Nigeria’s Itana, formerly Talent City, has raised US$2 million in a pre-seed funding round that supports its bid to develop Africa’s first Digital Free Zone, which aims to improve the ease-of-doing-business index, drive foreign direct investment, and catalyse employment.
Itana will be a fully online jurisdiction for the digital economy, with the ideal policies, business services and technology for global digital and service businesses to remotely operate and scale with ease across Africa.
Founded by CEO Luqman Edu, founding investor Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, and COO Coco Liu, Itana will enable global tech and service companies to situate their African operations from Nigeria, and also take advantage of globally competitive business policies and incentives. By 2027, Itana will also be coupled with an eco-friendly startup district in Alaro free zone (Epe, Lagos).
Its US$2 million pre-seed round was led by global venture capitalists LocalGlobe, Amplo, Pronomos Capital, and Future Africa. The deal brings together a powerhouse of deep industry expertise and technical know-how from partners that have backed model digital societies such as e-Estonia, and built products that scale.
“We are thrilled to announce this round of funding. It validates our efforts, and reiterates the aligned vision with our investors and partners to make it easy to invest and operate in Africa’s digital economy,” said Edu. “The African market is still largely untapped and Itana will provide the ideal business environment that will be fully online, for global and pan-African digital and service companies to use Nigeria as an anchorage to operate with ease across the continent.”
Aboyeji said Itana would enable entrepreneurs to build a globally respected business in Nigeria’s first digital free zone by leveraging benefits currently only enjoyed by traditional manufacturing or oil and gas industries who have traditionally set up in Nigeria’s free zones.
“Within the Itana digital free zone startups will have the benefit of a stable policy environment, tax and capital repatriation incentives and the freedom to operate remotely without the need for an expansive physical presence within the free zone. I’m looking forward to the global businesses from Nigeria that will emerge from this,” he said.
