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 →

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

Lipa Later

Here lies Lipa Later. It let Kenyans buy now and pay later, then bought an e-commerce platform to grow faster. Unpaid staff, chasing suppliers and a lost court case caught up first. For its own bills, later never came.

2018 – March 2025E-commerce & Retail🇰🇪 Kenya

Medsaf

Here lies Medsaf. It connected Nigerian hospitals and pharmacies to verified drug makers to fight counterfeits. When its Series A never closed and its bank line was pulled, the cash ran out, and a last-minute acquisition collapsed before it could refill.

2016 – March 2025Health Tech🇳🇬 Nigeria

Milezmore

Here lies Milezmore. Spun out of Brimore, it built warehousing and last-mile delivery tuned for Egyptian e-commerce. When its parent and sole backer hit funding trouble, the deliveries stopped and no new route was assigned. It wound down alongside the company that made it.

2021 – February 2023E-commerce & Retail🇪🇬 Egypt

Mobidoc

Here lies Mobidoc. It offered Nigerians remote consultations, medical records, and digital prescriptions from a phone. But patients kept choosing the clinic waiting room, and no amount of connectivity could convince them to pay. The doctor was in; the patients were not.

2016 – February 2019Health Tech🇳🇬 Nigeria

Mocality

Here lies Mocality. Backed by Naspers, it paid agents to build a free business directory across Kenya and Nigeria. The directory grew past 170,000 listings but the revenue never did, and the owner switched both markets off on one day. No entry could list its own future.

2009 – February 2013Marketing & CRM🇰🇪 Kenya

Momint

Here lies Momint. South Africa's first NFT marketplace pivoted to tokenising solar projects once the hype faded. It served tens of thousands, but growth stalled past the early adopters and the crypto winter froze the funding. The last token went unminted.

2021 – June 2025Crypto & Web3🇿🇦 South Africa

MVX

Here lies MVX. It pivoted from chartering vessels to matching trucks and freight across five African markets. Then the naira collapsed, inflation topped 30%, and no new funding arrived to carry the load. The route ran out before the destination.

2019 – November 2024E-commerce & Retail🇳🇬 Nigeria

Mxit

Here lies Mxit. Born in 2005 as an SMS game, it became the chat app of a South African generation, 7.5 million strong at its peak. Then smartphones arrived without a Mxit worth opening, users left for WhatsApp, and it sent its last message in 2016.

2005 – October 2021Communication & Social🇿🇦 South Africa

myPadi

Here lies myPadi. It matched Nigerian students and corps members with verified off-campus housing and landlords, winning awards and seed money early. Then its search, login, and registration quietly broke and stayed broken. The vacancy sign never came back on.

2016 – September 2018Real Estate & Property🇳🇬 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

Notify Logistics

Here lies Notify Logistics. It carved rented warehouse floors into hundreds of shelves and leased them to small sellers with nowhere to store their stock. Shelf rents of a few thousand shillings never covered 800,000 shillings a month in floor costs, and it ran out of room in August 2022.

2018 – September 2022Logistics & Supply Chain🇰🇪 Kenya

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

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

Ousta

Here lies Ousta. Egypt's first homegrown ride-hailing app, it promised licensed drivers, no surge, and transparent fares, growing fast across five cities. Then Uber and Careem opened a price war it couldn't outbid. Its own fare finally read too high to continue.

2012 – January 2017Travel & Mobility🇪🇬 Egypt

Pillow

Here lies Pillow in Nigeria and Ghana. It offered a place to save, spend, and invest in crypto against inflation, and drew seventy-five thousand users in a year. Then the regulatory climate shifted the ground beneath its infrastructure, withdrawals were suspended, and the app was pulled.

2022 – July 2023Crypto & Web3🇳🇬 Nigeria

PrivPay

Here lies PrivPay. It let Kenyans transact on M-PESA without baring their details to merchants, built entirely on Safaricom's Daraja API. When the attention came, so did the compliance questions; Safaricom cut the API off, and a business with no licence had nothing left to run on.

2022 – May 2023Fintech🇰🇪 Kenya

Quabbly

Here lies Quabbly. It let African teams build internal tools and automate their databases without writing code. But Excel stayed good enough for most, custom software felt too dear to switch to, and three years on the revenue never cleared a nice-to-have. The domain is now for sale.

2021 – March 2024Developer Tools & Cloud🇳🇬 Nigeria

RejaReja

Here lies RejaReja. It handed informal retailers wholesale goods and next-day delivery across five countries, moving nearly 160 million dollars in trade. Thin margins, price wars, and a funding round that never fully landed left it unable to restock its own runway.

2020 – April 2024E-commerce & Retail🇰🇪 Kenya

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

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

Showmax

Here lies Showmax. Africa's homegrown streaming service brought local stories and live sport to millions, then reached the series finale nobody queued. Canal+ cancelled the standalone show and moved the library to DStv Stream.

2015 – April 2026Media & Entertainment🇿🇦 South Africa

Showroom.ng

Here lies Showroom.ng. It connected Nigerian furniture makers with buyers for a commission. A seven-figure seed came in, but a thin team and slow execution undid it in under two years. The pieces never fit together.

2014 – August 2016E-commerce & Retail🇳🇬 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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