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MTN is considering selling half of its 19% stake in Jumia at some point this year. This could happen anytime after the mandatory six-month lock-in following Jumia’s IPO. News of this sale has been around since last year before Jumia went public. Reports say MTN wants to sell its stake to raise funds to pay off its debt primarily in Nigeria and also for expansion. Listing Jumia, which has now happened, was one of the options MTN was reported to have considered in 2018 alongside minor investor, Rocket Internet, to sell its stake. So it appears MTN and other investors were very influential in getting Jumia to go public. MTN’s shares have gained almost 7 percent since the Jumia IPO.

Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams, South Africa’s Communications minister, says the government has now paid the telco regulator, ICASA, the first installment of its budgetary allocation. We previously reported that ICASA wanted to take South Africa’s Department of Communications to court for refusing to release its funds. Both organizations appear to be in a policy tussle over the allocation of additional spectrum especially for 5G deployment. A policy direction allowing the allocation of new spectrum was expected on April 30 but Ndabeni-Abrahams has put it on hold until after the country’s elections.

Losing $2m in Nigeria’s music industry by Jason Njoku

Equity Bank and Safaricom have signed an agreement that will allow both organizations build fintech products together. While no projects have been named yet, the focus seems to be on providing solutions to the unbanked. Equity Bank and Safaricom have been rivals for some time with the former trying to break MPesa’s monopoly.

Cafe One, a co-working space by Nigeria’s Sterling Bank which also doubles as a Café and will provide banking services is celebrating its first anniversary.  The first of many outlets to be opened across the country is located at Lennox Mall, Lekki Phase 1, Lagos. The space was set up to support Nigeria’s growing community of entrepreneurs and millennials.

Briter Bridges has put together a map of the Cameroon tech ecosystem in partnership with ActivSpaces. Check it out here.

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Kenya has received $173 million from Huawei to build a data center at the Konza Technology City. Last year it also secured a $94 million loan from South Korea to build the the Kenya Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) which is part of the Konza Technology City project.

South Africa’s Competition Commission recently found that data costs in the country were so high that they were hindering economic growth. According to the report, the high data costs from two of the continent’s largest telcos affect the poor the most. Read the rest of the story in this article by Lynsey Chutel.

This tropical getaway has Airbnb’s top occupied listings in Africa

Here’s the registration link for the Digital Entrepreneurship workshop with Odun Eweniyi, PiggyVest’s COO on May 8.

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