15 African startups to watch in 2014

Toby Shapshak has selected the most exciting African startups to watch this year
Click through the gallery to find out which ones make the list




Editor's note: Toby Shapshak is a technology journalist based in Johannesburg where he writes about tech and innovation in Africa. He spoke at TED about how Africa is solving the world's problems, in Edinburgh in 2013. He edits and publishes the South African edition of Stuff magazine and has been named by GQ as one of the top 30 men in media. Foll him on Twitter: @Shapshak
(CNN) -- Africa is not just a mobile-first continent. It is mobile-only.
As such, many of the most innovative startups address mobile for what it is: the gold of today, the new, digital equivalent of a railroad.
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Toby Shapshak

Drawing up this list, I was struck by how readily I thought of good South African tech firms that deserved to be here -- so I shamelessly let my patriotic fervor guide me. Looking back, I still think they all deserve to be on this list.
Several of the names on this list come from the final 40 of this year's Demo Africa the African arm of this renowned launch event for tech start-ups, held in Nairobi.
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The most recent figures for mobile and internet usage are promising, and show room for growth. "Only 16 percent of the Africa's one billion people are currently online, but that share is rising. More than 720-million Africans have mobile phones, 167-million already use the Internet, and 52-million are on Facebook," reported consultancy McKinsey, in a report entitled " Lions go Digital: The Internet's transformative potential in Africa."
Click through the gallery above to see, in no particular order, the innovative companies at the forefront of Africa's tech revolution.
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