Author: Staff Writer

Pan-African multi-sector business services company Mara Group announced the production of the Maraphone – the first made-in-Africa, full-scale smartphone, soon to be manufactured in plants across Africa. According to Ashish​ Thakkar, founder of Mara Group, Maraphone is Africa’s phone, referring to Huawei’s Xiaomi for China and Apple’s iPhone for the…

Facebook has started rolling out its “Unsend” feature on Messenger. This has started in Messenger’s Android and iOS apps in Bolivia, Colombia, Lithuania and Poland. However it will be available in other countries as soon as possible. With the “Unsend” feature, a person can retract a sent message within 10 minutes…

MTN has partnered with China Mobile Communications Group Co., Ltd., chipset maker UNISOC and KaiOS technology to launch first smart feature 3G device in Africa. This announcement was made by the partners at the ongoing AfricaCom event in Cape Town, South Africa. This new mobile device is a feature phone with fast, 3G…

Africa’s leading telecoms company MTN has announced its acquisition of music streaming business, Simfy. This announcement was made by Group CEO and president Rob Shuter at the AfricaCom event currently taking place in Cape Town, South Africa. Calling Simfy  “Africa’s leading music-streaming business”, he said “It has a fantastic catalogue of music,…

Teleology has been given the approval to take over 9mobile eight months after it made the initial $50 million non refundable deposit for its acquisition. This follows the issuance of the final approval of no objection by the Board of the Nigerian Communications Commission. In a statement signed by the…

There are few things that come close to the independence afforded to the modern nomad. Close your eyes for a second and imagine having the ability to travel wherever you want, whenever you want. No home, working from anywhere, being your own boss. This notion may seem too good to…

FreeConferenceCall.com, the most recognized conferencing and collaboration brand on the planet, announced today that it has launched free conference calling in Uganda. Uganda joins Algeria, Tanzania, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria and South Africa on a growing list of countries that can use conference calling services at no cost. The country has instant…

Nigerian data analytics firm Terragon has announced its acquisition of SIngaporean based mobile marketing company, Bizense. Bizense has core expertise in mobile advertising and targeting technologies with operations in key Asian markets including India, Singapore and Indonesia. It specializes in “mobile ad platforms for Telco’s, large publishers, and [e-commerce] ad…

Those looking to start their own company should seriously consider e-commerce as this continues to rise in popularity thanks to the variety and convenience for the consumer. This does mean that it can be a highly competitive arena and somewhere that can be hard to stand out from the crowd.…

A Nigerian startup, Landhouse has launched to help reduce the cost of owning homes in Nigeria. In a country with about 18-21 million housing deficit, which is growing at about 6% per annum due to high population growth, increased rural-urban migration and a rapidly growing middle class, housing crisis is expected…

Mobile payments company, Paga, has recorded its 10 millionth user. This is announced by the CEO and Founder, Tayo Oviosu in a blog post last week. It took only 79 days to add a million to reach 10 million whereas it took 989 days to its first 1 million users. Tayo…

South African based e-commerce giant, Naspers, is planning to invest over $335 million (R4.9bn) in South African technology companies. The announcement was made at the inaugural South Africa Investment Conference 2018 in Johannesburg last week. Out of the $335 million, it will allocate $219 million (R3.2bn) to the development of its existing…

After you have developed a product, service, or idea, you may be excited about launching it online. However, before you rush out and get online with it, there are certain processes and foundational issues that should already be established. For swift launching an internet startup, you must have some of…

 Uber to double down on safety and roll out Safety Toolkit for riders and drivers across 38 countries, including Nigeria; Features to include Safety Centre, Trusted Contacts, Share Trip, emergency assistance button and customisable speed alerts This week Uber announced the new Safety Toolkit which, over the next few weeks, will be…

Huawei launched the new Huawei Mate 20 pro in London on the 16th of October 2018. One key feature about this phone is the fact that it offers reverse wireless charging to Qi-compatible devices. This means that you can use a Mate 20 Pro to wirelessly charge a Note 9 or an iPhone…

Recently Facebook announced that there was a security breach on its platform in September 2018 and that 30 million people affected were affected. According to Facebook, attackers had exploited a vulnerability in Facebook’s code that impacted “View As” a feature that lets people see what their own profile looks like to someone…

Google has just launched new products and programs to help grow the Kenyan economy. According to Google, since it opened its doors 11 years ago, it has been focused on making information accessible and useful to Kenyans and it has initiated programmes to connect people, equip young Kenyans with digital…

Celestine Omin, Senior Consultant at Andela Nigeria has left the company to become the first Engineering Manager at Paystack, a technology company solving payments problems for businesses. Celestine made this announcement via a post recently. According to him, he “will be leading a bunch of the engineering effort here; hiring,…

Current Green Visor Capital Chairman & General Partner and Former Chairman and CEO of Visa, Joe Saunders has joined the board of Flutterwave, an online payments Technology solution company based in San Francisco. This is on the heels of its announcement of its completion of its Series A “extension” round…

Iyinoluwa Aboyeji is stepping down as the CEO of Flutterwave. He is handing over to the CTO and co-founder, Olugbenga Agboola. The ex-Andela co-founder made known in a press statement as detailed below. Olugbenga Agboola is a Financial Technology Engineer, with core financial services technology experiences with Paypal, Google, GTBank, Access…