The Empower Africa Business Platform is Now Live !!!
Kenyan identity management startup Peleza and Y Combinator-backed Prembly have joined forces to create a new entity, the Prembly Group.
The merger brings together Peleza’s expertise in background checks, particularly valuable due to its established partnerships with East African mobility giants Uber and Bolt and logistics leader FedEx, with Prembly’s focus on identity verification, security, and compliance solutions.
This collaboration isn’t entirely new as Peleza has been leveraging Prembly’s infrastructure for the past year and a half.
According to Peleza’s founder, Marita Mutemi, the merger formalizes this partnership, which aims to expand service offerings across various markets with a specific focus on global reach.
“This merger is a natural extension of our existing collaboration,” Mutemi said. “It allows us to provide a wider range of services to customers across different markets, including internationally.”
Prembly’s co-founder and CEO, Lanre Ogungbe, echoed this sentiment, highlighting the combined entity’s potential for leadership in the Pan-African identity management space.
Following the merger, Ogungbe will assume the CEO role of the Prembly Group. Mutemi will become the Group’s CFO and concurrently serve as the CEO of Prembly East Africa.

A consortium of leading institutions, including the SA SME Fund, the Department of Science and Innovation (DSI), the Technology Innovation Agency (TIA), and E Squared Investments, has launched a R300 million (approximately $17 million) seed fund aimed at supporting tech startups in South Africa.

Miro, a forestry and plywood manufacturing enterprise with operations in Sierra Leone and Ghana, has closed a significant funding round spearheaded by Lagata, an investment firm dedicated to forestry ventures across sub-Saharan Africa.

Chowdeck, a fast-growing Nigerian on-demand delivery service, has secured $2.5 million in seed funding to fuel its expansion plans within the country.