
Seven South African Startups Selected for Irish Tech Challenge
Seven promising South African tech startups have been chosen to participate in the third Irish Tech Challenge South Africa.
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PowerLabs, a Nigerian energy and climate technology startup, has raised pre-seed funding in a round led by venture firm Breega, with additional backing from Catalyst Fund, Mercy Corps Ventures, and Kaleo Ventures.
The company plans to use the capital to scale its technology designed to help businesses manage unreliable power supply more efficiently.
The investment comes at a time when Nigeria’s electricity sector continues to struggle with deep structural issues.
Despite being Africa’s largest economy, the country faces chronic power shortages that affect both households and industries.
Studies indicate that grid-connected users receive only a few hours of electricity daily — about 6.6 hours on average — forcing many businesses to rely on diesel generators or alternative energy sources.
This gap has significant economic consequences, with frequent outages and limited supply having long constrained productivity, with energy deficits costing the economy billions of dollars annually and pushing companies toward costly self-generation solutions.
PowerLabs was founded to address these inefficiencies by introducing smarter energy management tools.
Its core product, Pai, uses artificial intelligence alongside data collected from connected devices to give businesses clearer visibility into their power usage.
The system analyses historical and real-time energy patterns to forecast costs, identify inefficiencies, and guide better planning for future energy investments.
According to the company, Pai can also automate how businesses switch between different power sources, such as grid electricity, generators, or solar systems, to ensure continuous operations.

Seven promising South African tech startups have been chosen to participate in the third Irish Tech Challenge South Africa.

The UK government, in partnership with FSD Africa, has unveiled a KSH 667 million ($5.2 million) initiative to improve financing access for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Kenya.

South African fintech startup Happy Pay has secured $5 million in seed funding as it looks to expand a new approach to buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) services built around advertising rather than consumer fees.