Author: Staff Writer

Fresh from raising N23 billion through the issuance of a 23 billion Naira Series 1 Fixed Rate Senior Unsecured Callable Bond and getting $200 million investment from Payments giant Visa, Nigerian-based payments giant, Interswitch has listed its N23 billion bond on the Nigerian Stock Exchange. Interswitch says that the N23…

Founders Factory Africa (FFA) announced today that they have accepted five new startups into their Venture Scale programme, kicking off on 3 February 2020. The venture development company, along with its corporate investors Standard Bank and Netcare, are excited to welcome LocumBase (South Africa), Bwala Africa (Kenya), Akili Labs (South…

South African social content startup, Over, announced that it has been acquired by Internet domain registrar and web hosting company, GoDaddy for an undisclosed amount. Founded in 2012, Over is the company behind the popular Over app that helps entrepreneurs and small businesses grow their brands by easily creating impactful…

Imagine developing the business plan for your bike-hailing service and you wake up one morning and find out you are no longer to operate on major highways in one of the most populous cities in Nigeria. This is what faced the management of bike-hailing startups in Nigeria – OPay, Max.ng,…

Leading tech giant, Samsung, unveiled three Value–Packed Devices into the Nigerian market. They are the Galaxy A71, Galaxy A51 and Galaxy Note10 Lite. Dudu Mokholo, Chief Marketing Officer, Samsung Central Africa reiterated Samsung’s focus on innovation for all – “We are committed to bridging the gap between flagship features and…

Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo (@cristiano) has become the first person to hit the 200 million mark on Instagram. The football maestro achieved this milestone yesterday and posted a comment to celebrate this….. “Wow 200 million!!! Thank you to each and every one of you for sharing this journey with me…

Pieter de Villiers, Founder of Clickatell and Tinashe Ruzane Co-founder of FlexClub are the latest South African entrepreneurs to join the prestigious global network and did so during Endeavor’s 92nd International Selection Panel (ISP) held in Riviera Maya, Mexico in December. Clickatell provides a chat commerce platform that enables brands…

One of the former co-founders of Vine, a short-form video hosting service, Dom Hoffman, has just launched a new short form video app named Byte. Byte lets you shoot or upload and then share six-second videos. Will it be as successful as Vine with competition from the likes of TikTok…

Tech giant, Google, has opened its first African Google Developers space in Lagos, Nigeria. “This space, in addition to housing our Google Launchpad Accelerator Africa programme, will be used for developer training and meetings, innovation, research and startup programs, as well as carrying out our commitment to empowering people through…

It is a sad day for ride-hailing startups in Lagos state as the state government has banned commercial motorcycles and tricycles from operating along major highways in the state. The state government has proscribed their operations in 6 Local Government Areas (LGAs), 9 Local Council Development Areas (LCDAs) and 10…

Grammy award winning musician, Wyclef Jean, has raised $25 million to fund music publishing services in Africa, the Caribbean and other developing regions through his newest venture Carnival World Music Group. Carnival World provides artists with music publishing and distribution resources needed to promote their music and earn royalties. According…

Kenyan agri marketplace start-up, Tulaa, has partnered with Nigeria-based logistics company, Kobo360, to bring smallholder farmers’ produce from farm to market. Tulaa sells inputs on credit to small farmers and trades their crop at harvest time by purchasing at farm-gate and delivering to wholesale buyers in urban markets. “One of…

Renowned American academic, business consultant, Clayton Christensen, has passed on at the age of 67. According to his brother Carlton, Christensen died Thursday evening of complications from cancer treatment in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Christensen coined the word “disruptive innovation”, having introduced the concept in the Harvard Business Review in 1995. The…

Telecoms giant, Vodafone, has quit from the Libra Association, becoming the latest company to exit the Facebook-led group trying to create a new global cryptocurrency. In October last year, Visa, eBay, Mastercard and PayPal walked away from the initiative. The number of companies has now whittled down to 20 from…

Paga, a Nigerian mobile payments company, has acquired an Ethiopian software company, Apposit for an undisclosed amount. This acquisition is part of its strategy to commence operations into Ethiopia later this year. Paga also intends to leverage the US incorporated Apposit to support its expansion into East Africa and Latin…

Veteran TV executive, Alex Okosi has been appointed YouTube’s Managing Director of Emerging Markets for YouTube in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA). Alex will be responsible for running YouTube’s business and partnership teams across emerging markets in EMEA including Russia, the Middle East, North and Sub Saharan Africa. He…

Lagos-based fintech startup, Flutterwave, announced that it has closed a $35m Series B funding round. The round was co-led by Grey Croft & eVentures with additional participation from CRE Ventures, Fidelity National Information Services Inc (FIS), Visa, Green Visor and Endeavor. Olugbenga Agboola, Co-founder and CEO of Flutterwave, in an email…

VerifyMe, a Nigerian startup which specialises in ID verification, announced that it has secured an undisclosed amount from Consonance Investment Managers. According to the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Esigie Aguele, the funds would be used to expand strategic partnerships and bring new digital ID verification products to market.…

Alphabet, Google’s parent body, has become the fourth US company to hit the $1 trillion market capitalisation. It hit this number just before markets closed on Thursday, ending the day’s trading at $1,451.70 per share, up 0.87 percent. Alphabet joins the league after the likes of  Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp. as the…

Google announced that it will phase out third party cookies in its Chrome browser. According to the tech company in a blog post, “Over the next two years Google intends to stop supporting third-party cookies in its Chrome browser” A cookie is a small piece of data sent from a website and…