Africa Tech News

Ubenwa, an innovative health-tech startup that leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning to diagnose infants within 0–6 months of age, has locked in $2.5 million in pre-seed funding to scale its operations and materialise its go-to-market strategy. Ubenwa’s CEO described Ubenwa’s solution as one that helps distinguish an infant’s natural cries from the disease-causing cries for help....

Max has announced a partnership with Yamaha’s Nigerian subsidiary, Moto Business Service Nigeria, to finance and maintain over 50,000 vehicles over the next 2 years. The partnership will expand Max’s operations in Nigeria, Ghana, and Cameroon and fast-track its goal of serving 100,000 independent commercial drivers by the end of 2023. Adetayo Bamiduro, co-founder and CEO of MAX, says the partnersh...

Google says it will allow developers of non-gaming apps on the Play Store to provide alternative billing systems for in-app transactions and purchases for users based in the European Economic Area. The company’s move comes after the European Parliament passed the Digital Markets Act earlier this month to force tech giants like Google, Apple, Meta, and Amazon to follow fair and open market practice...

Microsoft announced the launch of the Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty, a new solution for public sector customers especially in Europe who need to be able to guarantee that their users’ data is stored and processed in a given region. The company says public sector customers can harness the full power of Microsoft Cloud, including broad platform capabilities, resiliency, agility and security. The c...

CEO Arjun Sethi of Tribe Capital has raised $25 million from outside investors and has launched its incubator program, Tribe Crypto Labs. The firm has approximately $1.5 billion in assets under management and has previously made investments in crypto companies like crypto exchanges FTX and Kraken and blockchains like Cosmos and Frax. He says they saw the chance to take a more proactive approach an...

Duhqa is a B2B retail tech platform that empowers informal African merchants to digitally source and pay for inventory, get delivery conveniently, and access short-term financing. This approach maximizes efficiency across the sales and supply distribution chain. Its platform has onboarded over 5,000 merchants so far. Duhqa has now closed a seed round of US$2 million, seven months later. The round...

A Nigerian-based indigenous cloud service provider has re-affirmed the need for Nigerian companies to host content locally, saying there are dangers associated with hosting data abroad. The  Chief Sales Officer of Layer3,  Theresa Adeyinka, says Nigeria loses up to N60 billion worth of foreign exchange to other countries annually in payments for web hosting alone, according to the Nigeria Internet...

The Chief Executive Officer of Binance, Changpeng Zhao, says Africa is ready for crypto adoption. He says blockchain provides a level of financial accessibility that isn’t currently available on the continent. He says Africa is primed for crypto adoption as blockchain provides financial accessibility not currently available to lots of Africans. Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.sprea...

Africa: The Big Deal reports that Investment in Nigerian tech dropped by 30 percent towards the end of the second quarter of 2022 Data from the database and insights firm which focuses on startup funding above $100,000 in Africa showed that of the big four in Africa — Nigeria, Egypt, South Africa, and Kenya—only Nigeria witnessed a dip in the quarter. He explained that with rising interest rates i...

Nigeria is set to regulate emerging technologies such as the Internet of Things as the nation enters a new phase of technological advancements. The Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission, Prof Umar Danbatta, defined IoT as a system of interrelated computing devices, mechanical and digital machines, objects, animals, or people that are provided with unique identifiers and...

The number of Nigerians and other nationals within Nigeria with high-speed Internet (broadband subscription) increased by 118.24 percent from 38.19 million in May 2017 to 83.37 million in May 2022. The Nigerian Communications Commission says this was a 23.66 percentage point increase in broadband penetration from 20.01 percent in May 2017 to 43.67 percent in the corresponding month of 2022. Within...

Google says US Android app developers will be able to claim money from a new $90 million fund Google will establish as part of a wider settlement with app makers over the tech giant's app store practices. The proposed settlement is designed to address app developers' years-long allegations that Google imposes onerous and anticompetitive restrictions on app makers as a condition of hosting their ap...

The UK competition regulator announced the launch of an antitrust investigation into Microsoft's proposed $68.7 billion acquisition of video gaming giant Activision Blizzard. The probe into what would be Microsoft's biggest acquisition in its history will focus on whether the deal may substantially lessen competition — or create expectations that it might. Microsoft has previously said it expects...

The Federal Trade Commission says it will step up to protect the privacy of consumers in a post-Roe America, declaring the agency is committed to fully enforcing the law against the illegal sharing of sensitive medical and location data. Kristin Cohen, the FTC’s acting associate director in the Division of Privacy and Identity Protection, says the commission took particular aim at data brokers and...

TikTok has agreed to pause a controversial privacy policy update in Europe, which had been due to happen tomorrow, and would have meant the platform stopped asking users for their consent to be tracked to receive targeted advertising. The Irish Data Protection Commission, TikTok’s lead privacy regulator for the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, said the pause follows engagement...

Global venture capital firm Cathay Innovation has announced its third fund, targeting €1 billion at a broad gamut of companies and technologies around the world. The new fund follows its $550 million second fund back in 2020, which — like the inaugural fund before that — was also a multi-stage fund. Cathay Innovation CEO and cofounder Denis Barrier say despite the current market conditions and unc...

Twitter’s lawyers from the firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz said Elon Musk’s termination of the acquisition deal was invalid and wrongful. This comes after Musk and his lawyers said last week that they’re killing the deal to acquire the social network alleging it of making false and misleading representations. They said the purported termination is invalid for the independent reason that Mr. Mu...

Senegalese-US fintech Wave has secured a €90 million syndicated loan from the International Finance Corporation, the investment arm of the World Bank, and other sources. The syndicated loan comprises loans from Symbiotics, Blue Orchard, Lendable, responsAbility Investments, Finnfund, and Norfund. Coura Sene, Wave general manager for the West African Economic and Monetary Union says Access to digit...

Bolt, the popular ride-hailing platform, has opened a new Africa head office in Nairobi, Kenya. This new office will be a regional hub for the 7 African countries in which Bolt is operational—Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, and Tunisia. Bolt’s regional director and interim VP for rides, Paddy Partridge, maintained that the investment is significant in bolstering the firm’s p...

Visa, a global leader in digital payments, has announced a partnership with Flocash, an African startup to provide African SMEs with access to robust digital solutions that will enable the success and digitization of business processes. Visa’s latest partnership with Flocash is directed toward promoting digital capabilities for African SMEs. Visa will collaborate with Flocash to build embedded fin...

The British International Investment, the UK government’s Development Finance Institution has announced that it has invested $20 million in debt funding in Nigeria’s mobility financing startup Moove. Moove, which raised $10 million in debt financing in February and mega funding of $105 million a month after, has shown that it has a huge appetite for funding. Ladi Delano, co-founder and co-CEO at M...

The European Parliament has given a final stamp of approval to two major pieces of regulation which will update the EU’s rules for digital businesses. The Digital Markets Act will introduce new ‘ex-ante’ competition rules for gatekeeping tech giants to ensure markets are fair and open; while the Digital Services Act which applies more broadly will set governance rules around the handling of illega...

Google has stopped providing updates to popular messaging app KakaoTalk in South Korea after Kakao continued using an external payment link in its Android app, against Google’s new in-app payments policy. Google’s new policy requires developers selling digital goods and services to use Google’s first-party billing system, but Kakao has been using an external link to its own website. Google says al...

Glance, a subsidiary of adtech giant InMobi Group, is planning to launch its lock screen platform on Android smartphones in the U.S. within two months. The startup is engaging with wireless carriers in the U.S. for partnerships and is gearing up to launch several smartphone models by next month. Glance, valued at around $2 billion, serves media and current affairs content and casual games on Andro...

Twitter has sued the Indian government to challenge some of its block orders on tweets and accounts, further escalating the tension between the American social giant and New Delhi. Twitter alleges that New Delhi has abused its power by ordering it to arbitrarily and disproportionately remove several tweets from its platform Twitter moved to the court after New Delhi threatened to open criminal pro...