Author: Akin Naphtal

Twitter is to expand its Safety Mode feature, which lets users temporarily block accounts that send harmful or abusive tweets. The system will flag accounts using hateful remarks, or those bombarding people with uninvited comments, and block them for seven days. Half of the platform’s users in the UK, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland will now have access. And they can also now use a companion feature called Proactive Safety Mode. This will proactively identify potentially harmful replies and prompt people to consider enabling the mode. The firm said it had added this based on feedback from some…

In Africa and the Middle East, most companies in the freight industry still use old-fashioned methods such as spreadsheets, phone calls and emails to manage their shipments. They are electronic yet manual processes that make their work very inefficient. While incumbents have pioneered various enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems to digitize these processes, companies would still get four to five different software platforms to complete multiple tasks. Ideally, stakeholders in this industry — from manufacturers and distributors to retailers and logistics providers — require a single software that connects them with their entire shipping ecosystem, therefore cutting time and cost. Freterium,…

A Nigerian start-up company, Earnipay, has raised $4 million in seed financing led by early-stage venture capital firm Canaan. Thare are other participating investors including XYZ Ventures, Village Global, Musha Ventures, Voltron Capital, Ventures Platform and Paystack CEO Shola Akinlade. Earnipay, which has been in beta since September 2021 and only launched last month, plans to offer its on-demand salary solution to 200,000 employees by the end of 2022. Most of Africa’s workforce is paid monthly but live paycheck to paycheck. Unlike more developed countries like the U.S., where weekly or bi-weekly salaries can take care of this lifestyle, low monthly wages — which…

Three public and private universities have been selected to benefit from a free forex trading (digital finance) programme this year under the Elevate Ghana Forex Project. The beneficiary universities are the University of Ghana (UG), University of Cape Coast (UCC) and Valley View University (VVU). It seeks to train 1,000 youth in digital finance from these tertiary institutions and three other identified regions. The training, an initiative of Women in Forex (FX) Trading Ghana, is aimed at introducing students to forex trade, equip them with the basic skills and develop their interest in the market which could serve as a…

In safeguarding the country’s cyberspace and promoting its national identity, the Nigerian government has directed government officials and agencies to migrate from using generic domains in their websites and emails to the “second level under the government top-level domain”. He said that the benefits of the new policy would include the protection of the nation’s cyberspace as well as safeguarding national identity. This became effective following the approval of the National Policy on the Government, Second Level Domain by the Federal Executive Council (FEC) in Abuja, the nation’s capital. The policy has been approved mandates federal public institutions, ministries,…

Nigerian startup Meeula has launched a smart lead-generating business card to help corporate professionals, entrepreneurs and business owners to network more effectively. Formed in May 2021, Meeula allows users to exchange contacts at events, conferences, meetings or meetups with just a single tap. “Instead of professionals getting to order paper cards again and again, they simply use a single smart business card with unlimited benefits. First, it helps professionals save on costs, and update their business contact information anytime without ordering again. Then it also helps professionals to effortlessly build an email list from contacts received,” said Emmanuel Uduebholo, the…

Nigerian fintech company Flutterwave has raised US$250 million in Series D funding to drive its expansion plan, tripling its valuation to over US$3 billion in the process. Launched in 2016, Flutterwave builds modern payments technology and infrastructure for Africa to enable people and businesses to connect with the global economy. Its solution enables banks and merchants to replace multiple payment integrations with one simple API, which enables the processing of any form of payment anywhere in Africa. The startup has processed over 200 million transactions worth over US$16 billion to date and serves more than 900,000 businesses, including customers like…

Open finance continues to be a significant theme in the world of fintech as businesses tap APIs to access customers’ financial accounts and provide a gamut of integrated and embedded financial services. In the latest development, Stitch — one of the prominent players building and operating these APIs in Africa — confirmed to that it has raised $21 million in Series A funding. This news follows the $4 million Stitch raised out of stealth in February 2021, a prequel to the $2 million extensions round it secured four months ago, bringing its seed round to $6 million. In total, Stitch has raised $27 million to date.…

Texas sues Meta for collecting facial recognition data of Over 10 Million Residents Texas is suing Facebook’s parent company, Meta (FB (FBK)), over allegations the social media giant illegally harvested the facial recognition data of tens of millions of state residents for a decade. The lawsuit, filed Monday in Texas’s Harrison County District Court, argues that a now-shuttered Facebook (FB) photo-tagging feature failed to get Texans’ informed consent before gathering their facial recognition data. The feature worked by analyzing faces in photos, including those of non-Facebook users, and recommending that Facebook users tag the people that the tool identified. Facebook announced it would discontinue the tool in…

Contact Financial Holding, Egypt’s non-bank consumer finance provider, has invested $9 million in the country’s ecommerce super-app Wasla, setting the stage for the rollout of new online shopping capabilities, products and regional expansion. Contact has been in the business of consumer finance since 2001, while Wasla was founded in 2018 by former Serag Meneassy and Taymour Sabry, both ex-Rocket Internet entrepreneurs, and investment banker Mahmoud El Said. “It’s an equity investment, through a series of investments that aim to grow the business going forward, to enable their business plan and their achievement of the company’s vision,” Contact Financial Holding chairman Hazem Moussa explained. The e-commerce platform is…