Africa lags behind the rest of the world in internet adoption. Reasons for this include poor coverage distribution and the high cost of internet, and some of the effects are social, digital, and financial exclusion.
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The prospect of Africa going cashless has led to a rush to revolutionize the continent’s digital payment landscape. But despite huge investments into the industry over the years and the presence of big players working to shape its infrastructure, the longstanding narrative is that the space is still heavily fragmented.
Security in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the newest member of the East African Community (EAC), has been deteriorating over the past three months due to rebel activities and reprisals against civilian populations.
Ghana has ended its mandatory requirement to wear face masks in public, becoming the newest African country to ease covid-19 containment measures as infections fall, and pressure grows to reopen economies.
Soccer is Africa’s most popular sport, but finding comprehensive data on the game in the continent to help in decision making is often a challenging task. Sometimes data are not available, or they are fragmented.
Netflix has released its first original African reality show, Young, Famous & African, a series that follows the lives of some of the biggest celebrities in the continent. Although its stars come from all over Africa, the show is based in Johannesburg.
Sokowatch, a Nairobi-based B2B company that connects informal retailers to manufacturers, has raised $125 million in a Series B round and rebranded to Wasoko.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is likely to disrupt Africa’s wheat supply and heighten food insecurity in some parts of the continent including Somalia, which is experiencing its worst drought in decades.
The London Metal Exchange suspended the trading of nickel on Mar. 8 following a doubling in price in just two days to trade above $100,000 per ton. Mar. 8’s price was four times the price a week earlier.
Africans are criticizing their governments for abstaining from the United Nations vote condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Late last year, local and international media reported that Uganda’s Entebbe International Airport was at risk of being taken over by China upon default on a loan for the upgrade and expansion of the airport. The controversial news was even turned into a skit by The Daily Show.
Africans in Ukraine are reporting racist treatment in their quest to escape the war, saying they are being blocked from boarding trains and prevented from crossing borders to neighboring countries for safety.
The African Union (AU) has called on Russia to respect international law and Ukraine’s sovereignty.
Similar to many parts of the world, women’s reproductive rights are a highly polarizing issue in Kenya. According to a new report by the Mozilla Foundation, Kenyans now have another factor complicating debates – that of targeted Twitter disinformation campaigns.
Kenya’s permanent representative to the United Nations (UN) on Feb. 21 gave a scathing condemnation of the Russia-Ukraine crisis, comparing it to colonialism in Africa.
For five years, Sweden’s Norrsken Foundation has helped social tech entrepreneurs in Africa and elsewhere solve societal and environmental challenges by investing in their ideas financially.
Last week, a delegation from Somaliland went on a five-day tour of Taiwan, a trip that elicited a negative reaction from China.
Although Wikipedia is an important source of knowledge and one of the world’s most-visited websites, it has a scarcity of content in African languages. To put this into perspective, Swahili Wikipedia has about 69,000 articles, the most of any African-language edition, compared to 6.45 million for the top-ranked English Wikipedia.
