Author: Akin Naphtal

An internationally recognised currency exchange platform, Grey, has been accepted into Y Combinator’s Winter 2022 startup batch. The instant exchange service company recently changed its name from Aboki Africa in a bid to use a more international-friendly moniker. The startup also recently raised an undisclosed amount of pre-seed funding from Ingressive Capital and Abdul Hassan, co-founder and CEO of Mono and other investors. Idorenyin Obong and Femi Aghedo launched Grey in July 2020. The simple problem they wanted to solve, which they faced, was to help Nigerians exchange the foreign currencies in their domiciliary accounts to local currency — which…

Cassava Technologies has appointed Tesh Durvasula as the new Chief Executive Officer of Africa Data Centres effective 7 February 2022. He will be responsible for driving growth, innovation and strategy of Cassava Technologies’ data centres to meet Africa’s accelerating demand for data and digital infrastructure. Durvasula is an experienced technology and real estate industry executive with a 25-year track record of successful leadership and value generation in the digital infrastructure sector. He will lead the ADC team as the organisation rapidly expands its footprint of hyperscale data centres throughout Africa with a plan to add an additional ten data centres…

Africa Data Centres (ADC) has announced that its long-serving CEO, Stephane Duproz, has been replaced in the role by Tesh Durvasula. Cassava Technologies – a new holding company created last year for businesses such as ADC, Distributed Power Technologies and Liquid Intelligent Technologies – said in a statement on Monday that Durvasula will take the reins with immediate effect. “Durvasula is an experienced technology and real estate industry executive with a 25-year track record of successful leadership and value generation in the digital infrastructure sector,” Cassava said in Monday’s statement. “He will lead the Africa Data Centres team as the…

Airtel Africa recorded an earnings surge that helped its after-tax profit almost double to more than half a billion dollars in the nine months to December, according to its unaudited earnings report issued today, Friday, February 04, 2022. The reported revenue grew by 21.7% to $3,492m while constant currency underlying revenue grew by 24.8%. Constant currency underlying revenue growth was recorded across all regions: Airtel Nigeria up 29.0%, East Africa up 24.4% and Francophone Africa up 19.0%; and across all key services, with revenue in Voice up 16.1%, and in Data and Mobile Money both up 37.2%. Underlying EBITDA was…

A report issued by a panel of experts looking into the July 2021 riots has found that South Africa’s recently-introduced Cybercrimes Act would have given the state additional tools to clamp down on the looting and riots, and could be used to prevent future unrest from taking place. President Cyril Ramaphosa appointed the panel following a spate of orchestrated public violence, destruction and sabotage that impacted KwaZulu Natal and parts of Gauteng in July 2021. The three-member panel included human rights lawyer, Advocate Mojanku Gumbi, former deputy head of the South African Secret Service, Silumko Sokupa, and University of Pretoria’s…

The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) has urged President Muhammadu Buhari to use “his good offices and leadership position to urgently review and rescind his reported approval for security agencies to access people’s personal details via National Identification Number (NIN)-Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) linkage without due process of law.” SERAP also urged President Buhari to send executive bills to the National Assembly to repeal and reform all laws, which are inconsistent and incompatible with Nigerians’ rights to privacy, dignity and liberty. The Guardian had exclusively reported last week that one year after the NIN-SIM policy came into force, the…

Nigerian ride-hailing and shared mobility startup, Transtura has completed the acquisition of WazoMoney, a fintech startup that provides simplified payment solutions as it sets to launch its payment and marketplace solutions for the mobility sector. The company believes this will help unlock the enormous opportunities in the transportation value chain in Nigeria and other Africa countries. Transtura commenced full-scale operations in October 2021, launching its shared mobility service in Lagos. The company has continued to record massive traction since launching, with thousands of riders queuing in its three major routes to use its shared ride service. The startup is now…

About 17 years after the Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NiRA) was formed, birthing the country’s code top-level domain (ccTLD), the .ng share of the nation’s identity on the Internet remains very low. The .ng is Nigeria’s identity on the World Wide Web (www). Checks showed that the .ng is 0.000504353 of the world’s 365.5 million registered and functional ccTLD. This is in spite of the country’s over 200 million estimated population and more than 100 million Internet users. For emphasis, a domain name is an identification string that defines a realm of administrative autonomy, authority or control within the Internet protocol. The right to use a domain…

Countries in sub-Saharan Africa have been worst-affected by Meta’s plan to discontinue its low-cost Express Wi-Fi internet, launched five years ago to drive connectivity in underserved regions. Meta (formerly Facebook) quietly issued this notice saying that it plans to wind down the program later this year. In countries like Kenya, however, the service has been off since mid-December 2020. The switch-off comes barely a year after Meta partnered with Eutelsat Konnect, a satellite operator, to expand the low-cost internet service in parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Kenya, Ivory Coast, Zambia, Cameroon, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Madagascar, Ghana, South Africa and Uganda. Other countries…

The Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) has termed as timely the Government decision to classify telecommunication infrastructure facilities as critical amid rising vandalism cases. Interior and Coordination of National Government Cabinet Secretary (CS) Fred Matiang’i last week gazetted several assets ranging from communication installations (including internet systems) as well as air navigation, petroleum storage and distribution systems as critical infrastructure facilities. Such installations will now be accorded enhanced security in a bid to deter vandalism after recent incidents of vandalism on power lines, telecommunication masts as well as road and railway facilities. Recently, a breakdown on the Kiambere-Embakasi high voltage…