Author: Staff Writer

The United States of America under the Biden administration has requested Chinese internet giant, ByteDance, to sell TikTok or risk facing an outright ban in America. According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, the recent demand was made by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., or…

Wow! 10,000 employees are to be rendered jobless in Meta’s second round of layoffs. While we were still smarting over 11,000 Meta employees laid off in the company’s first round of layoffs announced in November 2022, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta is reducing its workforce by around 10,000 people and…

Y Combinator has announced that it would be decreasing the amount of late stage investing to focus more on early stage investing which it is primarily known for. The company made this known in a blog post by Garry Tan, its President & CEO. According to him, “YC is rightly…

Naspers Foundry, a R1.4 billion investment vehicle set up by South African eCommerce giant Naspers, has shut down. According to a BusinessDay report, Naspers did this as it slims operations in the light of dismal venture capital fortunes. Naspers Foundry invests in early-stage technology companies that seek to address big…

Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta is planning to to launch a social media app to rival Twitter while Twitter is trying to waddle through its numerous issues with the platform, people and more. Twitter has not had it easy since he bought the social media app and it seems the problems are…

Sweetkiwi, a frozen yoghurt business that started in Nigeria, has secured $250,000 for 16% equity from Shark Tank’s Robert Herjavec. This was aired on Episode 16 of Season 14 over the weekend. Sweetkiwi founder Ehime Eigbe-Akindele came to Shark Tank with her husband Michael Akindele asking for $250,000 for 5%…

Tech giant Google announced that it is giving VPN access to all Google One members on all plans. Hitherto, it was only available to those with Pixel devices and those on the Premium 2TB plan. It is also rolling out a “dark web report” for all subscribers so that you…

Global job placement network, Andela, announced that it has acquired Qualified, a leading technical skills assessment platform to identify, qualify, and certify top engineers. This acquisition expands Andela’s global talent community with the addition of more than 3.6 million engineering users via Codewars, an online community powered by Qualified that enables technical talent…

Global consumer internet giant, Naspers, announced that it is letting go of OLX Autos, one of its Classifieds properties. OLX Autos, part of OLX Group operates an online marketplace where people can buy and sell vehicles. It is one of the brands under Prosus N.V. (Prosus), Naspers’ subsidiary. Naspers owns…

Increased internet penetration and connectivity have significantly changed how consumers behave and shop. Most modern buyers start their purchase journey online and expect to finish it there. In fact, online shopping continues to grow, and e-commerce sales worldwide are expected to increase by 56% over the next few years, amounting…

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the body responsible for co-ordinating elections in Nigeria, announced that the governorship and state houses of assembly elections have been postponed by one week due to Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) reconfiguration. According to INEC’s press release pasted on its Twitter page, the shift…

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has issued the operational guidelines for Open Banking in Nigeria thus becoming the first country to do this in the African continent. According to Musa Jimoh, the Director payments Systems Management at CBN in a circular, the adoption of Open Banking in Nigeria will…

In celebration of International Women’s Day, Google unveiled the inaugural class of Google for Startups Accelerator: Women Founders in Africa program. The class is made up of 15 founders of startups from eight African countries, creating innovative solutions that improve livelihoods in their communities. The accelerator program is designed to…

Finally, Nigeria has started the implementation of uniform short codes for telecom operators and banks. This means that all four operators – MTN, Airtel, Globacom and 9mobile – will use the same short codes for basic services like airtime balance check, airtime credit recharge, e.t.c. This implementation will also affect…

Ex-Capital One Managing Vice President, Pawel Swiatek is joining Moniepoint as its Chief Operating Officer. He will have the responsibility of driving strategy and execution by building policies, tools, measurements and culture to help Moniepoint reach its goals. Before joining Moniepoint, Swiatek worked as the managing Vice President at Capital…

There are allegations that Flutterwave, the payments unicorn was hacked, losing up to N2.9 billion. This allegation was made by a Nigerian online blog, Techpoint Africa that in early February 2023, hackers transferred over ₦2.9 billion from Flutterwave accounts. The report stated that Flutterwave has filed a motion to freeze…

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has launched API for the viral chatbot so that developers can use its features in their apps. The company made this announcement some days ago when it launched APIs for ChatGPT and Whisper, thereby giving developers access to cutting-edge language (not just chat!) and speech-to-text…

Tecno has unveiled its first foldable smartphone – the Phantom V Fold 5G. The Chinese phone maker introduced the phone along with the SPARK Pro 10 selfie phone and the upgraded MEGABOOK S1 2023 laptop at the ongoing Mobile World Congress 2023 in Barcelona, Spain. This is Tecno’s first outing…

TikTok announced that it is rolling out a 60-minute daily screen time limit for teens so as to help them manage time spent on the app. This is one of the features for teens and families on TikTok it is introducing. The short-form video hosting service announced that in the…

In today’s world, people are moving away from Cable TV to TV streaming services due to the fact that streaming is cheaper. With this shift, you are now spoilt for choice as there are many streaming services to choose from. The most common TV streaming services available in Nigeria are…