A typical day on Tarkwa Bay, an island on the Lagos lagoon, sees dozens of tourists come in to visit its famous beaches while residents of a decades-old slum community that has mushroomed on the island go in the opposite direction, to mainland Lagos, for work. But on Tuesday, Jan. 21, the day started with gunfire instead.
How much did African startups raise in 2019? It depends on who you ask.
Getting around in Lagos, Africa’s largest mega-city, is notoriously difficult given the daily traffic jams and poorly maintained road networks. But it’s about to get even worse with new clampdown measures on some of the city’s most commonly used modes of transport.
The ongoing revelations of the extent of the influence and questionable riches of Isabel dos Santos, daughter of Angola’s longest serving president, has dominated news cycles across the continent over the past week.
When a Nigerian says “see you next tomorrow,” the person actually means the day after tomorrow.
More African countries could soon be caught in the cross-hairs of US president Donald Trump’s immigration clampdown.
OKash and OPesa, the Africa-focused consumer lending apps of Opera, the Chinese-owned internet browsing giant, appear to be flouting Google’s Play Store policies. In a report this week, equity research house Hindenburg Research suggested that Opera’s Android-based lending apps in Nigeria, Kenya and India typically require loan repayments within a 30 day period—less than Google’s stipulation of 60 days with steep interest rate payments.
After nearly one year of facing visa restrictions, visa processing for Ghanaian officials and their families will revert to a more straightforward process.
Shutting down internet and social media access—an increasingly popular choice for governments on the continent in response to protests and dissent—came at a cost of $2.1 billion last year.
Fintech startups are the rave across African tech ecosystems but the sector has been increasingly defined by payments specialists. This is somewhat unsurprising given how global payments giants have fueled interest by investing hundreds of millions of dollars.
Nigeria might be Africa’s largest economy but it is increasingly home to one of the continent’s weakest passports.
It is getting easier for Africans to travel across their own continent over the year.
The inflow of venture capital into the African technology ecosystem is not slowing down.
The travel measures taken against Nigeria by the United States last year are starting to have a clear and, potentially, long-term effect.
As startup and innovation culture deepens on the continent, the explosion of tech hubs across Africa has shown no signs of slowing down: the number of tech hubs across Africa grew by nearly 50% over the past year. As these hubs play crucial roles for community, business incubation and ideation, their growth continues to fuel innovation on the continent.
The alluring promise for tech startups in Africa is the social and commercial upside that lies in providing scalable solutions and products to users on a continent that’s home to several significant problems—and market opportunities.
The funding pitch for off-grid energy companies across Africa can be boiled down to one poignant statistic: the continent is home to world’s slowest electrification rate.
Motorcycle-hailing companies became mainstream in Lagos, Africa’s largest city, this year on a simple premise: providing a cheaper way than cars to get around Lagos’ notorious traffic jams and being a safer alternative to the chaotic independent commercial motorcycles known locally as okadas.
It’s about to become much easier for Africans to travel to the continent’s most populous country.
Shenzhen, China-based Transsion is still the top-selling phone maker in Africa, according to market data from IDC. Transsion’s brands, including Itel, Tecno and Infinix, jointly dominate the feature phone space with 64% of unit shipments in the third quarter of this year. The company’s brands also maintain the lead for smartphones accounting for 36.2% of shipments, keeping with the trend since it first overtook Samsung as the continent’s top phone maker in 2017.
The ongoing court trial of Omoyele Sowore, a New-York based Nigerian journalist and prominent activist, has taken a worrying turn and added to growing concerns Africa’s largest democracy is slowly becoming intolerant of political dissent and defaults to tightening press freedom when it is under pressure.
Being a mobile phone user in Ethiopia comes at the risk of receiving nearly 120 spam texts per month—the highest rate globally.
The latest European soccer giant benefiting from Rwanda’s tourism promotion drive is French soccer club, Paris St. Germain (PSG).
The emergence of fintech startups across Africa working to boost financial inclusion over the past half decade has had some obvious effects. The startup sector has become the best funded on the continent and that has, in turn, fueled the launch of more fintech startups.
