Kenya’s Cyber Threats Surge 441% in Three Months as Defence Gap Widens
Kenya’s Computer Incident Response Centre reported a 441% jump in cyber threat events, reaching 4.6 billion incidents in the fourth quarter of 2025 – the sharpest rise in at least three years. Distributed Denial‑of‑Service attacks exploded by 1,117% quarter‑on‑quarter, yet advisory coverage lagged, with only 1.34 million of 21.8 million alerts addressed. The surge is attributed to AI‑driven attack tools, weak patch management and low user awareness. With a fintech sector projected to handle $1.5 trillion in payments by 2030, the gap poses a systemic risk.
Zazu Taps Visa to Launch Online Business Accounts in Morocco
Zazu, a pan‑African digital bank for SMEs, has teamed up with Visa to launch a fully online business account in Morocco. The partnership lets Zazu issue Visa Business cards and tap into Visa’s global payments network, adding card issuance to...
GSH to Acquire Majority Stake in Uganda’s AKIBA to Deepen Tokenisation Push
Global Settlement Holdings (GSH) is acquiring a majority stake in Uganda’s AKIBA International, giving it licences to operate a broker‑dealer off‑ramp, a regulated tokenised‑asset exchange, and a mining platform. The move builds on GSH’s earlier partnership with Uganda’s Diacente Group...
Jessica Hope Built Wimbart Quietly, Then Let the Work Speak Loudly
Jessica Hope founded Wimbart in 2016 to fill a glaring PR gap for African tech firms, leveraging her journalism background to craft credible narratives for emerging‑market companies. The agency’s breakthrough came with the hard‑won Andela account in 2017, a client...
Croatia’s Media King Picks Nigeria to Test Its Cloud-Powered Public WiFi Model
Croatian smart‑WiFi firm Media King Group is launching its cloud‑managed public WiFi model in Nigeria, using a partnership with local entrepreneur Charles Okpaleke. The architecture moves traffic management, routing and bandwidth allocation to a central cloud, turning access points into...
Safaricom Migrates M-PESA App Users to My OneApp in Platform Consolidation Push
Safaricom has begun shifting users from its standalone M‑PESA app to the newly launched My OneApp, a unified platform that will eventually host more than 10 million customers. The migration, which started on April 3, consolidates the M‑PESA and mySafaricom apps into...
Tayo Oviosu Transitions to Group CEO as Paga Names Acting Nigeria Head
Tayo Oviosu is moving from day‑to‑day management of Paga Nigeria to the Group CEO role, while Opeyemi Oyinloye steps in as Acting CEO of the Nigerian unit pending CBN sign‑off. The shift enables Oviosu to focus on pan‑African market entry,...
AHL Venture Partners Spent a Decade Doing Equity in Africa. Then It Chose Debt.
AHL Venture Partners, a Nairobi‑based impact VC founded in 2007, has pivoted from a mixed equity‑debt strategy to a pure private‑credit focus after a 2020 strategic reset. The firm now backs scaling African businesses with senior secured loans, targeting high‑margin,...
SMC DAO Acquires Nigerian Crypto Startup Bread Africa in Six-Figure Deal
SMC DAO, a decentralized autonomous organization of crypto traders, has acquired Nigerian crypto startup Bread Africa in an undisclosed six‑figure cash deal. The purchase builds on a 2023 $250,000 sale of the founder’s earlier ventures and adds a frictionless crypto‑to‑fiat...
Telkom Kenya Is Now Kenya’s Smallest Mobile Operator After Two-Year Slide
Telkom Kenya has slipped to the fifth‑largest mobile operator in the country, with its subscriber base dropping from 1.34 million in December 2023 to about 744,500 by December 2025. The decline occurred despite overall market growth, as Safaricom and Airtel added millions of...
Kenya Adds 9 Million Mobile Money Users but the Easy Growth Is Over
Kenya added 9 million mobile‑money subscriptions in the year to December 2025, pushing total users to 51.36 million and driving penetration to 98%. The market’s growth is now limited by saturation, shifting competition from acquiring new users to increasing transaction frequency and wallet...
Why Africa’s Crypto Sector Is Entering Its ‘Pay the Milkman’ Era
African crypto startups such as Zerocard, CoinCircuit and Machankura are shifting the continent’s focus from cross‑border arbitrage to everyday low‑value payments, a phase the author calls the “pay the milkman” era. These firms are building card rails, merchant gateways and...
Kenswitch Taps Visa as Kenya’s National Payments Switch Race Heats Up
Kenyan payments infrastructure firm Kenswitch has signed a framework agreement with Visa to co‑develop Kenya’s national payments switch. The partnership merges Kenswitch’s domestic network linking over 30 financial institutions with Visa’s global technology, aiming to create new products for banks,...
Quick Fire 🔥 with Semiloore Akoni
Semiloore Akoni, a growth and product‑marketing leader in African fintech and digital commerce, argues that retention must be engineered before a user even signs up. In his most recent role he slashed the time to a user's first transaction, lifting...
Kenya’s AI Bill Creates a New Digital Sheriff with Sweeping Powers
In February 2026 Kenya introduced its first comprehensive Artificial Intelligence Bill, establishing an independent Office of the Artificial Intelligence Commissioner – dubbed the “digital sheriff” – with sweeping powers to inspect AI systems, access training data, and enforce compliance. The...
Flutterwave Secures Nigerian Banking Licence After Crossing $40 Billion in Lifetime Payments
Flutterwave has obtained a national micro‑finance banking licence in Nigeria after acquiring open‑banking startup Mono, allowing it to hold deposits and issue loans directly. The move follows $40 billion in lifetime payments processed through its platform and eliminates reliance on third‑party...
Lasbery Oludimu: Nigerian Lawyer Who Abandoned Oil and Gas for Digital Assets
Lasbery Oludimu, a former head of legal in Nigeria’s oil‑and‑gas sector, pivoted to digital assets and now serves as Vice President of Operations at Yellow Card, overseeing product and regulatory functions across more than 20 African markets. Her transition was...
Ghana’s National ID Cards Can Now Make Payments
Ghana’s National Identification Authority has embedded a digital wallet into the Ghana Card, allowing holders to withdraw cash from ATMs, pay in stores and online, and conduct international transactions in over 200 countries. Cardholders can activate the wallet through the...
CBN Begins Virtual Asset Anti-Money Laundering Supervision, Names Paystack, Flutterwave for Pilot
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has launched an anti‑money‑laundering, counter‑terrorism financing pilot targeting a select group of virtual asset service providers (VASPs). The pilot includes prominent fintechs such as Paystack, Flutterwave, KuCoin and others, and will require monthly AML/CFT...
CBN Gives Banks 21 Days to Grade Their Cyber Defences
Nigeria's central bank has issued a circular requiring banks, fintechs and other financial institutions to complete a new Cybersecurity Self‑Assessment Tool (CSAT) within 21 days for deposit banks and five weeks for other entities. The move follows a surge in...
Kenyan AI Startup Bets on Local Dialects as Proof Gap Remains
Map Maven GMB, a Nairobi‑based AI startup founded in 2025, has launched Kaya, a 70‑billion‑parameter LLaMA‑based large language model fine‑tuned on Kenyan dialects, alongside a voice agent called Sauti deployed at Natcon SACCO. The firm also offers Daraja Connect, a...
How a Startup Built Nigeria’s Digital Map in Nine Months
Nigerian startup Milsat Technologies built a home‑grown geospatial platform that digitally mapped the entire country in just nine months, a task that had stalled for over two decades. The mobile‑first app works offline, consumes minimal storage and delivers 99.9% location...
For Crypto Startups, Breaking Kenya’s Advertising Rules Could Cost $23,000 in Fines
Kenya’s National Treasury has released draft Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP) regulations that would tightly control crypto advertising and impose new fees on transactions and token issuances. The framework, open for comment until April 10, defines advertising broadly and threatens...
How PAPSS Is Fixing Africa’s Cross-Border Payments, Four Years On
The Pan‑African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) launched in January 2022 to slash the cost and delay of intra‑African payments by routing transactions in local currencies. Four years on it is live in 19 countries, linking over 160 commercial banks...
Nigerians Used 1.26 Million Terabytes of Data in February, Down From January
Nigerian internet traffic fell to 1.26 million terabytes in February, a drop of 125,475 TB from January’s 1.38 million. Despite the lower total, average daily usage rose to 45,000 TB, a 0.7% increase, reflecting intensified per‑user consumption. Telecom operators MTN and Airtel added over...
Savanna Fibre Sparks Price War in Kenya’s Stagnant Broadband Market
Kenyan ISP Savanna Fibre, launched in 2024, has introduced a 100 Mbps broadband plan priced at KES 2,000 (≈$15), undercutting Safaricom’s comparable offering by about 80%. The company also offers a 1 Gbps tier for $77, roughly half the price of Safaricom and...
The $600 Million Asset Manager that Tracked a Startup for Three Years Before Investing $1.2 Million
BFA Asset Management, a $600 million spin‑off of Angola’s second‑largest bank, launched the Kimmo Fund to back mid‑market companies. The fund’s first deployment was a $5 million anchor from the sovereign wealth fund FSDEA into agri‑food processor FoodCare, followed by a $1.2 million...
Niger State Replaces Tech Ministry with New Agency to Cut Bottlenecks
Niger State has dissolved its Ministry of Communications Technology and Digital Economy, creating the Niger State Information Technology and Digital Economy Agency (NSITDEA) to streamline digital initiatives. Former ministry commissioner Sulaiman Isah will lead the agency as director‑general, replacing the...
Hamilton Labs Receives Backing From AXIAN to Scale Dollar Stablecoin Infrastructure in Africa
Hamilton Labs, an Egyptian fintech infrastructure provider, has secured an undisclosed investment from AXIAN Investment, the venture arm of the pan‑African AXIAN Group, to accelerate its dollar‑pegged stablecoin, USDh, across the continent. The funding will fund the launch of USDh...
Africa Bitcoin Corporation Crosses 5 BTC Mark as Treasury Strategy Takes Shape
Africa Bitcoin Corporation (ABC), a South African Bitcoin‑focused SME lender, now holds 5.0246 BTC worth about $359,000, purchased at an average $100,574 per coin. The firm has set a 2030 ambition to accumulate 21,000 BTC, which would make it the...
Case Study: Regulation Is Becoming Nigeria’s Fintech Advantage
Nigeria’s fintech surge is now being credited to a deliberate regulatory foundation built by the Central Bank of Nigeria. The 2011 launch of the NIBSS Instant Payments platform cut interbank transfer times from days to seconds, generating real‑time data that...
Kuda Cuts Jobs as Restructuring Hits Core Units, Hundreds Feared Affected
Kuda, the Nigerian digital bank, announced a company‑wide restructuring on March 25, terminating hundreds of contracts across core units, including 19 of its 40 marketing staff. The layoffs are framed as a strategic shift rather than a response to financial...
Scale Partners with Mastercard to Simplify Card Issuance Across Five African Markets
South African fintech Scale has teamed up with Mastercard to launch a one‑integration card‑issuing platform across Senegal, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The partnership consolidates issuing banks, payment networks and BIN sponsors into a single onboarding flow, cutting time‑to‑market...
Nigerian Crypto Startup Quidax Cuts Jobs Amid Push Into B2B Products
Nigerian crypto exchange Quidax announced a company‑wide layoff on March 2, terminating employees in sales, design and operations and offering one month’s severance. The cuts follow a February salary payout and are framed as performance‑related, though the exact numbers remain...
Kenya’s I&M Bank Hits 98% Digital Usage as Growth Shifts to Revenue per User
I&M Group reported that 98% of its 727,000 customers now transact digitally, signaling that Kenya’s banking sector has largely completed the migration to online channels. The bank’s non‑interest income surged 31% to $111 million and assets under management jumped 223% to...
Who Controls Nigeria’s only Communications Satellite? Inside a Growing $11.4m Dispute with China
Nigeria’s sole communications satellite, NigComSat-1R, has been operated from China’s Kashgar ground station since 2018 after a lightning strike crippled Nigeria’s Abuja control facility. The Chinese contractor, CGWIC, claims Nigeria owes $11.44 million for technical support services that have gone unpaid...
EdNova Wants to Simplify How Liberian Graduates Access Their Transcripts
EdNova Group has launched TranscriptDove, a digital platform that streamlines the request, issuance, and verification of university transcripts in Liberia. The system replaces weeks‑long manual processes with an online workflow that logs every step, provides QR‑code verification, and maintains a...
Nigeria to Spend $6.1 Million on Consultants for National Fibre Project
Nigeria’s BRIDGE Project will spend $6.1 million on seven consulting firms and five individual consultants to kick‑start its $2 billion national fibre‑optic expansion. The contracts cover transaction advisory, legal compliance, technical planning and capacity building, with the two largest deals worth $1.5 million...
Littlefish Raises $9.5 Million to Scale Its Merchant Operating System Across Africa
South African fintech littlefish has closed a $9.5 million Series A round led by Partech to accelerate its merchant operating system across the continent. The platform bundles point‑of‑sale, CRM, payments and API services into a white‑label SaaS solution that banks can offer...
Nigerian Crypto Startup Roqqu Draws 30,000 Users to Its Futures Product
Nigerian crypto platform Roqqu attracted over 30,000 users to its futures derivatives during beta, prompting a full launch with a 0.1% trading fee. The startup is simultaneously reviving its crypto‑backed card offering and planning a prediction‑market product to broaden its...
Legend Internet Is Merging with Spectranet in a Broadband Consolidation Play
Legend Internet Plc, Nigeria’s first listed ISP, announced a merger with market‑leader Spectranet, targeting completion in Q2 2026 pending FCCPC and NCC approval. The deal combines Legend’s listed status and fibre footprint with Spectranet’s strong wireless brand, aiming to boost network...
The More Nigerians Stream, the Less Their Favourite Artists Earn From Spotify
Nigerian artists have earned over ₦143 billion ($105 million) from Spotify since 2023, reaching ₦60 billion in 2025. While total revenue rose sharply in 2024, growth stalled to just 3.45% year‑over‑year in 2025 as streams shifted toward the domestic market. Local consumption jumped...
M-PESA Ethiopia Expands Into Tax Collection with Amhara Region Deal
M-PESA Ethiopia has signed an MoU with the Amhara Regional State Revenue Bureau, enabling the region’s 450,000+ taxpayers to settle taxes through the mobile money platform. The partnership makes Amhara the first Ethiopian region to integrate mobile payments into its...
Moniepoint Acquires Restaurant Management Platform Orda in Full-Stack Merchant Infrastructure Bet
Moniepoint, the Visa‑backed Nigerian fintech unicorn, has bought Orda, a cloud‑based restaurant management platform, and will rebrand it as Moniebook for Restaurants. The acquisition adds Orda’s Nigerian merchant base and technology to Moniepoint’s Moniebook suite, aiming to embed payments directly...
Digital Nomads: Samuel Odeloye Left Lagos. He Never Stopped Building for It.
Samuel Odeloye, the founder of Lagos‑centric chatbot Lara.ng, left Nigeria for the United States but kept the platform’s eight‑year transit data alive. After Lara.ng stalled, he repurposed its routing intelligence into Motions Space Technologies, a last‑mile delivery startup. Motions blends...
“I Wasn’t Sure I Could Make Money From the Industry”: Day 1-1000 of Space in Africa
Temidayo Oniosun founded Space in Africa in 2018 as a niche news site covering the continent's nascent space sector. After a costly domain purchase and a failed subscription model, the firm pivoted to selling a $2,000 industry report, which unlocked...
Quick Fire 🔥 with Ibukun Adedeji
Ibukun Adedeji, a product leader at Moniepoint, shares insights from his fintech career across Africa. He emphasizes that reliability, not just features, builds user trust and that operations knowledge is essential for product success. Adedeji highlights the rapid user‑driven adaptations...
What Riding Bolt’s Electric Tricycle in Lagos Actually Feels Like
Bolt launched an electric three‑wheel tricycle service in Lagos in April 2025, distinguishing itself with a green, square‑shaped vehicle, enclosed cabin, and fan‑equipped interior. The service operates via the Bolt app in limited zones (Gbagada, Bariga) and requires drivers to...
Rwanda Wants to Be Where Africa-Focused Capital Gets Structured and Domiciled
Rwanda’s Kigali International Finance Centre (KIFC) has risen to become Africa’s third‑largest financial hub, trailing only Casablanca and Mauritius, after passing 22 laws and offering a 3% corporate tax, zero withholding tax and six‑hour company registration. The centre now hosts...
MultiChoice to Move Showmax Content to DStv Stream by April 1
MultiChoice will discontinue Showmax subscriptions on March 31, 2026, migrating all original content and library to its sister service DStv Stream. The move follows Canal+'s $3 billion acquisition and marks the first major integration since the September 2025 takeover. MultiChoice cites cost‑cutting,...
