Last week, it was the Northern region of Africa that took the headlines in the startup funding scene. This week, the party was in the South, as South African startup companies dominated fundraising activities across the ecosystem. It started with coding education company WeThinkCode securing a $2 million grant from Google and ended with DevOps solutions provider Salus Cloud raising $3.7 million from multiple investors.

Elsewhere, Nigerian fintech company Migo has been acquired by long-term investor First Ally Capital. Read the full updates below.

Funding

WeThinkCode

Funding Round: Grant ($2 million)
Investors: Google
Founded: 2015, South Africa
Founders: Arlene Mulder, Camille Agon and Yossi Hasson

About the Company:
WeThinkCode is a free coding education provider that has redefined how people learn tech-related skills in Africa through its aptitude-based training model, which targets youths from underserved backgrounds.

What Next:
The new funding will be channelled into the company’s new AI-skills training programme, which will benefit 12,000 learners, helping them gain practical AI knowledge through a newly designed curriculum.

Nile

Funding Round: ($11.3 million)
Investors: Cathay AfricInvest Innovation Fund, FMO
Founded: 2021, South Africa
Founders: Eugene Roodt (left) and Louis De Kock (right)

About the Company:
Nile is an agritech company operating a digital agricultural marketplace. The company’s B2B solution serves as a one-stop agri-commerce platform, designed to eliminate inefficiencies that have become commonplace in African agricultural supply chains, including price opacity, waste, delayed payments, and too many intermediaries.

What Next:
The funding will be used to scale the company’s solution to provide coverage across the entire Southern African region. Nile has already begun facilitating cross-border transactions and aims to scale this further by building a digital ecosystem that addresses a full range of needs for farmers.

MyNextCar

Funding Round: ($10 million)
Investors: Emso Asset Management, Bolt, Assemble Capital, and E2 Investments
Founded: 2021, South Africa
Founders: Tinyiko Msweli and Nathaneal M Fihlabani

About the Company:
MyNextCar is a company that positions itself as a ride-hailing service enabler. It supports individuals and ride-hailing operators by helping them obtain vehicles for business use. MNC is one of Bolt’s foremost partners in South Africa, supporting low-cost ride-hailing operations across the country.

What Next:
MNC raised this funding to scale operations by rolling out 1,500 new vehicles powered by the compact Bajaj Qute. The majority of these vehicles will be integrated into Bolt Lite — a budget-focused category. The company hopes to overcome the challenges experienced during the pilot phase of Bolt Lite and further solidify investor confidence.

Salus Cloud

Funding Round: ($3.7 million)
Investors: Atlantica Ventures, P1 Ventures, LoftyInc’s Idris Bello, Everywhere Ventures, and Essence VC’s Timothy Chen
Founded: 2021, South Africa
Founders: Andrew Mori

About the Company:
Salus Cloud operates an AI-native DevSecOps platform designed to empower African engineers and software developers. The platform automates security fixes and streamlines software delivery at affordable rates for startups. It aims to solve one of the recurring challenges in Africa’s tech landscape: access to secure, scalable, and affordable DevOps solutions. In essence, it aspires to become the go-to DevOps platform for African developers.

What Next:
The funding reflects a growing shift in investor perspectives on the African tech ecosystem. Salus Cloud intends to use the investment to scale its solutions, supporting thousands of developers and enterprise teams by 2026.

Acquisitions

First Ally Capital Buys Majority Stake in Migo

Migo (formerly mines.io), a Nigerian credit service provider, has undergone a quiet exit with long-term investor First Ally Capital acquiring a 60% stake in the company. With this deal, the investor has effectively taken control of the once high-flying international startup.

During the height of its operations, Migo operated a credit-as-a-service platform leveraging AI-powered credit scoring to enable companies to offer loans to their customers. Back in 2019, the company had a Series B funding round during which it raised $20 million in capital.

Speaking on the motivation for the deal, Ebenezer Olufowose, Group Managing Director of First Ally Capital, was quoted as saying the acquisition reinforces the investor’s commitment to innovation and to expanding financial inclusion through responsible technology.

From a broader perspective, the deal points to an ongoing trend of strategic acquisitions in the Nigerian fintech space. With VC funding becoming harder to secure, more fintechs are turning to mergers and acquisitions for survival. Brass and Bankly are both prime examples of this.