Africa Tech News

MTN Zambia has launched a 5G network, becoming the first mobile operator in Zambia to offer 5G services commercially, after successfully running trials over the past 11 months. Chairman of the MTN Group, Mcebisi Jonas, says the launch of this ultra-fast communication capacity serves as a clear indication of MTN’s commitment to being a major player in Zambia’s digital economy. MTN Zambia CEO, Bart...

Genesis, a digital assets financial services firm, may be in hot water as it looks to raise fresh capital for its lending unit or potentially face bankruptcy if it can’t. A Genesis spokesperson says their goal is to resolve the current situation consensually without the need for any bankruptcy filing. Genesis continues to have constructive conversations with creditors. Sources shared that Genesis...

Electric vehicle startup-gone-SPAC Faraday Future has raised a going concern warning, per regulatory filings. The company says it has substantial doubt as to whether it would be able to continue operating over the next year, adding that it is uncertain when it will dispatch the first deliveries of its FF 91 luxury EVs. Faraday has 369 preorders, down from 399 refundable, non-binding, paid deposits...

Cobee, a platform, and app to make organizing and accessing these a little easier by way of an app, a payment card (physical or virtual), and an integration with payroll, has announced some funding on the heels of seeing strong interest in its services, with revenues growing 3x this year. The company has raised €40 million in a Series B round of funding co-led by Octopus Ventures and Notion Capita...

Paystack, the Nigerian-born fintech company acquired by Stripe, has secured a payment service provider license from the Central Bank of Kenya, enabling it to facilitate payments and optimize merchant experience for Kenyan businesses. This development follows the company’s expansion into Kenya and its private beta product launch. Paystack acquired its payment license despite the country’s apex bank...

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,...

Africa’s e-commerce giant Jumia is ending its free delivery Prime subscription service and cutting staff costs according to its Q3 earnings announcement. The company’s results showed consistent growth but lapses in some areas compared with Jumia’s previous quarter. The company reported $50.5 million in revenue for this year’s third quarter, a 6% growth compared to $47.6 million in Q2, and an 18.4%...

Unicorn Flexport is revolutionizing the world of logistics, serving as a freight forwarder with software that enables customers to manage their shipments. But there are still thousands of smaller freight forwarders, many running on outdated ERP software or spreadsheets. A startup called GoFreight wants to help them compete by providing the Shopify of freight forwarding, with backend software that...

Google says it has evidence that a commercial surveillance vendor was exploiting three zero-day security vulnerabilities found in newer Samsung smartphones. The vulnerabilities, discovered in Samsung’s custom-built software, were used together as part of an exploit chain to target Samsung phones running Android. The chained vulnerabilities allow an attacker to gain kernel read and write privileges...

Blnk is providing consumers with access to credit at the point of sale. The startup has raised a total of $32 million in a combined pre-seed and seed funding round, which comprises $23.7 million in equity and debt funding as well as $8.3 million in securitized bond issuance. The $12.5 equity round was led by Abu Dhabi’s Emirates International Investment Company and Egypt-based venture capital firm...

Kenyan-based fulfillment and logistics startup Sendy has announced that it has received undisclosed funding from MOL PLUS, the venture capital arm of Japanese transport company Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, Ltd. The funding, which appears to be a bail-out fund, is expected to keep things steady at Sendy as the logistics startup figures out its next act. The funding negotiations with MOL PLUS appear to have...

Google has launched a delivery-tracking feature on Gmail, enabling users to receive updates about their orders automatically. Google says this feature will save users the stress of following individual tracking links for all their orders, as they will be able to see the status of their deliveries with labels like arriving tomorrow, in transit, and delivered today. Google is launching this product...

Kuda, the Nigerian, London-based neobank, has expanded into the UK to provide its digital banking services, including direct debits and local transfers, to diasporan Nigerians. The neobank says it has acquired over five million users in its three years of existence. Kuda’s direct debits and transfers will be powered by a UK third-party company, Modulr, a popular embedded payments platform for digi...

Paga, a Nigerian fintech that has been in operation for 13 years, has partnered with Visa, a global card issuer, to launch virtual and physical cards. Paga users can now make payments using their Paga cards online or at any location that accepts Visa cards. The cards will be available in Naira first before US dollar-denominated cards are launched. Paga chose to launch the Naira virtual cards first...

YouTube is expanding the reach of its TikTok competitor, YouTube Shorts, with today’s announcement that it will begin rolling out Shorts on TV to its global users. The company’s updated smart TV app will now allow users to view the popular vertical videos in an optimized experience that’s designed to feel more consistent with what users see on mobile, YouTube explains. YouTube says the new Shorts-...

The U.S. Department of Justice says that law enforcement seized $3.36 billion of bitcoin from a man who unlawfully obtained more than 50,000 bitcoin from dark-web market Silk Road over a decade ago. The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York says that James Zhong of Gainesville, Georgia, pleaded guilty on November 4 to committing wire fraud in September 2012. The charge carries a maxi...

South African retailer, Pick n Pay has announced that it has successfully completed the first phase of a new pilot that allows customers to pay for their purchases using cryptocurrency on their smartphones and will be rolling out the service to more stores across the country. In this pilot, the retailer tested a payment service technology that enables customers to buy groceries with cryptocurrency...

South African retailer, Shoprite Group has joined a group of investors, led by Buffet Investments and KLT, in an undisclosed expansion round in Omnisient, Africa’s first privacy-preserving data collaboration platform provider. Chief of Strategy & Innovation at ShopriteX, Shoprite Group’s data and customer technology unit, Neil Schreuder, says the decision to invest in Omnisient is the result of a...

Satgana has closed a €30 million fund to fund startups that tackle climate change problems in Africa. The fund will do so by investing up to €500K in the pre-seed and seed stages of startups across Europe and Africa. The VC will leverage the network of its team and some of its investors to help founders with direct operational and strategic support. Satgana will concentrate on food, agriculture, e...

Yassir, a San Francisco-based Algerian super-app offering on-demand services and financial services, has closed a $150 million Series B funding to power its expansion across Africa and the rest of the world. The investment was led by BOND, with participation from DN Capital, Dorsal Capital, Quiet Capital, Stanford Alumni Ventures, and Y Combinator, among other prominent strategic global investors....

Jumia, the African eCommerce giant, has announced a few changes in its management with the appointment of a new management board and the departure of co-founders Jeremy Hodara and Sacha Poignonnec as co-CEOs. Francis Dufay has been appointed as acting CEO by the supervisory board while the search for a permanent CEO continues. The supervisory board has also promoted Antoine Maillet-Mezeray who was...

Amazon Web Services announced the opening of its first office in Lagos, Nigeria. The opening of the Lagos office comes five years after its first office in Johannesburg was opened in 2017. The Lagos office is AWS’s latest investment in Africa as it’ll house teams of AWS account managers, partner managers, solutions architects, and other roles that support Nigerian customers. Amrote Abdella, region...

Netflix has acquired Spry Fox, a Seattle-based independent gaming studio focused on cozy games. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Spry Fox is now Netflix’s sixth in-house games studio. Amir Rahimi, the vice president of game studios at Netflix, says that the acquisition will help Netflix accelerate its creative development in another popular genre. Rahimi says their games journey...

Twitter’s new CEO reached out to the European Union last week to assure local lawmakers that the platform will comply with an incoming flagship reboot of the bloc’s rules on digital governance around illegal content. A move that will, self-evidently, demand a beefed-up legal, trust, and safety function inside Twitter if Musk is to actually deliver compliance with the EU’s Digital Services Act at a...

The Indonesia Stock Exchange has signed a memorandum of understanding with Metaverse Green Exchange, a Singaporean startup that specializes in digital exchange technology. The intended collaboration centers around IDX’s emission trading scheme that is slated to launch in 2025, and MVGX’s job is to help IDX build a carbon registry and exchange with blockchain as the infrastructure layer. Bo Bai, ex...