Author: Staff Writer

Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, announced that they will be investing $3 billion over 10 years to build tools to advance health care – cure, prevent and manage all diseases by the end of the century. The evening started with Priscilla Chan talking about how…

Video on demand (VOD) partnerships key to growth for telcos With voice revenues in terminal decline and future data revenue models uncertain, Africa’s telcos have to expand their value-added services portfolios. “On-demand entertainment and infotainment present the next big opportunity for telco VAS business growth,” says Stephen Watson, Director of…

Samsung Nigeria has postponed the launch of its Galaxy Note7 launch in Nigeria. This announcement was made via its Instagram page. This was expected because of the recent reports from the US and South Korea of the phone “exploding” during or after charging. The company confirmed this saying that “This is…

Zimbabweans in South Africa to send money directly into local EcoCash wallets Econet Wireless Zimbabwe today announced a money transfer deal between EcoCash and Mukuru Money Transfer, which is a well-established and growing international remittance provider. This partnership between Mukuru, a key player in the South African remittances space, and…

Western Digital Corporation yesterday unveiled its SanDisk 1TB terabyte (TB) SDXC™ card prototype at the world’s leading trade fair for photo and video professionals. This is the world’s first 1TB memory card. According to Dinesh Bahal, vice president, product management, Content Solutions Business Unit, Western Digital in a press release, “Showcasing the…

Google has launched a Whatsapp rival called Allo. Google announced its coming at the Google I/O in May this year. Google Allo can help you make plans, find information, and express yourself more easily in chat. And the more you use it, the more it improves over time – it…

Don’t get confused. Yes ! Microsoft has just introduced a new feature phone into the market. It is the Nokia 216. This is the same company that said in May this year that it was selling its feature phone business. How come it is now launching a new feature phone? Well,…

Registration is now open for the upcoming edition of “The Platform Nigeria”. The theme for this edition is “The Economic Value of Nigeria and How Nigeria can be made to work” The speakers are as follows: Bolanle Austen-Peters – Foudner, Terra Kulture and BAP Productions Peter Obi – Former Governor,…

Rotary today committed an additional $35 million in grants to support the global effort to end polio, bringing the humanitarian service organization’s contribution to $105 million in 2016. The announcement follows recent reports of three new cases of wild poliovirus in Nigeria: two cases in July, and one in August.…

Despite all the underwhelming remarks about the new products launched recently – iPhone 7 and Apple watch series 2, Apple believes these products are a reflection of its commitment to continuous improvement even though the improvements might be minor. Apple loyalists still queued to get their new phones and the…

Shepherd Bushiri Ministries International, led by Shepherd Bushiri, has launched its own mobile virtual network. The MVNO, known as PSB Network, is enabled by local telecoms firm MVN-X on the back of Cell C’s network. PSB Network will offer voice calls at 99c/minute (on per-second billing) and a range of data options,…

Nigerian Property Classifieds startup ToLet.com.ng has raised $1.2m from Frontier Digital Ventures According to the company’s CEO, Fikayo Ogundipe, “The new funds raised will be used to improve the platform’s technology offering to both property seekers as well as that used by listing agents. The rest of the funds will be…

Y Combinator (YC), a startup accelerator based in California (U.S.), will be visiting Lagos from 23-28 September 2016 on a tour of the Nigerian technology ecosystem. With investments in high profile startups like Airbnb, Dropbox and Stripe, Y Combinator is known as the world’s most powerful start-up incubator. YC attracts…

The Nigerian Presidency has announced that it  will install plagiarism detection software in the computers of its speechwriters to prevent a recurrence of plagiarism in presidential speeches. An unfortunate incident occurred whereby it was noticed that a paragraph was lifted verbatim from US President Barack Obama’s 2008 victory speech in the Nigerian President’s “Change begins…

Kenya’s ambulance app, Flare, has raised $150,000 from interested investors. According to Disrupt Africa who earlier reported some days ago that it raised $100,000, an additional $50,000 has been received increasing overall funds to $150,000. “I think that should be it for now, but we’ll keep open the round for…

Sifa Asani Gowon and Oluwatosin ‘Tosin’ Olaseinde of KoKo’s Kitchen are looking to raise $30,000 to kick-start their dry confectionery mix business and they have resorted to Indiegogo to help with this. According to the team, they were inspired to start KoKo’s Kitchen because of “Sifa’s flair and passion for all things…

Microsoft and C0-Creation Hub (CcHUB) are in search of 20 Nigerian entrepreneurs who would like to be assisted in bring their ideas to life. This is the objective of the first edition of the #WINsiders4Good Fellowship which will launched on the 21st of September 2016. The #WINsiders4Good Fellowship will identify entrepreneurs…

The biggest singing duo in Africa, PSquare – Peter and Paul Okoye, are back with a new single titled “Bank Alert. The video is about a guy who promises his girlfriend that he would need to go abroad to “make it”. He promises to come back after 1 year. Well…

Media24, one of Naspers’ media properties, is partnering with The Huffington Post to launch HuffPost South Africa in November this year. The partnership – HuffPost’s first venture into Sub-Saharan Africa – was announced today by Media24 CEO Esmaré Weideman and HuffPost CEO Jared Grusd. The Huffington Post is a Pulitzer Prize-winning…

Dangote Cement, a subsidiary of Dangote Group, says it will start mining for coal at Ankpa, Kogi State, in November 2016. This is to reduce the company’s dependence on gas whose supply has been hit by the disruptions caused by militants in the Niger Delta region. It also said that the switch of…