Built for Africa. Now Dead.

A minute of silence to the African software products that are no longer operating. Learn what they built, what led to their closure, and which alternatives continue to serve their users today.

African Software Products That Have Shut Down · 117 products

The Graveyard is an editorial archive. Each fate describes what happened to a product as an independent service, while the record separates documented facts from community opinion. How the Graveyard works →

WeJapa

Here lies WeJapa. It matched African developers with global employers, the founder screening each application himself. In August 2020 developers went public over pay and treatment, a leadership change followed, but trust never returned. The site quietly went dark by 2021.

2019 – March 2021HR & Talent🇳🇬 Nigeria

Bkam

Here lies Bkam. It helped Egyptians compare prices on books, electronics, and more. Counting on a promised half-million dollars, the founder burned company and personal savings for four months while the investor delayed, then vanished. The one price it couldn't check was an investor's word.

2012 – February 2016E-commerce & Retail🇪🇬 Egypt

Bongalow

Here lies Bongalow. It helped diaspora and local buyers save, compare home loans, and rent their way toward owning property in Nigeria. But mortgage rates above twenty percent and no long-term debt capital left it with a slick app and nothing affordable to sell.

2019 – October 2023Fintech🇳🇬 Nigeria

Bonto Kenya

Here lies Bonto. It moved money in and out of Kenya, just eight months after finally winning its remittance licence. Then FX margins thinned to nothing and compliance costs climbed, until the only rational transfer left was the one to the exit.

2022 – September 2025Fintech🇰🇪 Kenya

Brantu

Here lies Brantu. It brought curated women's fashion from some seventy brands to Egyptian phones, with quick delivery and easy returns. Global and local rivals crowded the same rack, and around early 2024 the storefront quietly went out of season.

2016 – January 2024E-commerce & Retail🇪🇬 Egypt

54gene

Here lies 54gene. It set out to build the world's largest library of African DNA and briefly thrived on COVID testing. When that revenue faded, a costly diagnostics expansion drained the cash faster than three CEOs could refill it. The biobank outlived the company.

2019 – September 2023Health Tech🇳🇬 Nigeria

Brass

Here lies Brass. It gave Nigerian businesses current accounts and cash-flow tools, then became the banking equivalent of a merger. Paystack kept the business alive. The Brass name was written off.

2020 – June 2026Fintech🇳🇬 Nigeria

BuyCoins Pro

Here lies BuyCoins Pro. It gave Nigeria's technical traders order books and currency pairs atop the BuyCoins app. But there was never enough volume to fill their orders, and between the central bank's crypto ban and the post-FTX chill, its owner wound the Pro tier down.

2017 – January 2024Crypto & Web3🇳🇬 Nigeria

Cassbana

Here lies Cassbana. It built financial identities for Egypt's micro-merchants and lent them inventory on the strength of their behaviour. Then its biggest backer withdrew a two-million-dollar promise, the round never closed, and the founders scattered.

2020 – July 2024Fintech🇪🇬 Egypt

Climate Edge

Here lies Climate Edge. It carried soil data, planting calendars and market prices to 150,000 smallholder farmers over SMS and voice, no smartphone required. Around 2023 the updates simply stopped and the signal went quiet. The domain now belongs to someone else.

2016 – January 2023🇰🇪 Kenya

Collect Africa

Here lies Collect Africa. For four years it let Nigerian SMEs collect payments across transfers, POS, QR codes and links from one dashboard. Its founders found a bigger bet in stablecoins and closed it on purpose, redirecting every hand to Autospend.

2021 – August 2025Fintech🇳🇬 Nigeria

ConnectMed

Here lies ConnectMed. It gave patients in Kenya and South Africa video consultations, same-day prescriptions, and referrals through licensed doctors. Adoption stayed thin and profit thinner, until Merck absorbed its technology into the Curafa network. Its final referral was to a new owner.

2017 – August 2016Health Tech🇰🇪 Kenya

Copia Global

Here lies Copia Global. It reached rural Kenya's shoppers through a network of fifty thousand local agents, becoming one of the country's best-funded commerce startups. When fresh capital stopped coming, the agents were let go, the trucks and warehouses sold, and the last order went undelivered.

2013 – May 2024E-commerce & Retail🇰🇪 Kenya

Dash

Here lies Dash. It promised to be the AliPay of Africa, linking mobile money and bank accounts across borders. But the numbers it moved were partly fiction, and millions went missing before the regulator and an audit caught up. Eighty-six million raised, the account empty.

2019 – October 2023Fintech🇬🇭 Ghana

FanBants

Here lies FanBants. It turned African football and pop culture into fantasy leagues and prediction markets. Users were asked to withdraw their balances, but the company never predicted its own final score. The shutdown reason remains off the leaderboard.

2021 – December 2025Betting & Prediction Markets🇳🇬 Nigeria

Fibre Lifestyle

Here lies Fibre Lifestyle. It leased homes across Lagos and re-let them to young professionals, promising simple city living. When too many properties underperformed, it terminated leases and pulled back to smaller units, insisting all the while it wasn't leaving. The lease, in the end, was not renewed.

2016 – August 2020Real Estate & Property🇳🇬 Nigeria

KippaPay (The Product)

Here lies KippaPay. It handed Nigerian merchants POS terminals to take payments, pay bills, and move money. Then the naira slid and took the hardware margins with it; six months on, its parent pulled the plug and let the terminals go quiet.

2021 – October 2023Fintech🇳🇬 Nigeria

Kloud Commerce

Here lies Kloud Commerce. It set out to bring African retailers online through a consumer storefront and a tool to digitise small shops. Instead the traction was claimed rather than built, investors alleged funds had gone missing, and the shop closed for good in September 2022.

2021 – October 2022E-commerce & Retail🇳🇬 Nigeria

La Reina

Here lies La Reina. It let women across Cairo rent and lend evening and bridal gowns, matching designer supply with demand. Around 2022 the site and its accounts quietly went dark. The dresses were returned, but never re-listed, and no closing notice was ever posted.

2022 – February 2023E-commerce & Retail🇪🇬 Egypt

Lazerpay

Here lies Lazerpay. It let over three thousand businesses accept crypto and stablecoin payments across Africa. But the bear market froze its next round; layoffs came first, then the full stop, and merchants were told to withdraw their funds before the gateway closed.

2021 – April 2023Crypto & Web3🇳🇬 Nigeria

Lidya

Here lies Lidya. For nine years it lent working capital to small businesses across Nigeria and briefly beyond. Then its own books stopped balancing: refunds it could not process, loans it could not recover, founders it could not keep. The last account never settled.

2016 – October 2025Fintech🇳🇬 Nigeria

Okadabooks

Here lies OkadaBooks. For nearly ten years it let Nigerian authors self-publish and sell cheap books straight to readers' phones, no bookshop needed. Then the wider economy wrote a chapter it could not edit, and the virtual shelves closed for good.

2013 – November 2023E-commerce & Retail🇳🇬 Nigeria

Okra

Here lies Okra. It pioneered open banking in Nigeria, opening APIs so others could build on financial data. Its Nebula infrastructure pivot showed promise but drew users too slowly to justify more capital, so Okra returned the unused funds and closed the connection itself.

2019 – July 2025Developer Tools & Cloud🇳🇬 Nigeria

OyaPay

Here lies OyaPay. It let offline Nigerian businesses take payments and forward orders, with or without a smartphone. When outside capital was needed, the founder and his sole family investor spent months unable to agree on diluting one stake. The impasse never settled, and in February 2019 he called it quits.

2017 – February 2019Fintech🇳🇬 Nigeria
About the archive

How the Graveyard works

The Graveyard is an editorial archive. Each fate describes what happened to a product as an independent service, while the record separates documented facts from community opinion.

Read our editorial standards →

What belongs here

Products that shut down, were deliberately sunset, were absorbed into another company or brand, or are confirmed dormant.

How records are verified

We review company announcements, founder statements, credible reporting, archived pages, and other public evidence.

What each record explains

Complete records document the timeline, outcome, contributing causes, lessons, cited sources, and active alternatives where available.

Frequently asked questions about the Liners Startups Graveyard.

The Liners Graveyard is a documented archive of African software products that no longer operate as independent products. Each complete record explains when the product operated, how it ended, what contributed to the outcome, and which alternatives remain active.

A product may be included when it has shut down, been discontinued by its owner, been absorbed into another company or brand, or remained dormant long enough that it no longer appears to operate. We distinguish those outcomes on each record rather than calling every case a failure.

We review official company announcements, founder statements, credible reporting, archived pages, and other public evidence. Available citations are listed in the Sources section of the product record, and records can be corrected as better evidence emerges.

Shut down means the product's operations ended. Sunset means its owner deliberately discontinued it. Absorbed means it stopped operating independently after a rebrand, merger, or acquisition. Dormant means there are strong signs that the product is inactive, but no definitive closure announcement.

Surviving alternatives are active products with meaningful overlap in category, features, markets, and use case. They use the same alternatives method as the rest of Liners, and placement is not sold.

Yes. Use the Suggest a correction action on the product page to tell us what needs to change and include a supporting source where possible. Our researchers review corrections before updating a record.

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