| Africa Agenda: Press Releases: EVA Fund Invest Additional USD1m in Umuntu Media |
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| Monday, 19 September 2011 | |
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Cape Town/Amsterdam, 19 September 2011 --- Umuntu Media raised USD1m series A funding from Netherlands based eVentures Africa (eVA) Fund as a first step to expand their model of local information portals to an additional nine African countries. www.iNamibia.co.na and www.iZambia.co.zm have already been successfully launched with the first round of eVA Fund investment. The funds will also be partly used to build a mobile communications platform that caters for Africa’s needs. This platform will be launched in Alpha version before Jan 2012. ‘Think Local, captivate the reader and build world class platforms for Africa from within Africa’ is the success formula for Umuntu Media CEO Johan Nel. Umuntu Media has proven this concept to work with their extraordinary uptake of iNamibia and iZambia. The success comes down to truly local content: Umuntu Media employs on the ground journalists and encourages citizen journalism to publish world class local and hyper local news on their platforms. Umuntu means ‘person’ in Ndebele and people are the core of the strategy. “We want to be the one stop content and information shop for our readers. So far, we’ve established a news and entertainment section, offer the largest database of accommodation establishments in Namibia and Zambia, showcase the latest music and events and have integrated a property and job board. All this information is locally produced to create relevance, as we believe it’s the local content that counts.” explained Johan Nel. Brian Hirman of eVA Fund comments on the new investment: “Quality local content is still a gap in the market in Africa. It is a massive challenge, but we have the vision, we have the team and we have the guts to make this happen. We have great confidence in Johan Nel and his team. That is why we are happy to invest a second round in Umuntu Media today and will continue to invest and actively support the team in the future.” Comments (0)
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