Founder of African startup Ghafla denies acquisition story

One of the major stories on African tech startups this past week was the news that Ghafla, the Kenyan entertainment and gossip blog had been acquired by Ringier. 

Ringier is a Swiss media group with global interests in print and digital media including in Africa. Just last month it entered into a partnership with One Africa Media, the classifieds company  that bought a stake in Zimbabwean startup Webdev

We even referenced the deal in an article on the need for African startup mergers and acquisitions. Despite all the hype, though, the founder and CEO of Ghafla, Samuel Majani, has denied that this happened.

A number of publications that ran the article appear to have pulled down the article and Majani also contacted us with the same clarification.

There hasn’t been any new information on what sparked this story and whether or not there might be a deal in the first place.