TC Daily

TechCabal Daily, 739 – The UK Government is Investing US$2.2m in the Development of Solar Plants in Rural Kenya

Akindare Okunola 19th March 2019

19 – 03 – 2019

Welcome to today’s edition of TC Daily, your favourite roundup of technology around Africa. If you haven’t, please take a moment to subscribe so you have this delivered directly to your mailbox.

Kwese Free TV has become the first free-to-air terrestrial broadcaster in South Africa to be licensed since e.tv received its terrestrial television licence 21 years ago. Of the five entities vying for the license, Independent Communications Authority of South Africa named Kwese Free TV as the successful applicant at a press conference in Pretoria yesterday. Techcentral has more.

STOA Infra and Energy announced it has acquired a strategic equity interest in Metro Fibre Networx in South Africa. The company purchased a 23.08% stake in Metro Fibre from a portion of its capital base earmarked for investments in telecommunications in developing countries.

Support Legal, a legal services platform for entrepreneurs and emerging companies, has made its free legal knowhow platform ‘ScaleUp’ available in Arabic. The platform supports SMEs and Individuals in the Middle East and Africa. (TIL: Arabic is the fourth most-used language online, after English, Chinese and Spanish)

The UK Government, through InfraCo Africa, a Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG) company, is investing Ksh. 220 million (~US$2.2m) in the development of two solar plants in rural Kenya. At an event in London, the UK’s Minister for Africa, Harriett Baldwin, announced the commitment by InfraCo Africa to develop two solar plants in Samburu and Transmara, each with a capacity of 10 MWAC, to give more people access to affordable, clean energy.

The Africa Women Innovation and Entrepreneurship Forum (AWIEF) has opened a call for nominations for the 2019 AWIEF Awards. Nominations for the awards are open across eight categories that include the Tech Entrepreneur Award, Young Entrepreneur Awards, and the Social Entrepreneur Award. The deadline for nominations is 15 May. This year’s awards will take place during the annual Africa Women Innovation and Entrepreneurship conference and exhibition which will be held on 29 and 30 October in Cape Town.

Starfleet Accelerator by æternity Ventures has selected Kenyan agri-finance startup CapAgri as one of the 14 teams from across the world to participate in its program that provides funding and support to blockchain startups. The company announced that applications from Africa doubled in this second edition of its program.

Nigerian software engineer, Christian Nwamba has been appointed as a Senior Cloud Developer Advocate at Microsoft. Cloud Developer Advocates are meant to engage their developer communities and encourage the use of Microsoft’s Azure.

Clara Wanjiku Odero, who used to be Head of Implementation at Flutterwave announced yesterday on Twitter that she joined UK-based Rapyd as Director of Network Operations, Africa. Rapyd, a “fintech as a service startup”, raised $40 million about a month ago in a series B funding round led by Stripe and General Catalyst, and is expanding into Africa.

If you missed the AUDACITY exhibition last weekend, it continues this weekend, March 23 and 24. You don’t want to miss a multi-sensory experience that comprises audio and visual components of the Tech Women Lagos portrait series.

We’ve had a lot of cool people over and we’ve been sharing sneak peeks on social- #TechWomenLagos in case you’ve somehow missed it. Tech Women Lagos profiles 50 women in Lagos’ technology ecosystem from different backgrounds and at different stages of their tech careers and we are showing the next generation of girls and women that careers in tech are possible and there is space for them in the industry.

Apart from the exhibition, there’s a line-up of activities you definitely want to be part of (although they are open to only women).

AUDACITY Exhibition
Africa Fintech Foundry (AFF), 1216 Ibiyinka Olorunbe, Victoria Island, Lagos
March 23-24, 2019
Register to attend

Access Bank/W Community Workshop
Africa Fintech Foundry (AFF), 1216 Ibiyinka Olorunbe, Victoria Island, Lagos
(Registration link coming soon)

Andela x Tech Women Lagos Workshop
Andela Epic Towers, 235 Ikorodu Road, Lagos
Tuesday, March 19, 2019.
Register to attend

Paystack x Tech Women Lagos Workshop
Paystack Offices, 3a Ladoke Akintola Rd, Ikeja GRA, Ikeja
Thursday, March 21, 2019
Register to attend

Mines.io x Tech Women Lagos Workshop
Africa Fintech Foundry, 1216 Ibiyinka Olorunbe, Victoria Island, Lagos
Friday, March 23, 2019
Register to attend

Flutterwave x Tech Women Lagos Workshop
Flutterwave Office, 8 Providence Street, Lekki Phase 1, Lagos
Wednesday, March 20, 2019
Register to attend

If you’ll be at the exhibition this weekend, you should read this.

From TechCabal

+ Ten Women with Tech Careers That Don’t Involve Coding

+ If We All End Up Sounding Like Americans, You Can Probably Blame Voice Assistants

That’s it.
See you tomorrow!
– Wole

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