{"id":3584,"date":"2024-05-24T14:00:31","date_gmt":"2024-05-24T14:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highfrequency.tv\/?p=3584"},"modified":"2024-05-30T15:39:55","modified_gmt":"2024-05-30T15:39:55","slug":"seeking-an-angel-african-startups-face-funding-challenges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highfrequency.tv\/?p=3584&lang=en","title":{"rendered":"Seeking an ‘Angel’: African Startups Face Funding Challenges"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Kubik prides itself on its groundbreaking, climate-friendly technology that recycles one of the world\u2019s environmental curses \u2013 plastic waste \u2013 into building blocks. But for the award-winning Ethiopian startup, it hasn\u2019t been easy to get off the ground. It has fought tooth and nail to raise funds, says its youthful boss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kubik takes bundles of discarded plastic and sorts them into piles. Selected plastics are mixed, melted, and combined with additives, then molded into the desired shape. The result: black beams and interlocking blocks that are today being assembled in a pilot project \u2013 the construction of a daycare center in the capital Addis Ababa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The construction site has no cranes or cement mixer, just a concrete floor where four workers are building a wall by fitting the blocks together like Lego and tapping them with a hammer to ensure they fit well. There is no glue or cement. The beams, screwed together on all four sides of the walls, hold the structure upright.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe idea is that it should be super simple,\u201d says supervisor Hayat Hassen Bedane, a 34-year-old civil engineer. \u201cYou have a manual, and the whole point is to get it done with inexperienced workers, obviously under supervision. You can build 50 square meters of a building in just five days, so it\u2019s super fast compared to other forms of construction,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019ve done tests, tensile stress tests, and compression tests, so it\u2019s durable and very strong.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speed and smart use of unwanted plastic are not the only advantages. Recycling generates just one-fifth of the carbon released in cement production. If Kubik\u2019s factory processes 45 tons of dumped plastic daily, it equates to avoiding 100,000 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually, the company says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s also a social trickle-down, giving a boost to the country\u2019s many informal waste collectors, many of whom are women. \u2013 Funding challenge \u2013 But Kubik\u2019s CEO, Kidus Asfaw, 36, said he struggled to get startup money for his company. He faced many setbacks from wary investors, he said, before getting a break. He has just closed a multi-million-dollar funding round to scale up production \u2013 a success coinciding with the prestigious AfricaTech prize for the company, boosting visibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Ethiopian previously worked at Google, the World Bank, and UNICEF after studying in the United States. He then took the plunge into entrepreneurship, he said. \u201cThere\u2019s a huge network that I already had within my professional environment that I could leverage in the beginning,\u201d he told AFP in Paris last month, where he went to collect the prize. Still, \u201cthe fact that it was there didn\u2019t make it easier\u201d to raise money. \u201cI\u2019ve met over 600 people in two years. Of those 600 people, about 20 have become investors.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Startups in Africa face numerous hurdles, from regulations and a lack of infrastructure to a fragmented continental market. But funding is a persistent and major issue on a continent that lacks fearless individual investors to provide backing. \u201cThere are very few \u2018business angels\u2019 in Africa,\u201d said Sergio Pimenta, vice-president for Africa at the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector arm of the World Bank that has just launched a $180 million fund to help provide a financing source. Of the $415 billion in venture capital deployed worldwide, just over one percent \u2013 $5.4 billion \u2013 goes to Africa, he said. And of that amount, 80 percent goes to just four countries: South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, and Egypt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n