Reports out of South Africa say MTN is considering whether it should hold onto its operations in 23 countries or break up over regulatory burdens such as those it is dealing with in Nigeria. It may also be considering a merger with Telkom, one of South Africa’s two smallest telcos. Remember MTN’s latest spat with Nigerian regulators over alleged unpaid back taxes sent its stock spiraling down to multi-year lows. It’s stock only picked up after the CBN announced it was negotiating with MTN.
BBC Newsroom Africa Editor, Will Ross, reports that the Government of Benin has “scrapped” the recently introduced internet tax. Apparently, it had led to an increase in social media costs and people had started to protest. I hope Uganda and Zambia are learning.
Omidyar Network Entrepreneur-In-Residence, David Madden, had a conversation with Piggybank co-founder and COO, Odunayo Eweniyi, about her journey on his Revolution of Necessity podcast. Check it out here.
Digest Africa made a list of the biggest funding raises (>$5 million) by African startups so far in 2018. Naspers’ $94 million investment in South African specialized car buying service, Webuycars, tops the list.
Changing places: Trivago Android dev and Former Andela Senior Technical Lead, Segun Famisa, is joining the Google Developer Expert (GDE) program as an Android GDE.
Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, Co-founder of Andela and Flutterwave, will be the guest speaker at CcHub’s Breakfast Chat Series for this month. The event will happen on September 27 by 9AM at the CcHub building in Yaba, Lagos. Request an invite here.
