Author: Akin Naphtal

Nigerian tractor-booking platform Hello Tractor has raised US$1 million in funding from Heifer International to provide loans for tractor purchases which can be repaid from revenues earned by leasing them to local farmers. Hello Tractor has rolled out a tracking device and software that allows farmers and tractor owners to book connected tractors from their phones. Farmers get a critical service formerly unavailable to them, and owners see a fleet optimisation opportunity that also minimises fuel theft and fraud. It currently serves over 500,000 small farmers across Africa with over 3,000 tractor and combine owners. It has now raised US$1…

The Central African Republic (CAR) has become the second-ever country to adopt Bitcoin as a national currency, following El Salvador’s adoption of the cryptocurrency last year. CAR’s government says a bill to adopt Bitcoin was passed unanimously by the country’s parliament, reports Reuters and BBC News. (Though former CAR prime minister Martin Ziguele complained the bill was approved “by proclamation.”) The office of CAR president Faustin-Archange Touadera claimed the move would “improve the conditions of Central African citizens” and distinguish CAR as “of the world’s boldest and most visionary countries.” However, geopolitical analysts and financial experts are confused by the…

Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has said that it is hopeful that 5G services will be available by the fourth quarter of this year in the country. Usman Aliyu, Head, Spectrum Administration, NCC, disclosed this while speaking on 5G deployment at a capacity building workshop organized for ICT journalist by the Commission in Abuja. He said cleaning of the Bands is ongoing with the migration of the FSS users from 3.4-3.8 GHz spectrum following the ratification of the use of Nigerian Communications Satellite by the National Frequency Management Council. When deployed, he said a lot of services would be enhanced with…

Even as it deals with continued supply constraints and consumers wary of inflation, Apple today reported the best March quarter in its history. The company tallied $97.3 billion in revenue in Q2, up 9 percent over the year-ago quarter. That amounted to a profit of $25 billion, with earnings per share of $1.52. Apple set March quarter revenue records for its iPhone, Mac, and Wearables / Home / Accessories divisions. Apple’s various services grew to a new high of 825 million subscribers. And the Mac continues to surge. “The last seven Mac quarters have now been the top seven quarters…

As part of his pitch to raise funds to acquire Twitter, Elon Musk apparently “floated” the idea of cutting jobs at Twitter to improve its bottom line, according to a Bloomberg report. “While nothing is set in stone — and Musk himself had no access to Twitter’s non-public financials at the time — he specifically mentioned job cuts” during discussions with banks, the report says. The Washington Post reported that Musk discussed making “efficiencies” at the company in the conversations with bankers, “which could include job cuts.” There are still a lot of uncertainties about what Twitter will look like…

TN Ghana and Vodafone Ghana have entered into a partnership to pilot national roaming in the Volta region, and describe the development as a first step to a broader nationwide national roaming alliance. The companies released a statement which affirmed that under the agreement and pilot phase, Vodafone Ghana will expand coverage of its network by leveraging MTN’s network infrastructure. Ghana’s government is prioritising national roaming implementation to facilitate universal access and accelerate the country’s digital economy ambitions. The plan is to establish a full national roaming regime amongst all operators in the country. Patricia Obo-Nai, CEO of Vodafone Ghana…

Prof. Isa Ali Pantami, Minister of Communication and Digital Economy has asked technology company, Huawei, to establish a global ICT centre for the training of Nigerians and Africans. Pantami disclosed this during the kick off of the implementation of the Federal Government and Huawei Memorandum of Understanding aimed at providing ICT skills to Nigerian youths in Abuja. The MoU aims at promoting the partnership between the Ministry of Communication and Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. to establish two core ICT projects in Nigeria: the Huawei ICT Academy Project and the Huawei ICT Talent Cultivation Project in line with the Ministry’s National…

Kenyan electric vehicle company Opibus has changed its name to ROAM, with the rebrand coming after the company’s expansion led to a strategic shift in its vision. Founded in 2017, Opibus is the leading provider of electric vehicles designed and manufactured locally. Its vision is to create reliable and cost effective products designed for the pan-African mass market. The company raised US$7.5 million in equity and grant funding late last year to help it scale its operations, and in January it introduced the first all-electric bus in Kenya – also the first Africa-designed electric bus ever. It has now changed…

Google has announced that it is submitting its Istio service mesh project for consideration as an incubating project within the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). Google’s Kubernetes has long been the flagship project for the CNCF and the company recently also brought Knative, a project that aims to make it easier to build and deploy serverless applications on top of Kubernetes, to the CNCF as well. It’s maybe no surprise then that Istio, too, will likely become a CNCF project. There are still some steps to take before that happens, but chances are Google wouldn’t make today’s announcement if those weren’t, for the most part,…

Spotify has announced that it’s launching a Free and Open Source Software Fund to support independent open source projects. The company says the purpose of the fund is to bring attention to independent open source projects and give back to developers. The new fund will start at €100,000. Spotify’s open source tech lead said in a blog post that “this is just a starting amount” and that as with any new program, the company wants to test it before deploying it more broadly. The company will donate the money to different open source projects over the course of the year. The funds will provide…