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 →

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

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

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

Barter by Flutterwave

Here lies Barter. For seven years it gave Nigerians virtual dollar cards for Netflix, subscriptions, and shopping the world. When card-partner troubles and merchant rejections piled up and it fell to one percent of Flutterwave's volume, the parent cancelled the card.

2017 – March 2024Fintech🇳🇬 Nigeria

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dash

Here lies Dash. It promised to be the AliPay of Africa, linking mobile money and bank accounts across borders. But the numbers it moved were partly fiction, and millions went missing before the regulator and an audit caught up. Eighty-six million raised, the account empty.

2019 – October 2023Fintech🇬🇭 Ghana

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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
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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