Startups On Our Radar spotlights African startups fixing African challenges with innovation. In our earlier version, we featured 5 game-changing startups pioneering synthetic intelligence, agriculture, cryptocurrency, and job matching. Count on the subsequent dispatch on February 13, 2026.
This week, we discover 5 African startups within the synthetic intelligence, fintech and cloud companies sectors and why they need to be in your watchlist. Listed below are our picks for at present:
Yamify is constructing an area cloud for AI brokers (AI, Democratic Republic of Congo [DRC])
When Luc Okalobe, a cloud and reliability engineer, returned to Congo-Brazzaville after spending the earlier 15 years working at Silicon Valley, in corporations together with Apple, TikTok, Pinterest, and IBM, he was met with recurring complaints from engineers in regards to the unreliability of Africa’s cloud infrastructure. So, he teamed up with Mike Kabangu, a enterprise developer, to create an answer. In December 2025, they launched Yamify.
Yamifi is a cloud infrastructure startup constructing native cloud environments for African companies that wish to run automation and AI brokers with out internet hosting their core operations on United States or Europe.
Yamify addresses this hole by offering native cloud infrastructure for AI brokers, beginning with workflow automation instruments. The platform’s first use case is internet hosting n8n, an open-source automation and AI-agent framework utilized by entrepreneurs, freelancers, and internet businesses. As an alternative of working n8n on US-based servers, Yamify installs and operates it on bodily servers positioned in African knowledge centres, starting with Open Entry Knowledge Centres (OADC) in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
The platform features as a cloud working layer that sits on high of bodily servers and permits customers to create digital knowledge centres, referred to as Yams, the place AI-agent software program could be deployed and managed with out requiring deep infrastructure experience.
The startup manages server provisioning, uptime, monitoring, and restoration, permitting customers to focus solely on constructing workflows and AI brokers. Over time, the startup plans to host further AI instruments, together with chatbot methods, to broaden past its preliminary n8n focus.
Yamify operates on a subscription mannequin priced at $5 month-to-month. The startup says it has about 100 beta customers and is producing $500 in month-to-month income. The startup has additionally attracted early validation from corporations utilizing the platform as design companions, together with VaultPay, a YC-backed fintech.
Why we’re watching: Yamify focuses on AI infrastructure. The startup presents an alternative choice to working automation on US-based clouds, the place African companies face latency and knowledge sovereignty considerations. In August 2025, the startup raised $100,000 in pre-seed funding from Felix Anane, an early Paystack backer.
Clea needs to make use of stablecoins to make world funds sooner for African importers (Fintech, Nigeria)
Based by Sheriff Adedokun, Sidney Egwuatu, and Iyiola Osuagwu in December 2025, Clea is a cross-border funds platform that facilitates funds to abroad suppliers for African importers.
Earlier than Clea, Adedokun based a automotive importation enterprise, which concerned sourcing autos from america. It was throughout this importation function that he encountered repeated cost failures, as US public sale platforms rejected third-party funds and Nigerian fintech instruments declined transactions. These frictions led to the launch of Clea to assist individuals supply property and settle funds overseas extra simply.
Clea operates by a wallet-based system and allows customers to fund a pockets in Naira, convert to {dollars} utilizing stablecoins, after which ship cash to international suppliers throughout a number of nations.
By way of Clea’s partnership with Fincra, customers are assigned digital financial institution accounts and might make funds utilizing a number of worldwide rails. These rails embrace Fedwire, Automated Clearing Home (ACH), and Actual-Time Funds (RTP) within the US, and the Society for Worldwide Interbank Monetary Telecommunication (SWIFT) for different nations.
Clea additionally permits customers to fund their USD wallets instantly with stablecoins, supporting BEP20 (BNB) and TRC20 (Tether) networks. Importers working with over-the-counter (OTC) crypto merchants may ship USDT or USDC cash into their Clea wallets. For compliance functions, Clea requires customers to supply detailed beneficiary data, like relationship to the recipient, business, and deal with, earlier than funds are processed.
The startup generates income primarily from switch charges, because it says it retains FX margins low to guard importers’ profitability. Since its launch, the startup says it has onboarded 60 non-public pilot customers and experiences $68,000 in income throughout its pilot section.
Why we’re watching: In 2024, the worth of Nigeria’s remittance outflows reached $89.4 million, and Clea is concentrating on retailers on this phase. Its differentiation is its cross-border settlement by RTP, which settles funds sooner than Fedwire and ACH. The startup says it’s presently testing its new product, Clea Remit, which is able to permit inbound worldwide transfers into Nigeria and convert obtained {dollars} into stablecoins as a substitute of naira.
BookMolly needs to construction bookings for appointment-based companies (SaaS, Nigeria)
BookMolly is an appointment reserving and administration platform for companies that function on scheduled companies, like salons, spas, therapists, consultants, and wellness professionals.
Samuel Olabamiji, a senior software program engineer, developed BookMolly in April 2025 after repeatedly calling service suppliers to ask when to come back in, solely to reach and nonetheless wait or be turned again. Olabamiji then got down to construct a system that enables clients to e book a time slot prematurely, pay upfront, and stroll in precisely when anticipated.
The webapp serves as a administration dashboard for service suppliers and a market for customers. On the enterprise facet, service suppliers create accounts, arrange their profiles, listing companies and costs, outline opening hours, and handle availability by a calendar interface. Every enterprise receives a novel reserving hyperlink that may be shared instantly with clients on channels like Instagram and WhatsApp.
Companies may handle clients, payouts, group members, opinions, reductions, and experiences exhibiting appointments and efficiency tendencies. BookMolly integrates with Google Calendar and Google Meet, which permits digital service suppliers like therapists to generate assembly hyperlinks when bookings are made.
The platform additionally consists of reserving insurance policies that require clients to pay a share of the service payment upfront, together with guidelines for cancellations, rescheduling, and no-shows. Olabamiji says this characteristic addresses an issue the place companies lose income as a result of shoppers fail to indicate up after blocking time slots.
On the client facet, BookMolly presents a market the place customers can seek for appointment-based companies by class and placement. Clients can view enterprise profiles, choose companies, choose time slots, overview reserving insurance policies, and pay deposits earlier than confirming their appointment. At checkout, clients sometimes pay 70% upfront, relying on the enterprise’s coverage. Funds on the platform are processed by Paystack, which additionally gives enterprise wallets.
BookMolly costs a 4.5% fee on bookings, capped at ₦30,000 ($21.95). Since its launch, the startup says it has onboarded over 400 registered companies and is presently averaging not less than 10 weekly appointments.
Why we’re watching: In Nigeria’s casual service economic system, bookings are sometimes dealt with by telephone calls or WhatsApp messages that supply little construction or accountability. BookMolly is tackling this inefficiency with its reserving software program. The startup differentiates itself by combining a enterprise administration software with a consumer-facing market, a characteristic that rivals like KindlyBook don’t presently supply.
The startup is constructing a WhatsApp-based AI reserving agent to permit clients to seek for companies and e book appointments with out leaving WhatsApp. The startup additionally plans to incorporate further options resembling payroll and white-label options.
Memcortex needs to supply a personal reminiscence layer for AI in extremely regulated sectors (AI Infrastructure, Nigeria)
Based in December 2025 by Bukola Sobowale, a Nigeria-based senior software program engineer, Memcortex emerged from firsthand expertise constructing AI methods within the US, a extremely regulated healthcare setting, the place knowledge residency and affected person privateness are non-negotiable. Whereas constructing inner AI charting methods, he realised that present massive language mannequin (LLM) platforms depend on exterior centralised layers that retailer and replay total dialog histories, which is incompatible with healthcare and different compliance-heavy sectors.
Memcortex is designed as a semantic reminiscence layer that sits between an software and its underlying LLM. As an alternative of sending full dialog histories to a mannequin, Memcortex shops previous interactions between a affected person and the organisation’s AI chatbot in a vector database.
When a brand new immediate is issued, the system retrieves solely contextually related historic knowledge and passes that filtered context to the mannequin. This strategy ensures delicate knowledge by no means leaves the organisation’s setting. The software is especially helpful for corporations in healthcare, fintech, and inner enterprise AI instruments, the place private knowledge can’t be uncovered to third-party platforms.
Memcortex is absolutely open supply and accessible on GitHub, and could be deployed regionally or on any cloud supplier. Sobowale describes Memcortex as a foundational software meant to assist builders construct compliant AI methods.
Why we’re watching: Whereas large tech corporations like OpenAI and Google keep closed-source variations of this know-how, Memcortex presents another that smaller corporations can use to construct AI options with out breaking the financial institution. By preserving knowledge absolutely on an organisation’s personal infrastructure, Memcortex says it addresses considerations that make AI platforms unsuitable for healthcare and different compliance-heavy sectors.
Tavestack needs to make use of its multilingual AI product to construct an “clever mind” for African companies (AI, Nigeria)
Tavestack, co-founded by Hafsah Garbati and Ahmad Sagir Koki, is an AI-powered productiveness and workflow automation platform being constructed to assist African companies handle conferences higher and centralise fragmented work instruments right into a single clever system.
The concept for Tavestack emerged from the group’s personal struggles with distant work whereas working throughout Kano, Kaduna, and Abuja. The founders relied closely on on-line conferences and located gaps in present instruments for video calls and transcriptions. They noticed that speech recognition instruments failed to grasp native pronunciations or mixed-language conversations. Conferences with sturdy native accents had poor transcription accuracy, and summaries didn’t seize what was really stated. The group additionally realised that productiveness instruments priced in {dollars} consumed a big share of working budgets and required groups to juggle Zoom, Notion, reminders, and job managers with out integration.
That led to the event of Tavestack, a productiveness working platform that sits on high of and integrates present enterprise instruments. It permits customers to routinely seize discussions throughout conferences, generate summaries, extract motion gadgets, and set off follow-ups. The platform additionally extends into workflow orchestration, job automation, audit trails, and course of intelligence, that means the system is designed to grasp how an organisation operates and automate interactions between instruments.
Tavestack can be being constructed to operate in low-resource environments by supporting offline or low-connectivity utilization for bodily conferences, which might be synced as soon as connectivity is restored. Tavestack is growing its computerized speech recognition (ASR) engine tailor-made to African speech patterns, accents, and languages, to attain accuratetranscriptions.
The corporate stays bootstrapped, has not but launched publicly, however is concentrating on a public beta by Q3 2026. Its income mannequin might be subscription-based, and its product might be focused at B2B clients.
Why we’re watching: Tavestack is tackling the mismatch between world AI instruments and actual use instances in African organisations. By constructing its personal computerized speech recognition (ASR) and enabling offline utilization, the startup is addressing persistent points round multilingual conferences in low-resource environments, which normally undermine the usefulness of present transcription and productiveness instruments in such environments.
That’s all for at present. Count on our subsequent dispatch on February thirteenth. Know a startup we must always characteristic subsequent? Please nominate right here.
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