Author: Smart Megwai

On May 1, 2025—International Workers’ Day—drivers for Bolt, Uber, and other e-hailing platforms in Lagos will stage a 24-hour strike. Their message is clear: “We will not be ignored.” And for anyone watching the gig economy in Africa, this isn’t just a protest—it’s a reckoning. The planned strike, organised by…

When the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) recently announced it had banned 574 secondary schools from conducting the 2025 WASSCE due to exam malpractice, the news sent shockwaves through Nigeria’s education sector. But beyond public outrage lies a deeper question: Can technology finally solve WAEC’s cheating crisis? The scale of…

The 2025 UTME kicked off today, with over 2 million candidates sitting for Nigeria’s biggest university entrance exam. But alongside the usual anxiety and expectations came a now-familiar shadow: cheating scandals. This year, the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) revealed it had deliberately created a fake “expo” website—and 180…

When WhatsApp quietly rolled out its new in-app translation feature to some Android beta users in 2025, most people saw it as a win for casual conversations and travel plans. But there’s another group that should be paying very close attention: small businesses. WhatsApp Business is already a lifeline for…

Africa has traditionally been viewed as a consumer of used vehicles from Asia, Europe, and America to fulfil its mobility needs. However, this perspective is shifting. Across the continent, both governments and manufacturers are driving a quiet revolution: local auto assembly. In countries such as Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, and…

Electric vehicles are gaining momentum across Africa, but the biggest roadblock isn’t interest—it’s infrastructure. While developed markets rely on dense networks of charging stations and home chargers, many African cities and towns still struggle with unreliable power supply, limited grid coverage, and high electricity costs. That’s why one homegrown solution…

When people think of classic cars, images of a 1967 Mustang or a 1959 Cadillac might come to mind. But across Africa, an entirely different lineage of beloved vehicles has shaped everyday life—and many of them are disappearing without a trace. In Nigeria, the Peugeot 504 wasn’t just a car;…

When we talk about electric vehicles (EVs), the usual suspects come to mind: Tesla in the U.S., BYD in China, or Volkswagen in Germany. But a quiet EV revolution is brewing in a less-expected corner of the world—Africa. More specifically, Nigeria. Meet NEV Electric, a Nigerian-based EV startup that’s raised…

Every minute, over 2 million mobile money transactions occur across Africa. That’s not hyperbole. It’s the new normal in a continent that’s home to 1.1 billion registered mobile money accounts and processed $1.1 trillion in transactions in 2024 alone, according to GSMA’s State of the Industry Report on Mobile Money…

In an era marked by dwindling funding and cautious investors, The Africa Report’s latest ranking of the 20 Future Champions of Tech in Africa offers a fresh and necessary lens into the continent’s shifting innovation landscape. Led by journalist and editor Julien Wagner, the report seeks not just to spotlight…

For decades, building hardware in Nigeria has been a cautionary tale. Even the most promising ideas often didn’t survive past ideation, from the cost of components to a lack of specialised talent and infrastructure. Just ask the team behind Humane — no, not the AI Pin startup that raised $230…

What if AI helped you become a better writer instead of just writing for you? That’s the vision behind Thesify, an AI-powered tool for students, researchers, and knowledge workers. I spoke with co-founder Marc-Oliver Gewaltig about Thesify’s growing user base in Nigeria, the importance of writing in the AI era,…

You and I know that a simple phone call is no longer as innocent as it once was. With the rise of spam calls, fraud, and identity scams, it has become essential to know who is calling before answering. This is why caller identification services have become so popular, and…

In the past, colonialism was about land—territories seized, borders redrawn, and entire populations brought under foreign rule. Today, a new form of colonialism is unfolding—not on land, but in space. The battleground is not physical territory, but digital access. And the conquerors? Tech giants like Amazon and SpaceX, who are…

For years, Nigerian bank customers have been quietly bleeding money, not from reckless spending, but from routine transactions. The charges attached to online transfers—sometimes as little as ₦10 or as high as ₦50 per transaction—may seem insignificant at first glance. However, when multiplied across millions of daily transfers, the numbers…

In a world dominated by smartphones and high-speed internet, one might assume that USSD codes are becoming irrelevant. Surprisingly, these simple sequences of asterisks, numbers, and hashes are not just hanging on; they are thriving as a vital part of Nigeria’s financial and telecommunications ecosystem. They are more than just…

You can still access the internet even when your phone is in flight mode. This seemingly contradictory fact left me completely perplexed. When I discovered this, I was amazed by how much we can accomplish by truly exploring the functions of our devices. Interestingly, during my research for this article,…

I sat with a friend at the cinema, and while the movie was playing, I glanced at his phone. To my surprise, his screen was filled with numerous notifications—news headlines, weather alerts, social media updates, and countless others. I couldn’t resist asking, “How do you even focus with all that?”.…

Is it just me, or does the new WhatsApp upgrade annoy you, too? The WhatsApp Update Tab now displays both your status updates and the updates from the channels you follow together. I enjoyed scrolling vertically through the different status updates and selecting the ones I wanted to view. However,…

I had a female colleague who wasn’t as tech-savvy as her 10-year-old son. One day, she called me, but I didn’t answer because the caller ID displayed “Private Number.” She continued to call, but I didn’t pick up since it still showed as private. The next day, she approached me…