Google has opened applications for the third edition of its Startups Accelerator: Middle East and North Africa programme, which offers startups access to mentorship and support from Google experts. The three-month digital programme, which kicks off in January of next year, is targeting seed to Series A tech startups. Twelve companies just graduated from the second…
A new regional director, in the person of Catherine Chinedum (‘ChiChi’) Aniagolu-Okoye, has been appointed to take charge of the West African office of Ford Foundation based in Lagos State. Before the appointment of Aniagolu-Okoye, the position was served by the late Innocent Chukwuma from 2013 to 2021. During his tenure, he helped Ford Foundation build its…
Sub-Saharan Africa venture firm Pacer Ventures is set to further unlock the power of digital transformation in Africa with the launch of Pacer Labs, a software development firm born to support the African digital ecosystem and the growth of forward-looking organisations by harnessing the power of advanced technologies. Projections indicate that Africa will be the world’s next tech talent…
Designing websites came naturally to Onyeka Akumah even as a college student, but his greatest epiphany was in a moving bus in Lagos. Today, his bus-hailing solution is going places. What do you get when you have a mother who wants you to make all the money in the world and a father who wants…
Ghanaian startup Kaazi has launched the public beta of its football talent identification and recruitment platform, which will be available to all football players in Africa. Founded in July by Nana Yaw Oppong-Mensah, a former football player, coach and scout, Kaazi is a web-based platform that allows football players to build their own profiles by adding videos…
Nedbank, one of South Africa’s largest lenders, has announced the launch of the Nedbank DigiSkills online platform, in partnership with Microsoft and Afrika Tikkun. The DigiSkills Online platform seeks to help South Africans acquire the in-demand skills needed in a more digital post-COVID-19 economy. The initiative initially aims to upskill and create sustainable income opportunities…
Facebook today announced the winners of the 2021 Facebook Community Accelerator Program, highlighting the 13 Facebook community leaders from Nigeria, South Africa, and Kenya who will receive training, mentorship and up to $50,000 USD in funds to invest in an initiative that extends their community’s positive impact. The 13 winners emerged out of over 13,000 applicants…
With Africa’s startup ecosystem worth put at $6.6 billion, over 90 per cent of these funds are currently concentrated in five cities including Cape Town, Lagos, Johannesburg, Nairobi and Accra. This is one of the key findings in the latest Global Start-up Ecosystem Report 2021 (GSER 2021), compiled by Startup Genome and the Global Entrepreneurship Network….
If you’ve ever tweeted something innocuous that went on to kick off a firestorm of unwanted attention, you know full well that people on Twitter will fight about anything and everything — it’s the internet’s premier destination for high-speed, low-information opinion slinging, after all. Twitter has been working on ways to tone down the toxicity…
MTN Group has announced the appointment of Adekunle Awobodu as its new Chief Financial Officer for Digital and Fintech. According to a statement from MTN, Awobodu is a seasoned business and finances professional who has spent most of his career at MTN, including serving as CFO for MTN Nigeria for 4 years, having started as…
The central bank of Zimbabwe has added 47 more people to its blacklist for allegedly using social media to advertise and facilitate unlawful foreign exchange transactions and money laundering. According to John Mangudya, governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, 30 people were “blacklisted and prevented from accessing financial and mobile telecommunication services for the…
Ghana Tech Lab has partnered up with a number of partners for the fourth edition of the Ghana Startup Summit, which will take place in Accra over the course of a week. The theme of this program is “Enterprise Innovation and Youth Employment at the Center of Ghana’s Digital Drive,” and it is primarily focused…
The Airtel Africa Group has announced the new appointment of Olusegun “Segun” Ogunsanya, as its Managing Director (MD) and CEO. Ogunsanya took the helm of the group as of 1 October 2021. This comes as former CEO, Raghu Mandava, who led Airtel Africa since 2016, was announced to be stepping down from the company’s board of directors…
Less than a third of African countries have achieved the global goal of vaccinating 10% of their populations against Covid-19 by the end of September, according to the World Health Organization. This is an indicator of the challenge the continent is facing in procuring vaccines amidst their uneven distribution for poorer countries of the world….
The World Bank has approved $11.5bn in lending to Western and Central African countries for 98 operations. The World Bank made this known in its ‘Annual Report 2021: From crisis to green, resilient, and inclusive recovery’. The bank said: “In fiscal 2021, the bank approved $11.5bn in lending to Western and Central Africa for 98 operations, including…
During his address to the nation on Thursday evening, SA President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that the Department of Health would begin rolling out vaccination certificates as the government made its final effort to reach its goal of vaccinating over 33-million people by December 2021. Currently, 17-million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine have been administered, with…
LAGOS; September 30, 2021: The Nigeria Innovation Summit (NIS) 2021, the virtual edition, scheduled for Tuesday, October 5 and Wednesday, October 6 2021, has received the support of critical industry stakeholders. Nigeria Innovation Summit in its 6th year is an annual event that brings together stakeholders from different sectors of Nigeria’s economy to share ideas, trends,…
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has postponed the launch of the eNaira — its digital currency — slated to launch on October 1, 2021. According to The Punch, the launch was postponed to prevent it from clashing with the lineup of events planned for the Independence Day celebration. In a statement attributed to the CBN’s Director of Communications,…
Nigeria President Muhammadu Buhari announced on Friday that the current Twitter ban would be lifted, but only if the social media giant met certain conditions. The president disclosed this during his televised broadcast to Nigerians on the country’s 61st Independence Day anniversary. He acknowledged the fact that Twitter is used to disseminate information. Still, he warned about…
Nigeria’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) website has gone live, signaling that the eNaira digital currency will be launched on October 1. The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) sent local banks a paper last month that detailed the architecture of its soon-to-be-launched virtual currency, as well as details on the duties given to participants in the currency…
Once the world’s leading producer of palm oil, Nigeria has seen an output decline over the last three decades. The country is the fifth largest producer of palm oil in the world, the main ones currently being Malaysia and Indonesia. CNN learns that a host of challenges are to blame for Nigeria’s palm oil production shortcomings,…
International development funding to Africa has a “colonial” approach that favors Western organizations at the expense of local civil society organizations (CSOs), a new independent report funded by the Vodafone Foundation says. Most donor resources go to intermediary non-governmental organizations (NGOs) based in the northern hemisphere, the report says, describing the system as one that is…
The University of Cape Town (UCT) online school has been recognized for its revolutionary educational innovations, having been named one of the 12 Top Innovators in The WorldClass Education Challenge at the World Economic Forum’s Sustainable Development Impact Summit 2021. The World Class Education Challenge debuted in May of this year on the World Economic…
Exactly three days before the official launch of Nigeria’s digital currency called eNaira, the Central Bank of Nigeria opens the website. Before now, CBN governor, Godwin Emefiele, had announced that the eNaira would be launched officially on Independence day, October 1st, 2021. According to the CBN, the digital currency is a legal tender just like…
An investment of about $280-billion will be needed for 35 cities across South Africa, Kenya, and Ethiopia to cope with the harmful effects of climate change by 2050, according to new research. A report released on Monday by the Coalition for Urban Transitions, which advises governments on economic development and climate change, says that Africa is…
Mobile spyware is one of the most invasive and targeted kinds of unregulated surveillance, since it can be used to track where you go, who you see and what you talk about. And because of its stealthy nature, mobile spyware can be nearly impossible to detect. But now one Y Combinator-backed startup is building an app with the aim…
It appears that the authorities of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja are set to commence a regime of licensing ride-hailing drivers and ensuring compliance from October 1st, 2021. This follows a series of clampdowns targeted at operators in the city for about 3 months now and a subsequent outcry. This is according to documents and materials…
Sophos, a global leader in next-generation cybersecurity, has published research, “Phishing and Malware Actors Abuse Google Forms for Credentials, Data Exfiltration,” describing how cyber attackers – from entry-level scammers to advanced adversaries – abuse Google Forms to implement a wide range of attacks, targeting both organizations and individuals. “The extent to which cyberattackers abuse Google Forms…
Foremost ICT infrastructure and systems integrator in Sub-Saharan Africa, Inlaks Africa, last Friday announced the appointment of Kyari Abba Bukar as the new MD/CEO, Africa Operations. Inlaks specialises in the deployment of dynamic and highly scalable ICT Infrastructure solutions in Sub-Saharan Africa. In his role, Bukar oversees Inlaks’ operations spanning Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Ethiopia, and other African countries managing the…
Growing up, I never had much contact with deaf people. Of course, that is to be expected as I didn’t know any deaf people. In later years, I would come to — unconsciously — associate being deaf with being poor. Why? I only saw deaf people while travelling through Nigerian roads to or from school…