Africa Tech News

South Africa’s streaming service platform is getting bigger and the South African government is considering licensing these platforms. The Department of Communications and Digital Technologies released a white paper that seeks to create broader regulations for streaming services in the country. The country became the first African country to get Disney+ and one of the few African countries in Ugan...

President Bola Tinubu announced ₦75 billion to fund 75 enterprises in the manufacturing sector. ₦125 billion has also been earmarked to support micro and small businesses. President Bola Tinubu has announced a plan to support small businesses and startups in Nigeria in response to the country’s current economic challenges. In a nationwide broadcast on Monday evening. Tinubu disclosed that his gove...

Walmart paid $1.4 billion to buy out Tiger Global’s remaining holding of Flipkart shares as the retail giant further expands its stake in the Indian e-commerce startup. The transaction took place in recent days and Tiger Global, which has cashed most of its Flipkart shares earlier, overall made a gain of $3.5 billion on an investment of $1.2 billion. Flipkart is the only Indian startup in which Ti...

Worldcoin, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s bid to sew up the market for verifying humanness by convincing enough mobile meatsacks to have their eyeballs scanned in exchange for crypto tokens only started its official global rollout this week but it’s already landed on the radar of European data protection authorities. Pop-up locations where willing humans can get some Worldcoin “digital tokens” in exchang...

The Namibian government has begun the process of setting up a regulatory authority to oversee the virtual asset industry, acting on the provisions of one of the major mandates of the newly passed law. The authority will be responsible for licensing virtual asset service providers and overseeing, supervising, and monitoring activities related to the provision of virtual asset services. Individuals...

Google has announced its partnership with Verve to make digital transactions on Google Play Store easier and more accessible for Nigerians. Verve is a pan-African payment card scheme owned by Interswitch that can be used to make payments at merchants, withdraw cash from ATMs and transfer money between accounts. Nigerians can now use their Verve cards to make purchases on the Google Play Store, Goo...

Nigeria’s central bank unfroze the accounts of some firms illegally trading in foreign exchange in Nigeria. It could symbolise new beginnings. The acting CBN governor, Folashodun Shonubi, and Emefiele’s replacement raised interest rates to 18.75%, banks were told to lift the restrictions on the bank accounts of 440 individuals and companies. Experts said the apex bank's reversal of its earlier sta...

MTN Nigeria has reported a drop in its H1 result from 2023— January 1 to June 30, 2023. MTN reported a 29.14% decline in its profit for the period under review of ₦128 billion, compared to ₦181 billion during the same period in 2022. MTN Nigeria’s CEO, Karl Toriola, stated that operating conditions in the first half of 2023 remained challenging with energy, food, and general inflation at elevated...

The Kenyan Court of Appeal lifted an earlier court order barring the implementation of Kenya’s new Finance Act. The Finance Act 2023, which is designed to generate revenue for the government, introduces several new taxes, including a 1.5% tax on content creators and a 3% tax on crypto traders. The senators argued that the Act was passed without due process and that the 1.5% housing levy which the...

ChatGPT is available to pre-order” for Android users who want to take the ubiquitous chatbot on the go. The ChatGPT app on Android looks to be identical to the iOS one in functionality, meaning it gets most if not all of the web-based version’s features. OpenAI says that the Android app will be rolling out to users next week, presumably in the U.S. first. No plans were mentioned for other countrie...

Senegal announced it was finally ready for 5G by opening up the window for applications for 5G spectrum licences. Telecom regulator L’Autorité de Régulation des Télécommunication et des Postes announced that interested investors should submit applications by July 14. ARTP director Abdou Karim Sall, says the application process would help the regulator decide which telecom has the capacity to rapid...

South Africa’s biggest Internet Service Provider, Telkom, has plans to sell its Swiftnet tower. CEO Serame Taukobong, says part of the money from the Swiftnet sale will contribute to the company’s negative free cash flow and allocate additional investment in capital expenditures for their fibre business. Taukobong also stated that Telkom’s tower portfolio has two solid bidders. Telkom is open to o...

IMF keeps approving loans despite the country’s escalating debt, leading to widespread criticism, protests, and loss of faith in the government. Kenya is dealing with a challenging economic landscape and dwindling revenues following a global economic downturn and rising inflation. The country’s borrowing has increased even as it struggles to raise revenue. The government struggles to pay salaries...

Bundle Africa has shut down its exchange services; the crypto payments app will now be focusing on Cashlink, its peer-to-peer platform. Bundle Africa, a social payments app for cash and cryptocurrency, has announced it is shutting down operations of its exchange services after three years. The company says the decision was made by its shareholders in a bid to “restructure the business. The company...

Kenya has introduced the Common Reporting Standard to improve financial transparency and fight tax evasion. The CRS requires financial institutions to report information about their clients’ accounts to tax authorities, which helps identify individuals evading taxes. Kenya introduced the Common Reporting Standard through the Finance Act in 2021. The Tax Procedures Act was updated to include the CR...

Justice Mugure Thande extended an earlier order halting the implementation of the country’s recently approved Finance Act 2023. Busia senator Okiya Omtatah, Eliud Matindi, Michael Otieno, and four others filed a petition challenging the constitutionality of the Finance Act 2023. They argue that the Act was passed without the concurrence of both Speakers of the National Assembly and Senate, as requ...

Platforms like Fawry and InstaPay tapped into the apex bank’s policies to reduce cash dependencies are responsible for the spread of e-wallets and cards in the North African country where 64% of Egyptians increased their adoption of digital payments solutions last year. The number of mobile phone wallets reached 46,500 per 100,000 people. Egypt’s apex bank is keen to promote another method: contac...

Google announced that its AI chatbot, Bard, is now available in South Africa, Brazil, and many parts of the world including the European Union after an initial delay due to data privacy concerns. Bard is also available in 40 languages including Swahili, the first African language supported by the generative AI platform. Other languages supported by Bard include Arabic, Chinese, German, Hindi, Span...

British multinational bank Standard Chartered (StanChart) revealed that it had completed negotiations to have all its sub-Saharan African assets acquired by Access Bank. The deal, which is set for competition in 2024, will see the sale of StanChart’s subsidiaries in Angola, Cameroon, Gambia, and Sierra Leone, with the exception of StanChart’s Nigerian subsidy. Access Bank will also acquire Standar...

The Ugandan government amended its Income Tax Act to include a new law that imposes a 5% tax on income earned by foreign companies operating in the country. This comes weeks after President Yoweri Museveni initially refused to assent to the Income Tax Amendment Bill 2023, stating that it needed to include taxes on non-resident digital companies in the country. The president stated that the measure...

Fintech company Flutterwave has integrated its payment technology into the International Air Transport Association’s financial gateway. The IFG is a payment platform specifically created for international airlines and travel agencies to process payments from local markets through various distribution channels. This partnership with Flutterwave allows airlines to have full control over the entire p...

The House of Representatives asked the Central Bank of Nigeria to temporarily halt the implementation of an earlier directive to use social media handles for know-your-customer operations. The CBN says the policy will allow financial institutions to conduct an effective assessment of potential risks associated with money laundering, terrorism financing, and proliferation financing. He further argu...

The regulatory crackdown that has shaken up China’s fintech industry since late 2020 appears to be ending with the imposition of hefty fines on the country’s two digital payments giants. Tencent has been fined approximately 2.99 billion yuan by the People’s Bank of China for its past regulatory breaches in relation to the provision of payment services in mainland of China. The central bank announc...

The Twitter rival, Instagram’s text-based app Threads has achieved the mark of 100 million sign-ups in just five days. Mark Zuckerberg noted on the first day that the app attracted 2 million sign-ups in two hours, 5 million sign-ups in four hours, and 10 million registered users in seven hours. The next morning, the CEO of Meta noted that more than 30 million people had signed up to try the new ap...

Zimbabwe’s industrial electricity consumers are aiming to raise R4.7 billion for phase one of floating solar panels on Kariba Dam. The Zimbabwean government’s sovereign wealth fund will possess a 10% share in the company, while the remaining 38% will be open to investors, including development banks. Members of The Intensive Energy User Group, including mining companies, will have a 52% ownership...