| Get rewarded for saving!. Join the Backup Cash 21 Day Savings Challenge to win amazing cash prizes of N250,000 and more. For details on how to join, follow @mybackupcash on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter (T & C’s Apply). Backup Cash is backed by SFS Capital and powered by Paystack.
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| Twiga Foods has raised $30 million Series B investment from a group of investors. The round was a combination of debt funding ($6.25 million) and equity funding ($23.75 million) and it was led by Goldman Sachs, the US bank. TechCabal’s Olumuyiwa Olowogboyega provides a better explanation of what Twiga is and what this funding means. |
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| For many, traffic is the biggest challenge when living in Lagos. Touted as a megacity with millions of residents, gridlocks shouldn’t be odd. Yet the city’s transport and other infrastructure are so underdeveloped that a light rainfall could cause severe traffic lasting hours; a feat that many in the city’s working class have to endure. In this article, WeeTracker’s Nzekwe Henry says that employers in Lagos should consider remote work to help their workers avoid traffic. |
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| Airtel Africa, one of the continent’s biggest telcos, has posted $1.64 billion in revenue for the first half of 2019. The company grew its data revenue by 37.8 percent and recorded a 46.5% growth for its mobile money business. The company, which is present in 14 African countries, now has 100 million subscribers on the continent. Airtel Africa completed a $750 million initial public offering (IPO) with a market capitalization of $3.9 billion. Going forward, the telco says it is prioritizing 4G expansion in its 14 markets. |
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| The South African government wants to migrate its services to the cloud. The country’s State Information Technology Agency (SITA) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Microsoft that will allow the government to adopt Azure, Microsoft’s cloud platform. SITA said the move will help to “modernize and digitally transform the government” while improving citizen experiences. However, the news is another win for Microsoft. The software giant recently won the $10 billion JEDI contract from the US Department of Defense. The contract means Microsoft will develop the Pentagon’s cloud architecture and sensitive artificial intelligence systems over the next ten years. |
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| Mahmoud Nouh, the Chief Operating Officer (COO) and co-founder of Swvl, has resigned from the company, Menabytes reported. He has also quit the Swvl board. He reportedly resigned to pursue “personal endeavours”. Swvl is an Egyptian bus hailing company. In June, the company secured $42 million funding and has expanded to Kenya and Pakistan. |
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The next edition of the TechCabal Townhall is here! TC Townhall: Edtech & the Future of Work will hold on November 29, 2019, we are bringing together regulators, government agencies, investors, entrepreneurs, NGOs, social enterprises and schools to set a strong agenda about how to use technology to leapfrog Africa’s education challenges and prepare our citizens for future jobs. If you would like to attend the townhall, please fill this form and we’ll keep you updated with the agenda.
We are also putting together a map of the African edtech industry. If you have an edtech startup or you are a technology company doing significant work in the industry we would like to hear from you. Please fill this form. |
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| Developers and designers frequently work together to create apps and platforms that people use daily. While their goal is make improvements to user experiences (UX) and user interface (UI), they have different conclusions about what these should be. In this article, TechCabal’s Wole Olayinka writes about the frenemy situation between these two software professionals. |
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| South Africa’s Pineapple has won $1.5 million at the Venture Clash Challenge in the US. Pineapple is a peer-to-peer insurance that removes the conflict of interest that hinders many people from getting their premiums. The company was named the overall winner at Venture Clash, a $5 million competition for early stage startups. This TechCabal article provides deeper insights into how Pineapple’s innovation works. |
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| Join key regulators at the Nigeria Fintech Week (today and on 30th October 2019) including the DG, Central Bank of Nigeria, Mrs Aishah Ahmad; DG, Securities & Exchange Commission, Ms Mary Uduk; Immediate Past Governor, Central Bank of Sierre Leone, Dr Patrick Conteh, CEO, Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation NDIC, Alhaji Umaru Ibrahim, among others. Learn more here. Secure your seat by registering on the website or send your inquiries to enquiries@nigeriafintechweek.org. |
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| The #JollofRoad team is currently in its 6th country and on day 37 of the journey. So far they’ve witnessed the state of international highways between West African countries, the challenges with customs, tech adoption in different countries and how worthless some African currencies are. Keep up with the team and their experiences. Visit jollofroad.com every day to catch up on all the stories from the road! |
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| Three African web hosting platforms have suffered major network attacks. Afrihost, Axxess, and Webafrica each faced a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on Sunday that affected some of their services till Monday, MyBroadBand reported. Although it is not clear who or what caused the attacks, this is the latest cyber attack South Africa has suffered in the last two weeks alone. Last week, a number of banks suffered similar attacks that disrupted their services. |
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| Early-stage fintech accelerator DFS Lab and The Subtext are organising a 5-part course about the opportunities in African Fintech. Learn more about the course and sign up here. |
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| Afrilabs has raised €2 million from the French Development Agency (AFD) to design a three-year capacity building programme for its tech hub community. Afrilabs is a network of over 170 African tech hubs and allows them to cooperate, network and share ideas among themselves. The new capacity building programme will develop a host of features including: certified curriculum on hub management in partnership with a major African academic institution, physical workshops across 15 cities each year, useful toolkits for hubs, webinars, and a hub residential program, where top projects will be selected for funding.
As part of the programme, Afrilabs has partnered with the African Business Angel Network (ABAN) to launch Catalyst. Catalyst is a startup financing initiative for angel investment and will also provide mentorship to these investors. |
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| Seedstars World, the startup competition, has partnered with the African Development Bank (AfDB) to launch “Job Creation Track”. The partnership will support youth-led startups and job creation in Africa. Seedstars will also include a new criterion – “the potential for job creation” – when selecting winners of local competitions in Africa. The main goal is to find and reward the startups with the greatest potential to create jobs, support the youth and impact their local ecosystems. |
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That’s it for today,
See you tomorrow.
– Abubakar
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