Africa Tech News

The UK government has confirmed another pause to draft digital legislation under new prime minister Liz Truss’ reshuffled cabinet saying the data reform bill it had introduced in recent months is on hold while ministers take another look. The paused bill contained a package of amendments to the UK’s data protection regime, which remains based on a pan-European Union framework tweaking rules for pe...

Ventures announced the launch of its $90 million second fund. It was the sequel to its first: a $54 million fund invested in 21 startups across Egypt and the Middle East. While Algebra Ventures predicted it would reach its first close in Q3 2021, the firm had to wait an entire year to achieve that. However, the lag afforded Algebra Ventures enough time to exceed what it initially earmarked for the...

Facebook parent Meta has settled a lawsuit in the U.S. against two companies that had engaged in data scraping operations, which had seen them gathering data from Facebook and Instagram users for marketing intelligence purposes. The companies named in the suit, Israeli-based BrandTotal Ltd. and Delaware-incorporated Unimania Inc., agreed to a permanent injunction banning them from scraping Faceboo...

Paymob and Tabby partner to bolster e-commerce in Egypt Paymob, an Egyptian payment, and shopping app have partnered with Tabby, a Dubai-based buy-now-pay-later platform, to fuel growth for retailers in Egypt by enabling businesses across Paymob’s network to benefit from Tabby’s split in-four, interest and fee-free payment solution via Paymob’s gateway. The two fintech will seamlessly integrate Ta...

The International Finance Corporation estimates that 40% of formal micro, small and medium enterprises in developing countries have an unmet financing need of $5.2 trillion every year. In Uganda, YC-backed Numida has provided more than $20 million in unsecured working capital to 27,000 micro and small businesses. Founded by Mina Numida is also the first digital lender in the East African region to...

Kenya’s leading telco Safaricom, and its partner banks announced cuts on daily charges for loans below Sh1000 from Fuliza, a short-term digital loan product on Wednesday. The move, widely seen as political, comes ahead of a planned presidential review of Kenya’s credit scoring system. Fuliza is an overdraft mobile money overdraft product jointly operated by Safaricom and two of Kenya’s largest ban...

One of Nigeria’s leading online brokerage firms has expanded into Ghana, making it the first trans-national west-African brokerage app. Through a partnership with 10th Capital Investments, a licensed Ghanaian firm, the more than 50,000 users on Bamboo Ghana’s waitlist will now be able to buy and invest in stocks from US companies like Apple Inc and Tesla. Bamboo says it recently received a No Obje...

Crypto platform Nexo is being sued by eight U.S. state securities regulators representing New York, California, Kentucky, Maryland, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Washington, and Vermont. New York Attorney General Letitia James says Nexo and Nexo Capital failed to register with the state’s securities and commodities brokers or dealers and lied to investors about their registration status. James seeks t...

Samsung has launched two credit cards in India, entering a crowded category that sees more than 50 companies fiercely compete for consumers’ attention in the world’s second-largest internet market. The South Korean giant says it has partnered with the Mumbai-headquartered Axis Bank and global payments processor Visa to launch the cards, which it is calling the Samsung Axis Bank Credit Card. Consum...

Pan-African fintech giant Flutterwave raised $250 million in a series D raise, the company held an event where it announced, amongst other things, that it would integrate Google Pay and Apple Pay into its suite of payment options. The company is making good on its promise about Google Pay, as users of the global payment service can now use it for transactions with merchants on Flutterwave’s stores...

Jumia, Africa’s leading e-commerce player, has partnered with Zipline, a global instant delivery company, to offer on-demand drone delivery services to the growing number of eCommerce players on the continent. The pilot test involved 1hr deliveries from distances as far as 85km from the take-off point, with real-time visibility of the drones for all stakeholders in the process. Apoorva Kumar, EVP...

Crypto adoption in Africa grew by 1200% between July 2020 and June 2021, making Africans the fastest adopters of Crypto in the world. French-speaking Africans, by comparison, are distant from the crypto party, and Binance is trying to change this. Binance, a leading global crypto infrastructure provider, commenced a tour to 5 countries in francophone Africa intending to create more awareness of cr...

Ghanaian agtech Farmerline has secured $1.5 million equity funding from Dutch impact investor Oikocredit in its second close of the pre-series A round. The new funding brings the total amount raised in the round to $14.4 million, including $6.4 debt funding. The funding comes at a time when Farmerline, which has operations across Ghana, is setting up shop in Ivory Coast as it continues its expansi...

Vendease, a Y Combinator-backed digital platform that allows restaurants in Africa to buy supplies, access financial services, and power their business operations. Founded by Tunde Kara, Olumide Fayankin, Gatumi Aliyu, and Wale Oyepeju, the startup has raised $30 million in an equity and debt funding round to consolidate its growth and operations in Nigeria and Ghana, and to support its expansion...

Johan van Zyl, co-CEO of shareholder African Rainbow Capital says South African data-only mobile network operator Rain is launching a mobile 5G product in early 2023, Van Zyl stated that Rain wanted to add mobile 5G to their current 4G product which he added was always supplementary to its fixed wireless Internet offering. Van Zyl says that the company’s market share still has not taken a hit desp...

EBANX, a multinational fintech company, has announced plans to expand its payment gateway solution and operations outside Latin America for the first time, to Africa. Present in 15 countries in Latin America, the 10-year-old unicorn has processed over $1 billion in payments and wants to initially focus on mobile money in Africa. The CEO and co-founder, João Del Valle, explained that although Afric...

Uganda has recently come up with its Computer Misuse Bill during plenary, the House considered and passed the Computer Misuse (Amendment) Bill, 2022 with amendments. The Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa says it’s a blow to online civil liberties. The bill wants to amend Section 12 of the act and criminalize hacking another person’s electronic device and publis...

American multinational computer software Adobe announced that it will acquire the design startup Figma for $20 billion, taking out one of its biggest rivals in the digital design space. Figma CEO, Dylan Field, says that with Adobe’s amazing innovation and expertise, especially in 3D, video, vector, imaging and fonts, they can further reimagine end-to-end product design in the browser while buildin...

Kuda MFB, a neobank operating under the Nigerian microfinance bank license, has been recording losses for the past two years. The company recorded a loss of ₦6,092,554,866, a 602% rise from the ₦868,062,000 ($2,025,295) loss it made in 2020 by the end of the 2021 financial year. The financial report indicated that the company’s revenue increased by 4,315% from ₦72,649,000 in 2020 to ₦3,207,177,570...

SoftBank-backed Ola plans to eliminate about 200 jobs across its engineering teams over the next few days, on track to shrink its workforce by over 1,200 this year, as the ride-hailing giant streamlines its operations to improve finances. The company has kickstarted a new wave of layoffs, which affects the engineering teams at its food and ride-hailing businesses. An Ola spokesperson says the layo...

Fintech Portabl announced the closing of a $2.5 million seed round led by Harlem Capital Partners. Nate Soffio says It is a digital wallet and password manager for financial services and banking apps, but Soffio calls it a financial digital passport, which helps with user identification, making the task less cumbersome for both consumers and financial services. He says the company’s goal is to wea...

The US and Africa-based blockchain payments startup Bitmama has raised an additional $1.65 million in funding, bringing its total pre-seed round to $2 million. The new pre-seed round will be used to expand the company’s operational presence, strengthen its team across different markets, consolidate its product offerings, and plot market penetration across Africa. With this expansion, it seeks to r...

Financial literacy across the world is low, as only 33% of adults globally are financially literate. Standard & Poor’s Global Financial Literacy Survey, in African countries, says the percentage of financially literate adults hovers within the 26% range in Nigeria and the 42% range in South Africa. NowNow Digital Systems, a Nigerian fintech, has raised a $13 million seed round to improve financial...

South Africa’s minister of communications and digital technologies Khumbudzo Ntshavheni has published a draft policy document that has proposed the trading of radio frequency spectrum which has been prohibited in the country. The draft policy document will be used to coordinate national spectrum management approaches to support the rollout of communications networks for socio-economic national dev...

A series of commitments offered by Amazon in the EU, where regulators are investigating competition concerns linked to its use of third-party data, has been dubbed weak, vague and full of loopholes in a critical submission signed by a dozen civil society and digital rights groups, non-governmental organizations and trade unions. The bloc’s regulators urged the European Commission to reject Amazon’...