Author: Staff Writer

The Central bank of Nigeria (CBN) has announced that it is introducing newly-designed N200, N500, and N1,000 currency notes by December 2022. The statement was made by the CBN Governor, Mr Godwin Emefiele in a special briefing on Wednesday. According to him, the current Naira notes will no longer serve…

The Central bank of Nigeria (CBN) announced that it recorded 700,000 transactions worth N8 billion on eNaira platform in first year of operation. This was disclosed at the first anniversary of the central bank digital currency (CBDC) Launched in October 2021, the eNaira is a central bank digital currency (CBDC)…

Media streaming giant, Spotify, announced that it now has 195 million paying subscribers and expects to cross the 200 million mark by the end of 2022. This is an increase of 7 million since last quarter. Total monthly active users stands at 456 million with net additions reaching a record…

54gene CEO, Dr Abasi Ene-Obong has stepped down from his executive role and General Counsel, Teresia L. Bost has been appointed as interim CEO. She will be supported by Chief Operating Officer Delali Attipoe. This was confirmed today to TechCrunch by the African genomics company. This comes barely a month after VP…

Spotify announced that it is offering $100,000 to 13 creators from different parts of Africa from its new Africa Podcast Fund. The media streaming giant said in a blog post that it had “been paying close attention to the many storytellers and entertainers across the African continent and using our…

The Nigerian Communications Commission, the regulatory body in Nigeria has ordered mobile operators in the country to reverse the 10% tariff increase on the voice and data plans. By this order, MTN and Airtel are now to reverse the price increases they implemented on their respective networks some days ago…

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…