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 · 142 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 →

Saida

Here lies Saida. It gave Kenyans a mobile account that split money into pockets and offered short-term loans underwritten by phone-activity data. In January 2022 it closed the account for good, no explanation given and its site switched off. A co-founder moved on to backing other builders.

2015 – January 2022Fintech🇰🇪 Kenya

Snapt

Here lies Snapt. It built software load balancers and application delivery controllers for enterprises. Demand kept climbing, but no round followed the 2018 Series A, and the company that balanced everyone else's traffic had no failover of its own. It shut off in October 2022.

2012 – October 2022Cybersecurity🇿🇦 South Africa

TiketMobile

Here lies TiketMobile. It let Nigerians find and buy interstate bus tickets by phone, launched on a small Tony Elumelu grant. The grant ran short, rivals took the routes, and an airport e-hailing pivot couldn't revive it. It booked a one-way ticket.

2013 – January 2016Travel & Mobility🇳🇬 Nigeria

Tress

Here lies Tress. It helped Black women find hairstyles, stylists and products, and grew a warm community across Ghana and beyond. Press and a brand partnership arrived, but funding and fit did not follow. In May 2018 the app went offline and its founders quietly moved on.

2014 – September 2019Communication & Social🇬🇭 Ghana

WeFarm Shop

Here lies WeFarm Shop. Bolted onto WeFarm's farmer knowledge network, it let smallholders buy agricultural supplies online. About a year in, difficult market conditions made the shop hard to scale, and its owner pulled it. The advice-sharing platform it grew from stayed open.

2014 – July 2022E-commerce & Retail🇰🇪 Kenya,🇹🇿 Tanzania,🇺🇬 Uganda

YallaXash

Here lies YallaXash. It sent money from Canada's diaspora to Morocco and West Africa across 12,000 payout points. It expanded fast on far too little capital against far richer rivals, and filed for bankruptcy owing $1.2 million it could not pay out.

2018 – March 2025Fintech🇲🇦 Morocco

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

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

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

Awa Bike

Here lies Awa Bike. It parked shared bicycles on Nigerian campuses and estates for on-demand rides. But strikes kept shuttering the universities it leaned on, the cities had no bike lanes, and theft and repairs wore the thin margins flat. The wheels stopped turning.

2017 – August 2023Travel & Mobility🇳🇬 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

Ogelle

Here lies Ogelle. It gave African creators a home to publish and earn in their own languages, a purpose-built answer to YouTube. But viewers who wouldn't pay, a rival that delisted cross-posters, and a crash during its biggest launch cost the founder some eighteen million dollars.

2019 – April 2024Creator Economy🇳🇬 Nigeria

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

Spinlet

Here lies Spinlet. Built in Finland, revived by Nigerian investors, it aimed to be Africa's first music streaming service. Two million downloads never became paying subscribers, as clumsy card payments and Spotify's arrival closed in. The track ended before the royalties arrived.

2006 – January 2016Media & Entertainment🇳🇬 Nigeria

Bundle Africa

Here lies Bundle Africa's exchange. For three years it let Africans send, save, and trade cash and crypto, moving some fifty million dollars a month. As the continent's crypto market cooled, it closed the trading floor and moved its people to Cashlink. The rails remain.

2021 – July 2023Crypto & Web3🇳🇬 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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