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 →

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

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

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

Jumia Food

Here lies Jumia Food. For a decade it carried meals to doorsteps across seven African markets, until its parent chose profit over the round trip. The delivery was cancelled mid-route, and riders were left with earnings the app would no longer release.

2013 – December 2023E-commerce & Retail🇳🇬 Nigeria,🇩🇿 Algeria,🇨🇮 Côte d'Ivoire+4

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

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

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

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

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

TradeHub

Here lies TradeHub. It set out to digitise procurement for Egypt's manufacturers, then pivoted to sales-automation software when the marketplace stalled. Neither found buyers with conviction. Eighteen months in, it returned what capital remained and closed the order book.

2023 – September 2025E-commerce & Retail🇪🇬 Egypt

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

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,🇿🇦 South Africa

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

Float Africa

Here lies Float. It promised to close the cash-flow gap for African SMBs, then quietly gambled client deposits on black-market naira-to-USDT trades. A broker vanished with a million dollars, the naira sank, and the liquidity company ran dry. Six million in client funds stayed frozen.

2020 – September 2023Fintech🇿🇦 South Africa,🇬🇭 Ghana

GoldenEye (Aerospace and Defense)

Here lies GoldenEye (Aerospace and Defense). In stealth, it built precision drones for humanitarian and defence work across Africa. Steep defence-procurement barriers and scarce follow-on capital kept it grounded, and it wound down in early 2022 as quietly as it had operated. No launch was ever announced.

2018 – January 2022Logistics & Supply Chain🇬🇭 Ghana

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

Bento Africa

Here lies Bento Africa. It ran payroll, tax and pensions for African companies from one platform. Then it could not make its own payroll: engineers walked out unpaid, the CEO resigned, and the deductions it was trusted to remit went missing.

2017 – February 2025Fintech🇳🇬 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

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

Bizao

Here lies Bizao. Its APIs let companies accept mobile money and cards across a dozen African markets, up to 350 million requests a month. Six years of volume never turned into profit, and a Paris court called the final settlement.

2019 – April 2025Fintech🇨🇮 Côte d'Ivoire

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

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

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
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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