The United Nations Development Programme, UNDP, and PwC Nigeria recently signed a ground-breaking Memorandum of Understanding, (MOU), to collaborate on strategic initiatives centred on facilitating skills transfer, knowledge and competencies. The first of its kind collaboration in Africa is aimed at catalysing development and policy dialogues that connect and link the private and public sectors with the start-up…
Nigeria, Ghana and South Africa top 20 other African countries under the enforceability of standard master agreements pillar in the latest African Financial Markets Index presented by Absa, a leading financial services provider. The insight was delivered during the presentation of its Absa-OMFIF Financial Markets Index on Wednesday, October 13, 2021. The top financial services provider also…
Africa.com undertook a rigorous research project to identify the women who run the largest, most complex businesses on the African continent. The result of this extensive research undertaking is The Africa.com Definitive List of Women CEOs. SAP’s Cathy Smith, MD Sub-Saharan Africa, made the list of 50 women CEOs leading corporate Africa. The list was compiled…
In 2016, a coalition of 34 Kenyan Uber drivers filed a suit against Uber Kenya after, the coalition claimed, the company had violated an online contract. According to the contract in question, the drivers were expected to transport customers at a minimum of $0.54 per kilometre, with a minimum fare of $2.71, with Uber Kenya making 25%…
Sparkle, a mobile-first digital bank that provides financial, lifestyle and business support services to Nigerians across the globe, has raised an oversubscribed seed round of $3.1m from an all-Nigerian group of investors including Leadway Assurance, Trium Networks and a number of Nigerian HNIs. This follows a previous friends and family pre-Seed round totalling $2m [N857m], bringing Sparkle’s…
American technology giant Microsoft announced today that it will pull its professional social network LinkedIn from the Chinese market later this year. Microsoft purchased LinkedIn for more than $26 billion back in 2016. The news comes amidst a flurry of regulatory changes in the Asian nation, as well as rising tensions between the company and the country. Two…
Mobile network provider, MTN Nigeria announced in a statement that the nationwide service outage that was experienced by its subscribers on Saturday, 9th October 2021 was a result of a disruption in its core network. The South African-owned company is the largest telecoms provider in Nigeria with about 71 million subscribers in Nigeria as at 2020. The outage…
South Africa’s Health Minister Joe Phaahla has announced that children and teens between 12 and 17 will now be able to get vaccinated against COVID-19. The announcement came during a media briefing Friday morning, where Phaahla confirmed that the decision was influenced by recommendations made by the Ministerial Advisory Committee (MAC) on vaccinations during a…
With IT job vacancies continuing to climb as companies struggle to recruit and obtain critical skills in South Africa, there is an opportunity to upskill or reskill individuals to meet this demand. Prudence Mabitsela, founder and MD of Dynamic DNA, a leading training and skills development company empowering Africa’s ICT generation, believes these skills are…
French President Emmanuel Macron has made a new EUR130 million (US$150 million) commitment to support 500 African startups as part of a rejigged Digital Africa initiative. Launched in 2018 with the mission to equip African tech entrepreneurs with capabilities to design and scale up ground-breaking innovations for the real economy, Digital Africa brings together startups, academia, incubators, institutional…
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…
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…
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…
Product Management (PM) in general seems to have a different job description depending on the company. Some focus more on project management skills, some focus on UX skills — but the core of the position seems to be the same: the glue between business development, product development, and the users. However, every industry has its…
America since long has dominated the world of start-ups along with buzzing activities in venture capital. However, now the craze of the start-up has increased and many cities of different continents including Asia, Europe and Africa have created many promising cities that are ideal for starting a start-up. Even though the Coronavirus impacted the startup…
The Nigerian federal government has, within the last 12 months, enacted a series of bans and restrictions across a country that has one of the most vibrant tech ecosystems in Africa. Africa’s most populous country has a booming tech industry and was the incubator for 4 of the 5 unicorn startups in Africa, all of which have…
Without a doubt, the COVID-19 pandemic created catastrophic effects in our communities, educational systems and, most importantly, our careers and overall global economy. The pandemic has also had a disproportionate effect on women’s careers: We are 1.8 times more likely to be laid off than men. It is also important to note that the pandemic caused a…
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…