The countdown to the World Cup is on. In less than three months, the world’s greatest footballers – including African players from Algeria, Cape Verde, Egypt, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Morocco, Senegal, South Africa, and Tunisia – will make their way to the US, Canada and Mexico, to take part in the greatest sporting competition in the world.
Unless you’re in the Iranian national team. Or from one of the countries on the US’s “naughty” list. Or, of course, if you’re a woman.
Macro, structural and systemic issues hinder global talent from thriving in the way that it could. The jobtech sector is not immune to this. If you are a refugee in Kenya without a local ID and try to sign up to most platforms, your application is likely to get rejected by automated document reviews. If you are a single mother of two in Senegal with parental responsibilities, you might struggle to work on a platform that rewards availability during the school run.
Still, jobtech platforms can do a remarkable job of overcoming structural access barriers. As we detail in our recent long read about women and jobtech in Africa, platforms can overcome some of the enduring labour market barriers for women in the analogue world – from bias and socio-cultural gender norms to skills gaps. Jobtech can offer women accessible and flexible work.
Our latest round of data shows that from over 180,000 people earning from our venture support portfolio platforms, women continue to earn 26% more than men.
But there is lots more to be done to make the sector more inclusive. While blogs and UN reports and case studies and Tiktok videos are hailing platforms for overcoming structural barriers to work for refugees, many of these challenges persist. This month, we shared the lessons we learned from three years seeking to include more refugees in the platform economy in Uganda and Ethiopia. TL;DR: it’s been way harder than we thought, but we can see the potential ahead. If you want to learn more and get involved, please join the Jobtech for Refugees Community of Practice.
Overcoming systemic barriers is always a gargantuan task. It requires concerted effort and attention, or you might miss the big thing right in front of you. Like the fact that the Women’s World Cup is happening in 2027!
Until next time,
Chris
📣 Highlight of the month
This month, we are hosting a micro-session that has been a long time coming. We first talked about the issue of demand and supply in jobtech back in 2023, and over the years, we’ve put together a robust guide on building marketplaces.
Join us to learn from a market development expert, alongside 3 marketplace platforms from our portfolio, in this insight-packed 40-minute session.
📊 Our insights
It’s all things investment as we broke down the “why” behind our latest portfolio members.
Why we invested: Twiva (6mins): The African creator economy is growing fast, but most creators still can’t rely on it for stable income. We unpack why we invested in Twiva, and what its model reveals about what it actually takes to fix that.
Why we invested: Bumpa & Flowcart (6mins): For the millions of Africans whose livelihoods run through small businesses, the bottleneck is rarely customers, but the chaos underneath. That is why we backed Flowcart and Bumpa, two platforms building the operational infrastructure that makes African commerce actually work.
🔧 Built by our members
This month, we chatted with Bereket Shimekit, co-founder of StriveIn.
StriveIn is a freelancing and outsourcing platform connecting clients with skilled professionals to deliver work both online and offline. Today, we serve 700+ freelancers across 10 job categories, including software development, design, digital marketing, customer service, and more.
Clients can post jobs, receive bids, review portfolios, and hire through milestone-based payments that improve transparency and trust. Freelancers can showcase their work and offer services through structured gigs.
Top 3 insights from building StriveIn
1. Solve real problems you understand.
StriveIn started from a personal pain point—accessing reliable services efficiently. Building from lived experience ensured strong problem-solution fit.
2. Product-market fit requires behaviour change.
Introducing freelancing in a trust-based informal market meant reshaping how people hire and get paid. Technology alone wasn’t enough – we had to build credibility, educate users, and even offer free services initially to drive adoption.
3. Startups demand adaptability beyond your core skillset.
Building StriveIn required learning across product, partnerships, pricing, and talent development. Progress came from constant iteration, listening closely to users, and staying committed to a long-term vision in an evolving ecosystem. Ultimately, execution, patience, and the ability to adapt quickly mattered more than the initial idea.
What’s an overlooked challenge in your sector?
African freelancing is often framed around serving global demand, yet local demand remains underdeveloped and underserved—even though Africa accounts for over 10% of the global freelance workforce.
There is a significant opportunity to build strong internal outsourcing ecosystems that create jobs and drive economic growth. But challenges persist—low awareness, inconsistent pricing, and limited support structures for freelancers.
Unlocking the sector’s potential requires shifting focus: not just connecting African talent to global work but enabling them to solve local problems and build self-sustaining markets.
🚀 Founder resources and opportunities
- The Chicken & Egg Report: Our new research on marketplace liquidity is out. If you’re building a two-sided platform and wrestling with supply-demand balance, read the report for insights from 4 platforms.
- Building Her Community Grant: Freelancing Females and Heartbeat are running a $5,000 cash grant for women founders, freelancers, and community builders ready to launch or grow a community. Open to applicants anywhere in the world. Applications close April 10. Apply here
- AFRISE Challenge: A startup accelerator for young African entrepreneurs offering $600,000+ in technology credits, mentorship, and a virtual Demo Day pitch in front of global investors and stakeholders. Open to founders at any stage building solutions with social or economic impact. Apply here
🗞️ Who’s making the news?
Platforms for offline work
- Lagos Uber and Bolt drivers this week launched a three-day strike over low fares and high commissions, organised by the Amalgamated Union of App-Based Transporters of Nigeria. Kenya is simultaneously considering launching a new airport ride-hailing platform at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, signalling growing pressure on Africa’s gig mobility model from both workers and governments at once.
- Kenya-based e-mobility startup Spiro raised $50 million in a debt facility in February, making logistics and transport the top-funded sector in Africa for the month, overtaking fintech for the first time.
Platforms for digitally delivered work
- Nigeria’s 2026 tax reform requires freelancers and remote workers to register and file under a new progressive structure. A rapidly growing “digital middle class” of remote developers, designers, and creators across Nigeria, Kenya, and Ghana earns in dollars through global platforms but remains largely invisible in GDP, labour law, and social protection systems. The new policy could formalise this workforce, or push them further underground.
- African gig workers hired by data annotation firm Appen have been unknowingly performing work for US military contracts worth $17m with little explanation of the tasks or who they were ultimately working for. A striking example of how platform opacity plays out at the bottom of global AI supply chains.
Digital services for micro-enterprises
- Moroccan retail-tech startup WafR raised an $4m seed round to power 20,000 corner stores (known locally as hanouts) as fintech access points.
Digital tools for worker enablement
- South Africa’s Labour Law Amendment Bill, published late last month, proposes extending collective bargaining rights to non-standard and platform-based workers, the most significant overhaul of the country’s employment legislation in over a decade. If it passes, it would represent a structural shift in how platform work is regulated across the region.
Labour mobility
- Ghana and Kenya have signed the AU Free Movement of Persons Protocol, and the ECA-AUC’s new MOVE AFRICA initiative is working to promote inclusive discourse on migration and remove barriers to free movement across the continent, with multi-stakeholder working groups launched in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Uganda.