TechCabal Daily – It’s coming to Africa

Constant power supply would be seen as a miracle in Nigeria, but the Nigerian government is looking to change that with its new project.

What’s this about?

Nigerians living in areas that are under-served or cut off from the national grid are being incentivized to own solar panels with weekly payments from as little as ₦1,500 ($3) per week to ₦4,000 per month — depending on the plan — for 3 years.

Who’s pulling this off?

The Rural Electrification Agency in partnership with the Central bank which would facilitate soft loans for persons who might struggle to pay.

Due to the scale of the project, the government expects that 250,000 jobs will be created from it.

Looking forward: The cost of living and doing business is higher in Nigeria due to power shortages and other factors. Also, with an electrification rate of 45% and occasional electric grid failures, solar panels might be a better option, after all, there’s enough sunshine to go around.

Question on people’s mind: How do I get my own?

Meanwhile in Kenya, the opposite is happening, as the Kenyan government wants more people to use its national grid. In recent times, many users including industrial customers who consume a lot of power have switched from the national grid to solar energy.

This change has led to a decline in the finances of Kenya Power, the company which transmits, distributes and retails electricity to customers throughout Kenya. To put things in context, industrial customers contribute 54.8 % of Kenya power’s revenue.

There’s a draft energy regulation in the works which would make it difficult and more expensive to manufacture, import, install or maintain solar components and systems in Kenya. The aim of this is to prompt consumers to use the national grid, which has a reputation for being expensive and unreliable.

Dig Deeper: Read our Energy report on The Future of Energy in Sub-Saharan Africa

Next week: we’ll look at how the digital lending sector, without the support of the CBN is also organising the rails to help make lending better and more secure.

“Send or receive money instantly, in any currency, free of charge, only with Barter By Flutterwave. Start here“

Chinese tech giant Huawei will launch Huawei Pay in South Africa later this week. It’s the first time Huawei Pay will be functional in Africa.

How it’d work: In partnership with SA based mobile company Zapper, Huawei users will be able to install an app and add their bank cards. This means that when paying in stores, they simply scan the Zapper QR payment code on the bill at checkout.

Who’s been around for longer?

Samsung. Samsung Pay, from Huawei’s longtime rival Samsung, has been available in South Africa for the past two years and supports tap to pay. Huawei doesn’t support tap-to-pay yet. Samsung Pay also surpassed 3 million transactions earlier this year in South Africa.

For Huawei, a successful rollout could mean it’s here to stay. Huawei is able to leverage its position as the third-largest smartphone seller in Africa, after Transsion and Samsung.

Huawei has other concerns though, as earlier this month, it sold its Honor brand due to the unavailability of technical parts needed. And the UK government barred the use of Huawei equipment in Uk’s 5G networks, tagging Huawei as a high-risk vendor.

Zoom out: Of the three largest smartphone makers in the world, Apple is the only one yet to launch its mobile payment system in Africa.

There’s some recent activity around better internet connectivity in Africa. First, Liquid Telecom partnered with Google’s Project Taara — a better way to increase access to the internet — to expand and enhance affordable, high-speed Internet to communities across its networks in Sub-Saharan Africa.

These positive moves complement other efforts made to bolster internet connectivity in Africa like Facebook’s undersea cable project to connect 23 African countries, in collaboration with MTN, Orange, Vodafone and China

The bottom line: In a new report released by Google and the International Finance Corporation (IFC), Africa’s internet economy is estimated to have the potential to contribute $180 billion to Africa’s economy and a projected $712 billion by 2050.

These internet connectivity projects only take Africa a step closer towards making these projections a reality.

• Africa’s streaming wars have begun
• The Secure #NairaLife Of An Engineer In Oil And Gas/li>
• Inside Moderna: The Covid Vaccine Front-Runner With No Track Record and an Unsparing CEO