Author: Staff Writer

– Award of US $300,000, Extensive Mentoring and Connection Network Building to Support Expansion and Sustainability of Businesses and Programs

South African based payments enabler, Tutuka, announced that Apis Partners has acquired a majority stake in Tutuka. Apis acquired their stake from Paycorp, who invested in Tutuka in 2015, and helped the company grow their international presence and more than triple in size since their initial investment. Tutuka is a…

Global non-profit, Accion announced that its seed-stage investment initiative, Accion Venture Lab, has added $33 million to its initial capital pool, with the launch of a new $23 million fund and an additional, separate $10 million investment from Accion. The new fund brings together a group of third-party impact and…

Africa cross-border payment startup, Chipper Cash, has expanded into Nigeria. It has hired a country manager, Abiodun Animashaun, to help spread the word in Africa’s most populous country. The San Francisco based startup will be doing this in conjunction with PayStack, the payment gateway company. Abiodun Animashaun, co-founder of Gokada…

Android 10 is now available. This is the first time it is stepping away from the dessert naming convention. It is simply Android 10. According to Dave Burke, VP Engineering for Google, the company focused making your everyday life easier with features powered by on-device machine learning, as well as…

Chinese  mobile phone brand, Tecno Mobile, is set to unveil its camera smartphone CAMON 12 series on September 5. Leaked images hint that the Camon 12 series has a 90% perfect edge-to-edge ratio compared to that of the Camon 11 with 87.5% edge-to-edge ratio. A notable change is that this year’s…

– Nigeria is the second biggest market in Africa with over 2.9m DAU

Start-ups SHOPIT, EXPORTUNITY and WAKULIMA from South Africa, Benin and Tanzania respectively, emerged today the winners of the Nestlé Research and Development (R&D) Sub-Saharan innovation challenge. Selected from among a highly competitive group of 174 submissions received from 27 different countries across Africa, these start-ups projects were judged by a panel of Nestlé executives as…

Fresh off launching the Samsung Galaxy Note10 and Note10+, Samsung has launched the first 5G smartphone in its A series – the Galaxy A90 5G. Though it is the first in the A series, it is the fourth 5G phone after the Galaxy S10 5G, Galaxy Note10 5G, and Galaxy Note10+ 5G. The…

Econet Wireless has begun the installation of Tesla’s Powerwalls at its base stations across Zimbabwe. The Telecoms company is installing 520 Powerwalls to ensure that its network is available 24/7 despite frequent power outages that has characterised Zimbabwe in the last couple of months. A self-powered home combines solar energy…

Sun Exchange, the world’s first buy-to-lease marketplace for solar cells, is seeking to raise R7 million ($460,000) via an equity crowdfunding campaign with Uprise.Africa. This is part of the company’s current fundraising round which it seeks to raise up to $3million to grow its business. This R7 million will equate to…

Google Maps has now been updated to allow you pair transit directions with biking and ridesharing options, making it easier to travel that first or last mile with ease. Here’s how it works: Enter your destination in the search box, tap on “Directions” and then on the transit tab. From there,…

Japan and the African Development Bank recently announced a joint target of $3.5 billion under the Enhanced Private Sector Assistance for Africa initiative (EPSA4), during the 7th Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD 7). Both Japan and the Bank have set a target of $1.75 billion each, from 2020-2022, to…

Global investment firm, Carlyle Group, has acquired a majority stake in South Africa based Environmental, Health and Safety (EHS) software vendor, Isometrix, through its $698 million Carlyle Africa (Buyout) Fund. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Madison Park Group served as exclusive financial advisor to IsoMetrix on the transaction and existing…

True to our report in March 2019, Nigerian based logistics company, Kobo360 has officially launched in East Africa, Kenya to be precise. The launch was presided over by Kenya-based Africa Region CEO, Kagure Wamunyu,  in an event attended by business partners, media and other stakeholders. The logistics company which recently raised…

Cairo-based RiseUp has launched a new multi-stage regional startup competition, named “Pitch by the Pyramids” for startups around the Middle East and North Africa Startups participating in the Pitch by the Pyramids program provides  a unique experience and exposure for them. They will receive extensive webinar sessions covering business and…

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey ‘s account was hacked on Friday. This was noticed when it seemed that he was broadcasting racist messages and bomb threats for about 20 minutes. Twitter quickly acknowledged that the account had been hacked https://twitter.com/TwitterComms/status/1167528672523210752 However they said it was now secure. It also added that there…

The Mastercard Foundation has launched a new initiative “Young Africa Works” in Ghana to enable three million young people to access dignified and fulfilling work by 2030 The initiative is aligned with the government’s An Agenda for Jobs: Creating Prosperity and Equal Opportunity for All, and Ghana’s commitment to positioning the…

Alphabet’s Google will pay between $150 and $200 million to settle a Federal Trade Commission investigation into YouTube’s alleged violation of a children’s privacy law. This was first reported by Politico and has been corroborated by The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg . It is said that the official settlement will likely be made…

YouTube has launched a kid-friendly website named YouTubekids.com. This may be in reaction to the anticipated hammer from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) investigation. It is rumoured that Alphabet’s Google will pay between $150 and $200 million to settle the Federal Trade Commission investigation into YouTube’s alleged violation of a…