[NEWS] Africa Roundup: Canal+ acquires ROK, Flutterwave and Alipay partner, OPay raises $50M – Loganspace

in July, French television companyCanal bought theROKfilm studio from VOD company IROKOtv.

Canal would no longer picture the acquisition tag, but confirmed there used to be a cash component of the deal.

Founded by Jason Njoku  in 2010 — and backed by $Forty five million in VC — IROKOtv boasts the arena’s greatest on-line catalog ofNollywood:a Nigerian film genre that has changed into Africa’s de facto film substitute and one in every of the greatest globally (by production quantity).

Basically primarily based in Lagos, ROK film studios used to be incubated to manufacture well-liked bellow for IROKOtv, which will be accessed digitally any place within the arena.

ROK studio founder and producer Mary Njoku  will quit on as director overall below the Canal acquisition.

With the ROK deal, Canal looks to be like to mumble the Nollywood production ethos to various African countries and regions. The novel group plans to ship Nigerian production groups to French talking African countries starting this year.

The facility to be triumphant in a elevated selling community of African shoppers on the continent and internationally used to be a mountainous acquisition play for Canal .

San Francisco and Lagos-primarily based completely fintech  startup Flutterwave partnered with Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba’sAlipayto provide digital funds between Africa and China.

Flutterwave is a Nigerian-founded B2B funds provider (primarily) for companies in Africa to pay various companies on the continent and abroad.

Alipay is Alibaba’s digital wallet and funds platform. In 2013, Alipay surpassed PayPal in funds quantity and at this time claims a global community of larger than 1 billion active users, per Alibaba’s most up-to-date earnings file.

A huge portion of Alipay’s community is in China, which makes theFlutterwaveintegration valuable to shooting funds utter in some unspecified time in the future of the estimated $200 billion in China-Africa substitute.

Flutterwave will effect revenue from the partnership by charging its customary 3.8% on international transactions. The company at this time has bigger than 60,000 merchants on its platform, primarily based completely on CEO Olugbenga Agboola.

In a recentAdditional Crunch feature, TechCrunch tracked Flutterwave as one in every of various Africa-targeted fintech companies that absorb established headquarters in San Francisco and operations in Africa to tap the greatest of both worlds in VC, builders, purchasers and digital finance.

Flutterwave’s Alipay collaboration additionally tracks a pattern of elevated presence of Chinese companies in African tech. July observed Chinese owned Operaraise $50 million in enterprise spending to lend a hand its rising West African digital business community, which contains browser, funds and hasten-hail products and services. The funds are predominately for OPay, anOperaowned, Africa-targeted cell funds startup.

Lead merchants included Sequoia China,IDG Capital  and Source Code Capital. Opera  additionally joined the spherical within the funds enterprise it created.

OPay will exhaust the capital (which wasn’t given a stage designation) primarily to develop its digital finance enterprise in Nigeria — Africa’s most populous nation and greatest economy.

OPay will additionally lend a hand Opera’s rising business community in Nigeria, which contains motorcycle hasten-hail app ORide and OFood offer provider.

Opera founded OPay in 2018 on the recognition of its web search engine. Opera’s web-browser has ranked No. 2 in usage in Africa, after Chrome, the final four years.

July additionally observed transit tech news in East Africa. World hasten-hail startup InDriverlaunched its app-primarily based completely provider in Kampala (Uganda), bringing its Africa working countries to four:Kenya, Uganda, South Africa and Tanzania. InDriver’s cell app permits passengers to title their very absorb fare for inner sight drivers to compile, decline or counter.

Nairobi-primarily based completely web hardware and provider startup BRCK and Egyptian hasten-hail enterprise Swvl are partnering to mumble Wi-Fi and on-line entertainment to on-ask bus provider in Kenya.

BRCK is installing its routers on Swvl vehicles inKenya to bustle itsMojaprovider, which offers free public Wi-Fi — web, song and entertainment — backed by business partners.

Founded in Cairo in 2017, Swvl is a mass transit provider that has positioned itself as an Uber  for shared buses.

The company raised a $42 million Series B spherical in June, with intent to create bigger in Africa, Swvl CEO Mostafa Kandil said in an interview.

BRCK and Swvl wouldn’t ascertain plans on expanding their cell web partnership to additional countries outdoor ofKenya.

Africa’s hasten-hail markets are changing real into a multi-wheeled and global affair making the continent dwelling to a set of novel mobility exhaust cases, in conjunction with the BRCK and Swvl Wi-Fi partnership.

Extra Africa-associated stories @TechCrunch

• VertoFX raises $2M for its African and EM currency buying and selling platform
• Why this Nigerian fintech startup is volunteering audited financials
• China’s Vivo is eyeing smartphone users in Africa and the Middle East
• Handiest 2% of genomic subject cloth on hand for compare comes from Africa; 54gene wants to alter that

African tech in some unspecified time in the future of the ‘win

• MTN granted working license to birth monetary provider in Nigeria  
• Kenya’s Sokowatch raises additional $2.5m funding, expands to Rwanda, Uganda
• 4Di Capital launches $9.4m fund to make investments in SA tech startups