Abubakar Idris

French media company Canal+ Group has completed the acquisition of ROK Studios, a Nollywood studio company that has produced over 550 movies and TV series as it attempts to gain a stronger foothold in French-speaking African countries.

On Thursday, July 11, 2019, TechCabal hosted its second townhall of 2019 to discuss the importance of renewable energy to Africa for improving access to electricity. The event also highlighted the challenges that exist in the renewable energy market and how they should be addressed.

Nigeria-based OPay has closed a new $50 million funding round, the largest for any Nigerian tech startup so far in 2019. The company will use the new funding to deepen its roots in the Nigerian market for all its digital businesses including ORide and OFood. It also has plans to expand to other African markets.

On July 2, Kwese Play users started getting errors that the service has been shut down. The company has since denied the shut down rumours, but the service has still not being restored due to issues with its platform provider Roku. This issue and the subsequent news about financial challenges at Kwese have fueled speculations about the future of the company’s services.

Lagos is the biggest market for bike hailing in Nigeria. With its over 20 million residents (reportedly), Lagos is the first market of choice for all bike hailing startups in Nigeria. Yet, Lagos is one Nigerian state that has imposed tight controls over motorcycle transportation.

Nigerian medical startup 54gene has secured a $4.5 million seed funding barely 7 months after it launched. The sum was raised from investors some of which include YCombinator, Fifty Years, Better Ventures, KdT Ventures, Hack VC and Techammer.