Author: Akin Naphtal

Airtel Zambia’s B2B silo Airtel Business has launched a new enhanced fibre connectivity solution, Gigabit Passive Optical Networks (GPON), to connect more businesses in the country. Airtel Zambia said it already has over 4,000 km of fibre spread across the country, and with the new solution in place, backed by a US$1-million investment, additional SMBs (initially in Lusaka, Ndola and Kitwe) will be connected. Thereafter, the company has committed to further investment to roll out the solution in other regions. The company added that the fibre network infrastructure will benefit businesses by offering guaranteed bandwidth, scalable plans, high performance, reliability…

The Governor of the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) has said African Fintech companies Flutterwave and Chipper Cash are not licensed to operate remittance and payment services in the East African country. Compliance with regulation has impacted tech companies over the past few months, and affected cross-border payments, US Dollar virtual payments and other card processing functions. Chipper Cash and Flutterwave have been singled out by Patrick Njoroge, Governor of the CBK, for not having operator permits. Kenya, which is delaying launch of a central bank digital currency, is considered to be a major growth market for mobile-based remittances from…

Twitter and Amref Health Africa, a leading Nairobi-based health development organisation, have announced their continued collaboration to provide skills and capacity-building training in best practices for health reporting. This comes on the heels of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and amid growing concerns about recently reported cases of monkeypox across the continent. Since its launch in 2020, the media scholarship programme by Amref Health Africa in partnership with Amref International University and Twitter, has awarded scholarships to high-achieving African journalists to pursue Health Communication and Journalism courses. The partnership between Amref and Twitter, which has been renewed in 2022, aims to…

STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education is a growing focus in Africa. More than ever before, people are recognizing the importance of including STEM-related disciplines in the education curriculum. Many believe the future of STEM education is in collaborations. Collaborations that provide immersive education for interested students while creating channels to increase the interest of students. Collaborations that create an avenue for stakeholders to share resources, and build on each other’s experience and expertise while pooling resources through their individual networks. Collaboration that fosters a harmonious working relationship with the regulator and the regulated for sustainable impact. It is on…

As the Internet Society (ISOC) celebrates its 30th anniversary as a global nonprofit advocating for an open, globally-connected Internet, the organization is calling for accelerated action to further Internet development throughout Africa. During the World Telecommunication Development Conference (WTDC) 2022 taking place from in Kigali, Rwanda under the theme “Connecting the unconnected to achieve sustainable development”, Dawit Bekele, Regional Vice President of the Internet Society in Africa, lauded the progress made by stakeholders in expanding access throughout the continent, while encouraging more collaborative efforts to bridge the digital divide. Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest growth in global Internet penetration, increasing…

Amazon Web Services has announced its presence in Nigeria with the launch of ‘AWS Outposts’, an infrastructure service that enables users to locally host, run, manage their workload and connect with Amazon’s cloud service offerings. Amazon described the infrastructure as fully-managed and configurable computing and storage racks built with AWS-designed hardware. These it says, allows its customers to run AWS services on-premises, including computing, storage, and databases, while seamlessly connecting to AWS’s broad array of services in the cloud. “Customers in Nigeria who have workloads that require low latency, data processing, or data storage on premises can benefit from AWS…

Verve International, Africa’s payment technology and card business platform has welcomed its first francophone e-commerce and merchant aggregator, CinetPay into the Verve ecosystem. CinetPay, the Ivorian-based FinTech provides online and Point-of-Sale (POS) payment solutions for merchants to process payments from more than 40 different payment operators in West and Central Africa. According to verve, this partnership is expected to further establish the Verve footprint across the region and support merchants to accept Verve cards from customers of issuing banks in 13 African countries. Vincent Ogbunude, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Verve while speaking on the partnership said, “We are…

Minister for Communication and Digitalization Ursula Owusu-Ekuful has stated that the Ministry would not extend the set deadline for the nationwide SIM card registration exercise. She reiterated how all unregistered SIM cards would be deactivated by the end of July this year, and advised mobile phone users yet to register their SIM cards to do so to meet the deadline. The exercise which began on 1st October 2021, was originally scheduled to end on 31st March 2022 but was extended by the sector Ministry to 31st July 2022, due to the issue where over 7.5 million citizens and residents at…

Vodacom Group will retain full ownership of a new subsidiary that will take over its South African tower business. The firm also recorded 5.2% rise in first-quarter revenue. The formation of the telecommunications tower company, which follows similar actions by Vodacom’s rivals, is not yet complete, CEO Shameel Joosub said. South African telecoms firms have either carved out tower businesses or sold them to specialist tower companies, a move also seen globally. By doing so, they have raised money for such purposes as funding fast-growing services, such as fintech. Formation of the tower company, which follows similar actions by Vodacom’s…

There may soon be a common virtual currency used by members of the Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC), if plans by the Bank of Central African States (BEAC) pan out. Chairman of the Board of Directors of BEAC Hervé Ndoba, also CAR’s Minister of Finance and Budget, has called CEMAC’s central bank to “work towards the creation of a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC)’ for its members – Cameroon, Chad, Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Congo and Gabon. Ndoba made the call in Cameroon’s economic capital Douala recently after an extraordinary session of the regional monetary authority. Ndoba…