In 2021, Egyptians Nour Altaher and Omar Mansour recognised a gap in Africa’s data analytics market and founded Intella. Their startup aimed to address the underrepresentation of Arabic in speech-to-text technologies. By leveraging artificial intelligence, machine learning, and big data sets, Intella set out to process the nuances of Arabic dialects, offering cloud-based solutions to transform contact centre voice recordings into useful business analytics. Intella’s journey has mirrored the quickening evolution of Africa’s data analytics industry. Beginning with a $1m raise in 2022, the startup significantly advanced its growth trajectory by securing $3.4m in a funding round in late 2023, led by HALA Ventures and Wa’ed Ventures, part of Saudi oil giant Aramco. This funding round is not just a success for Intella but also a marker of the increasing momentum in Africa’s data analytics sector, highlighted by a surge in record investment this year, and a spike in professional course enrolments across the continent.
The Quickening Evolution of Africa’s Data Analytics Industry
