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 →

Passerine Aircraft

Here lies Passerine Aircraft. It built electric delivery drones that leapt into the air on a novel jumping launch, shown off at Drone Con 2018. But hardware this ambitious needs capital well past a first cheque, none came, and by 2020 the jump never became sustained flight.

2017 – March 2020Logistics & Supply Chain🇿🇦 South Africa

Patricia.ng

Here lies Patricia. It made retail crypto and gift-card trading ordinary in Nigeria, then hid a two-million-dollar hack for eighteen months. When it quietly swapped frozen customer balances into a token no one could trade, trust ran out faster than liquidity.

2017 – June 2024Crypto & Web3🇳🇬 Nigeria

Paxful

Here lies Paxful. For a decade it matched buyers and sellers of Bitcoin across emerging markets using local money. Then the compliance bill for its founders' early shortcuts came due, and no counterparty could cover it. Trading closed for good.

2015 – October 2025Crypto & Web3🇳🇬 Nigeria

Pivo

Here lies Pivo. It banked and lent to Nigeria's small logistics firms, kept a 98 percent repayment rate, and faced no real rival in supply-chain finance. What it could not route around was a rift between its two founders, the one relationship the business could not restructure.

2021 – December 2023Fintech🇳🇬 Nigeria

Quizac

Here lies Quizac. It turned studying into a game for more than 12,000 learners across many subjects. Individual players never paid enough to win, and the funding to chase profitable corporate clients never came. Tekedia Capital claimed the high score a week later.

2019 – August 2024EdTech🇳🇬 Nigeria

Raise

Here lies Raise. For seven years it kept cap tables and equity in order for Africa's startups and SMEs. It never found a business model that vested, so it moved its own users onto Carta and folded its shares into someone else's table.

2018 – September 2025Fintech🇰🇪 Kenya

Redbird

Here lies Redbird. It equipped six hundred Ghanaian pharmacies with rapid tests and record-keeping software, serving hundreds of thousands of patients. Its growth was real, but it reached the market for its next round just as the money left the room. The results came back negative.

2018 – February 2023Health Tech🇬🇭 Ghana

S&T Media

Here lies S&T Media. It hung interactive ad screens at fuel pumps and supermarket aisles, mixing brand spots with news and sport. But the screens drew more power than the grid could promise, and with no capital past its seed, the network went dark.

2014 – November 2023Marketing & CRM🇳🇬 Nigeria

Swift Lab

Here lies Swift Lab. It built cargo drones in Nairobi to fly medicine where roads do not reach, and even won over the national post office. But local manufacturing costs, aviation red tape, and scarce hardware capital kept it grounded at the pilot phase.

2013 – June 2024Health Tech🇰🇪 Kenya

Teliman

Here lies Teliman. It put Bamako's first motorcycle-taxi app on the road and offered drivers a path to owning their bikes. High costs and thin investor appetite for Mali's risky market left little follow-on funding, and the rides are recorded to have quietly stopped in early 2024.

2018 – January 2024Travel & Mobility🇲🇱 Mali

KOKO Networks

Here lies KOKO Networks. It built smart bioethanol stations to make clean cooking affordable across Kenya. The stoves had fuel, but the carbon-credit engine lost government authorisation. Seven hundred jobs later, the network went offline.

2013 – January 2026Energy & Utilities🇰🇪 Kenya

Tulaa

Here lies Tulaa. It connected Kenyan smallholder farmers to input financing and buyers for their harvest through mobile tools and agent networks. After its 2018 seed round the updates stopped, the site and accounts went quiet, and no closing word was ever given.

2016 – October 2019Fintech🇰🇪 Kenya

Vibra

Here lies Vibra. It set out to bring peer-to-peer crypto trading to Africans through verified merchants and paid tutors. But users couldn't clear KYC or get their withdrawals out, and the $400-a-class tutor scheme cost more than it returned. Nigeria logged off first.

2021 – October 2023Crypto & Web3🇳🇬 Nigeria

Wabona

Here lies Wabona. A pan-African video-on-demand service, it carried African film and TV, moving from pay-per-view to subscriptions. The founders couldn't raise the next round in a market shifting faster than they could, and closed within days. Refunds issued; no second season.

2012 – August 2015Media & Entertainment🇿🇦 South Africa

Gigbanc

Here lies Gigbanc. It helped Africans get paid globally and withdraw locally, then made one final transfer to the startup afterlife. This transfer is final. Withdrawals are no longer supported.

2023 – July 2026Fintech🇳🇬 Nigeria

Easy Taxi

Here lies Easy Taxi. Backed by Rocket Internet, it carried its ride-hailing app from Brazil into Nigeria and across Africa. When its Nigerian chief left, the parent pulled out of the continent and kept its Latin American routes. It hailed its last African ride.

2011 – April 2016Travel & Mobility🇳🇬 Nigeria

Kune Food

Here lies Kune Food. It cooked and delivered ready-to-eat meals across Nairobi for about three dollars each. Rising food costs ate the thin margin on that price, the next funding round never arrived, and in June 2022 it served its last order and let ninety people go.

2020 – June 2021E-commerce & Retail🇰🇪 Kenya

Meditell

Here lies Meditell. It sent Nigerian hospitals automated SMS and voice medication reminders. But hospital revenue ran on HMO payment lists with no line for digital extras, so no one paid. It never got the reminder about who would foot the bill.

2014 – June 2015Communication & Social🇳🇬 Nigeria

Zoto

Here lies Zoto. It sold airtime and payments to over a million Nigerians from one app. Then transactions started failing and users' money vanished, and the app offered only a notice that service was 'temporarily not available.' It never came back online.

2015 – August 2018Fintech🇳🇬 Nigeria

Zumi

Here lies Zumi. Once a women's magazine, reborn as a B2B apparel marketplace, it moved twenty million dollars of clothing for five thousand retailers. But the unit economics never quite fit, funding dried up, and Zumi closed for the second and final time.

2016 – March 2023E-commerce & Retail🇰🇪 Kenya

54 Collective

Here lies 54 Collective. It set out to build 105 startups across all 54 African nations on a philanthropic grant. An unapproved rebrand and commingled charitable funds cost it that grant, and the builder of companies was itself put into liquidation.

2018 – July 2025Fintech🇿🇦 South Africa

Africa Courier Express (ACE)

Here lies Africa Courier Express. It built last-mile delivery and pay-on-delivery collection across five Nigerian cities. But bad roads, costly vehicles, and cash-collection risk wore it down while its founders steered toward a new fintech, Lidya. No rider was assigned for the last leg.

2013 – March 2018Logistics & Supply Chain🇳🇬 Nigeria

Afristay

Here lies Afristay. For nearly two decades it listed 30,000 African stays, guest houses, villas and B&Bs, for travellers. Then the pandemic emptied the calendar, and the bookings never came back. It checked out in 2025 with no vacancy left to fill.

2006 – June 2025Real Estate & Property🇿🇦 South Africa

Afrostream

Here lies Afrostream. It streamed African, African-American, and Caribbean film to viewers across nearly thirty countries. Licensing costs climbed, a marketing budget no match for Netflix drained the tank, and Series B talks collapsed. The credits rolled before the funding did.

2014 – September 2017Media & Entertainment🇨🇮 Côte d'Ivoire
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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