Investisseurs & Partenaires (I&P), a pan-African impact investor based in Paris, through its fund I&P Afrique Entrepreneurs 2, has participated in a pre-series A investment round in StarNews, Africa’s fastest-growing mobile content platform.

StarNews started its activities in 2017 in Ivory Coast.

The company is positioning itself in a unique market, specifically adapted to the African context to unlock the potential of the creation of mobile video content on the continent.

StarNews was designed as a digital platform for creating, producing and distributing video content to mobile subscribers on various themes (celebrities, culture, cuisine, sport, humor, religion, beauty, events, etc.).

Guy Kamgaing, founder and director of StarNews, said: "Despite the widespread use of smartphones and ever-wider access to mobile Internet, value-added service offers are not very Africanized and even when it does, the content comes only from international players. It was necessary to highlight this rich and original local content and allow its players to monetize it appropriately. Hence the idea of a distribution platform deployed in partnership with mobile operators.”

Now launched in Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Congo and South Africa, StarNews has established partnerships with large pan-African mobile operators such as MTN and Orange in order to distribute exclusive and quality video content directly to users who can subscribe through their mobile to the various channels offered. Monetization is one of the key issues of the model: the startup offers content creators a stable source of income by sharing the income generated. StarNews started out collaborating with local and international African celebrities such as Fally Ipupa, Serge Beynaud, Lady Ponce or Davido and has been focusing since 2019 on the development of new themes.

“We are proud to support a talented and experienced African entrepreneur who demonstrates a real commitment to deploy a pan-African and innovative solution. We share StarNews’ ambition to showcase African artists and to produce a greater diversity of quality local content with high added value for end users,” commented Nouss Bih, Investment Manager at I&P, based in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.

I&P Afrique Entrepreneurs 2 continues to invest actively in Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in Madagascar, West Africa and East Africa.

Starnews is the 9th investment of the fund.

By 2022, IPAE 2 aims to finance some 20 additional African SMEs, with an investment ticket ranging from €300,000 to €3m.