Fuzu and Kyosk, two Kenyan firms, are the most recent to receive an unknown sum of money from the Jobtech Alliance.
In October 2022, Media reported on the establishment of the Jobtech Alliance, an ecosystem-building project centered around inclusive jobtech in Africa led by Mercy Corps and BFA Global. The initiative’s goal is to foster an environment that allows entrepreneurs to develop platforms that provide high-quality livelihoods, are inclusive, and allow users to engage in decent work.
In addition to running many cohorts, it is now directly investing in pertinent businesses, most recently Kenyan social commerce startup Twiva and Nigerian e-commerce companies Bumpa and Flowcart.
It has now invested in Kyosk and Fuzu.
After more than ten years of developing talent infrastructure throughout Africa, Fuzu has shifted from managing a marketplace to overseeing international teams for AI data operations, assessment, and quality assurance. The investment resulted from the Jobtech Alliance’s Digital Work Sector Scan, which charted the ways in which AI is transforming digital work in Africa.
The partnership will collaborate with Fuzu over the course of the next six months on direct international client growth, improving the positioning surrounding Fuzu Atlas, and advancing up the value chain into higher-quality AI-adjacent projects.
“Most African talent platforms still operate as marketplaces, competing on volume and cheaper sourcing. Fuzu has already moved past that. They’ve built the infrastructure layer underneath the marketplace, and Fuzu Atlas is now using it to deliver managed teams that global clients can actually build with. It’s one of the more credible answers we’ve seen to where good digital jobs in Africa come from next,” said Nick Markham, investment lead at the Jobtech Alliance.
Kyosk, a B2B marketplace that supports more than 200,000 unofficial sellers in Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda, is the second new portfolio firm. Kyosk is part of the alliance’s microenterprise investment thesis, which consists of platforms that deal with the everyday workflow issues of informal shops, such as inventory access, consistent delivery, and recurring customer behavior.
“African B2B commerce is maturing, and the platforms that win from here will be the ones that learn to bridge the fragmented workflows of informal retailers: inventory access, delivery reliability, repeat ordering. Kyosk’s shift from 25 warehouses in Kenya to one per country, with a sharper focus on route-level economics, is exactly the kind of operational discipline this market needs,” said Mide Alonge, senior venture builder at the Jobtech Alliance.
