The International Finance Corporation (IFC) has today launched a US$225 million venture capital platform to back early-stage startups in Africa, Middle East, Central Asia, and Pakistan.
Kenyan startup BasiGo has raised US$6.6 million in new seed funding to begin commercial delivery of locally manufactured electric buses and charging infrastructure.
New York-based venture platform Modus has launched Modus Africa, a venture capital fund for AI and blockchain startups across sub-Saharan Africa. The fund is expected to reach its first close in the first quarter of next year.
Martech keeps taking larger bites out of marketing budgets: 17.3% last year, 19.9% this year, 23.5% next year, and 30.9% five years from now, according to the latest CMO Survey. This despite barely more than half (56.4%) of current tools being used and nearly half (48.8%) of the survey respondents reporting worse-than-expected results. Oddly enough, marketers rate selecting marketing technologies as the thing they do best.