Good morning.

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1. Safaricom may soon take M-Pesa to other African markets such as Nigeria and Angola. This would mean exploring growth opportunities outside Kenya where its market dominance is currently under scrutiny from regulators (allegations of abuse of power). Link

+ If this is set to happen, Vodafone’s commitment to expand to other African markets through new Safaricom stakeholder, Vodacom, puts Safaricom in a convenient position, considering Vodacom’s wider African market reach.

2. According to this report, the Egyptian government is ramping up its monitoring of citizens. It wants Uber to share its internal tool (Uber refused) for tracking its customers and drivers. It asked the same of another player in the ride-sharing space, Careem, a while back (same response) in exchange for preferential treatment, whatever that means. This is actually one of the more recent attempts by the government at increasing surveillance to gain civil control (there’s a backstory you might want to get into). The report also says that a bill will soon go before parliament to mandate ride-sharing services to share their data with relevant government bodies.

3. Addis Ababa has launched Africa’s first smart parking system. And it has improved the number of cars per parking area by a factor of 10. It’s different from the more traditional parking system in the sense that it optimizes vertical space, as opposed to horizontal space, through a lift system that picks and drops cars on steel beds in a 50-storey building. Link

+ Most of the smart city initiatives seem to be rolling out of East Africa at the moment, with Rwanda leading the line. Good thing we have pencils now to outline the plan.

4. Paga is partnering with MFS Africa to connect the Nigerian remittance market to the rest of the world. Link


Bonus

+ Andela’s Director of Training, Nadayar Enegesi, on his Andela journey. Link

 

+ Kenyan innovators are selling out to foreign money too early. Link

+ Disrupt Africa collected and analyzed data on active fintech startups across 20 African countries for over 2 years. Link

+ The ten worst countries in the world to be a child are all in Africa. Welp. Link

+ African startups are betting on the continent’s untapped trove of consumer data. Link


Upcoming events

Lagos: CBN Cashless Card Expo Day 1, June 13th. Link

Lagos: CBN Cashless Card Expo Day 2, June 14th. Link

Lagos: CBN Cashless Card Expo Day 3, June 15th. Link

Lagos: The Boardroom, June 15th. Link

Lagos: Hackgrowth 2.0, June 17th. Link


Thank you for reading.

Have a great day.

Francis Bulus Author

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