Ten African startups have been selected for the final round of the Latitude59 pitch competition which will see the winner qualify to pitch at the main event in Tallinn, Estonia, with the chance of winning the grand prize $1.1 million.

The Latitude59 pitch competition which is in 12th edition, is Estonia’s flagship startup and tech event and attracted over 3,500 attendees, including more than 900 startup representatives and nearly 600 investors when it was hosted in Tallinn in May.

According to the organizers,
Latitude59 is seeking early-stage startups from across Africa to compete for the chance to pitch at the next edition of its pitch competition, which will take place at next year’s edition of the event.

The event organizers said a total of 382 applications were received from 37 African countries, with the top 10 now selected and will pitch at an event in Kenya on November 28, where the African winner will be chosen.

Eight of the selected ventures are Kenyan and include Eco Nasi, which transforms pineapple pulp waste into high-quality vegan leather.

Others are Grekkon, a platform which scales up moisture sensors for smallholder farmers; NoMa, a tech platform that digitises school transportation; and Paycloud, which is building a neobank to help MSMEs in Africa to pay, get paid, and access credit through payment aggregation.

The other selected Kenyan ventures are Roadrims, which provides reliable, efficient, and cost-effective logistics; Twiva, a social commerce platform; VunaPay, which provides instant payments to farmers; and Zerobionic, which is developing a human-like robotic arm to help students with hearing impairments.

From Nigeria comes AcemyX, an LMS helping students prepare for exams with personalised learning tools and study materials, with Tanzania’s Afya Mama, which is providing answers to questions pertaining maternal care and reproductive health to women via SMS and web app, completing the list.

Ride-hailing platform, Bolt, has announced an investment of $107 million in its bid to boost safety and service quality in Nigeria’s ride-hailing sector, with a special technology enhancing safety standards for both drivers and passengers.

Lola Masha, Bolt’s Regional Manager for North and West Africa, who made the announcement in a statement, said the “investment will fund new safety technologies, accident prevention measures, customer support upgrades, and public safety awareness campaigns, underscoring Bolt’s commitment to providing a secure and reliable platform.”

She revealed that as part of its quality check, the company had removed more than 5,000 drivers from its platform in 2023 so as to cleanup its database cleanup effort and will continue to implementing a driver score system to maintain quality standards.

“The driver score evaluates performance by monitoring how frequently drivers accept ride requests, successfully complete trips, and respond to passenger feedback. Essentially, it rates drivers based on their performance over their last 100 trips,” she noted.

Masha emphasized that the move came as a result of complains by the Amalgamated Union of App-based Transporters of Nigeria (AUTON) which raised concerns about the potential downsides experienced by users and the psychological stress on drivers, which could negatively affect their performance.

According to her, among the upcoming features are a four-digit trip pickup code and a trip counter, both aimed at making rides more secure and dependable for all users.