 The tech space in Nigeria continues to rapidly grow with several tech startups using technology to solve everyday challenges peculiar to the continent. This bust has projected the Nigerian tech space as a promising industry. For ideas to flourish, funding is essential. It's an important lifeline for any business. How easy or hard is it for startups to get funding? Okay, let me tell you this way. Awaba is now in the process of raising its seed. 19 months. I'll call it like a baby so you see 19 months. We're in our seed round, which is our second round of seed raising funds. Our first seed round, we raised $250,000. It took us speaking to about 70 investors, 17 investors, and only five of them invested in us. And I'm saying a lot of these 17 investors, some of them took anywhere between a 30-minute conversation to three months of back and forth. Check your data, check your disk, check your that, and then they'll still say no. It's hard. And sometimes the people who then get to believe and invest in you just come out of the blue and they just invest in the company. So it's very difficult. People say it's a numbers game, so you have to speak to a lot of people. Some people tell you they spoke to 300 investors. My 70 was just child's play really. But at the end of the day, it's so difficult. Even when... Globally, there has been a decline in funding for startups. According to a recent report from the CB Insight from Economic Times, the global funding for startups fell 23% in the second quarter of 2022 from the first quarter, with 108.5 billion US dollars invested across 7,651 deals. This marked the biggest quarterly percentage drop in deals and the second largest drop in funding in a decade. Will this global decline in funding affect African startups? I think it's a global phenomenon. But it being a global phenomenon doesn't always take out the fact that whenever there's an economic crisis globally, there's also opportunity for ideas that can help economies build up. And I think what's unique about what we're building in Africa is they're localized. When you look at what startups are building in the West, they're quite futuristic. They're things that may not see proper application in like three, four, five years. But they are the future. So the world is able to pass on some of those things because there's a global economic downturn. But in a place like Nigeria, recovery is going to be everything that people are saying. And you can do recovery if you're not creating new ideas that can help economies to be a lot more productive. So that's why I think you're not going to see much of the effect. You can also look at data. I think data is already out there that is showing that the impact on Africa is not as deep as people were expecting it to be. And there was a lot of money going around the technology ecosystem. Now that there's very reduced money in circulation, it's even more difficult. So if you spoke to 70, then you probably have to speak to 140 now. So it's really hard. The sector has seen a steady rise in investors' interest in expanding the frontiers of tech innovation. But only 1% of global VC funding goes to Africa. The concern is why are there a lot of African investors funding startups? The biggest answer to it is that Africa is just getting used to funding startups and technology. And people with money, you know, they're not out there to take a bet on things they don't know. They're always very conservative. So if you know someone that has always been used to investing in real estate, they know how to invest their money in a property. They know that the property is going to be there. Even if it's not appreciating in value for a few years, it will come back and appreciate. So people are used to what they're investing in. A lot of the investors locally need a lot of education. As I was saying on stage, eight years ago, we couldn't raise any money in Nigeria, but today you have a bigger pool of local investors, angel investors, people that are investing anywhere from five to 100,000 US dollars. We haven't seen some investing up to millions, who are local money, not foreign money. But we still don't have a good size of them. So I think that will continue to change as you see more and more local startups becoming successful. Paystack was a big news for so many people because a lot of those who put money in Paystack were able to make money out of it, you know. So that was a big example. As we see more Paystack, you're going to see confidence in local money to invest in startups. And it's a matter of time. That's just a journey. Google recently announced that 60 eligible black founded startups across Africa have received a total of four million US dollars in funding and support to enable them scale up their ongoing work. Each of the selected startups will receive support in the form of a six-month training that includes access to a network of mentors to assist in tackling challenges that are unique to them. They will also be part of tailored workshop, support networks and community building session. This funding is a breeder for some startups that will have some of the everyday issues. We got 50,000 dollars and the fantastic thing about it is that it came at a very useful time. It came at a very useful time. Generally, because we are in a period where funding across the technology ecosystem, not just Nigeria, I'm talking about globally has slowed down dramatically. I mean, you can see there's a slowdown in the world generally, but as concerns funding, it's also slowed down. So wherever startup founders can get funding right now, it's a lot great. And not only was this startup funding, it's also a situation where it was equity free. So non-dilutive, it just goes into the business and helps you be able to plug a few cracks here and there. And it's fantastic for a lot of startup founders. Building a startup from an idea to running into a successful business is a lot of work. And like every business, founders can be discouraged. Generally riddled with the plethora of challenges and it will take a deliberate effort from each and every one of us to solve these challenges. Even if there's currently a sort of assumption that there's a bandwagon movement of everyone going to fintech or certain sectors that are receiving the most funding, what I tell everyone is that we still need a lot more stuff. We still need many more solutions. We still need many more products and services to be developed to solve these problems. We require solutions and we require solutions from Nigeria. We require solutions from Africa to solve these problems. So what I tell people is that keep building and if you're scared and anxious, then build scared and build anxious. But eventually you will succeed. It's not taking a day for any of these startups. A lot of them were founded maybe last year, two years ago, three, four, five years ago. But here they are now. They've gone on to raise follow on funding. They've received funding from Google, but they're also receiving mentorship training and technological support from the likes of Google. So even if you're building now, build with a plan, build to solve the problems that Nigeria is real with, and eventually you will scale. Startups are a catalyst for economic growth both globally and locally, and their success through adequate funding and support have a positive ripple effect for everyone. Fresh news updates