Africa Tech News

The Central Bank of Ghana has barred eight money transfer organisations (MTOs) from operating in the country. The eight companies include Xoom, Wise, LemFi, Transfer Go, SendValu, Aza Finance, Boss Revolution and Supersonicz. The apex bank says these fintechs don’t have the regulatory approval to operate in Ghana. The bank has also warned all financial institutions in the country to stop dealing w...

inDrive, the mobility platform has launched a new venture and merger and acquisition (M&A) arm, New Ventures Investments, with a dedicated fund of up to $100 million to invest in promising startups. New Ventures will be led by investment professional, Andries Smit, who will be joining the company as the vice president. The investment criteria: inDrive’s New Ventures unit will target post-seed/...

Paystack, the Nigerian fintech acquired in 2020 for $200 million by Stripe, is laying off 33 workers in Europe and UAE. The company’s CEO, Shola Akinlade says the layoff is happening because Paystack is reducing its operations outside Africa. Akinlade says the affected staff will be getting a severance package which includes four months’ salary, accelerating equity vesting, and an extension of hea...

Enugu, a south-eastern state in Nigeria has announced plans to build 250 smart schools over the next 14 months. Governor Peter Mbah noted that the schools will be built across 260 wards in the state to allow students in the remote parts of the state access to quality education. The smart school says there will be a creative production studio in each school, 25 inclusive classrooms furnished with i...

The parent company of ChatGPT announced the sudden departure of CEO Sam Altman after the board of directors decided he was not being “candid in his communications” and could not be trusted to move the company forward. The board’s decision came a month after Altman announced a new feature that would allow users to build their own versions of ChatGPT—a service that is barely a year old, and achieved...

Celullant, the pan-African fintech has secured a licence as a Payment Service Provider and Payment Facilitator in Egypt. Cellulant will empower global and regional merchants in Egypt to effortlessly manage B2B and B2C payments locally and internationally. The company’s solutions support mobile money, wallets, cash, cards, and direct bank transfers across multiple payment methods and currencies. Ce...

Nigeria’s minister of communications, innovation, and digital economy, Bosun Tijani, formally launched a plan to train 3 million technical talents over the next four years. Tijani says based on data that LinkedIn has projected, Nigeria can fill about 23% of the current global shortage in technology talents. The minister hopes that Nigeria’s young people—about 60% of the population—can grow the cou...

Meta and Snap are the latest tech firms to get formal requests for information from the European Commission about the steps they’re taking to safeguard minors on their platforms in line with requirements set out in the bloc’s Digital Services Act. The Commission sent similar RFIs to TikTok and YouTube also focused on child protection. The safety of minors has quickly emerged as a priority area for...

Bolt is shutting down its food delivery service in Nigeria from December 7, 2023. The company announced its decision as a move to streamline its resources and maximise its overall efficiency. Bolt, which currently offers food delivery services in 16 countries and 33 cities across the world, launched Bolt Food in Nigeria in October 2021 after increased demand for food delivery services during the p...

South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal has ruled that prisoners who are registered students have the right to have and use computers in their cells…as long as it’s for study. A prisoner, Mbalenhle Sydney Ntuli, who is serving a 20-year sentence for robbery complained that his right to education was being infringed. Per Ntuli’s reps, he was struggling to complete a data processing course because he...

MTN Nigeria announced that the disappearing debts were due to a system glitch after several MTN users received confirmation messages that their debts on the network had been cleared. The telecom says that the glitch affected balance enquiries for some subscribers. Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/africa-tech-news--5512041/support .

MultiChoice, the pan-African broadcaster that reported $131m in revenue in 2022, has invested R500 million in Showmax, its streaming service, ahead of a late-2024 relaunch. Showmax 2.0 will launch on a specialised technology platform on the US streaming service, Peacock, according to the company’s filings. It also incorporates the higher investment in Showmax, primarily related to dual platform co...

Flutterwave, the African payments company, has secured a licence to process payments into Malawi, including remittances. Malawi’s remittance market has grown exponentially since 2016, presenting a growth opportunity for the $3 billion-valued African fintech startup. The International Money Transfer Operator license from the Reserve Bank of Malawi allows the company to process international payment...

Nigeria-based agritech AFEX has secured $26.5 million in funding. The British International Investment signed a new partnership with the agritech that will see the investor commit $26.5 million to the company’s activities. AFEX has BII’s investment for the development of 20 modern warehouses strategically located in Nigeria, Kenya, and Uganda. The new warehouses are expected to offer an additional...

Kai-Fu_Lee, the computer scientist known in the West for his bestseller AI Superpowers and in China for his bets on artificial intelligence unicorns, has a new venture. Lee launched a company called 01.AI with the vision to develop a homegrown large language model for the Chinese market. T He says, unlike the rest of the world, China doesn’t have access to OpenAI and Google because those two compa...

The 11th edition of the Africa Fintech Summit will be held in Nairobi, Kenya in 2024, said Zekarias Amsalu, the co-founder of Africa Fintech Summit at the ongoing 10th edition of the summit in Lusaka, Zambia. Andrew Barsden, the summit’s lead organiser, says the relaxed visa requirements for Africans announced by President William Ruto will help make the event much more open and inclusive to more...

MFS Africa, the African fintech platform has rebranded to Onafriq. CEO Dare Okoujou, says the facelift was due to trademark challenges in the US. Aside from the challenges with the trademark, the Onafriq CEO says the group wanted a name that reflects its true ambition as the business had expanded beyond just mobile financial services and had become an omni-channel platform across Africa and beyond...

The South African franchise of WeWork has announced that its operations are independent of WeWork Global’s bankruptcy filing in the US. Reuters reported that global coworking space provider WeWork Global was planning to file for bankruptcy in the US. The company, which was valued at $47 billion in 2019, was reportedly struggling to repay debts over $15.9 billion. The company has struggled since it...

Zambia has announced plans to open a smartphone factory in the country by June 2024 to reduce the prices of the devices for citizens. Zambia’s minister of technology and science, Felix Mutati, has announced the country’s plans to open a smartphone factory by June 2024. Mutati stated that Building the gadgets in the country will enable us to reduce the cost of smartphones in the country and hence f...

FTX founder and CEO Sam-Bankman Fried was convicted of looting $8 billion of customer assets from his now-bankrupt cryptocurrency firm. A 12-man jury found him guilty of two counts of fraud, and five counts of conspiracy. Bankman-Fried’s sentencing has been set for March 28, 2024, and he faces decades in prison. He will also face another trial next year as prosecutors charge him with foreign bribe...

Showmax, the MultiChoice streaming service announced that it would discontinue its streaming services outside Africa by December 1, 2023. This means Showmax users outside the continent will no longer be able to access the service by then. The company says for the moment, they will be focused specifically on the African market and on meeting the needs of our growing customer communities across the...

Elon Musk says X posts that are corrected by Community Notes, the platform’s crowd-sourced fact-checking system, will become ineligible for revenue share. He says the idea is to maximize the incentive for accuracy over sensationalism. The billionaire executive also noted that any attempts to weaponize Community Notes to demonetize people will be immediately obvious because all code and data is ope...

Botswana’s president, Mokgweetsi Masisi, emphasised the need for diamond-producing nations like Botswana to incorporate technology into the sector to foster sustainability. Masisi says the use of innovations such as drone-assisted surveying to advanced water management systems could help preserve the world for generations to come. The President says the use of blockchain technology for diamond tra...

South Africa, international marketplace Airbnb launched a $500,000 fund geared towards supporting tourism in Africa. Per Velma Corcoran, the company’s regional lead for MEA, says the fund will be used to help governments, entrepreneurs and tourism organisations identify and unlock new tourism opportunities across different communities in Africa. The funds will also be dispersed via awards and gran...

Drivers of ride-hailing platforms in Kenya are taking advantage of the situation. The drivers urged the National Transport and Safety Authority not to renew the licences of ride-hailing platforms Bolt and Uber until the companies act on submitted complaints. The NTSA earlier declined Bolt and Uber’s requests to renew their operating licences. The regulator says the ride-hailing platforms were char...