Africa Tech News

The Competition Commission is seeking feedback on its inquiry into differences between South African media publishers and major tech companies (Apple, Facebook, Google) through the Media and Digital Platforms Markets Inquiry. The commission acknowledged that the rise of digital platforms has significantly impacted traditional news media organisations and their revenue streams in recent years. It a...

Ghana’s drivers push back against a new tax on commercial vehicles. The country’s revenue authority is set to implement a Vehicle Income Tax, slated to launch in January 2024, requiring drivers to pay quarterly taxes based on their earnings. Ride-hailing vehicles fall under “Class A” and will pay 12 Ghana cedis quarterly, totalling 48 GHC annually. Also, ride-hailing companies like Uber, Bolt, and...

Technology ministers across Africa are looking to introduce startup visas to support innovation and startup growth while simultaneously addressing the brain drain wave on the continent. Technology ministers from Algeria, South Africa, Tunisia, Botswana, and Nigeria were all in attendance. The startup visa will facilitate the free movement of startups on the continent and help to boost the mobility...

Jumia has shut down its food delivery business to cut costs. The e-commerce company has decided to shut down its food delivery business, Jumia Food, across several African countries, including Nigeria, Kenya, Morocco, Ivory Coast, Tunisia, Uganda, and Algeria by the end of December 2023. Jumia, facing a Q3 2023 loss of $19 million, has been reevaluating its business segments to navigate challengin...

Google will soon allow users to store their location data on their devices rather than on Google’s servers, effectively ending a long-running surveillance practice that allowed police and law enforcement to tap Google’s vast banks of location data to identify potential criminals. Police can use geofence warrants to demand that Google turn over information on which users’ devices were in a particul...

M-PESA, Kenya’s biggest mobile money platform is set to disrupt the country’s cash-loving retail sector with roll-out plastic cards. The GlobalPay virtual cards were limited to purchases from online platforms like Netflix, Amazon, and others. Virtual cards haven’t exactly had a stellar track record with reliability and fraud risks. Companies like card issuing startup Union54 learned that the hard...

Apple has agreed to pay out $25 million to settle a class action lawsuit over its Family Sharing feature, which lets users and up to five of their family members share access to apps, music, movies, TV shows and books that they purchase. The lawsuit, which was first filed in 2019, alleged that Apple misrepresented the ability to use its Family Sharing feature to share subscriptions to apps. The la...

Techstars, an African startup investor has partnered with ARM Labs, a Nigerian accelerator, in its second cohort for its Lagos-based accelerator programme. The cohort comprises 12 startups from Ghana, East Africa and Nigeria, and has four teams with at least one female co-founder in each startup. Each startup receives $120,000 in funding, along with valuable benefits like $400,000 in cash equivale...

South African mobile operator Cell C is still grappling with insolvency, with liabilities towering almost three times higher than its assets. The latest report tells us that Cell C still has more debts than assets with a gap of R9.294 billion. The agreements led to the settlement of debts at a discounted rate of 20 cents to the rand, aiming to ease Cell C’s hefty debt load. Cell C’s immediate debt...

Kippa, a Nigeria fintech, has transferred the operation of its agency banking product, KippaPay, to Bloc. Kippa shuttered the operations of KippaPay in October after the naira devaluation meant that the fintech couldn’t keep up with buying point-of-sale (POS) terminals which its banking agents used. KippaPay has now been incorporated into GPay, Bloc’s payment subsidiary. However, service is yet to...

Beeper, the startup that reverse-engineered iMessage to bring blue bubble texts to Android users, is experiencing an outage. Apple Inc says it shut down third-party applications that enabled Android devices to use the iMessage service to communicate with iPhone users. The iPhone maker says it took steps to protect users by blocking techniques that exploit fake credentials in order to gain access t...

YouTube Music and YouTube Premium are now available for subscription in Kenya, joining Ghana, Egypt, Nigeria, South Africa, Senegal, and Algeria where YouTube Music and YouTube Premium are available. Pricing and plans: In Kenya, YouTube Music (Individual) is priced at KES 419, while the YouTube Music Family plan costs KES 669. For an all-inclusive package, the YouTube Premium Bundle is your go-to...

Nigerian fintech Payday, after securing a $3 million seed funding round in February, is now in talks to be acquired by Bitmamaa Nigerian crypto exchange startup. This news comes three months after Payday reportedly began exploring acquisition opportunities. Bitmama is offering Payday investors $1 million worth of equity in the crypto company at a $30 million valuation. Ruth Iselema, the CEO of Bit...

Stablecoin issuer Tether announced the implementation of a voluntary wallet-freezing policy. Tether has frozen 41 wallets controlled by individuals the United States has sanctioned since December 1. These individuals were suspected of engaging in cryptocurrency transactions related to illicit activities, despite no directive from government authorities. in the US, regulators have been cracking dow...

Meta released the website version of its AI image generator named “Imagine with Meta AI”, trained on a staggering 1.1 billion photos posted by users of Facebook and Instagram. It enables users to generate images using text prompts, just like Open AI’s Dall-E, and it is free to use. The generator is fueled by Meta’s Emu, the image foundation model, and anyone with a Facebook or Instagram account ca...

South Africa’s Financial Sector Conduct Authority has released new updates on the licence status for crypto asset service providers in the country. The FSCA received 128 renewal applications as of November 2023, State of the licences: Only 36 of the 128 licence application assessments were complete; the regulatory body said it would present the completed applications on December 12, 2023. The FSCA...

Delegates from 36 African countries have been invited to Moscow next month to pitch digital services to Russian investors and IT specialists. The project is supported by the Innopraktika Centre, which is affiliated with the National Intellectual Development Foundation where Russia’s President Vladimir Putin’s younger daughter, Katerina Tikhonova, is the general director. The programme aims to prom...

Nigeria country joined 18 other countries, including the US and UK to unveil a 20-page document that will be the holy grail of AI safety. The countries agreed that companies developing and implementing AI must ensure that their systems prioritise customer and public safety by preventing misuse. The non-binding agreement deals with questions of how to keep AI technology from being hijacked by hacke...

OneWeb has launched its low-earth orbit (LEO) broadband service in South Africa. Through a partnership between telecom company, Paratus and satellite operator, Eutelsat, the Starlink rival will offer fast and reliable internet in areas with connectivity challenges, benefiting sectors such as healthcare, government, mining, agriculture, tourism, and hospitality. The partnership leverages a 10,000-k...

The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) has again, issued a warning, against the illegal use and provision of Starlink satellite broadband services within the country. This warning comes days after Starlink’s rival, OneWeb, launched its broadband service in South Africa. Starlink has been unable to secure an operating licence in South Africa due to its refusal to surrender...

Neuralink, the Elon Musk-founded company developing implantable chips that can read brain waves, has raised an additional $43 million in venture capital, according to a filing with the SEC. The filing published this week shows the company increased its previous tranche, led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, from $280 million to $323 million in early August. Thirty-two investors participated, accordi...

Fintech Patricia identified a Nigerian politician, William Bonse, as a culprit in its 2022 $2 million hack. The Nigerian Police Force says, Bonse, who was a gubernatorial candidate in Nigeria’s 2023 elections, reportedly diverted ₦607 million ($760,000) from the fintech’s account into his through a cryptocurrency wallet. Bonse, who is allegedly working with others, had been apprehended by the poli...

Access Bank, Nigeria’s largest lender by assets plans to expand into Asia early in 2024. Access Bank Group will join South Africa’s Standard Bank Group and TymeBank, the South African challenger fintech to open a shop in Asia. Standard Bank has offices in Singapore and Dubai, while TymeBank recently expanded to the Philippines. Hebert Wigwe, chairman of Access Holdings, the parent company of Acces...

Deputy governor for the CBE Ihab Nasr revealed that Egypt has announced plans to roll out an electronic know-your-customer process next year. that Egypt’s apex bank was on track to launch an e-KYC process next year that will cut out the need for going to banks. The process will allow Egyptians to use fingerprints and facial recognition on their smartphones. While the CBE has not given an official...

Airbnb acquired a secretive AI startup, GamePlanner. AI for around $200 million. GamePlanner was co-founded by Adam Cheyer, who famously helped co-launch the startup Siri, which Apple acquired and whose technology became the basis for Apple’s AI-powered Siri assistant. Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky hinted that the 12-person startup combines expertise in AI and design toward crafting AI-driven experience...