Author: Smart Megwai

A year ago, Meta rolled out Teen Accounts on Instagram. The move was framed as a safeguard, a way to protect younger users with built-in restrictions, after lawmakers in the U.S. and Europe accused social media giants of putting profit ahead of children’s safety. Now, Meta says that hundreds of…

At Apapa Port in Lagos, containers pile up like a towering wall. Some of them have sat there for years, abandoned after disputes, unpaid duties, or sheer neglect. Each idle box eats into space, slows down new shipments, and drives up costs for traders already wrestling with Nigeria’s tough business…

Apple’s latest flagship, the iPhone 17 Pro, is priced at $1,099 in the U.S. For many in Silicon Valley, this is a painful but manageable expense, equivalent to roughly a month’s wages for the average American worker. However, in West Africa, purchasing the same phone requires years of labour, highlighting…

In Africa’s race toward a digital future, Airtel Africa wants to make sure no one gets left behind. On Tuesday in Lagos, the company’s philanthropic arm, Airtel Africa Foundation, unveiled an ambitious plan: by 2026, it will train 26,000 Nigerian youth, connect 300 schools to the internet, and provide digital…

For anyone in a multilingual chat, the experience is all too familiar: you see a new message, copy the foreign text, jump to a translation app, then toggle back to WhatsApp to reply. That cumbersome process, however, may be over. This week, WhatsApp began rolling out built-in message translations for…

For years, you’ve edited photos on your phone by dragging tiny sliders and navigating confusing menus, or trying to remember what “shadow” versus “exposure” actually does. Now, Google wants to make that whole process feel more like a conversation. On Tuesday, Google announced that it is rolling out a new…

For months, business owners across the country have publicly complained online about the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC). They cited payments that failed to reflect, applications that stalled indefinitely, and approvals that were delayed for weeks. This frustration stemmed from a severe internal issue: the commission was grappling with a backlog…

Radware’s cybersecurity team’s discovery of a flaw in ChatGPT was more than a routine code check; they called the process a “rollercoaster” that ended with a startling breakthrough. They revealed a method hackers could have used to silently steal private data directly from users’ Gmail accounts. The vulnerability was centred…

For years, Mark Zuckerberg pursued his metaverse obsession like a billionaire’s fever dream. He poured billions into bulky headsets and promoted virtual avatars with no legs, all for a futuristic vision that failed to materialise. But at this week’s Meta Connect 2025 in Menlo Park, Meta changed its tone. The…

When Blockchain.com first hinted at an African expansion earlier this year, insiders weren’t surprised that Nigeria was at the top of the list. The country is too big, too fast-moving, and too crypto-curious to ignore. Now, seven months later, the UK-based crypto giant has made it official: Lagos is home…

Weekday traffic in Lagos is relentlessly unpredictable, clogging roads across the city. For years, officers from the Lagos State Traffic Management Authority (LASTMA) have worked in all weather, directing “danfos” and clearing minor accidents to maintain order for over 20 million residents. This week, however, LASTMA acknowledged that its traditional…

A friend messaged me about a website he found. “Hey,” he wrote, “I saw a preorder site that says ‘guaranteed iPhone 17 before everyone else’, but it only asks for card details and shipping fee up front. Seems too good to be true.” His suspicion was completely justified. That single…

Authorities intercepted a suspicious shipping container en route to Lagos. The shippers had falsely declared its contents as spare parts, but inside they discovered something far more dangerous: 277 cartons of counterfeit malaria medicines valued at over ₦1.2 billion. On Monday, the agency behind the operation, Nigeria’s National Agency for…

On a rainy Tuesday in Lagos, I was buying groceries and noticed someone arguing at a POS terminal about high fees and unauthorised charges. The argument reflects common frustrations in Nigerian markets: hidden costs, a loss of trust, and the belief that complaining is useless. However, consumer complaints are yielding…

For millions of Nigerians living with diabetes, a vial of insulin isn’t just medicine, it’s survival. Yet for decades, that survival has depended almost entirely on imported supplies. This dependence has left patients and their families grappling with unpredictable shortages, crippling costs, and the constant uncertainty of vulnerable foreign supply…

Anyone who’s ever stared at those tiny WhatsApp checkmarks knows the weight they can carry. One tick, message sent. Two ticks, message delivered. Two ticks in blue? Message read, and now you’re waiting, wondering, maybe overthinking. For years, that classic grey-to-blue shift has been part of WhatsApp’s unspoken language. But…

It’s been a turbulent year for Temu. Once the darling of U.S. bargain hunters, the e-commerce platform was rocked by Donald Trump’s tariff changes, which effectively ended duty-free small parcel imports. The model that Temu had built its U.S. success on, which involved shipping low-cost goods directly from Chinese factories…

For months, the conversation around AI and music has been stuck on one question: who gets paid when the machines start composing? This week, Sweden gave the world its first real answer. The Swedish Performing Rights Society (STIM), which represents more than 100,000 songwriters and composers, has signed what it…

If you grew up in Nigeria, groundnuts are not just a crop. They’re a memory, sold in “cones” of old newspaper at motor parks, eaten roasted during long road trips. Groundnuts: “Gyada” in Hausa, “Epa” in Yoruba, “Ahuekere” in Igbo, are a staple of daily life. But behind the familiar…

It started with a growing unease. When Attaullah Baig joined Meta in 2021 as a software engineering manager, he eventually became the Head of Security for WhatsApp. But the system he found wasn’t a fortress; it was a security nightmare. Baig says he uncovered glaring vulnerabilities that would alarm any…