Author: Akin Naphtal

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…

Appoints Dr Olatunji as NDPB Pioneer National Commissioner The federal government of Nigeria has approved the establishment of the Nigeria Data Protection Bureau (NDPB). This followed a request made by the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Prof Isa Ali Ibrahim (Pantami). The NDPB has been established in line with global best practices and will focus on data protection and privacy for the country, among others, according to the statement signed by Spokesperson to the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Mrs Uwa Suleiman. The successful implementation of the National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy (NDEPS) for a Digital Nigeria…

Kenya’s Lami has acquired fellow Nairobi-based insurtech startup Bluewave in order to drive rapid growth and expand its presence to new African markets. Founded by Jihan Abass in 2018, Lami is a digital insurance platform that enables partner businesses – including banks, tech companies, and other entities – to easily and seamlessly offer digital insurance products to their users via its API. The startup, which last year was chosen by Catalyst Fund as part of the eighth cohort of its inclusive fintech accelerator and also secured US$1.8 million in seed funding, can also be used by partner businesses to manage…

Meta Platforms, the company formerly known as Facebook, just had the worst trading day in its history as a public company. The company’s shares closed down more than 26% on Thursday, shaving off nearly $240 billion from its market value, after a rough earnings report released after trading hours on Wednesday. Not only did Meta (FB) report a rare and worse-than-expected profit decline during the final three months of last year, it laid out a series of challenges to its core advertising business and revealed for the first time just how much money it’s losing on its shift to the metaverse.  The company also reported a slight-but-striking decline…

This was revealed during the release of the end-of-year report on venture capital investments in Africa. Further checks in Crunchbase and Tracxn — platforms that track funding rounds in startups and private companies globally — reveal that the company closed the round in August 2021. PalmPay came into Nigeria’s payments scene in June 2019. Five months later, it launched with a $40 million seed round — the largest of its kind on the continent — from Chinese investors such as Chinese phone-maker Transsion via its Tecno subsidiary, NetEase and wireless communications hardware firm Mediatek. The startup also took money from Chinese investors for…