To establish Africa’s first Digital Free Zone, Nigeria’s Itana raised $2 M Pre-seed funding

Itana, formerly Talent City, of Nigeria, has raised US $2 million in a pre-seed funding round to support its effort to create Africa’s first Digital Free Zone, which aims to increase the ease of doing business index, stimulate foreign direct investment, and stimulate employment.

Itana will be a fully online jurisdiction for the digital economy with the best business policies, services, and technology for international service and digital businesses to easily operate remotely across Africa.

Itana, founded by COO Coco Liu, founding investor Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, and CEO Luqman Edu, will allow multinational tech and service companies to base their African operations in Nigeria and benefit from globally competitive business policies and incentives.

Global VC firms LocalGlobe, Amplo, Pronomos Capital, and Future Africa led the $2 million pre-seed round. The agreement brings together a stronghold of technical know-how and deep industry expertise from partners who have backed model digital societies like e-Estonia and created scalable products.

“We are thrilled to announce this round of funding. It validates our efforts, and reiterates the aligned vision with our investors and partners to make it easy to invest and operate in Africa’s digital economy,” said Edu. “The African market is still largely untapped and Itana will provide the ideal business environment that will be fully online, for global and pan-African digital and service companies to use Nigeria as an anchorage to operate with ease across the continent.”

By utilizing advantages currently only enjoyed by traditional manufacturing or oil and gas industries, which have historically established themselves in Nigeria’s free zones, Aboyeji claimed Itana would enable entrepreneurs to build a globally renowned business in the country’s first digital free zone.

“Within the Itana digital free zone startups will have the benefit of a stable policy environment, tax and capital repatriation incentives and the freedom to operate remotely without the need for an expansive physical presence within the free zone. I’m looking forward to the global businesses from Nigeria that will emerge from this,” he said.