Dar Salaam. Doors are now open for Tanzania fintech startups to pitch their solutions to solve future payment and commerce challenges as the 2023 edition of the global innovation competition gets underway.
Dubbed the Visa Everywhere Initiative (VEI), the competition winners will go home with monetary prizes and gain access and exposure to Visa’s networks of partners in the banking, merchant, venture capital, and government sectors.
The Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa (CEMEA) finals will be livestreamed on July 27 on TechCrunch – an online publisher focused on the tech industry and the startup ecosystem, Visa said in a statement yesterday.
The startup that wins at the CEMEA Regionals will participate in the global finale, which will be held on September 19 in San Francisco.
This year’s edition of CEMEA is set to introduce for the first time an award in the risk and security domain: the Fintechs Innovating in Risk Excellence, or ‘FIIRE’, Award, which will involve global fintech players across fraud management, cybersecurity, and credit risk, among others.
Following a joint review by Visa and Emirates NBD representatives, the winning fintech will receive a $25,000 prize and an opportunity to work with Emirates NBD, a leading bank in the region.
“The Visa Everywhere Initiative is a platform that empowers fintechs and entrepreneurs to showcase the most ground-breaking, impactful solutions in the world of payments and commerce,” said Salma Ingabire, Visa’s country manager for Tanzania.
“Through their technology-driven, innovative solutions, fintechs have the potential to offer broad social benefits to the markets they operate in—particularly when it comes to providing financial services to those who have traditionally been underserved. At Visa, we believe access to the digital economy drives equitable, inclusive growth, and VEI is an important means of supporting the innovators playing a leading role in this space,” she said.
Since its launch in 2015, VEI has helped startups representing more than 100 countries collectively raise more than $16 billion in funding, with a network that includes nearly 12,000 startups from across the globe.
Last year, VEI awarded more than $530,000 in prize money over the course of the competition, which saw over 4,000 startups participate from five regions.
VEI is seeking innovative and ambitious entrepreneurs who are uplifting communities by solving payment and commerce challenges faced by businesses of all sizes and sectors
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Tanzania Declares End of Marburg Virus Disease Outbreak
Tanzania today declared the end of Marburg virus disease outbreak after recording no new cases over 42 days since the death of the last confirmed case on 28 January 2025.
The outbreak, in which two confirmed and eight probable cases were recorded (all deceased), was the second the country has experienced. Both this outbreak, which was declared on 20 January 2025, and the one in 2023 occurred in the north-eastern Kagera region.
In response to the latest outbreak, Tanzania’s health authorities set up coordination and response systems, with support from World Health Organization (WHO) and partners, at the national and regional levels and reinforced control measures to swiftly detect cases, enhance clinical care, infection prevention as well as strengthen collaboration with communities to raise awareness and help curb further spread of the virus.
Growing expertise in public health emergency response in the African region has been crucial in mounting effective outbreak control measures. Drawing on experience from the response to the 2023 Marburg virus disease outbreak, WHO worked closely with Tanzanian health authorities to rapidly scale up key measures such as disease surveillance and trained more than 1000 frontline health workers in contact tracing, clinical care and public health risk communication. The Organization also delivered over five tonnes of essential medical supplies and equipment.
“The dedication of frontline health workers and the efforts of the national authorities and our partners have paid off,” said Dr Charles Sagoe-Moses, WHO Representative in Tanzania. “While the outbreak has been declared over, we remain vigilant to respond swiftly if any cases are detected and are supporting ongoing efforts to provide psychosocial care to families affected by the outbreak.”
Building on the momentum during the acute phase of the outbreak response, measures have been put in place to reinforce the capacity of local health facilities to respond to potential future outbreaks. WHO and partners are procuring additional laboratory supplies and other equipment for disease detection and surveillance and other critical services.
Marburg virus disease is highly virulent and causes haemorrhagic fever. It belongs to the same family as the virus that causes Ebola virus disease. Illness caused by Marburg virus begins abruptly. Patients present with high fever, severe headache and severe malaise. They may develop severe haemorrhagic symptoms within seven days.
In the African region, previous outbreaks and sporadic cases have been reported in Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, Kenya, Equatorial Guinea, Rwanda, South Africa and Uganda.
Source: allafrica.com
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