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Ckrowd SecuresPre-Seed FundingAnd Export Grant Investment
24 November, London, UK:Ckrowd,Africa?s most preferred and premium content streaming platform,has secured a $60,000 of pre-seed funding and $100,000 export grant investment, respectively from an international angel investor group, as well as backing from the Export Expansion Facility Programme from NESP.
The investment will be used to disrupt the African and Afro-diaspora tech and content creation market and allow
African content creators across Africa and the Diaspora to monetise their content and protect their content through structured IPand copyright infrastructure.
The African creative sector possesses the buoyancy and potential to earn 2.5 billion dollars, according forecast from global consultancies. This comes as a result of the Continent?s young population and the many untapped opportunities, however, the lack of immediate revenue from produced local content, the disparity in renumeration with some of the Western content creators, the lack of understanding of cultural difference across African countries, and lack of intra-African content integration have impeded real exponential growth for the creative industries in Africa. The export grant will all allow many storytellers and content creators to profit from revenue opportunities on the platform, while also providing an online portal where original, exclusive varieties of African content are well organized, can be accessed with ease and consumed as on demand short videos and live series.
Ckrowd?s receipt of the grant as part of the EEFPis a testament of the importance of the tech entertainment industry and how important is to diversify African digital economies, by capitalising on many verticalsding culture, edutainment, information, an, includ e-sports.
Ckrowd?s ground-breaking use of video technology and monetisation features to securely offer a profit to content creators, also confirms the company?s commitment to promote opportunities to help increase the exports of the creative industry and revenues earned by content creators.
Sensing an opportunity, Kayode and his team launchedCkrowd?s as a technology service to export African local content for global consumption and position the technology to generate foreign exchange, revenue and create job opportunities for African youth.
Kayode Adebayo, Ckrowd?s CEO said: ?This is a great win for African people. The Ckrowd platform, similarly to a large arena in the cloud, can broadcast live & short on demand video content and charges access fees on behalf of the creators of those content. This allows the platform to uniquely function as an EdTech, Media-Tech & Ad-Tech hybrid. We continue to welcome investments as we continue to grow partnerships across the continent and the African Diaspora. Our mission is to tell our stories, shine a light on the beauty of African culture and lifestyle, while delivering economic value to African creators, who have always and are pioneers and trailblazers in showcasing the beauty of our culture and our people. The platform pays 70% of total income on content to creators, which we believe it?s the highest pay-out on digital content to African Creators.?
Ckrowd plans to use its new capital to double down and expand with new innovative technologies and strategies to get more customers, accelerate growth and intra-African creative industries.In addition to that, the company plans to hire more talent, especially in product, R&D and engineering.
Ckrowdsecurednew investmentsfromEEFPandangel investor grouptocreatemorerevenuesfor Africa?screative market andfoster new jobsopportunitiesfor theyouth.
CYBERSECURITY A GLOBAL PROBLEM
TWO AFRICAN COUNTRIES LEADING IN CYBERSECURITY
The COVID-19 pandemic may have accelerated digitalization around the world, but as life has shifted increasingly online, cybercriminals have exploited the opportunity to attack vital digital infrastructure.
In early October 2020, Uganda?s telecoms and banking sectors experienced a crisis due to a severe hack that compromised the country?s mobile money network. At least $3.2 million is estimated to have been stolen in that incident, in which hackers used around 2,000 mobile SIM cards to gain access to the mobile money payment system.
Cyber-attacks have become an increased threat to Africa?s digital space. Fortunately, governments in the region have made some promising steps to address the issue. The African Union, as part of its ?Agenda 2063?for transforming Africa, has identified cybersecurity as a key priority to ensure that emerging technologies are used for the benefit of African individuals, institutions, and nation-states and to guarantee data protection and safety online.
The recently released Global Cybersecurity Index (GCI) indicates the countries that have done well to maintain cyber safety, since there is a shift of everyday activities and socio-economic services into the digital sphere.
Each country's development was assessed along the five strategic pillars of the Union's Global Cybersecurity Agenda (GCA): Legal Measures, Technical Measures, Organizational Measures, Capacity Building, and International Cooperation. The current assessment covers the 2019-2020 period and reflects data collected during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The index showed that 64 percent of countries had adopted a national cybersecurity strategy (NCS) by year-end, while more than 70 percent conducted cybersecurity awareness campaigns in 2020, compared to 58 percent and 66 percent, respectively, in 2018.
Mauritius and Tanzania are among the countries taking the lead in Africa, with Mauritius ranking 17th globally. Mauritius is often cited as an example on the continent in terms of cyber capacity, because of its legal and technical infrastructure, its national cybersecurity agency (CERT-MU), its national training and awareness initiatives and the involvement of public and private actors in these efforts.
To be safe from Cyber threats, African states, institutions and civil society must not only demonstrate their commitment to cybersecurity, but also work in close collaboration and partnership toward the shared objective of protecting citizens, businesses and organizations in the digital era.
