Year 5 | Edition 29 | 19 May 2022
 
Mastercard and OPay announce strategic partnership to advance digital financial inclusion in Africa

Mastercard and fintech giant OPay today announced a strategic partnership, which marks a significant boost for wider financial inclusion and economic prosperity by opening up digital commerce to millions of people across Middle East and Africa.

The collaboration enables OPay consumers and merchants in the region - including Algeria, Morocco, Egypt, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, Pakistan, South Africa and the UAE - to engage with brands and businesses anywhere across the...

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Oracle Opens New Research and Development Lab in Morocco

Oracle has announced plans to establish a new branch of Oracle Labs, Oracle's advanced research arm, at Casanearshore Park in Casablanca Morocco. The lab will house up to 100 researchers.

Researchers at the new facility will use Oracle’s cloud, AI, and machine learning technologies to tackle the most pressing challenges facing business, science and the public sector. Taking advantage of its new state-of-the-art facility, the team will collaborate with Morocco’s vibrant technology sector to...

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[Kenya] Fintech startup Hisa joins NVIDIA Inception Programme

Hisa App, a Kenyan mobile investment platform that allows anyone in Kenya to invest in  U.S. stocks and ETFs using mobile money has been selected to join the NVIDIA Inception programme.

NVIDIA Inception programme is designed to nurture startups revolutionizing industries with advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and data science.  The programme is designed to help startups evolve faster through access to cutting-edge technology and NVIDIA experts, connections...

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Fintech startup MooveBeta merges with blockchain company ImpalaPay to provide a connected economy for Africa

Adanian Labs Africa incubated fintech startup MooveBeta has announced its merger with ImpalaPay, a fintech blockchain company with operations across 42 African countries and 134 worldwide.

The merger will provide a payment platform that will enable the Pan African and Diaspora communities to transact via e-commerce, social commerce, peer to peer and enterprise using multiple interoperable platforms including mobile money, cards, bank accounts and/or crypto wallets powering over...

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Vodacom targets enterprise, fintech growth with Egypt purchase

Vodacom sees huge growth opportunity in both mobile financial services and the enterprise market in adding Egypt to its portfolio through acquisition of a controlling stake in Vodafone Egypt.

"We want to re-platform and launch our latest VodaPay and M-Pesa platforms into Egypt. About 80% of the population is unbanked, so we see a big opportunity to grow the financial services play and then, of course, to leverage off each other in terms of best practices and also skills," Vodacom Group CEO...

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Pan-African fintech app Bamba raises $3.2m seed funding

Kenyan fintech startup Bamba has secured $3.2m in seed funding to scale its app and build out its team. Venture capital firm 468 Capital led the round with participation from Presight Ventures, Jigsaw VC, and high profile angels Mato Peric, Leonard Stiegeler, Laurin Hainy and Thomas Stafford.

The Pan-African fintech app focused on small businesses will use the new capital to build out its mobile product offer, scale its engineering team and expand its user base across 12 sub-Saharan African countries with high mobile money...

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Orange Egypt’s NAC data center set to be delivered in June

The first phase of Orange Egypt’s NAC data center will be delivered next June. The information was disclosed by Hisham Mahran, Chief Enterprise Line Business Officer at Orange Egypt. 

The new infrastructure was designed and built by Orange Business Services, an Orange Group subsidiary specialized in providing telecommunications and IT services to businesses. It will host the NAC smart city platforms as well as protect and ensure data security. Hisham Mahran’s announcement...

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[Kenya] Healthtech startup Zuri Health raises $1.3-million to expand across Africa

Kenyan healthtech startup Zuri Health has raised $1.3-million in funding to expand across Africa. The startup which offers mobile-based healthcare attracted investment from DOB Equity, Launch Africa and Founders Factory Africa.

Zuri Health connects mass-market patients with affordable, convenient, and quality healthcare services via SMS, WhatsApp and a dedicated app. The company initially launched in Kenya in January 2021 but is now present in Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Uganda, Tanzania...

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[Kenya] Innovate Now accelerator announces its fifth cohort of Assistive Technology innovators

Innovate Now, Africa first Assistive Technology (AT) Accelerator has announced its fifth cohort of innovators, ventures providing digital AT or using digital to increase access to AT products or services.

Led by Global Disability Innovation Hub (GDI Hub), The digital AT and entrepreneurship project under Innovate Now is a partnership between GDI Hub, ICT Norway, Norad, and Kilimanjaro Blind Trust Africa to support digital assistive technology (AT) ventures in Africa. Innovate Now is a part...

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InterSAT and SES renew partnership to accelerate digital inclusion across Africa

Customers of leading African internet provider InterSAT can continue to rely on SES’s well-positioned satellite to connect their farms, remote offices, schools and hospitals with affordable internet access across Africa due to the latest capacity renewal agreement signed by InterSAT and SES, the two companies.

Under the agreement, SES’s NSS-12, located at 57 degrees East, will enable InterSat to securely and efficiently serve its government institutions and enterprises customers. Since the two companies initiated their partnership in 2010, SES and...

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Autochek acquires Morocco’s KIFAL Auto to drive North Africa expansion

Autochek, the automotive technology company making car ownership more accessible and affordable across Africa, has announced the acquisition of KIFAL Auto, Morocco’s leading automotive technology startup, to drive its expansion into North Africa.

This acquisition represents the first major expansion of a West Africa-based startup into North Africa and it will facilitate effective Pan-African collaboration to drive innovation across the continent’s growing automotive market. KIFAL Auto was...

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Ghana's BigPay goes live with Azentio's Amlock Financial Crime Detection and Management Solution

Azentio Software (Azentio), a Singapore-headquartered technology firm owned by funds advised by Apax Partners, announced that BigPay, a Ghana-based global digital payment solutions company, has gone live with Amlock, Azentio's Financial Crime Detection and Management Solution (FCDMS).

Amlock will meet BigPay's requirements for an effective transaction monitoring process, through an online workflow system. A unique feature of this workflow is the ability of the system to group or link together accounts belonging to...

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Incentro signs strategic partnership with Monday.com to deliver work OS to the African market

Incentro announced the signing of a strategic partnership with Monday.com, awarding Incentro the ability to deliver training, consultancy and service of monday.com’s work OS to the African market.

The Israeli based monday.com has a wide global network of organizations that take advantage of its collaborative tools. In conjunction with Incentro’s expertise in Google Cloud, Google Workspace and Chrome Enterprise, there’s a vast combined knowledge and experience to further drive digital...

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Disney+ arrives in South Africa

Disney+, the streaming service from The Walt Disney Company, launches today in South Africa. Standard pricing at launch is confirmed at R119 per month, or R1190 for an annual subscription, with sign-up information available at DisneyPlus.com.

With over 1000 films, more than 1500 series and a slate of 200 exclusive Originals from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, National Geographic and general entertainment from Star, Disney+ offers fans the greatest stories, all in one place...

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[UNICAF] Scholarship Opportunities

Unicaf is an online and blended learning higher education platform that is dedicated to making higher education of international standard accessible, by offering scholarship opportunities to professionals and young school leavers.

What are scholarship opportunities?

A scholarship could be defined as financial aid that relieves the burden of tuition fees and living costs that students and families have to pay to secure a place in secondary and tertiary education. Considering the rising costs of student expenses and debts, we could nowadays describe education...

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The Africa Trade Expo (TATE) | Virtual Conference and Trade Show | 9 March 2022 - 9 March 2023

The Africa Trade Expo (TATE) presents direct access to African buyers whose main aim is to source the latest products, establish partnerships, and conclude import/export deals. TATE is an ongoing virtual trade show for African businesses to network, collaborate, and enter into partnerships with international manufacturers and exporters. Present your new opportunities, network, build relationships and grow your business in African markets...

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Future Foods | African Food & Beverage Industries Virtual Conference & Trade Show | 9 March 2022 - 9 March 2023

Future Foods is a virtual meeting place for importers, F&B managers, retail category buyers, owner-operators, agents, and distributors from across Africa’s diverse and booming market to come to conferences, to network, meet exhibitors, source products, new ingredients, retail shelf-ready products, and the latest processing, packaging, and logistics solutions. Future Foods connects attendees exhibitors across the...

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Four ways to level up your digital marketing strategies

With more and more businesses moving into the e-commerce space, it's increasingly becoming essential to curve a way for your online business to stand out and thrive among competitors. One of the surest ways to get leads for your online business is digital marketing.

Digital marketing is the art of promoting your products and services online. For a campaign to be considered successful, it has to have leads that convert into sales, boost brand awareness, and, over time, create customer loyalty, among...

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[Column] Grant Phillips: South Africa’s proptech revolution is about to begin

Despite being one of the single largest industries globally, the property and real estate sector, both locally and abroad, have remained well behind the technology curve. 

Estimated to be worth some $330 trillion, the global property and real estate industry dwarfs the international oil and gas sector, and is substantially larger than the entirety of most countries stock markets. While property is arguably the world's biggest store of wealth, it has remained almost entirely untouched by the technological revolution and wholesale...

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[Column] Andrew Springate: Building the backbone of a subscription empire

Subscription services have grown tremendously in the last two years in South Africa and will continue to do so. The local subscription economy is expected to grow 14 percent each year to exceed USD$820 million in 2025. Given the expected growth, the opportunities are immense says Andrew Springate, CEO of tech and financial gateway service provider PAYM8.

The pandemic, left little option for consumers but to turn to online solutions that offered seamless access to products and services when they were otherwise unavailable. In the process, they gained more confidence in online and...

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[Column] Carey van Vlaanderen: The algorithms that suggest your kids’ content aren’t neutral

Search engines have given us easy access to more and seemingly ever-fresh sources of content that have the potential to be just as detrimental, if not more so, than cyberbullying. Of course, search engines, just like most technologies, are not inherently bad, but they aren’t neutral either which means there’s good reason to be cautious.

Paradoxically, while one of the greatest areas of progress in computing relates to search engine algorithms, some of the most concerning issues are rooted in them too. With greater use of search engines, their design evolved largely...

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[Column] John Mc Loughlin: Cybercrime - Impersonating the CEO

Over the past month, there has been an increase in an evolved method in change in bank details or payment fraud. This trend involves an internal change of bank details, mostly for the CEO.

Traditional payment fraud has been rife for some time, where the cybercriminal impersonates the CEO, or other senior member of staff, to convince the finance department to make an urgent payment to either a new supplier or update their bank details. The change of bank details fraud uses fake...

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[Column] Marilyn Moodley: Five ways IT companies can grow in Africa

Securing meaningful, sustainable growth in Africa requires a precise skillset with an airtight strategy, the right product fit with a tailored understanding of the market, and crucially, forward-looking leadership.

On the back of two high profile customer wins in the financial services sector. Accelerated digital transformation presents exciting new opportunities for growth that are finally being shaped by and for African people and reflects on the five...

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[Africa Tech Review] Nixon Kanali: Africa continues to attract investments from big tech

The last couple of years and months have been quite interesting for tech in Africa with tech giants like Google, Visa and Microsoft announcing some investments in Kenya. Google announced plans to open its first product development centre in the continent in Nairobi, Kenya. 

Visa opened its first African Innovation Studio in Kenya to service Sub-Saharan Africa while Microsoft officially opened its  African Development Center in the country. Oracle has joined this bandwagon and this week it made an interesting...

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