Africa Tech News

Google is indefinitely pausing the enforcement of its policy requiring developers to use Play Store’s billing system for user transactions in India following an order by the country’s antitrust body. The Android maker updated a support page to disclose the move and said that the requirement to use Google Play’s billing system still applies for in-app purchases outside of India. The Competition Com...

Pretoria-based rugby franchise, Vodacom Bulls, has announced a three-year sponsorship deal with cryptocurrency investment platform Luno. The deal will see Bulls players receive performance incentives in crypto. Christo de Wit, Luno’s country manager for South Africa says Luno is focused on empowering people by building a new financial system that is more suited to the digital age. Vodacom Bulls sa...

Bolt and Uber drivers in Kenya are protesting the slow implementation of Digital Taxi Hailing Regulation, a new ride-hailing law in the country. The drivers are accusing the country’s transport regulator, the National Transport and Safety Authority of deliberately slowing down the implementation process of the regulation since it was gazetted in June. Rhayn Kanyandong, chairman of The Digital Part...

The Advertising Regulatory Council of Nigeria has sued Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, alongside its Nigerian public relations agency AT3 Resources at the Federal High court, Abuja Judicial Division. ARCON is seeking ₦30 billion in sanctions for the violation of the advertising laws and for loss of revenue as a result of Meta’s continued exposure of unapproved advert...

Nigerian Central Bank governor Godwin Emefiele shared that the apex bank would redesign the country’s currency. The CBN governor says the redesign will impact the ₦200, ₦500, and ₦1000 notes, with the redesigned notes expected to be in circulation by December 15, 2022, while the current Naira notes will no longer serve as legal tender from January 31, 2023. Emefiele says the Management of the CBN...

Chinese luxury EV startup XPeng is moving forward with its plans to launch a robotaxi business. The company’s latest G9 SUV became China’s first mass-produced commercial vehicle to pass a government-led autonomous driving closed-field test. The company says it would come equipped with XPeng’s new advanced driver assist system, the XNGP, which combines XPeng’s Highway Navigated Guided Pilot and Cit...

Nigeria’s minister for communications and digital economy, Isa Pantami, announced that the Nigeria Startup Bill had been signed into law. Nigeria has made regulatory changes that have stopped some startups in their tracks– like this 2020 state regulation that banned bike-hailing startups in Lagos, Nigeria’s most populous city. With the Nigeria Startup Bill—now the Nigeria Startup Act—the gap betwe...

South Africa’s Financial Sector Conduct Authority through the Financial Advisory and Intermediary Services Act, has declared that cryptocurrency assets are classified as financial products, allowing them to be regulated. The FSCA’s head of regulatory frameworks, Eugene Du Toit, clarified that the move does not mean that cryptocurrencies are now legal tender in the country. He says they are however...

Large organizations that operate in Africa often have issues with payment collection due to the varying currencies on the continent, differing government policies, and fragmented payment systems. MoneyHash has pre-built integrations with prominent payment service providers that cover over 90 payment method integrations in the region. Nader Abdelrazik, MoneyHash’s CEO and co-founder, Abdelrazik say...

MTN is set to invest in Nigerian-owned businesses through a campaign - 'MTN Pulse BlowMyHustle', aimed at empowering Nigerian youths involved in scalable businesses. This investment idea was necessitated because 'side hustles' amongst Nigerian youths have become prevalent compared to previous generations. Chief marketing officer, of MTN Nigeria, Adia Sowho, says the 'hustle spirit' amongst Nigeria...

Google Arts & Culture in partnership with The Adunni Olorisha Trust and CyArk announced the launch of the first and largest digital library of content showcasing the Osun Osogbo Sacred Grove. The launch also marks the digital preservation of one of Nigeria’s last remaining sacred groves, being part of Google Arts and Culture’s wider Heritage on the Edge project. The project supports site managers...

Google has teamed up with Coinbase to facilitate payment with cryptocurrencies for its cloud services. The partnership, which was announced at Google’s Cloud Next conference, will also see Coinbase move its data-related applications to Google from Amazon Web Services. Jim Migdal, Coinbase’s vice president of business development, says that Coinbase will earn a percentage of transactions that go th...

Botswana has edged out Kenya in the list of top global innovators as more African countries punch above their weight to come up with ideas and technologies that increase productivity and output. Botswana is now the continent’s fifth most innovative country and ranked among sixteen African countries that improved their global innovation positions, fuelled by the COVID-19 pandemic. These three are a...

Airtel Zambia has announced that it has purchased 60MHz of additional spectrum spread across the 800MHz and 2600MHz bands from the Zambia Information and Communications Technology Authority for a gross consideration of $29 million, payable in Zambian Kwacha. Airtel Zambia says the additional spectrum will support the expansion of the telco’s capability in providing mobile data and fixed wireless h...

Bank of Namibia governor Johannes !Gawaxab stated that the central bank’s strategic direction and the rapid digitisation of the financial system have prompted it to think critically about a potential Namibia Dollar CBDC in the digital payment landscape of the future. !Gawaxab stated that a public consultation paper on central bank digital currencies would be published soon to further demonstrate t...

NALA, a Tanzanian-born fintech startup with a growing dominance in East Africa, made a pioneering move in Africa’s fintech space by enabling its African diaspora users to make local payments directly. This newest integration with world payment service, Apple Pay, reaffirms NALA’s ambition to enable seamless and lightning-fast payments to Africa. NALA’s integration with Apple Pay comes seven months...

The special advisor to the Lagos state governor on innovation and technology, Olatunbosun Alake, says that the government is planning to launch its own venture capital fund that would write bigger equity cheques for Nigerian startups than most privately-owned VC. Olatunbosun says the fund would be cross-sectoral including fintech, agriculture, health, and most importantly, research and development...

The Harare Institute of Technology has announced that it is working on developing a central bank digital currency. The tertiary institution stated that it was developing the currency to reduce printing and transactional costs, and eliminate currency manipulation, cash hoarding, and black market currency trading. HIT vice-chancellor, Dr Quinton Kanhukamwe, did not touch on why but he stated that th...

Nigerian data and intelligence company, Stears has raised $3.3 million to enhance its data collection and analytics capabilities, acquire talent and expand into East and Southern Africa. This seed round was led by MaC Venture Capital. It also saw participation from Serena Ventures, Melo 7 Tech Partners, Omidyar Group’s Luminate Fund and Cascador. The startup’s flagship product is Stears Insights,...

Kenya’s Safaricom officially launched its Ethiopian network becoming the first private operator in one of Africa’s largest telecoms markets Ethiopia’s governments welcomed M-Pesa. Safaricom Ethiopia’s launch follows a ten-city pilot and a phased launch across the country, which started in August 2022 in the city of Dire Dawa, 350km east of Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital. Until now, state-owned...

Apple and Google say they will roll out software updates to enable 5G support on their respective handsets in India, the world’s second-largest wireless market, just days after local bureaucrats began pushing the phone makers to expedite their efforts. Reliance Jio and Airtel, India’s two largest carriers, have started to offer 5G services in select Indian cities in recent weeks, but many popular...

The Central Bank of Kenya has announced the successful separation of the mobile money business from the telecommunications business, which was previously under Airtel Networks Kenya Limited. The CBK licensed Airtel Money Kenya Limited as a payment service provider on January 21, 2022, and also granted a transition period to complete the transfer. AMKL and ANKL are now separate subsidiaries of Airt...

The stock prices of Uber, Lyft and DoorDash slid after the Department of Labor announced proposed changes to how workers should be classified. The federal agency says the prospective guidance is intended to “combat employee misclassification. Uber’s share price dropped by more than 10% to $24.61, while Lyft’s tanked more than 12% to $11.22 and DoorDash’s fell more than 5% to $44.98 at the time of...

Prosus has scrapped the $4.7 billion acquisition of BillDesk it announced last year, once stated to be the European technology giant’s largest, saying certain conditions were unfulfilled in a surprising move a month after the proposed acquisition received from the local antitrust watchdog the approval to proceed. Amsterdam-listed Prosus says certain conditions precedent were not fulfilled by the 3...

Naver, the South Korean search giant, announced it plans to acquire secondhand apparel marketplace Poshmark for $1.2 billion in cash. The deal values publicly traded Poshmark’s shares at $17.90 a 15% premium over today’s closing price and the companies expect it to close by Q1 2023, subject to approval by Poshmark stockholders and the satisfaction of certain other customary closing conditions. Pos...