In the first week of April this year, the buzz around Swvl was about its entry into Africa’s group of billion-dollar companies. It achieved this by going public on Nasdaq via a Special Purpose Acquisition Vehicle (SPAC) with Queen’s Gambit Growth Capital, a women-led blank-check company, as its sponsor.
Sometime between July and September this year, Starlink expects to go live in two African countries: Nigeria, and Mozambique.
Mohamed Salah had another prolific season in the English Premier League. In the nine-month season that ended on Sunday May 22, Salah totaled 23 goals for Liverpool, taking his English career total to 120 in 193 games, an average of more than one goal every two games. No African player in Europe’s major soccer leagues (England, Spain, Germany, Italy, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, Belgium) scored as many as Salah. He also assisted more goals for his teammates than any other player in England.
Big tech companies from Silicon Valley tend to focus most business attention in the US and Europe where they make the most money. But they are increasingly setting their sights on Africa, too. Amazon is building a Prime Video team to develop original Nigerian films and series, while Microsoft has opened multimillion-dollar offices for its African engineering teams in Kenya and Nigeria.
At least 92 monkeypox cases have been recorded in 12 countries across Europe, the US, Canada, and Australia since the World Health Organization (WHO) started receiving reports of infections on May 13.
On May 22, Olaf Scholz started a three-day tour of Africa in Senegal—his first since becoming the chancellor of Germany—and said his country wants to help develop natural gas projects off the coast of west Africa.
In a draft document that became public on May 18, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) proposed guidelines that would usher in an ‘open banking‘ era in the country, a key step in creating a standard for how companies exchange digital financial data belonging to consumers.
In its latest earnings call this week, African ecommerce company Jumia reported revenue of $47.6 million in the first three months of 2022, 44% more than in the same period last year. The company said it had 3.1 million active customers and fulfilled 9.3 million orders, each figure being at least 29% higher than the same period last year.
Two major domestic airlines in Nigeria have increased the price of local flights from a baseline of 50,000 naira ($120) for economy seats to as much as N58,000 ($139) this week, signaling the industry’s effort to manage an aviation fuel scarcity spanning months.
Shiploads of cocoa move from Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana to Europe every year, giving life to a global $130 billion chocolate industry. But the west African farmers at the heart of this value chain have remained extremely poor over time. Some lawmakers in the European Union are now joining presidents of Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana in trying to change that imbalance.
For the second time this year, domestic airlines in Nigeria have threatened to shut down their operations, citing rising costs, only to back off after a few days.
Nigeria is increasingly liberalizing its financial services sector away from a total dependence on banks to include providers with different business models and distribution channels. The latest step in that evolution is the granting of ‘payment service bank’ licenses to MTN and Airtel, two of the country’s biggest providers of telecom services.
For the world’s biggest businesses, corporate social responsibility projects are a way to show that their purpose goes beyond maximizing profit. The projects can fortify brand equity by, for example, creating lasting relationships with influential stakeholders.
A little over a year ago, Twitter started setting up its first Africa office in Ghana, a decision the company’s founder and then CEO, Jack Dorsey, made. Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, will now determine how that project evolves.
At least 100 people died after an explosion on Apr. 24 at an illegal oil refinery in Nigeria. The site of the blast was the Abaezi forest in a border community between Imo and Rivers, two states in the country’s southeastern region.
Accelerator programs run by companies like Y Combinator help African startups with business readiness, access to investor networks, and global prestige. Twice every year, there’s a buzz to see what African startups made it into the famed program that helped propel companies such as Airbnb, Stripe, and Coinbase.
The African fintech company Flutterwave said a report of alleged financial and personal misconduct by its CEO Olugbenga Agboola does not reveal new information it did not already know.
When Flutterwave wanted to raise $100 million in Jan. 2021, it pitched a compelling set of metrics to investors. Its revenue had grown from $5 million to $55 million between 2018 and 2020. Gross profit was $26 million with a 48% margin. Its services were used in 20 countries, thanks to the hard work of over 270 employees.
Africa’s most valuable startup Flutterwave is in the spotlight for alleged dubious business and personal practices by Olugbenga Agboola, its founder and chief executive.
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Amazon is looking to hire at least three senior executives to help it develop original video content in Nigeria, Africa’s largest film industry.
A military tribunal in Burkina Faso gave life in prison sentences to three people for the murder of Thomas Sankara, the country’s famed marxist revolutionary.
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This year’s Grammy award for the best Dance/Electronic album went to Black Coffee, the South African producer and DJ. The feat puts him in a roll of honor that includes Madonna, Lady Gaga, and Daft Punk since the category was introduced in 2005.
