WhatsApp is a breeding ground for scams and fake news that has gone viral, and while the Facebook-owned chat platform says it tries its best to scour these from its service, many still seep through. “We work diligently to reduce any spam messages that come through our system. Creating a safe space for users to…
Alphabet’s Google will tell its cloud customers the carbon emissions of their cloud usage and open satellite imagery to them for the first time for environmental analysis, as part of a push to help companies track and cut carbon budgets. The new features were among announcements Google Cloud made Tuesday to kick off its annual customer conference,…
Eden Life, Africa’s first home services app for scheduling food, laundry and cleaning services, has completed a $1.4m Seed round, led by UK-based LocalGlobe, along with participation from Samurai Incubate, Future Africa, Village Global, Rising Tide Africa and Enza Capital. This brings Eden Life’s total investment to date to $2m following pre-seed backing from all of Andela’s original co-founders, and additional accelerator…
Microsoft Africa Development Centre (Microsoft ADC), the premier Engineering Center for Microsoft, has announced the commencement of its Game of Learners Clinic, a 3-month intensive programme for students in the university and beginner developers across West Africa. The programme is scheduled to commence in October 2021 and will allow participants to level up on .Net,…
Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos, professionals and experts in the technology sector have stressed the importance of technology in the drive towards the smart city project of the state. Specifically, Governor Sanwo-Olu expressed his administration’s commitment to greatly invest in technology, which according to him, is critical to the development of the state and nation…
After testing last month, Twitter is rolling out a feature to all web users that will let them remove followers without blocking them. This safety feature can be helpful if you want to avoid the repercussions of blocking someone — if a blocked user navigates to your profile after you block them, Twitter will tell them that…
A massive 2.4 terabytes per second (Tbps) Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack has been mitigated by Microsoft, the company says. The attack targeted an Azure customer in Europe and was 140% higher than the highest attack bandwidth volume Microsoft previously recorded in 2020. This attack occurred in early August of this year and is currently believed to have…
MTN Uganda is offering free shares to Kenyan investors in a bid to motivate them in buying stocks in the telecom firm. MTN Uganda yesterday opened an initial public offering (IPO) at $250-million yesterday. South Africa’s MTN Group is currently selling 4.47 billion shares in its Ugandan arm at a price of Ksh6.20 ($0.056) per…
Internet security provider Kaspersky has blocked more than 206,000 mobile malware attacks across the Middle East, Turkey, and Africa (META) region in just 6-months measured, between January to June 2021. Out of these attacks, a combined 30,000 originated from Nigeria (14,071), Kenya (10,697), and South Africa (5,499), respectively. Significantly, for the African countries monitored, Nigeria…
There is a persistent issue when it comes to the lack of education and how it contributes to the cycle of poverty, especially in underdeveloped areas of the world. According to UNESCO, more than 617-million children worldwide are lacking knowledge in basic subjects. The situation is alarming in Sub-Saharan Africa where out of 100 children,…
The successful completion of the Azura Edo 450 MW gas-fired power project in 2016 was hailed at the time as setting the blueprint for future independent power projects in Nigeria. The $900-million plant, which gathered 20 international banks and equity financing partners from more than nine countries, took over six years of project development and…
MyBroadband Insights has released its Q3 Mobile Network Quality Report, which shows the network quality of several of South Africa’s top telecoms gauged by a number of factors, including download and upload speeds, and latency. The report is based on results recorded between 1 July 2021 and 30 September 2021. The download speed (60%), upload…
Sixteen seed and Series A level African tech startups have been named finalists for the 2021 VC4A Venture Showcase, which will see them pitching to potential funders at the Africa Early Stage Investor Summit next month. Since 2017, the VC4A Venture Showcase has helped startup founders showcase their businesses to investors during the Africa Early…
Global biopharmaceutical company AstraZeneca and the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) have announced a new partnership to establish connections between African healthcare innovators and AstraZeneca’s A.Catalyst Network of more than 20 global health innovation hubs. The joint venture seeks to drive the development of engineering solutions that have the potential to address local challenges with…
Tunisian last mile delivery startup Lamma has secured an undisclosed investment from Orange Ventures to fuel its international expansion. Founded last year by Hamza Guesmi and Koussi Aymen, Lamma recently launched its q-commerce – “quick commerce” – app, offering delivery services in under 45 minutes. The startup began life as a carpooling service before it pivoted into…
African unicorns have made big news in recent months, with four startups having recently reached a $1 billion valuation or more this year alone, taking the total up to seven. Two of the new entrants are in fintech, one in edtech, and one in general technology. These and other technology-enabled sectors are where emerging market investors are…
Kenyan logistics startup Sendy has completed a strategic equity investment in Ivory Coast-based counterpart Kamtar to boost the former’s expansion plans in West Africa. Launched in 2015, Sendy offers a marketplace for last-mile package delivery and logistics services, allowing customers to send packages and documents using a mobile application that connects them to motorcycle riders, and drivers…
Bitcoin continues to one-up its previous days best and moves past $57,000 (roughly Rs. 42 lakhs) for the first time since May. At the time of writing, the world’s most popular cryptocurrency is trading at roughly $57,490 (roughly Rs. 43.3 lakhs) on Binance and CoinMarketCap, while on Indian exchange Coinswitch Kuber, BTC is already valued…
Africa-focused venture capital firm TLcom Capital will host the third edition of the Africa Tech Female Founder Summit virtually tomorrow (Wednesday, October 13). Themed “Board and C-Suite Matters – Counsel, Coach and Collaborate”, the third Female Founder Summit will deliver expert insights on how to build and leverage a senior team and board to drive…
• AfCFTA, the largest global free trade area by countries participating, could transform the continent’s economic prospects. • It aims to be a model of cross-border cooperation in an era of growing isolationism. • The agreement must overcome implementation challenges to realize its many benefits. The arrival of COVID-19 in 2020 has rapidly reshaped countries,…
From my perspective, GitOps has completely changed how to achieve flawless Continuous Delivery. The infrastructure as code (IaC) approach of the GitOps methodology has revolutionised the software delivery process. Through the utilisation of version control systems, particularly Git, GitOps revolutionises the way teams deploy and manage applications and infrastructure. Declarative infrastructure management principles and the…
Zoho Corporation has been named the lead sponsors of Africa Tech Alliance Forum 2021 (#AfriTECH2021), by the organisers. The hybride event (both online and physical) will take place on Wednesday, October 13, 2021 at Oriental Hotel, Lekki Lagos by 10:00am with Olatomiwa Williams, Country Manager of Microsoft Nigeria presenting the keynote address. Andrew Bourne, Regional Manager (Africa), Zoho Corporation will lead a…
After accusations of ignoring mental health impact on teens using Instagram, Facebook will roll out new measures to make amends. These measures include warnings for consuming too much harmful content, parental control on content, and a “take a break” prompt. Speaking on CNN’s State of Union show last night, Nick Clegg, Facebook’s VP of global affairs, said the nudge…
The African tech startup space has continued to be dominated by financial technology companies. These fintech companies have gained more traction, attracted more funding and generally have positioned themselves as the beacons of the African tech space. ? All the top 6 funding raised on the continent so far in 2021 have been raised by…
WhatsApp was working on adding lots of new features recently. The most recent improvement the popular messaging app is going to be getting, according to an APK code teardown done by XDA-Developers, is dubbed “Community”. This new feature that WhatsApp may be working on will reportedly coexist with the existing feature Groups. WhatsApp Community: a feature…
Payday, a Pan-African financial technology company has announced a $1m pre-seed fund raise. According to the startup, the raise will help it to build an online payments system that is equivalent to Paypal. According to the announcement, the raise was supported by several investors including LofyInc, Microtraction, Magic Fund, Ventures Platform, Voltron Capital, CcHub Syndicate, Helicarrier…
Africa’s biggest digital skills initiative, SAP Africa Code Week (ACW), officially launched yesterday with a strong focus on virtual learning as the continent struggles to recover after COVID-19 disruption. The launch coincided with World Teacher’s Day, which focuses this year on “teachers at the heart of education recovery”. Speaking at a virtual event to mark both World Teacher’s…
Kenya is all about the news. No, literally, “Habari”, a common greeting in Swahili, means “Any news?” in English. Everyone has their favourite publication. And every publication has a different story. Data-driven digital media is taking the place of print in Kenya. As the world becomes busier and more digital, the consumption of media has…
Recently, WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook faced a long six-hour outage. Initially, many people blamed it on their internet service provider but soon the realization that it is not the faulty internet connection but the fact that these social media platforms were actually not functioning as a shock to many. Even though many users of these…
From the energy that goes into making smartphones to the fact that even emails create carbon emissions, the world’s internet addiction comes with costs to the climate. But could digital technology be part of the solution to climate change, as well as the problem? Ahead of next month’s COP26 climate talks, AFP looks at five…