Technology

Digital infrastructure companyLiquid Telecomis betting big on African startups by rolling out multiple sponsorships and free internet across key access points to the continenttech entrepreneurs.

TheEconet Wirelesssubsidiary also is partnering with local and global players likeAfrilabsand Microsoft­­ to create a cross-border commercial network for the continentstartup community.

&We believe startups will be key employers in Africafuture economy. They&re also our future customers,& Liquid TelecomHead of Innovation Partnerships Oswald Jumira told TechCrunch.

With 13 offices on the continent, Liquid Telecomcore business is building the infrastructure for all things digital in Africa.

The company provides voice, high-speed internet, and IP services at the carrier, enterprise, and retail level across Eastern, Central, and Southern Africa. It operates data centers in Nairobi and Johannesburg with 6,800 square meters ofrack space.

Liquid Telecom has built a 50,000 kilometer fiber network, from Cape Town to Nairobi and this year switched on the Cape to Cairo initiative—a land based fiber link from South Africa to Egypt.

In 2017, the company generated 39 percent of its $680 million annual revenues on connectivity services to enterprise clients, 32 percent from wholesale data services, and 22 percent on wholesale voice products to mobile carriers.Liquid Telecom clients include MTN, Vodacom, China Mobile, Barclays Bank, and Google.

Though startups don&t provide an immediate revenue windfall, the company is betting they will as future enterprise clients.

Reliable estimates are sparse on how fast they&ve grown, but there are now 1000s of startups in Africa expanding across multiple sectors; fromfintechand e-commerce toagtechand logistics.

While performance events are still a bit light, the continentminted its first unicorn,Jumia, in 2016 and has produced ahandful of exits.

The round size and overall value of funding to African startups has picked up considerably over the last year. Kenyan based fintech company Cellulantraised $47.5 millionin May and just this week, South African lending venture Jumoraised a $52 million roundled by Goldman Sachs.

African man holding Nigerian 10 naira bill.

&Step one…in supporting startups has been….supporting co-working spaces and events with sponsorships and free internet,& Liquid Telecom CTO Ben Roberts told TechCrunch. &Step two is helping startups to adopt…business services.&

For that first step, the company has tapped into Africatech hubs—now estimatedat 442 by GSMA—which have become a focal point for startup activity.

Liquid Telecom provides free internet to 30 hubs in seven countries and is active sponsoringstartup related events.

On the infrastructure side, itdeveloping commercial services for startups to plug into.

&At the early stage and middle stage, we&re offering startups connectivity, skills development, and access to capital through the hubs,& said Liquid TelecomOswald Jumira.

&When they reach the more mature level, we&re focused on how we can scale them up…and be a go to market partner for them. To do that they&ll need to leverage…cloud services.&

Microsoft and Liquid Telecomannounced a partnershipin 2017 to offer cloud services such as MicrosoftAzure, Dynamics 365, and Office 365 to select startups through free credits—and connected to comp packages of Liquid Telecom product offerings.

&We&re working with Liquid on the continent to reach 100 hubs in Africa,& said Chris Lwanga, MicrosoftSenior Director for Cloud Communities. &Theremany other areas we&re thinking about, but that will come out later,& he said.

On the venture side, Liquid Telecom doesn&t have a fund but that could be in the cards. &We haven&t yet started investing in startups, but I&d like to see that we do,& said chief technology officer Ben Roberts. &That can be the next move onwards… from having successful business partnerships.&

Now that your cousin doesn&t ask you questions about bitcoin anymore, is it the end of all things blockchain Maybe it just means that ittime to think about innovating at the protocol level and come up with new use cases. Thatwhy I&m excited to announce that Outlier Ventures CEO and founder Jamie Burke will join us at TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin.

Burke bet on the blockchain industry quite early as he set up Outlier Ventures back in 2013. The firminvestment strategy is much more interesting than your average investment thesis.

According to Burke, blockchain is key when it comes to decentralization. At some point, the web and the internet became too centralized. Most people now spend their time on social networks and other walled gardens.

This isn&t the first centralization wave. Web portals and AOLnavigator have more or less disappeared. But the same thing seems to be happening with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other platforms — they can&t moderate everything even though they algorithmically promote the wrong things.

And it all comes down to trust. Tech CEOs have attracted so much power that they can control your mood or your opinion by tweaking a couple of settings. By building deep tech projects on top of some sort of blockchain, those projects become decentralized. A small group of tech CEOs can&t decide for everyone.

And this applies to IoT, AI and robotics startups. These startups will need a strong set of moral rules. And the best way to build this language is by building a decentralized infrastructure layer.

If you think those are fascinating questions that we should talk about today (and not in ten years), then you should come to Disrupt Berlin to listen to Jamie Burke .

Buy your ticket to Disrupt Berlin to listen to this discussion and many others. The conference will take place on November 29-30.

In addition to fireside chats and panels, like this one, new startups will participate in the Startup Battlefield Europe to win the highly coveted Battlefield cup.

Jamie Burke

CEO and Founder, Outlier Ventures

Jamie is CEO of Outlier Ventures, Europe's first blockchain venture capital firm, set up in 2013. Since then he has pioneered the convergence thesis that views blockchain as foundational to Deep Tech like AI, AR / VR, IoT and 3D printing scaling securely and eventually converging. As a global thought leader, he assists startups and corporations on the space with an emphasis on AI, Industry 4.0, Smart Cities - Mobility.