All about Business.
Apple lost its crown as the world’s most valuable public company to Microsoft on Friday, as the iPhone maker’s shares fell about 2 percent. Apple took a $6 billion hit to its sales during the fiscal fourth quarter due to persistent global supply chain problems, leading to a miss on Wall Street expectations. Top boss Tim…
Facebook’s rebranding as Meta has been followed up with the acquisition of Within, the company behind VR workout service Supernatural. As per The Verge, Meta recently revealed that the studio behind Supernatural will be joining the company, adding to the roster of studios owned by what used to be known as Facebook’s Oculus division. The company said that Within will continue…
Airtel Africa, a leading provider of telecommunications and mobile money services, with a presence in 14 countries across Africa, has launched a comprehensive sustainability strategy which sets out its detailed plans to improve the lives of millions of people across Africa through digital and financial inclusion and access to education. The strategy also includes specific goals around environmental…
Zipline, the global leader in instant logistics, has celebrated five years in flight since its launch in Rwanda in 2016. The company, which on average makes a delivery every four minutes, recently surpassed 200,000 commercial deliveries, the most of any unnamed aircraft system (UAS) company to date. This marks a significant acceleration over the last…
Facebook on Thursday announced it was changing the parent company’s name to “Meta.” Following the move, many people saw the rebranding exercise as an excuse to have a go at the social media giant. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was among them. He suggested that the new name of the company was confusing and it was…
A new strategic partnership has been announced in Africa’s telecom space as South African Liquid Intelligent Technologies (Liquid) and Orange, a French telecom and one of the largest telecom companies in Africa, sign a deal to leverage each other’s existing networks in Africa, allowing them even greater access and opportunity to build their businesses throughout…
The Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) announced that Flutterwave, a global payments technology company, has launched two new remittance corridors between Europe and Africa on the Stellar network. Working with TEMPO, Flutterwave is leveraging the Stellar network and Stellar USDC to simplify remittances in Africa. Opening these new corridors will greatly benefit businesses focused on building more efficient, cost-effective remittance services, contributing to a stronger, more inclusive…
A failed entrepreneur turned pretty successful investor, Brian Odhiambo is West Africa director and part of the leadership team at Novastar Ventures, which manages more than US$200 million across two venture funds, with 22 companies in its portfolio. Odhiambo grew up in Nairobi, and after a childhood spent travelling between boarding school in Kenya and…
Estonian on-demand transport firm Bolt is set to roll out electric taxi options in South Africa four months after introducing e-bike food delivery services in the country. Bolt’s plan follows the introduction of a ‘green category’ – which lets riders hail an electric or a hybrid vehicle. This comes as the company expands its services to environmentally…
A recent survey by Outsized found that many business leaders are open to this idea of a ‘blended workforce’ to help them become more agile and efficient. They expect that 15-30% of their future staff will be short-term or project-specific hired hands rather than full-time employees. That backs up research by McKinsey in September 2020…
In the technology industry, the concept of metaverse — a range of virtual experiences — is becoming a buzzword. It generally refers to shared virtual environments that people can access via the internet. Most technology companies, including Facebook, have invested heavily in it. The social media giant says it is planning to invest up to…
Africa’s leading e-commerce platform, Jumia, has published its first Africa e-commerce report, Jumia Africa e-Commerce Index 2021 with a Nigerian section, which leveraged data from the company’s platform to illustrate the importance of shopping online in a pandemic context. The shift to everyday products during COVID-19, is part of a broader economic transformation led by the continent’s…
Black Friday is the retail holiday in many countries across the globe. The phenomenon was popularised in the US as a means for retailers to sell enormous quantities of stock at lower prices, and it has proven to be a successful event year after year. In South Africa, the Black Friday phenomenon began fairly recently…
The co-investment fund Catalytic Africa, established in 2019 by the African Business Angels Network (ABAN) and AfriLabs, has concluded a successful pilot and will now launch full operations. The partnership between AfriLabs, a pan-African network of technology and innovation centres, and ABAN aims to increase the pool of capital available to promising African growth-stage entrepreneurs, support the startup…
Tesla’s market valuation hit and then surpassed the $1 trillion mark Monday, a milestone reached by the company 11 years after it became a publicly traded company. It also puts Tesla in select company with Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google, all of which have market caps above $1 trillion. Tesla met the $1 trillion market…
Mastercard has appointed Gabriel Swanepoel as the new Country Manager for Mastercard in South Africa. This serves as a promotion from his current role as the VP of Business Integration for Mastercard, Southern Africa. As country manager, Swanepoel is responsible for further driving the company’s strategic vision, innovation and growth agenda, and building on its…
After two years of operation, DHL Africa is shutting down its pan-African online retail platform, e-Shop, at the end of the month. “We are no longer accepting orders and this service will be closed effective October 30th, 2021. All orders in process will be shipped or refunded. Sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused,” a…
APO Group, a leading Pan-African communications consultancy has announced a multi-year strategic partnership with the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), providing the public broadcaster with sports content from the whole of Africa and bringing sporting stories from the rest of the continent to South African audiences – much of it for the first time. SABC…
Nigeria on Monday became the first African nation to launch a digital currency – the eNaira – a move its leaders said will expand access to banking, enable more remittances and even grow the economy by billions of dollars. Africa’s most populous nation joins the Bahamas, the first to launch a general purpose central bank…
There are a number of reasons a business needs investments, these investments could be in the pre-seed, Series A or B and regardless of whatever stage the business is operating, the major reason for seeking investor’s funding is usually for expansion purposes. This expansion could be in the line of products or the need to serve more…
According to sources, PayPal has made an offer to buy digital pinboard site Pinterest for $45 billion. It would be the largest social media acquisition ever, topping Microsoft’s $26.2 billion acquisition of LinkedIn in 2016. According to one of the sources, PayPal has offered $70 per share, largely in stock, for Pinterest. According to the…
The African Development Bank has signed a grant agreement for $500,000 with Y’ello Digital Financial Services (YDFS), a fintech subsidiary of MTN Nigeria, to be used for a study into economic, religious, and social factors hampering access to finance for women in northern Nigeria. According to a statement, the research, which includes a feasibility study,…
Kepple Africa Ventures participated in Wapi Pay’s $2.2 million pre-seed fundraising round in August. On Tuesday, the Japanese venture capital firm announced it was cutting all ties with the Kenyan fintech startup co-founded by Paul Ndichu and his twin brother, Edward. That decision followed the circulation of a video on social media, which showed two men engaged…
In March 2020, as the coronavirus swept through cities and triggered lockdowns in many countries, Toyin Akintayo asked himself, “What can give small businesses an edge against bigger ones?” Why small businesses? For Akintayo, the idea to work with Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) stems from his two decades of running small businesses. Although most of them…
Google has announced the launch of TaskMate in Kenya – a crowdsourcing app that allows people to use smartphones to do tasks and get paid. The app taps the growing gig economy and is finally ready to be launched in beta in the East African country after being tested in Kenya for over a year….
Autochek, the automotive technology company that aims to facilitate auto finance across Africa, has officially widened its operations to Kenya as part of its pan-African expansion. To lead its Kenya operations, Autochek has appointed Bilhah Muriithi as the Country Manager. Having recently acquired automotive marketplaces Cheki Kenya and Cheki Uganda from ROAM Africa (Ringier One Africa Media),…
Since its release in 2017, over 40,000 organizations have chosen Zoho One as their operating system. In 2021, Zoho One witnessed a 60% y-y customer growth with average number of apps used by businesses rising to 21 Zoho Corporation, a leading global technology company, today introduced five new apps, three new services and seven major…
GE Healthcare and medical group AFRIPHARMA has announced the opening of the Afri-Egypt Health Services Center, a first of its kind medical and diagnostic centre in Uganda. The Center is located in Jinja and is expected to serve over 60,000 people from the region, allowing for improved accessibility in the surrounding communities. The facility is…
Nigerian fintech startup Baxi, one of the country’s leading super-agent networks, has been acquired by the pan-African payments company MFS Africa to enable the latter’s expansion into Nigeria. Founded in 2014 by Degbola Abudu and Folu Majekodunmi, Baxi provides a cash-in/cash-out offering as well as value-added services – account opening, money transfer, bill payment and more –…
Rideshare group Bolt has announced its food delivery service Bolt Food has launched in Johannesburg. The service will provide the city’s residents with access to food deliveries from more than 300 restaurants and fast food outlets. Bolt Food has been available in Cape Town since April 2020, where 800 restaurants have been added to the…