian companies raised money, namely schools platform VeriCampus, crowd-sourced errand running service DropBuddies, and Wi-Fi company NURLUX. Ghanaian startups Tress, a haircare platform, and Swiftly, an on-demand shipping startup, also raised money.
There were also investments for Rwandan mobile payments startup VugaPay, Ivory Coast sports data startup Planete Sports, and Ugandan on-demand TV startup TrendingshoW.
Nine startups received external offers of investment, while a further seven were taken into Draper University. Singularity University is nominating six startups from SpeedUPAfrica to participate in its newly launched Impact Fellows Programme.
