The US will spend more than half a billion dollars on a new consulate general in Eko Atlantic, the four square miles of land in Lagos, Nigeria, reclaimed from the Atlantic Ocean, that features residential and commercial properties.
Mobile money hit a new milestone last year as the value of transactions processed globally surpassed $1 trillion for the first time, according to a report released this week by the GSM Association, which tracks data in the mobile telecommunications industry.
An angry crowd invaded the pitch and vandalized facilities inside the Moshood Abiola national stadium in Abuja on Tuesday (Mar. 29), after Nigeria failed to beat Ghana in a qualifying game for the soccer World Cup in Qatar later this year, and won’t be competing in the tournament.
Nelson Mandela’s status as an icon of South African democracy is still money in the bank, as was the case last week when an NFT of his 60-year-old arrest warrant sold for $130,000.
Last week, Togo became the first African country to land Equiano, Google’s subsea internet cable for Africa. The cable, which is part of the tech giant’s $1 billion investment in Africa, will land in Nigeria, Namibia, and South Africa later this year.
Nigeria’s startup employees are having a #MeToo moment over workplace abuse.
A South African court ordered Amazon to pause construction of its 4 billion rand ($300 million) headquarters in South Africa over concerns by indigenous people that the US company is defiling sacred land.
Equiano, Google’s subsea internet cable in Africa, will make its first landing in Togo this month.
It starts as a scrappy blog of punchy hot takes by a hobbyist who gets tired of writing gadget reviews. Seven years later, it’s raising $2.3 million in seed financing from venture capitalists that believe it can be the most important publication covering the business and human impact of technology in Africa.
From a January average of 288 naira ($.70) per liter, diesel now sells for over N700 ($1.69) per liter in Nigeria. It is causing widespread anxiety for businesses that rely on the product to power generators that make up for historically unstable power supply.
Africa’s e-commerce leader Jumia does not seem to have impressed investors with its 2021 earnings report, with its share price reaching a new one-year low of $7.25 at the end of trading on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on Mar. 11.
When the demo day for Y Combinator’s winter cohort of startups begins later this month, Bloom will put Sudan on the American accelerator’s famed map for the first time.
Besides being the chief executives of multibillion-dollar African startups, Olugbenga Agboola of Flutterwave, and Ham Serunjogi of Chipper Cash have one other thing in common: credentials from US universities. A lot of African tech leaders that raise venture capital funding are like them.
Nigeria’s dependence on foreign imports to satisfy growing wheat consumption might face its biggest challenge yet due to Russia’s war with Ukraine.
Last year in Nigeria, African telecoms group MTN doubled its mobile money transaction volume, deployed 4G in over 9,000 new sites, and bought spectrum for its 5G rollout. On Feb. 27 while unveiling its new logo at Lagos’s Eko hotel, the company sold these milestones as a bundle that will boost its appeal to Gen Z customers.
African e-commerce company Jumia has now released 12 quarterly reports since going public in April 2019, the most recent (pdf) arguably being its best yet on most metrics that matter.
Nigeria’s ministry of foreign affairs said on Feb. 27 that it received over 250 of its citizens who fled Russia’s deadly war in Ukraine to the borders of nearby European countries, and was processing them for subsequent return to their homeland.
The boom in Africa’s business-to-business e-commerce space is starting to lead to consolidation between potential competitors. One example is in west Africa where TradeDepot, a six-year-old Nigerian startup that uses a mobile app to help retailers order consumer goods from manufacturers, announced today (Feb. 23) that it has bought Green Lion, a Ghana-based company in the same line of business.
The move by Russian president Vladimir Putin to increase his military’s presence in Ukraine has set off all kinds of panic around the world, destabilizing oil markets, and threatening to cause food price hikes in Africa and Asia. One other area of panic is the disruption to the thousands of Africans studying in Ukraine.
Domestic air travel in Nigeria in 2021 exceeded pre-pandemic levels as travelers resumed frequent movement within the country, without the burden of covid-19 variants that continued to hinder other parts of the world. But as the number of flights increased, so did delays.
He’s acclaimed for busting notorious kidnappers and gangs, receiving an “outstanding performance” award from Nigeria’s house of representatives in 2020, and from the wife of president Muhammadu Buhari two years earlier. On Instagram, there are pictures of him in casual conversation with superstar Davido. “Thanks for the visit bro,” reads one caption.
Less than a year after Flutterwave became a unicorn through a mega-round co-led by Tiger Global, nine mostly US investors have co-invested $250 million at a $3 billion valuation, believing that this six-year-old African fintech company will eventually dominate its market.
Hi Quartz Africa members,
When a successful entrepreneur starts a professional soccer club from scratch in a country where sports is run as a distraction, will he build a charity case or another groundbreaking business? Shola Akinlade, CEO of Nigerian fintech company Paystack, is betting on achieving the latter.
