Billions of people all over the world use WhatsApp to stay connected to friends and family. Governments, NGOs, and charities use WhatsApp to support COVID-19 digital response with messaging services that enable fact-checking, hotlines, and vaccine schedules. WhatsApp is a key tool to provide vulnerable, disempowered, and minority communities with easy and secure access…
Author: AdeO
Airtel Africa has sold its tower units in Madagascar and Malawi to Helios Towers Plc for around $108 million. The telecommunication firm has also signed separate deals with the UK telecom infrastructure company for the potential sale of its tower assets in Chad and Gabon by end-FY22. The combined value of the tower asset…
Customers in this age of technology advancement are dynamic and spoiled for choice, as numerous brands jostle for their attention and patronage. To command wallet share and improve retention for brand loyalty, it is important that product manufacturers and handlers are consumer driven, understand customer dynamics and reach them with…
Uber is excited to announce Tope Akinwumi as its new Country Manager for Nigeria. Tope is an award-winning consultant with several years of professional experience advising multinational companies on complex and challenging situations to accelerate growth and create efficiency. Tope joins Uber from Kobo360, where he was the Head of…
A job application filled out by former Apple CEO Steve Jobs in 1973 has sold for a whopping $222,400 at auction in London. The rare employment questionnaire went up for sale on February 24 with the auction lasting one month. Jobs filled out the application in hopes of landing a job after dropping out…
Redbird, a Ghanaian healthtech startup, has raised a $1.5 million funding to expand its medical testing services and capabilities across Africa. The new investment comes from Johnson & Johnson Foundation and Newtown Partners via the Imperial Venture Fund. This brings the total funding raised by the startup to $2 million.…
Nigerian fintech startup Bankly has announced that it has raised $2 million investment led by Vault Other investors that participated in the round included Plug and Play Ventures, Rising Tide Africa and Chrysalis Capital. Bankly digitizes financial services for people in the informal sector, usually small-scale traders who save through…
The Nigerian government has taken delivery of the first set of 300,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines out of a total of 1.4 million doses designated for Nigeria by the AU. The vaccines are a combination of doses of AstraZeneca vaccines from the COVAX facility, and from the African Union’s (AU) COVID-19…
CardinalStone Capital Advisers (CCA), a Lagos based private equity fund manager, has announced the final close of its maiden private equity fund, the CardinalStone Capital Advisers Growth Fund LP (CCAGF or the Fund) at US$64 million. The Fund which recorded its first close in December 2018 and final close in…
Abu Dhabi state fund Mubadala Investment and Abu Dhabi Catalyst Partners said they had invested a combined $150 million in Telegram. Mubadala invested $75 million in five-year, pre-initial public offering (IPO) bonds of Telegram, while Abu Dhabi Catalyst Partners invested a further $75 million. “Telegram’s user base has reached a critical…
Afriex, a Nigerian and African-focused fintech startup that provides instant, zero-fee transfers to Africans has raised a $1.2 million seed funding to expand its services across. The funding was led by Launch Africa VC with the participants of Y Combinator, SoftBank Opportunity Fund, Future Africa, Brightstone VC, Processus Capital, Uncommon…
Complete Farmer has announced the launch of a new digital platform that addresses key challenges faced by commodity buyers and food growers along Africa’s agriculture value chain. Founded in 2017, the Ghana-based startup’s first offering brought farming to the fingertips of thousands of users around the world allowing them to…
In a month tech investors decided to open their investment wallets in an unusual manner, five Nigerian startups have found themselves raising $202 million. It is the most investment in a single month since 2019 and beats the whole money raised in 2020. Flutterwave opened the month of March with…
A federal jury in Texas has ruled that Apple infringed a patent for technology it uses in iTunes, App Store, and Apple Music held by Personalized Media Communications. Accordingly, the jury asked Apple to pay a $308.5 million fine. According to Bloomberg, Personalized Media Communications sued Apple for infringing its patent…
MTN Nigeria has launched a new unified customer engagement platform, EnGauge, designed to enable small-to-medium enterprise business owners seamlessly administer transactions with customers, potentially increasing their productivity significantly. Developed in partnership with Ajua™, a leading African start-up, MTN EnGauge is an agile application that offers innovative customer management solutions, including…
Facebook has announced that it’s exploring building a version of Instagram for users under 13, according to an internal company post obtained by BuzzFeed News. Vishal Shah, Instagram’s VP of product, reportedly wrote a post on the employee message board announcing the project. The post also said that the project will be overseen…
Spotify is shining a spotlight on one of its flagships, curated playlists African Heat, through an interactive campaign that brings the spirit of Africa alive around the world as a way of celebrating the power of African voices across the continent and beyond. The campaign journeys through a series of partnerships, activations, a dance challenge…
Twitter usually plays videos on its mobile apps if they’re uploaded by users. However, if someone’s posted a YouTube link, it’ll redirect you to a browser or the YouTube app. Now, the social network is introducing a feature that’ll let you watch these videos without leaving the app. Twitter said…
It’s a season of prominence for the female gender. The 2021 International Women’s Day celebration of March 8th was followed by the Mothering Day celebration a few days later. It has thus been a week-long celebration of female accomplishments and promotion of gender equality in social, cultural and political endeavours…
The coronavirus pandemic that led to the restriction of movement and total lockdown have forced many businesses to look for means to survive. While some have actually bounced back full time, many are still struggling to come to terms with the losses they incurred due to COVID-19. Regardless, these businesses…