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 Shutdowns · 143 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 →

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

FoodCourt

Here lies FoodCourt. It put several virtual restaurants in one basket and delivered more than a million meals. Then salaries, vendor bills, and kitchen economics arrived at the same table. The last order was a shutdown, with no rider assigned.

2021 – April 2026Quick Commerce🇳🇬 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

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

Freshbag

Here lies Freshbag. It linked Cameroon's smallholder farmers straight to Yaoundé's street vendors, cutting out the middlemen. The vendors, it turned out, preferred the informal handshake to a digital contract, and the produce kept moving faster than the payments.

2019 – August 2024Logistics & Supply Chain🇨🇲 Cameroon

Heroshe

Here lies Heroshe. It shipped goods from US, UK and China warehouses home to 40,000 Nigerians. Then a rushed warehouse move left parcels sorted by no one and delivered on no schedule, and months of backlog broke the trust it took years to build.

2019 – May 2025E-commerce & Retail🇳🇬 Nigeria

iProcure

Here lies iProcure. It moved farm inputs and software to distributors serving nearly a million Kenyan farmers. Behind the scale sat a burn rate its cashflow could not cover, and when no fresh capital came, the accounts ran dry and the administrators moved in.

2012 – April 2024Logistics & Supply Chain🇰🇪 Kenya

Inseco

Here lies Inseco. It ran Africa's largest Black Soldier Fly farm, turning waste into protein in Cape Town. Then the grid kept failing, and larvae that needed steady warmth could not survive the dark. The colony went cold.

2017 – October 2025🇿🇦 South Africa

Oga Hotels

Here lies Oga Hotels. It partnered with Nigeria's independent budget hotels to standardise service, branding, and online booking. The asset-light promise turned heavy on linens, staff training, and a power-and-water bill no small hotel could absorb. It never made check-out.

2016 – August 2024Services & Marketplaces🇳🇬 Nigeria

Legwork

Here lies Legwork. One of Nigeria's own social networks before Facebook took over, it let people share thoughts, photos, and videos. As Facebook spread, its activity faded and it slipped offline without a word. Its last post stayed at the top forever.

2007 – May 2013Communication & Social🇳🇬 Nigeria

LetsChat

Here lies LetsChat. Built by ByteDance to win young Africans a lighter alternative to WhatsApp, it reached nearly seven million downloads. But crashes, balky verification codes, and two entrenched rivals thinned its users from 440,000 to 83,000, and its parent logged it off for good.

2021 – March 2024Communication & Social🇳🇬 Nigeria,🇦🇴 Angola,🇨🇮 Côte d'Ivoire+1

Chimoney

Here lies Chimoney. Its API moved value across currencies, ledgers, and borders. The technology could route payments almost anywhere, but distribution never found the address and runway returned insufficient funds.

2022 – May 2026Fintech🇳🇬 Nigeria,🇨🇮 Côte d'Ivoire,🇨🇩 DR Congo+13

Sendy

Here lies Sendy. It dispatched riders on motorbikes, vans, and tuk-tuks to move goods across Kenya, then pivoted to stocking retailers direct from makers. It chased a hundred-million-dollar round, but a key investor stepped off the truck and payroll never got delivered.

2015 – August 2023Logistics & Supply Chain🇰🇪 Kenya

iROKOtv

Here lies iROKOtv. It streamed Nollywood to the world and chased the title of Africa's own Netflix for over a decade. More than $100 million later, the subscription never scaled against global players. The studio made money; the stream ran dry.

2011 – June 2025Media & Entertainment🇳🇬 Nigeria

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

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

Nefsak

Here lies Nefsak. Once called Egypt's fastest-growing online retailer, it stocked more than eighteen thousand products for a wide market. Then its posts thinned, its site stopped loading, and it slipped offline with no goodbye. No closing-sale sign, just an empty storefront.

2008 – September 2016E-commerce & Retail🇪🇬 Egypt

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

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

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

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

Zenafri

Here lies Zenafri. It taught African children literacy, numeracy, and their own languages through apps and animation, and collected awards for the effort. But too few would pay, and Nigeria's 2024 currency crisis drained the runway before the lesson could fund itself.

2016 – August 2024EdTech🇳🇬 Nigeria

Thepeer

Here lies Thepeer. It built the pipes to move money wallet-to-wallet across hundreds of African fintechs, and for a while the volumes climbed fast. Compliance blocked the wallets it needed, adoption came slower than the pitch, and the connection quietly dropped.

2021 – April 2024Developer Tools & Cloud🇳🇬 Nigeria

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
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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