All about Tech.
Africa-focused early-stage investor DFS Lab has invested in 19 African tech startups so far in 2021, making it one of the most active firms on the continent and taking its total portfolio size to 22. Founded in 2017, DFS Lab helps founders leading next generation digital commerce businesses in Africa build solid foundations, and matches them with…
Egyptian ed-tech startup OTO Courses has raised US$400,000 in cash and in-kind services from EdVentures to further develop its product to reach more users. Founded in 2015 by Ahmed Badr and Tarek Nour El-Din, OTO Courses has developed an online learning platform that offers general and specialised English language courses for individuals or businesses. Teachers are carefully…
Electric cars and shared mobility concepts are starting to disrupt Africa’s taxi industry. Just a few years after cab-hailing apps upended the market and made city transportation cheaper and safer, they’re now about to get greener. Last month, Nopea Ride, Kenya’s electric taxi fleet service, opened a new electric vehicle (EV) charging hub at Village Market…
The Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, earlier in February, outlawed crypto trading and prohibited banks and other financial institutions from facilitating related payments. This prohibition comes several months after the Apex bank initially warned Nigerians about the dangers of dealing in cryptocurrencies, stating that they were not legal tender and that investors were unprotected. In the…
An innovative local software development partnership between 4Sight Holdings and Bidvest Advisory Services has created 4MIA powered by ALICE TM, a first-of-its-kind AI-powered automated digital transformation advisor. Developed on the ALICE TM platform, the intelligent predictive solution Monitors, Investigates and Advises (MIA) business and technology executives on critical aspects related to their digital transformation roadmaps….
Every day, more people enter the labour market than the number of jobs being created, research has it that job seekers are applying for more than 20 jobs per day. The era of covid has hastened the growth of digital companies and at the same time modifying the employment space for youths. The job space…
The increase in cyberthreats recorded by global internet security firm Kaspersky in the first half of this year across South Africa amounted to 31.5 million. “Threats can be categorised as criminal (80% of attacks), targeted (19.9%), and advanced (0.01%). The advanced grouping is significantly more sophisticated and feature increased investment from attack groups. Unfortunately, both…
El Salvador made Bitcoin legal tender not too long ago but the country’s Bitcoin Trust has already gained millions in profit, and the country’s President Nayib Bukele has now stated that the profits will be directed towards building 20 schools. The update was confirmed via the press secretary of the presidential office via Twitter. Bukele,…
Discord is already the de facto home for NFT communities, but the company could be planning to deepen those connections in a big way. On Monday, Discord founder and CEO Jason Citron tweeted a screenshot depicting Discord integrated with popular crypto wallet service MetaMask and WalletConnect, an open protocol that many mobile crypto wallets are…
Latest Security report, titled: Out of Sight and Out of Mind, a comprehensive global study highlighting how the rise of hybrid work is changing user behaviour and creating new cybersecurity challenges for IT departments, has revealed a new form of cybersecurity targeting hybrid workplace. The research, HP Wolf Security report, showed that a growing number of users…
Facebook announced today that it will no longer allow advertisers to target users based on potentially “sensitive” topics like health, sexual orientation, or religious and political beliefs. “Lung cancer awareness,” “LGBT culture” and “Jewish holidays” are just some of the interest categories that will no longer be targeted starting early next year. “The decision to…
Yahoo has shut down its services in China, making it the latest American tech firm to leave the nation. A Yahoo representative said in a statement that the decision was made “in recognition of the increasingly tough business and regulatory climate.” “Yahoo is devoted to our users’ rights as well as free and open internet….
Meta, formerly known as Facebook, for the first time on Tuesday disclosed the prevalence of bullying and harassment on its platform, saying such content was seen between 14 and 15 times per every 10,000 views on the site in the third quarter. The company, which recently changed its name to Meta, also said in its quarterly content moderation report that…
DP World, a trade enabler, has announced the launch of DUBUY.com, a global wholesale e-commerce platform, in the Kenyan market. This latest expansion of DUBUY.com follows the successful launch of the platform in Rwanda earlier this year, where it has quickly established itself as a significant trading hub for the region’s East Africa region. DUBUY.com…
In March 2020, Google.org announced a $25 million Google.org Impact Challenge for Women and Girls to support organizations focused on gender equity in recognition that COVID-19 had put the economic future of women and girls at even greater risk. Today, Google.org announced the 34 funding recipients of the award. The $25M global philanthropy challenge was launched in March 2021 and called for…
Egyptian startups are the most accelerated in Africa, with 38.6 per cent of them having taken part in some kind of acceleration or incubation programme. That is according to the newly-released Egyptian Startup Ecosystem Report 2021 from Disrupt Africa, which dives into the local ecosystem by analysing active startups, local support networks, and funding and exit activity over…
Some Twitter users on iOS are starting to get access to a feature that makes it easy to search an individual user’s tweets. For those with access, when you navigate to a user’s profile, you’ll see a search icon in the top right corner of the screen on the user’s profile banner, next to the…
A former upstart Instagram rival is suing Meta, formerly known as Facebook, over allegations that the company violated antitrust laws by cloning a competing product and ultimately killing its business. The app, Phhhoto, launched in 2014, inviting users to create and share short GIF-like videos. If that sounds familiar, that’s because the same functionality was popularized in Boomerang,…
More fuel for social audio: Berlin-based social audio startup Beams, which is building a platform for sharing and consuming short-form audio recordings — as a sort of bite-sized/deconstructed and/or collaborative podcast format which it bills as “audio-based social media” — has doubled its seed funding, adding another $3 million to close out the round at $6M….
Access to affordable, reliable and environmentally sustainable sources of electricity is a pressing issue for the growing number of Data Centre operators across Africa. These facilities need to ensure a high availability of power to mitigate downtime, but many African countries face frequent power outages. Existing Data Centres have relied on diesel-fuelled generators to sustain operations…
Today, Amazon Web Services (AWS), an Amazon.com, Inc. company, announced that the first operational solar project it has enabled in South Africa has begun contributing renewable energy to the electricity grid. Located in the Northern Cape, South Africa’s largest province, the 10 megawatts (MW) solar project will supply renewable energy to AWS data centres and…
Applications for Google’s three-month virtual accelerator programme are now open to startups located in Algeria, Botswana, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, Tunisia, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. Successful early-growth stage startup applicants (from seed to Series A) will gain access to equity-free support alongside the best of Google’s…
The company formerly known as Facebook just announced its plans to sneak around Apple’s infamous platform fees, the latest beat in an ongoing war between major software companies and the creator of iOS. In a Facebook post Wednesday, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg said that the social network would give eligible creators on its platform new custom links that allow…
Netflix on Tuesday released a set of mobile games playable for free by subscribers of the global streaming service as it strives to be the go-to venue for entertainment. Two of the games are based on the hit Netflix horror series “Stranger Things” and the remaining three are basic card or skill games, according to…
Microsoft SwiftKey keyboard app is getting a new Cloud Clipboard feature that allows users to copy and paste texts between Android and Windows. Microsoft has updated the SwiftKey Keyboard with version 7.9.0.5. Once the latest version is installed, users will be able to copy text to their Android smartphone or tablet clipboard and paste it…
Just days after rebranding itself, Facebook announced plans to delete a trove of the most worrisome data that the world’s biggest social network collected on more than a billion individuals. In a blog post Tuesday, Facebook’s newly named parent company Meta explained that it would close shop on its facial recognition systems and delete a massive collection…
Telkom Kenya Limited, the Helios Investment Partners and Government of Kenya joint venture, has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Ericsson, the telecommunications company, and NEC XON, the systems integrator, to add 2,000 wireless sites onto Telkom Kenya’s network by 2023. The approximately $100-million nationwide rollout is part of Telkom Kenya’s long-term network expansion…
Online giant Google and Asia’s richest man Mukesh Ambani opened advance orders in India on Monday for an entry-level smartphone billed as the world’s most affordable, joining the race to tap into the booming budget market. Ambani’s conglomerate Reliance Industries announced in July last year that it would partner with Google to launch the 4G…
Five tech-enabled Kenyan startups have been selected for the second edition of the NINJA Accelerator, embarking on a 12-week programme that concludes with a demo day in January. Powered by Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in partnership with Double Feather Partners, Deloitte Tohmatsu and GrowthAfrica, the NINJA Accelerator helps startups address specific issues in order to help…
HP Inc. Monday released its latest HP Wolf Security report: Out of Sight & Out of Mind, a comprehensive global study highlighting how the rise of hybrid work is changing user behavior and creating new cybersecurity challenges for IT departments. The research shows that a growing number of users are buying and connecting unsanctioned devices outside of…