Author: Staff Writer

Nigeria is set to auction two additional 5G licences which should generate $547.2 million if we go by the reserve price $273.6 million per licence as stated in the Draft Information Memorandum (IM)  The auction will be co-ordinated by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC). In the exercise of its functions…

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Asset Management Company of Nigeria (AMCON) announced the completion of a Share Purchase Agreement (SPA) for the acquisition of 100% of the equity in Polaris Bank (‘Polaris’ or ‘the Bank’) by Strategic Capital Investment Limited (‘SCIL’) Recall that Polaris has been operating…

You may have received an email from YouTube recently advising you that it will introducing YouTube handles to make it easier for members of the community to find and connect with each other. Well this is if you have a YouTube channel. We received ours today in a email and…

FoondaMate, a South African edtech startup, announced that it has launched in Nigeria. Founded in 2020 by Dacod Magagula and Tao Laine Boyle, Foondmate supports students with their revision exercises by providing prompt answers to questions and access to revision papers, while also guiding them in responses to questions. The…

The Nigerian President, Muhammadu Buhari assented to the Nigeria Start-Up Bill, today, the 19th of October 2022. The Nigeria Startup Bill is now known as The Nigeria Startup Act 2022. The announcement was made on Twitter by Professor Isa Pantami, Nigeria’s Minister of Digital Economy on his page. According to…

A United States Agency, the U.S. Trade and Development Agency (USTDA), announced that it has awarded a total of $3 million in grants to three Nigerian healthcare firms in the country. The firms are Lily Hospitals Limited, Cedarcrest Hospitals Limited and Mobihealthcare Limited (Mobihealth). Lily Hospitals was awarded $1 million…

Tech giant Apple unveiled a new iPad Pro in two sizes – 11 inches and 12.9 inches. Both devices come with the M2 chip which is the beginning of Apple’s next generation of M-series chips. According to Apple, the M2 features an 8-core CPU — up to 15 percent faster…

Tech giant Apple has unveiled a new 10.9 inch iPad in four exciting colours –  blue, pink, yellow, and silver. The new 10th generation iPad is powered by the powerful A14 Bionic chip, advanced cameras, fast wireless connectivity, USB-C, support for the new Magic Keyboard Folio, and more. “We’re so…

The 66th edition of the Ballon d’Or (Golden Ball) took place today at the Theatre du Chatelet, Paris and winners got Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs) along with their gold trophies. This is the first time that the winners are getting NFTs signalling the L’Équipe group launch into Web3, the new age of…

Nigerian Banking as a Service (BaaS) startup, Maplerad announced that it has raised $6 million in a seed funding round led by Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures. Other participants in the round include Golden Palm Investments Corporation, Michael Vaughn (ex-COO, Venmo), Fintech Fund, Babs Ogundeyi (CEO, Kuda) Armyn Capital, Dunbar Capital,…

Leading international smart device brand, Tecno has launched a special edition of the recently introduced Spark 9 Pro called the Spark 9 Sport edition. This smartphone was designed by BMW Designworks to attract the passionate Gen Z. The Sport Edition has all the great features of the SPARK 9 Pro,…

EzyAgric, an agritech startup based in Uganda announced that it has entered a partnership with Pezesha, a Pan-African fintech startup to offer Buy Now Pay later (BNPL) services to agro-inputs merchants all over Uganda. Founded in 2015 by Esther Karwera, George William Luyinda, EzyAgric is an agtech company that integrates ICT…

Serial entrepreneur Opeyemi Awoyemi has partnered with Omolara Awoyemi and Jake Bright to launch a new platform called Fast Forward to build and back African companies. Fast Forward is a venture studio and early-stage fund. According to the company, Fast Forward Venture Studio works alongside dynamic entrepreneurs advancing ideas it…

Video streaming giant, Netflix revealed that it would be rolling out its ad-supported plan on the 3rd of November. Called Basic with Ads, this ad-supported plan will cost just $6.99 a month in the US. This new price in the US is $3 lower than the current $9.99 a month…

Moko Home + Living, a Kenyan furniture startup, has raised $6.5 million for expansion in the Kenyan market. This Series B debt-equity funding round was co-led by by U.S.-based investment fund Talanton and Swiss investor AlphaMundi Group. Other participants include Novastar ventures, Blink CV, Kenya’s Victoria Commercial Bank which offered…

In May 2022, three tech giants Apple, Google and Microsoft said they were planning to kill off the use of passwords across mobile, desktop and browsers, with “passkeys” being the replacement. Passkeys are backed by the giants and the FIDO Alliance. Apple implemented the support in iOS 16 and now Google is…

Bytedance, the company behind TikTok, is planning to expand its music streaming service globally to compete with industry leaders like Spotify and Apple Music. WSJ reports that the company has begun talks with music labels and it plans to integrate music streaming within its short-video service and scale it to…

Starlink CEO Elon Musk announced that “figures from the Chinese government asked him directly to withhold Starlink access within China. This was revealed in an interview Musk had with Financial times (FT) as reported by The Verge. Musk told FT that, in the publication’s summary, “Beijing has made clear its disapproval of…

Binance, a cryptocurrency trading platform, confirmed that it lost at least $100 million to hackers. This forced the Binance blockchain, also known as BNB Chain and Binance Smart Chain, to suspend transactions and fund transfers after discovering a vulnerability affecting the BSC Token Hub cross-chain bridge. The exploit was on…

Google unveiled its latest range of Google smartphones – Google Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro – at the at the Made by Google event in New York City today. It was unveiled alongside the new Google Pixel Watch. The Pixel 7 has a 6.3-inch display and smaller bezels while…