Author: Akin Naphtal

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is infamous for using Twitter to tease and tease out various ideas he has about his business interests, cryptocurrency, politics and life in general, but today it looks like he’s making good on one of the biggest of his musings. Twitter has announced that it has accepted Musk’s offer to acquire the publicly traded company at $54.20/share, valuing the social media platform at $44 billion. Moments after the news broke that Twitter trading was halted, the company issued a press release confirming that it was accepting Musk’s offer to take the social network private. “The Twitter Board conducted…

Biometric Verification Number (BVN) enrolments in Nigeria hit 54,241,963 on April 17. According to data released by Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS), the body saddled with eliminating bottlenecks in the country’s banking sector, enrolments by bank account owners in the country rose by 2.3 million in the last three months. At the end of December 2021, enrolments for the number stood at 51.9 million. Checks revealed that the BVN database grew by six million in the year. Also, NIBSS data showed that active bank accounts in the country stood at 133.5 million as of December 2021. Across the world, conventional security systems (password and PIN) face…

The Central Bank of Seychelles (CBS) says it will introduce e-money regulation by June this year in order to encourage and support investment into the market. CBS said the regulation is in line with its payment system modernisation plan, its Fintech strategy and the government’s digital economy agenda, and that it will implement other incentives to attract more people online. Financial surveillance analyst at the CBS Cyril Benoiton said the regulation will provide more information on the licencing, reporting requirements and the applicable licences, offences, notification, fees and penalties. Benoiton said, “The introduction to e-money serves regulation serves to open…

Egyptian e-commerce startup Kemitt has launched a new B2B platform as it diversifies its offering after strong growth in the B2C segment. Founded in 2017, Kemitt is a marketplace that connects product and furniture designers with consumers, handling the manufacturing, overheads, and last-mile logistics. The online platform allows customers to access over 30,000 SKUs, with an on-demand manufacturing option and 7-12 day delivery services to their doorstep. Kemitt, which raised a six-figure US dollar seed funding round a year ago, has now launched a B2B marketplace for furniture, home accessories, and materials. The platform makes procurement simple by providing an…

Nigerian fintech startup Syarpa has closed a US$500,000 pre-seed round of funding to help it expand across Europe and Africa. Syarpa enables users to carry out both international money transfers and crypto exchanges by providing fiat and crypto payment solutions, has over 2,000 users, aand has facilitated transactions worth over US$4 million since launch. The startup is now planning expansion across Europe and Africa after raising a US$500,000 pre-seed funding round led by CrossFund and FirstFounders and also featuring Yolo Investments and a strategic angel investor. “Moving funds or purchasing goods across borders is too complicated. People in Nigeria need…

South African fintech startup Stitch has launched LinkPay, allowing businesses in South Africa and Nigeria to enable users to link their financial accounts and pay securely via instant bank transfer, in seconds. The Stitch API allows developers to connect apps to financial accounts within minutes, allowing their users to share their transaction histories and balances, confirm their identities, and initiate payments. This tooling allows companies to innovate with new and improved services including personal finance, lending, insurance, payments and wealth management. Stitch also enables fintechs to work with traditional financial institutions in a safer and more compliant way. Stitch raised…

Egyptian digital payments provider Paymob has expanded its operations into Pakistan, aiming to empower Pakistani merchants with online, POS and “Tap on Phone” payment solutions. Founded in 2015 by Islam Shawky, Alain El Hajj and Mostafa Menessy, Paymob is an infrastructure technology enabler providing payment solutions to empower digital financial service providers through mobile wallet technology. Paymob, which closed a US$18.5 million Series A funding round last year, has now launched in Pakistan following rapid growth in its home market of Egypt, plus Jordan and Kenya, where combined it services tens of thousands of merchants including LG, Samsonite, Talabat, Uber…

Nigerian startup insurtech startup ETAP, which makes it easier to buy car insurance and make claims, has secured US$1.5 million in pre-seed funding to grow its team and drive the adoption of car insurance across Africa. ETAP makes buying and claiming on car insurance as easy as taking a picture, providing drivers with access to a range of daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly plans to choose from. The startup uses machine learning to build intelligent risk profiles that determine appropriate premiums for each driver, allowing them to achieve lower premiums by driving safely. Using advanced telematics, the driving experience is…

Every time you sink into the sofa and switch on your LG OLED TV, millions of self-lit pixels create images that pop up on the screen. These pixels can be controlled individually to achieve perfect black and infinite contrast, making what you watch come “alive” with excellent colour, depth, detail and texture. Are you planning a movie night with the family to watch your favourite films? Do not let backlight bleed (light leaking around the edges of the screen); blooming or the halo effect; or distorted images spoil your evening. With OLED (organic light-emitting diode) technology, you can be sure…

Global food waste is a massive issue with huge financial, ethical, and environmental costs. An estimated 1.3 billion tonnes of food is wasted globally each year, one third of all food produced for human consumption, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. In Sub-Saharan Africa, post-harvest food losses are estimated to be worth USD 4 billion per year – or enough to feed at least 48 million people, according to the UN Environment Programme. The amount of food lost or wasted costs 2.6 trillion USD each year and is more than enough to feed the…