As African migrants are swept up in a widening crackdown, critics say President Kais Saied is openly mining a deep vein of discrimination and prejudice against dark-skinned people in Tunisia.
Tag Archives: Tunisia
Tunisian Cave Village Empties Out in Face of Drought and Modernity’s Draw
For 1,000 years, homes dug into a desert cliff have sheltered olive farmers and sheep herders from summer heat and winter cold. But an exodus threatens its future. “We are left alone here.”
In a Hospital Ward, the Wounds of a Failed Democracy Don’t Heal
Tunisia’s road to democracy began with a self-immolation, and such cases have filled hospital burn wards ever since, as elected leaders failed to deliver on a promise of prosperity.
Tunisia’s World Cup exit was a wild ride. Denmark’s was a frustrating one.
Two games, played simultaneously in stadiums only six miles apart, settled the Group D standings: France (6 points) edged Australia (6) on goal difference, and left Tunisia (4) and Denmark (1) packing their bags.
Economic Neglect and Political Instability Unraveled Tunisia’s Democracy
Tensions across the religious-secular fault lines in the country could not be reconciled, and freely elected leaders failed to deliver on the 2011 uprising’s cry for bread, freedom and dignity.
Tunisians Approve New Constitution That Undercuts Democracy
The charter, passed in a referendum, cements the almost absolute power that President Kais Saied seized over the past year, when he has ruled mostly by decree.
Tunisians Vote on Constitution That Could Threaten Their Democracy
The new charter would enshrine into law a vast expansion of executive power under President Kais Saied in the past year.
Tunisia’s President, Kais Saied, Proposes New Constitution
The proposal, which will be put to a national referendum on July 25, would enshrine the significant steps he has taken over the past year to dismantle the North African nation’s young democracy.
Dozens of Migrants Die After Boat Sinks Off Tunisian Coast
The vessel carried about 100 people and had left from a Libyan port city.
President Dissolves Tunisia’s Parliament, Deepening Political Crisis
President Kais Saied, who suspended Parliament last year, dismissed that body after lawmakers challenged the autocratic powers he has exercised.
President Dissolves Tunisia’s Parliament, Deepening Political Crisis
President Kais Saied, who suspended Parliament last year, dismissed that body after lawmakers challenged the autocratic powers he has exercised.
Mideast Feels the Pinch of Rising Food Prices as Ramadan Nears
Russia’s war on Ukraine has driven up the prices of staple foods and energy across the Middle East and North Africa ahead of the Muslim holy month of daytime fasting and nighttime feasting.
Ukraine War Strains North Africa Economies
Egypt imports most of its wheat from Russia and Ukraine, and is looking for alternative suppliers. And Tunisia was struggling to pay for grain imports even before the conflict.
Pressure Mounts on Tunisia’s President to Salvage the Economy
When President Kais Saied seized power in July, he vowed to rescue the failing economy. Tunisians are still waiting for him to fulfill that pledge.
Tunisia’s President Promises Vote on Constitution and Sets Election Date
President Kais Saied’s announcement dispelled some of the uncertainty Tunisians have endured for months since he shunted aside Parliament in what critics called a soft coup.
Tunisians Recall Revolution Reluctantly, if at All: ‘It Just Faded Away’
When a monument to those killed in the 2011 uprising was recently damaged, few took notice or even cared in a town, and country, where there is now more regret than a wish to remember.
‘What Have We Done With Democracy?’ A Decade On, Arab Spring Gains Wither
Tunisia, birthplace of the pro-democracy uprisings that swept the Arab world, now looks to many like a final confirmation of failed promise.
Tunisian President Appoints Prime Minister Amid Protests Over Power Grab
President Kais Saied named a political novice, Najla Bouden Romdhan, in a move that may do little to dispel fears that he is moving toward one-man rule of the nation where the Arab Spring began.
As Tunisia’s President Cements One-Man Rule, Opposition Grows
In his latest step to consolidate power, President Kais Saied set up a system under which he will essentially govern the country by decree, bypassing the Constitution.
Populist Hero or Demagogue: Who Is Tunisia’s President?
As a law professor, Kais Saied preached strict adherence to the Constitution. As Tunisia’s president, he has bent it to his will. Will he save Tunisia’s democracy or destroy it?
Coronavirus Surges in Kisumu, Kenya
The pandemic is worsening in Africa as more contagious variants spread, vaccinations lag and hospitals in some places are pushed beyond their limits.
YC-backed Ziina raises $7.5M seed led by Avenir Growth Capital and Class 5 Global
Cash is the predominant method of sending and receiving payments in the Middle East. If you owe someone a cup of coffee or a trip over a long period, repaying via cash is your best bet. This is one problem out of many financial issues that haven’t been addressed in the region.
The good news is that startups are springing up to provide solutions. Last month Telda, a now two-month-old startup in Egypt, raised an impressive sum as pre-seed to offer digital banking services. Today, Ziina, another startup based in Dubai, has closed $7.5 million in seed funding to scale its peer-to-peer (P2P) payment service across the Middle East and North Africa.
Ziina has managed to enlist top global investors and fintech founders in the round. Avenir Growth and Class 5 Global led this latest tranche of financing. Wamda Capital, FJ Labs, Graph Ventures, Goodwater Capital, Jabbar Internet Group, Oman Technology Fund’s Jasoor Ventures, and ANIM also participated.
The founders who took part include Checkout CEO Guillaume Pousaz via his investment fund Zinal Growth; Krishnan Menon, BukuKas CEO, as well as executives from Paypal and Venmo. This adds to a roster of executives and early employees from Revolut, Stripe, Brex, Notion, and Deel that joined Ziina’s round.
According to the company, it has raised over $8.6 million since launching last year. This includes the $850,000 pre-seed raised in May 2020 and $125,000 secured after going through Y Combinator’s Winter batch early this year.
Ziina was founded by Faisal Toukan, Sarah Toukan, and Andrew Gold. It’s the latest addition to the Middle East’s bubbling fintech ecosystem and is capitalising on the region’s rapid adoption of fintech friendly regulation.
The company allows users to send and receive payments with just a phone number —no IBAN or swift code required as is the de facto method in the UAE and some parts of the Middle East. It also claims to be the country’s first licensed social peer-to-peer application “on a mission to simplify finance for everyone.”
After meeting during a hackathon in the U.S., Faisal and Gold began exchanging ideas on how to build wallets, wanting to mirror the successes platforms like WePay, Paytm have had. At the time, VCs seemed to be interested in how the wallets ecosystem intersected with banking.
“The lines between wallets and banking have become really blurred. Every wallet has a banking partner, and people who use wallets use them for their day-to-day needs,” CEO Faisal Toukan said to TechCrunch.
On the other hand, Sarah, who is Faisal’s sister, was on her personal fintech journey in London. There, she attended several meetups headlined by the founders of Monzo and Revolut. With her knowledge and the experience of the other two, the founders decided that solving P2P payments issues was their own way of driving massive impact in the Middle East.
So how far have they gone? “We launched a beta for the market but it’s restricted for regulatory reasons and basically to keep ourselves in check with the ecosystem,” Toukan remarked. “Since then, we’ve gotten regulated. We’ve got a banking partner, one of the three largest banks in the UAE, and we’ve set a new wallet a month from now. That’s also what we were working throughout our period in YC. So it’s been quite an eventful year.”
The fintech sector in MENA is growing fast; in terms of numbers, at a CAGR of 30%. Also, in the UAE, it is estimated that over 450 fintech companies will raise about $2 billion in 2022 compared to the $80 million raised in 2017. Fintechs in the region are focused on solving payments, transfers, and remittances. Alongside its P2P offering, these are the areas Ziina wants to play in, including investment and cryptocurrency services.
According to Toukan, there’s no ease of making online investments, and remittances are done in exchange houses, a manual process where people need to visit an office physically. “So what we’re looking to do is to bring all these products to life in the UAE and expand beyond that. But the first pain point we’re solving for is for people to send and receive money with two clicks,” the CEO affirmed.
Starting with P2P has its own advantages. First, peer-to-peer services is a repeat behavioural mechanism that allows companies to establish trust with customers. Also, it’s a cheaper customer acquisition model. Toukan says that as Zinna expands geographically — Saudi Arabia and Jordan in 2022; and Egypt and Tunisia some years from now — as he wants the company’s wallet to become seamless across borders. “We want a situation where if you move into Saudi or Dubai, you’re able to use the same wallet versus using different banking applications,” he added.
To be on the right side of regulation is key to any fintech expansion, and Toukan says Ziina has been in continuous dialogue with regulators to operate efficiently. But some challenges have stemmed from finding the right banking partners. “You need to make a case to the banks that this is basically a mutually beneficial partnership. And the way we’ve done that is by basically highlighting different cases globally like CashApp that worked with Southern Bank,” he said.
Now that the company has moved past that challenge, it’s in full swing to launch. Presently, Ziina has thousands of users who transacted more than $120,000 on the platform this past month. In addition, there are over 20,000 users on its waiting list to be onboarded post-launch.
Ziina has already built a team with experience across tech companies like Apple, Uber, Stanford, Coinbase, Careem, Oracle, and Yandex. It plans to double down on hiring with this new investment and customer acquisition and establishing commercial partnerships.
Seed-stage accelerator Flat6Labs closes $13.2M fund for startups in Egypt
Investment activities in Egypt continue to gain steam, not for startups only but also the funds backing them. Today, seed accelerator Flat6Labs announced the second close of its Egypt fund to support early-stage startups and provide follow-up investment. The fund had a target for EGP50 million (~$3.2 million) but eventually closed at EGP207 million ($13.2 million).
Launched in 2011, Flat6Labs is a regional seed accelerator with offices in Egypt and Tunisia. The accelerator launched its Cairo programme in 2017 to invest in more than 100 startups across Egypt over the course of five years. Startups that get into the accelerator are provided with office space, legal and marketing help, and access to mentorship and networking, among other perks. They also receive between EGP500,000 and EGP750,000. However, with the close of this round, Flat6Labs has increased the check sizes to EGP1.5 million (~$95,000) and up to EGP3 million (~$191,000) in post-programme follow-on funding for selected startups.
The International Finance Corporation (IFC), the MSME Development Agency, Egypt Ventures, and the Egyptian American Enterprise Fund are the anchor investors in Flat6Labs’ seed fund. Sawari Ventures, which recently closed its $71 million fund, also participated in this second close, and it comes as no surprise because the firm, which is highly affiliated with the accelerator, said it would set aside 10% of its fund for Flat6Labs seed-stage companies when we covered them in April.
“At Sawari Ventures, our fund strategy has always been to allocate a percentage of our fund to the seed stage, which is a completely different proposition in terms of process, culture, and support needed,” Wael Amin, managing Partner at Sawari Ventures, said in a statement. “As investors in Flat6Labs Accelerator Company, we get the opportunity to profitably participate in Egyptian companies at a very early stage, get early indicators on ecosystem trends, and visibility into the ecosystem.”
The second close of Flat6Labs’ fund is the latest of four venture capital funds targeted at Egyptian startups. Shortly after Sawari Ventures’ close, Algebra Ventures announced launching a $90 million second fund. Subsequently, GIZ Egypt launched a €100 million funding programme to provide up to four MENA-based fund managers between €25-30 million and is exclusively targeted at Egypt-based startups.
Flat6Labs is one of the continent’s active and well-known seed-stage accelerators. Just in Egypt alone, it has run seven cycles and invested in 62 startups. The venture capital firm and seed-stage accelerator provides a filter for some early-stage investors to source what companies to back or not. A good portion of startups in Flat6Labs’ portfolio has piqued investors’ interests, and half of them who have gone on to raise more money also received follow-up investment from Flat6Labs totalling EGP145,000,000 (~$9.25 million). Some of the startups in Flat6Labs’ portfolio include Welnes, Glued, CreditGo, and Docspert Health.
Egyptian VC firm Sawari Ventures finally closes $71M fund for North African startups
Egyptian-based VC firm Sawari Ventures has closed its $71 million fund for North Africa’s rapidly growing startup ecosystem.
The firm first announced its fund in 2018, when it closed an initial $35 million (which subsequently increased to $41 million) in hopes to close at $70 million, per Menabytes. The investors in the first tranche included CDC (which forked over $12 million), European Investment Bank, Proparco and the Dutch Good Growth Fund.
Having closed an additional $30 million, Sawari Ventures’ total raise is $1 million more than its original target. And it has added a range of new backers that includes Banque Misr, Banque du Caire, Ekuity, Misr Insurance Group, National Bank of Egypt and Suez Canal Bank.
Ahmed El Alfi, Hany Al-Sonbaty and Wael Amin launched Sawari Ventures in 2010. Before venturing into the world of venture capital, El Alfi and Al-Sonbaty were investment professionals in the Egyptian tech space for more than two decades. Amin, meanwhile, was a founder of a tech company called ITWorx that made notable acquisitions in the Egyptian tech ecosystem.
In addition to Egypt, Sawari Ventures focuses on Morocco and Tunisia. For the firm, these three countries represent one of the best investment opportunities around given the mismatch between the capital available (amounts and variation at every stage) and the market opportunity. They also share common traits such as language, culture, business, governance norms and market dynamics, making it easier for cross-border cooperation.
Since launching the firm over 10 years ago, Sawari claims to have invested in more than 30 companies, mostly in Egypt. Some of these companies include ride-hailing service SWVL, software startup Instabug, and AI chat-based personal assistant Elves, but its sweet spots are the hardware, education, healthcare, cleantech and fintech sectors.
“We try to cast a wide net given that, in essence, this is a transformative moment in emerging markets tech with the rapid digitization of the underlying economy,” a company spokesperson told TechCrunch. “So as expected, we’re seeing a great deal flow in the digitization of financial services, health care and education technologies. Also, given the engineering talent, there are unique opportunities in SaaS products, semiconductors and IoT.”
Sawari Ventures invests in growth-stage companies, in particular. But it also operates Flat6Labs, a seed VC firm akin to an accelerator that has been used to perform its seed investments since establishing both Cairo and Tunis offices in 2011 and 2016.
Image Credits: Sawari Ventures
Sawari says 10% of the now-closed investments will be earmarked for seed-stage companies as investments through Flat6Labs Cairo and Tunis. Flat6Labs Cairo will seed between 80 to 100 companies and offer follow-on investments to between 30 and 40. Flat6Labs Tunisia will seed 60 to 70 companies and offer follow-on investments for 30 to 40. The remaining 90% will be used to invest in 20 to 25 growth-stage companies across Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco, with a median investment range of $2 million to $3 million.
The investment range is a continuation of how Sawari typically cut checks for portfolio startups since closing the first tranche three years ago. The firm said it has invested between $1 million and $4 million in Elves, Brantu, and ExpandCart, Almentor, SWVL and MoneyFellows, among others.
“The Egypt-based fund is a privately held fund regulated by the Financial Regulatory Authority of Egypt (FRA), which allowed us to attract capital from top-tier local financial institutions to co-invest with foreign capital from international development financial institutions, doubling our allocation to invest in Egyptian high-growth companies to $68 million,” El Alfi said in a statement.
“Our aim is to create exceptional returns through investing in knowledge-driven companies, which have the potential of bringing transformational changes to the Egyptian economy. The fund will support local companies with dedicated capital, in addition to quality expertise from our seasoned and specialized team, and the value-add of our investors.”
Decolonizing the Hunt for Dinosaurs and Other Fossils
Younger paleontologists are working to overcome some historical legacies of their discipline and change how people learn about natural history.
Uprooting Colonialism From the Fossil-Finding Field
Younger paleontologists are working to overcome some historical legacies of their discipline and change how people learn about natural history.
A Decade After the Arab Spring, Autocrats Still Rule the Mideast
The popular uprisings of 2011 mostly failed, but they gave the region a taste for democracy that continues to whet an appetite for change.
On Arab Spring Anniversary, Tunisia, Its Birthplace, Erupts
Tunisians are putting their hard-won right to criticize the government to good use. They just wish there were less to protest.
How to Pretend You’re in Tunis Tonight
The Tunisian capital beckons with white-sand beaches, the medina, cafe districts and Roman ruins that speak to its place in history. Luckily, there are ways to capture its spirit at home.
As Virus Resurges in Africa, Doctors Fear the Worst Is Yet to Come
The coronavirus killed far fewer people in Africa than in Europe and the Americas, leading to a widespread perception that it was a disease of the West. Now, a tide of new cases on the continent is raising alarms.
Tunisian Woman Sentenced to Prison Over Joke Alluding to the Quran
Emna Chargui, 27, said she didn’t want to offend anyone when she shared another Facebook user’s post about the coronavirus that mimicked Quranic iconography.
Tragedy in the Middle East
Noah Feldman’s “The Arab Winter” tries to find hope in a grim turn of events.
Missives from My Locked-Down Friends, From Siberia to Samarkand
The people I met as the 52 Places Traveler were suddenly just as close as my friends down the street, so I reached out to my global community.