Why African Teams Should Borrow a Leaf from Local Startups to Succeed- Russia 2018 World Cup

Money Fellows is an Egyptian startup which was founded by Ahmed Wadi in 2014. The startup is a partnership group savings and lending platform. It aims at digitizing credit associations and rotating savings. Early in 2018, Wadi the CEO got equity investment worth $600,000 from Dubai Angel Investors and 500 startups. Wadi is planning to use the money to expand the platform’s partner network. Moreover, he intends to use a portion of it to acquire customers.

According to reports released by Forbes Middle East in January 2018, Money Fellows was creating a credit scoring offering and already had over 2,500 users by then. Forbes also reported that the startup secured funding valued at $800,000 since its launch. It stated that through its article where it listed top 20 Middle East fintech startups. Money Fellows has offices in London and Cairo.

In  2017 the World Economic Forum and the International Finance Corporation selected the startup among the Arab worldwide top 100 startups. The move was part of the initiative by Startup4IR. The list also had other 13 different startups from Egypt. Money Fellows won $50,000 at the 2017 MIT Enterprise Forum Arab startup competition. It also won grants worth $50,000 from the MetLife Foundation’s Financial Inclusion Plus competition.

Apart from the listed awards, the startup was among the winners of the 2016 Uber Pitch summit. This shows how the startup has succeeded overseas. In the same year, Money Fellows was among the finalists of the European Fintech Awards. It did not end there since the previous year the startup was the only one from Africa that was selected to take part in Startupbootcamp fintech accelerator in London. All these achievements are indications that the local startups can succeed at world stage level.

However, the Egyptian national team at Russia did not borrow a leaf from the global success gained by the startup. This is after they lost their two matches at the group stages. The first game they lost one nil against Uruguay and yesterday they lost 3-1 against the hosts. This was even after Mohamed Salah who is known as Mo Salah by many of his farms in English Premier League (EPL) took part in his first ever world cup game. But all is not lost yet since Senegal national team (The Lions of Teranga) won their first match against Poland.