Fixa, a Rwandan tech startup that uses technology to help businesses regain confidence in their blue-collar workforce, has been selected to participate in the second edition of the Norrsken Impact Accelerator, an international early-stage accelerator for startups. The accelerator is one of the programmes run by the Norrsken Foundation established by Niklas Adalberth, the co-founder of Klarna, a Swedish fintech unicorn. The foundation aims at supporting entrepreneurs globally in solving some of the world’s biggest challenges. Altogether, 20 startups from around the world have been chosen for the Norrsken Impact Accelerator, and nine of these are African - including Rwanda’s Fixa. The other African startups include Clafiya, a Nigerian digital primary health startup; Appload, a Mozambican mobility platform; Emata, a Ugandan lending platform; Umoja labs, a Tanzanian payment solution; Motito, a Ghanaian BNPL platform; HealthDart, a South African health network, Power Financial Wellness, a Kenyan savings and investment service, and SunFi, a Nigerian clean energy startup. The selected 20 companies deal with issues like poverty, mental health, sustainable agriculture, financial inclusion, or green energy. They will undergo an eight-week growth sprint at Norrsken House in Stockholm, Sweden, and receive mentorship from a roster of up to 110 entrepreneurs, investors and unicorn founders, and will be given USD 125,000 in upfront pre-seed or seed investment from the Norrsken Foundation. By using technology automation and real-time behavioural data, Fixa equips businesses with full control and visibility on how their workers are performing, in order to improve worker attendance, productivity and retention. The startup looks at this as a way of transforming the way businesses source, schedule and manage their staff. In addition to this, Fixa helps corporations hire directly from its network of pre-vetted workers. “We have an integrated worker network that consists of reliable blue-collar workers and subcontractors across Rwanda, with actual historical performance data on each worker to know who to recommend to fill workforce gaps. Our data-driven matching algorithms find the right workers for a job and reduce the time and risk it takes to recruit blue-collar workers,” reads a statement on Fix’a website. Stacy Kayihura, the Operations Manager at Fixa told The New Times that the startup has connected more than 17,000 jobs to date. Commenting about Fixa’s selection for the Norrsken Impact Accelerator, Tafara Makaza, the Chief Technology Officer at the startup said: “We are humbled and honoured to be selected as one of the top impact startups in the world by Norrsken. We look forward to leveraging the vast resources that the accelerator has to offer and utilising this knowledge to impact youth across the African continent,” About 80 percent of all workers on the African continent are employed in the informal economy, and Kayihura says Fixa wishes to scale its solution across the continent, creating a world where youth have access to decent work and stable earnings.
