Not many people around the globe have heard about the Africans when it comes to modern entrepreneurship or ‘techpreneurship’. The popular news from Africa is always negative; it’s always about war, corruption, famine, diseases and others.

But now, other great news and stories from Africa are making it into the mainstream media. We have all heard about IROKOTV – dubbed as the African Netflix. It seems the continent of Africa is moving towards the right directions.

The new year 2017 is going to be great for techpreneurs from the continent of Africa for so many reasons. First, the internet is becoming easily accessible even for the people in remote and rural areas of the continent. Also, the population of smartphone users continues to grow across the continent.

This development alone can open windows of opportunity for young entrepreneurs to set up their lucrative business ideas. It’s surely going to be a great year because from South Africa to Egypt, and from Nigeria to Kenya, there are business opportunities waiting to be explored.

Below are some of the African startups and inventions to look out for in 2017:

[1] TRESS

[img]https://1.bp..com/-fg-gRXQPjeY/WHKh63pnr0I/AAAAAAAAMfE/WBttgAts6x8dErM4jq71AikC32cNWGYUgCLcB/s400/Africa-startup-to-watch-TRESS.png[/img]
Tress is a community where users can discover and share their beautiful hairstyles. It’s a passionate community of black women from around the world sharing and discovering new and trending hairstyles.

Put together by three brilliant African women – Priscilla Hazel, Esther Olatunde and Cassandra Sarfo, Tress is made for women to share ideas about hairstyles. Users share detailed info such as the exact hair products used, cost, and the location of the salon.

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[2] SteamaCo
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SteamaCo is an emerging-market focused IOT solutions provider, focusing on microgrids and asset management in remote areas. The company has a mission to provide electricity to people in rural areas who are not yet connected to the national grid.

How does SteamaCo work? The company makes solar and battery micro-grids which can work for a whole village. They are small electricity generation and distribution systems that operate independently of larger grids.

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[3] BitPesa
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BitPesa is a mobile payment platform developed to help online workers such as web developers in Africa easily get paid. We all know popular payment systems such as PayPal are yet to enter African market. This makes payments to remote workers in Africa difficult.

This is the gap BitPesa wanted to fill. It lets people outside the continent pay remote workers in Africa with ease. The company uses digital currency such as Bitcoin to notably lower the cost of remittances and SME business payments to and from sub-Saharan Africa.

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[4] Piggybank
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So many people in Africa do not save money or set aside some funds to meet unplanned challenges. However, the introduction of Piggybank will make it easy for people to save for such activities as travel, birthday celebration, wedding and others.

Piggybank enables users to easily set a saving target. Then users will automatically save little amounts of money either daily, weekly or monthly directly to a debit card until they reach their target.

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[4] Printivo

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Based in Lagos, Printivo is the Nigeria’s leading online print shop and it was recently voted as the country’s most investable startup in 2016.

The digital printing startup is on a mission to help Nigerian startups and SMEs easily print their business and marketing materials. The startup hopes to grow Nigeria’s multi-million dollars print market, which has had no credible online presence until now.

http://www.onaplatterofgold.com/african-startups-to-watch/

Yeah even Netflix costs too much - https://technosoak.com/how-much-is-netflix/