Dubai-based baraka, a commission-free investment app for Middle East users to invest in US stocks and ETFs, raised a $20M Series A led by Valar Ventures (Tage Kene-Okafor/TechCrunch)

Tage Kene-Okafor / TechCrunch:
African e-commerce giant Jumia announces co-founders Jeremy Hodara and Sacha Poignonnec have stepped down as co-CEOs, replaced by executive Francis Dufay  —  African e-commerce giant Jumia has made a new change in management as co-founders Jeremy Hodara and Sacha Poignonnec step down effective today …

Tage Kene-Okafor / TechCrunch:
Cairo-based Money Fellows, which digitizes money circles or rotating savings and credit associations, raised a $31M Series B, bringing its total funding to $37M  —  Egyptian fintech Money Fellows has raised $31 million in what it describes as the first close of its Series B investment.

Romain Dillet / TechCrunch:
Paris-based Regate, which offers an all-in-one platform to manage invoices, expense reports, and payments, raised a $20M series A led by Valar Ventures  —  French startup Regate has raised a $20 million Series A funding round (€20 million) led by Valar Ventures.

Wall Street Journal:
The US government often waives its own stock trading rules, letting federal officials invest in Amazon, Apple, Meta, and others affected by their agencies’ work  —  The U.S. has rules limiting federal officials’ stock-market investing.  They can be waived.  —  1x

Wall Street Journal:
Robinhood launches Investor Index, updated monthly, to track the performance of the 100 most popular stocks in its app, weighting users’ “conviction” in them  —  Robinhood Markets is launching an index to track the favorite stocks of its millions of predominantly young, social-media-savvy customers.

Naoto Hosoda / Bloomberg:
Chip-related stocks slump in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan after US curbs on China; the PHLX chip index fell to its lowest level since November 2020 on Monday  —  Chip-related stocks in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan slumped as traders returning from Monday’s holidays reacted …