Africa Tech News

Google is announcing an HD version of its vehicle mapping solution. Unlike Google Maps, Google’s HD map is not a consuming-facing application but an additional layer of data that are served to the vehicle’s L2+ or L3 assisted-driving systems through Google Automotive Services. The additional information sits on top of Google Maps’ data and delivers details such as precise lane makers and localizat...

Nigeria’s House of Assembly has postponed the public hearing on the proposed amendment of the establishing act of the country’s digital economy regulator, the National Information Technology Development Agency. The postponement is due to the absence of key stakeholders of the amendment bill. The public hearing will now be held on a yet-to-be-decided date in January 2023. The NITDA bill could have...

Twitter banned links promoting other social networks. The list currently includes Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Nostr, and Post. Plus, link-in-bio tools like Linktree and Lnk. Bio are also banned — these services are commonly used by both creators and businesses. The Elon Musk-owned company no longer allows free promotion of certain social media platforms on Twitter. The com...

Google has announced that it is bringing India’s online document storage service DigiLocker to the Files app on Android to let users access verified government-issued documents from the app. Google announced its partnership with the Indian government to roll out the DigiLocker integration within the Files app. The search giant also announced a machine learning-based model that will help identify a...

Google chief executive Sundar Pichai says that India is going through an important period of time as it drafts several key regulations and asserted that it stands to benefit from open and connected internet. India is in the process of shaping and shipping several other key regulatory frameworks that seek to bring a series of major changes to how telecom services, on-demand video players and firms...

Drone delivery firm Zipline has partnered with the government of Rwanda to provide about two million instant deliveries and fly more than 200 million autonomous kilometres in Rwanda by 2029. Rwanda is planning to integrate drones into its national operations in the financial, e-commerce, and eco-tourism sectors. This partnership is the first of its kind on the continent. Rwanda’s ministry of agric...

Lodre Mainmarket, an e-commerce solution geared towards facilitating bulk trade between African manufacturers and wholesalers was introduced to the public in a launch held at Zone Tech Park on the 16th of December 2022. TLodre Mainmarket boasts of seven key categories which includes Consumer Electronics, Fashion, Vehicle Parts and Accessories, Sports and Entertainment, Home and Garden, Beauty and...

Executive Governor of Edo State, Godwin Obaseki, has described the Smart Digital Identity initiative of the state as the most ambitious in Nigeria and a critical enabler of the government’s technology program implementation roadmap. Governor Obaseki says the Edo Card is unique in that it links directly with the National Identity Management Commission database to provide one single form of identity...

Snyk hasn’t been afraid to take money over the years, scoring an ever larger investment haul with each passing round, and with each one has come a correspondingly large valuation increase. That previous round was $530 million with $300 million in primary funding and the remaining $230 million in secondary funding to pay off early investors and employees, anxious to see some return on their equity....

Digip digitizes much of the process, helping its customers file trademarks by themselves instead of going to law firms. The Stockholm-based legaltech startup announced it has added $1.3 million to its seed round, bringing the total to $3.4 million. The new funding was led by Industrifonden and Seed X, with participation from family offices and angel investors. Co-founder and CEO Viktor Johansson s...

Sam Bankman-Fried has been arrested by The Royal Bahamas Police Force following reports that the United States filed criminal charges against the founder and former CEO of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, and is likely to request his extradition. The Office of the Attorney General of the Bahamas issued a statement today, which was reported by BNO and other news outlets, that it would hold Bankman-Frie...

Pan-African cross-border payment app Chipper Cash is set to acquire Zambian fintech company Zoona Transactions International. This acquisition will allow Chipper Cash, which has a self-reported user count of 5 million, to add new online services and a new agent network to its offerings. This move is also an expansion strategy by the company into Zambia. Chipper Cash’s VP of Corporate Development,...

Kandon Technologies, a Nigerian tech company, has been cleared of money laundering and card fraud allegations laid against it by Kenyan authorities earlier in July. The ARA linked Kandon Technologies to seven other Nigerian firms—Flutterwave Ltd, Elivalat Fintech Ltd, Hupesi Solutions, Adguru Technology Limited, Boxtrip Travels and Tours, Bagtrip Travels Ltd, Cruz Ride Auto Ltd; and a Kenyan busin...

South African accounting firm Mazars stated that crypto exchange Binance.com is fully collateralized. Binance had commissioned the report to assure customers that it had enough reserve funds to cover customers’ assets on the exchange at a ratio of at least 1:1. Binance’s bitcoin asset balance (Binance’s bitcoins) was 582,486 bitcoins and its customer liability balance (customers’ bitcoins) was 597...

Uber has agreed to a $10 million settlement with the City of Chicago for listing local restaurants in the Uber Eats and Postmates food delivery apps without the restaurants’ consent, as well as for charging excess commission fees. Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, a law firm representing the city says over $5 million will go toward paying damages back to Chicago restaurants that were affected, and $1...

The Indian arm of SBM Bank, one of the banks that has aggressively worked with fintech startups in the South Asian market, is engaging with investors to raise capital and pitching the vision of becoming one of the top banking-as-a-service providers in the country, according to a source familiar with the matter. The Indian arm is in the advanced stages of deliberations to raise between $50 million...

Berlin-based Onomotion has come up with a scalable way to do micromobility-powered urban logistics cargo e-bikes with built-in cover from the elements and attachable containers. Onomotion has a couple hundred vehicles on the road in Germany with logistics partners like UPS, DPD and Hermes. Over the next few years, the company wants to expand to several thousands of vehicles across Europe and North...

Amazon is inching closer to launching Prime Gaming, its subscription service that offers free access to a number of titles and which ships bundled with Amazon Prime and Video plans, to its members in India. The company says that Prime Gaming unlocks instant access to tons of exclusive content for your favorite games and a rotating collection of PC games…each and every month. A support page on the...

Nigerian food tech platform, Orda, has raised a $3.4 million seed round to digitize food businesses across the continent. The company provides a cloud-based operating system to small and medium-sized restaurants across Nigeria and Kenya. The startup offers kitchen display systems, order and inventory management, integration with the top food aggregators, accounting software, microsites, and mobile...

SafeBoda, the Ugandan bike-hailing startup, is leaving Nigeria to focus on bringing the company to profitability by deepening its core transportation offering” in Uganda, its largest market. The company says it exited Kenya due to the negative effects of COVID-19 on its business. A company spokesperson says that the Nigerian market for its operations was unprofitable adding that leaving Nigeria be...

The venture market is in the middle of a downturn, but there are still plenty of emerging fund managers. Seedstars International Ventures, the investment firm that backs high-growth startups around the world, announced it has launched a platform called Seedstars Capital with Swiss-based investment holding company xMultiplied to help new fund managers around the world launch funds and develop their...

AWS announced its AWS Digital Sovereignty Pledge as nations across the globe introduce legislation that governs how and where businesses can keep data on their local users, the large clouds either have to offer attractive solutions or run the risk of having their customers move to local clouds. Matt Garman, AWS’s senior vice president of Sales, Marketing and Global Services, notes that giving cust...

South African crypto exchange VALR has announced the launch of its operations in Zambia. The exchange will allow Zambians to buy and sell Bitcoin and USD Coin as well as 60+ other cryptocurrencies directly using the Zambian Kwacha. VALR CEO Farzam Ehsani says they built a world-class product with a focus on robust security, high performance, and regulatory compliance, and we look forward to welcom...

Due to Kenya’s long-standing dominance of tech innovation in the East African region, Tanzania is not regarded as a typical destination for VC-backed startups to launch or operate their businesses. The government of Zanzibar and Wasoko (Africa’s fastest-growing company according to the Financial Times) announced the launch of Silicon Zanzibar. Ramani, a software-as-a-service startup operating in T...

Nigerian crypto startup Quidax has laid off 20% or 20 of its just over 100-strong staff. The startups confirmed that this layoff is unrelated to the bankrupt crypto exchange FTX and instead a response to unfavorable macroeconomic conditions. The startup, which is the latest African company to cut staff count, in August slashed employees’ salaries by 30% and team leads’ by 50% for three months, but...