Africa Tech News

The Nigerian Communications Commission has granted the telecom a 21-day extension to settle interconnect fees owed to MTN, delaying a planned phased disconnection. Globacom reportedly owes MTN about ₦6 billion ($6.7 million) in interconnect fees, which led the NCC to approve the partial disconnection of Globacom from MTN Nigeria on January 8. In 2019, MTN disconnected Globacom for five days, resul...

South African broadcaster Openview has taken MultiChoice to court for monopolising broadcasting rights for the Rugby World Cup. The eMedia parent company argues that Multichoice, through its sports channel SuperSport, unfairly excludes other platforms, like the South African Broadcasting Corporation channel from airing the popular event, hindering competition and limiting viewer choice. However, M...

Amazon Prime, the global streaming giant, is laying off staff and scaling back its local content production in Africa and the Middle East. The streaming platform, the third largest in Africa, is restructuring its business model to focus on its European market. Barry Furlong, the vice president of Prime’s EMEA division, says that the decision was made to focus on the areas that drive the highest im...

Patricia’s, the crypto exchange’s latest time frame for repayment is now two to five years which the company says it set for expectation management purposes. Patricia has tried several measures to repay its customers including an app relaunch, a stablecoin backed by the dollar, and fundraising. Patricia says this will help ensure a safe process for everyone, but it remains to be seen why the compa...

Kenya’s phone regulator, the Communications Authority of Kenya, has slapped Airtel and Telkom Kenya with warning notices and fines for failing to meet quality of service standards. The CA regularly tests mobile networks against benchmarks for call success rate, internet speed, and coverage. To be considered compliant, networks must score at least 80% on these key performance indicators. In the lat...

Egypt’s government-owned telecom has announced that citizens can expect 5G this year. Telecom Egypt has begun testing 5G services in five locations across the country, aiming for a full rollout later in 2024. The company says the tests will span three months, followed by a nationwide rollout. CEO Mohamed Nasr expects the financial impact to be evident by the end of 2024. Already the telecom saw a...

Google pulled many crypto exchanges, including Binance and Kraken, from its Play Store in India in what is the latest blow to the world’s second-largest internet market’s already dwindling web3 dream. The ban comes two weeks after these global crypto exchanges were flagged for operating illegally in the South Asian market. Financial Intelligence Unit, an Indian government agency that scrutinizes f...

Nigeria’s apex bank has appointed new board members for the three commercial banks whose boards it dissolved. The Central Bank of Nigeria dissolved the board of directors of Union, Keystone and Polaris banks citing regulatory non-compliance and corporate governance failure. The dissolution and replacement of board members comes weeks after Jim Obazee’s investigation into the Central Bank under for...

Amazon is laying off hundreds of employees across Prime Video and the recently acquired Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) Studios, because it wants to focus on creating high-impact content. Twitch, Amazon’s live-streaming site, is also preparing to cut off 35% of its staff after several top executives left the company in the final months of 2023. Amazon isn’t alone: Beyond Amazon, the broader streaming la...

Global investment bank Citigroup has announced that it will cut 10% of its workforce, about 20,000 jobs, by 2026. The chief financial officer Mark Mason, the layoffs are part of the company’s reorganisation and bid to boost its bank results. The company has had four rough quarters culminating in Q4 2023 when it recorded $1.8 billion in losses, the biggest losses recorded since 2009 when it recorde...

South Africa is seeing another multinational exit with network operator Lyca Mobile’s shutdown. Last week, the mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) stated that it’s cutting ties in SA. Users had until January 9, 2024, to hop onto another network or face the risk of losing their phone number and access to text, call and data services. Lyca’s announcement is related but the company’s long-time par...

Elon Musk’s Space X is redefining global mobile communication dynamics. The satellite company has launched six Starlink satellites with direct-to-cell capability to eliminate mobile dead zones. This means mobile phones can connect directly to the satellite, skipping the need for traditional cell towers. This makes it possible for mobile connectivity to work in remote areas and other places where t...

Mark Zuckerberg has been selling the shares every trading day since November 1, 2023, till the end of 2023. The average earnings from each day amounted to $10.4 million, with the largest transaction occurring on December 28, 2023, at $17.1 million. Meta shares, which grew by 193%, outperformed those of every other major tech giant except Nvidia Corp. last year and is now near its September 2021 re...

Multichoice-owned SuperSports channel will not show this year’s edition of the Africa Cup of Nations after it lost its broadcasting rights to a Togo-based platform, New World TV. The Confederation of African Football president Patrice Motsepe described it as a mega deal that no other broadcaster could match. New World TV secured the exclusive rights to cover both AFCON 2023 in Ivory Coast and 2025...

The ChatGPT parent company and its investor Microsoft faced a fresh lawsuit when two authors sued the company for allegedly using their books to train the AI service. Nicholas Basbanes and Nicholas Gage claim that OpenAI infringed on copyrighted works to build an empire that’s now worth millions of dollars. The authors want the courts to stop OpenAI from using their works without authorisation, an...

South Africa has plans to end load-shedding for good. The bad news though, is that it will take a couple of years. Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe published the country’s Integrated Resource Plan which is South Africa’s plan for stable electricity supply from now till 2024. The IRP sets out two timeframes: 2023–2030 to stabilise South Africa’s power and end load-shedding, and 2031–2050 to generate...

A U.S. bankruptcy judge has approved cryptocurrency lender Celsius Network's pivot to bitcoin mining, ruling that the company could deviate from a previously approved bankruptcy plan because creditors and customers were no worse off under the new restructuring. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Martin Glenn in Manhattan says the bankruptcy plan approved in November contained enough flexibility to allow Celsiu...

Mutual fund company Fidelity has marked down its investment in X holdings — the parent company of X (formerly Twitter) owned by Elon Musk — by 71.5% from the original valuation of shares, according to a new disclosure. Fidelity spent $19.2 million to acquire a stake in X back in October 2022. The fund manager made a valuation cut of 65% in October 2023. CEO Linda Yaccarino claimed that the company...

FTX Trading Ltd has revealed a proposal to repay billions of dollars to customers and creditors. The crypto exchange proposes to liquidate most of its remaining crypto holdings and convert them into cash which will then be distributed to creditors and customers, according to a yet-to-be-determined formula. The proposal is slated for a vote by creditors next year. The plan will be subject to final...

Starlink, Elon Musk’s satellite internet service provider has officially launched in Eswatini. Starlink already beams across Kenya, Mozambique, Rwanda, Mauritius, Sierra Leone, Zambia, and Nigeria. The service is awaiting regulatory nod In Zimbabwe and Botswana where its application for an operation licence is still being vetted. Starlink’s operation went through swiftly in Eswatini, getting a lic...

The Central Bank of Lesotho discovered that a cybersecurity incident had affected its system. The apex bank has restored transfers, but it advised customers to expect delays as the processing of payments is done manually. The attack led to several outages and affected the country’s National Payments System, which facilitates inter-bank transactions. There are concerns that the current wave of atta...

Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, has become the latest tech company to be fined in Italy for breaches of a ban on the advertising of gambling. Meta has been fined 5.85 million euros in connection with profiles and accounts on Facebook and Instagram, as well as sponsored content which promoted either betting or games with cash prizes. Communications watchdog AGCOM says earlier this m...

Israel's government agreed to give Intel Corp a $3.2 billion grant for a new $25 billion chip plant it plans to build in southern Israel. Intel says the expansion plan for its Kiryat Gat site is an important part of Intel’s efforts to foster a more resilient global supply chain, alongside the company’s ongoing and planned manufacturing investments in Europe and the United States. The chipmaker als...

Nigeria’s Central Bank has removed a two-year restriction on cryptocurrency transactions as it introduces stringent customer KYC and anti-money laundering checks. The CBN banned banks from crypto-related transactions in 2021, citing money laundering and terrorism financing concerns. The regulator has now reversed that ban and taken a positive posture towards digital currency assets, issuing new gu...

Pornhub’s parent company Aylo Holdings will pay $1.8 million to the U.S. government to resolve a charge of profiting off of sex trafficking. The company, formerly known as MindGeek, will enter a deferred prosecution agreement, which means that a monitor will be appointed to oversee Aylo and its compliance efforts for three years. Pornhub and other adult content sites owned by Aylo have come under...