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Happy Moonshot Week 🌙🚀
TechCabal was the biggest winner of the night at the Startup Awards!
We won the Best New Media Platform (Technology) Award, and our business intelligence arm TC Insights, won the Best Startup Intelligence Platform. The biggest—and most important win of the night, yes, most important😏—is the Best Startup Ecosystem Newsletter Award for TC Daily!
There’s more to celebrate at TechCabal: our website surpassed 2 million readers in Q3, and TC Daily hit 144,000 subscribers. Our Sunday newsletter, Next Wave, has over 46,000 subscribers, while Entering Tech now has 56,000 readers. 🚀 Read our Q3 impact letter to discover our reportorial impact so far.
If you’d like to congratulate us, find us at the Moonshot Conference starting tomorrow, October 11, and 12, 2023, where Africa’s most audacious thinkers and doers will celebrate innovation on the continent.
One day till the Moonshot Conference
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Wondering what’s in store for Nigeria’s digital future?
You can find out at the Moonshot Conference! Starting tomorrow, October 11, join some of Africa’s most audacious thinkers and builders as they network, collaborate, share insights and celebrate innovation on the continent. Join Bosun Tijani, Nigeria’s minister of communications, innovation and digital economy, Juliet Ehimuan, Oswald Osaretin Guobadia, and Tomiwa Aladekomo as they explore the future of Nigeria’s digital space.
Get your tickets now at moonshot.techcabal.com/.
Agritech
ThriveAgric to empower 125,000 smallholder farmers
Over the next year, Nigerian farmers will break into the banking scene.
Nigerian agritech startup, ThriveAgric, has partnered with a global nonprofit organisation, Heifer International, to empower 125,000 smallholder farmers.
How? Through the ThriveAgric Agriculture, Youth, and Technology (AYuTe) project, born from ThriveAgric’s win in the 2022 AYuTe Africa Challenge. The challenge was organised by Heifer International, and it will grant smallholder farmers financial inclusion access through the initiative.
In the coming year, ThriveAgric and its technical partners will facilitate the opening of bank accounts for the farmers across eight northern states in Nigeria, including Adamawa, Gombe, Yobe, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, and Bauchi, giving them access to debit cards and other financial services.
Furthermore, ThriveAgric will employ over 200 young individuals and provide 1,000 PoS devices to selected Nigerian youths to boost and provide income to their families.
A gender-focused approach: The AYuTe project is being launched in response to the fact that only 51% of Nigerian adults in 2020 had access to financial services, with women being disproportionately excluded. ThriveAgric will be approaching the project with a gender lens to ensure that at least 40% of the targeted beneficiaries are women.
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Telecoms
South Africa to amend SIM card registration law
South Africa’s SIM card registration law is undergoing a facelift.
The county is examining its regulation of the Interception of Communications and Provision of Communication-related Information Act known as the Rica Act.
Rica Act? The Rica Act was enacted in South Africa in 2005 to help prevent criminals from using cell phones for illegal activities. The law mandates every telecom agency to register its users.
While the Rica Act aims to stem criminal activities in South Africa, a loophole exists: it does not limit the amount of SIM cards an individual can activate. Several individuals have used this to perpetrate SIM card fraud, with criminals posing as legitimate cell phone account holders using fake identity documents.
The South African Banking Risk Information Centre (Sabric) estimates that a SIM-swap fraud costs a victim an average of R17,800 ($920) per incident. South Africa’s communications regulator is in talks with the department of justice to ensure that the amendment is passed into law in no time.
Zoom out: South Africa’s crackdown on sim card registration is not a first on the continent. Irregularly registered SIM cards have been used to perpetuate money laundering, cybercrime, and mobile money fraud in Africa. In 2022, Kenya’s communication authority turned off irregularly registered SIM cards in the country—the second time since 2018.
Cloud computing
Amazon launches web services development centre in Kenya
Amazon Web Services (AWS) has opened a new African development centre in Nairobi, Kenya.
This is the second AWS hub in Africa, with the first one situated in Cape Town, South Africa.
What’s the centre for? The AWS African Development Centre is a base for AWS Research and Development teams. The new centre will offer employment opportunities in fields like software development, cloud support, and software engineering.
Why use Kenya as a second hub? Uwem Ukpong, vice president of global services at AWS, stated that the centre will help Kenya tap into a pool of talented people. He also mentioned that AWS can support Kenya’s economic growth by working with local Kenyan talents, creating a win-win situation for all parties involved.
The big picture: Kenya is becoming a hub for these development centres. In April Last year, Google launched its first African product development centre in Nairobi, to build products and services for the African market. In March 2022, Microsoft officially opened its premier engineering hub, the African Development Centre in Nairobi.
Kenya already has Amazon CloudFront, the third in Africa, in addition to two in South African cities Johannesburg and Cape Town. Amazon CloudFront is a global content delivery network (CDN) that delivers web applications and Application Programming Interface (API) with low latency, high performance, security, and reliability.
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Fintech
Koree wins Ecobank Fintech Challenge
Koree, a Cameroonian fintech startup, has emerged winner of the Ecobank Fintech Challenge, edging out seven other finalists. The startup allows customers in cash-based economies to save spare cash on a card.
$50,000 equity-free funding: Koree walks home with $50,000 non-dilutive funding after emerging winner of the competition. Wolf Technologies, a DRC fintech, took second place, winning $10,000, and Flexpay, a Kenyan fintech, won $5,000 in third place.
According to Magalie Gauze, founder of Koree, the money won will be used to hire business development and engineering talents as well as to get an office space in Douala, Cameroon.
Ecobank Fintech Challenge—backed by Ecobank, one of Africa’s largest banks—identifies and partners with Fintechs that are ready to scale and provide them with support and access to opportunities in the 35 countries in which the bank is domiciled. Koree won against 1,490 pitches. Finalists for this year’s edition include Flexpay Technologies (Kenya), IPOXcap AI (South Africa), Kastelo (South Africa), Koree (Cameroon), Kori Tech (Senegal), SmartTeller Technologies (Nigeria), Rubyx (Belgium), and Wolf Technologies (DRC).
Zoom out: Koree becomes the first francophone country and woman-led country to win the Ecobank Fintech Challenge. The startup will be inducted into the Ecobank Fintech Fellowship alongside great Fintech alumni including Piggyvest, Touch and Pay, Moni, and Nala. Previous winners of the competition include Touch and Pay, Trove and Nokwary Technologies.
Read about the National Digital Literacy Framework
GIZ collaborates with NITDA in Nigeria’s efforts to access the $130 billion digital skills market in Sub-Saharan Africa. They support the National Digital Literacy Framework to empower 95% of Nigerians by 2030, fostering digital literacy and standards, capacity building, and strategic initiatives implementation. Read more.
Crypto Tracker
The World Wide Web3
Source:
|
Coin Name |
Current Value |
Day |
Month |
|---|---|---|---|
 Bitcoin |
$27,589 |
– 1.25% |
+ 6.87% |
| Ether |
$1,583 |
– 3.07% |
+ 0.10% |
 XRP |
$0.48 |
– 3.66% |
– 0.13% |
| MultiversX |
$22.93 |
– 6.52% |
– 2.97% |
* Data as of 06:10 AM WAT, October 10, 2023.
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Opportunities
- The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), through the Office for Nigeria Digital Innovation (ONDI), in collaboration with the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), are organising a one-week networking visit to Japan by selected Nigerian CleanTech Startups. Apply here.
- Applications are open for the Aurora Tech Award 2024. The Award is an annual global prize for women founders of tech startups. Winners of the first prize get $30,000, the second prize gets $20,000 and the third prize gets $10,000. Apply by December 1.
What else is happening in tech?
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