MIGA has issued guarantees covering a $200 million investment into companies providing digital financial services under the Airtel Money brand in 12 African countries. These companies provide access to financial services through mobile phones in a region where most people lack access to formal bank accounts.

The guarantees were issued to The Rise Fund II Aurora S.à r.l. (The Rise Fund), which is making its investments through a parent company, Airtel Mobile Commerce B.V., into Airtel Money operating companies in Chad, the Republic of Congo...

Vodacom and Microsoft South Africa recently collaborated to train twenty interns around the importance of cybersecurity. Vodacom is keen to play an integral role in addressing cyber skills scarcity in South Africa, with cybersecurity a significant threat for governments, businesses and individuals around the world.

According to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2020, training workers in cybersecurity must be a key priority as businesses accelerate the adoption of new technologies. "There are 3.5 million unfilled cyber vacancies...

Best Western Hotel Group, BWH, one of the world’s largest hotel companies, is the first to integrate its central reservation system (CRS) with Oracle Hospitality OPERA Cloud property management system (PMS) through the Oracle Hospitality Integration Platform.

 This makes it easy for any hotel within the BWH Hotel Group portfolio – including Best Western Hotels & Resorts and SureStay Hotel Group properties - to adopt OPERA Cloud to simplify and improve operations while delivering great guest...

Nokia today announced that Orange Egypt has opted to modernize its existing Nokia SDM solution to support the operator’s subscriber growth over the next five years.  

The enhancements to the SDM network include a total modernization of the solution with upgraded hardware and ongoing software releases. The new system will allow Orange Egypt’s users to benefit from improved reliability and security, as well as enable Orange Egypt to enhance operational efficiency and meet the evolving capacity and service needs...

On the back of two major interest rate hikes in the first half of 2022 alone and rapidly rising costs, business owners across the country are keeping a close eye on budgets and cash flow where every cent counts.

As champions of financial inclusion and SME growth in South Africa, local fintech Hello Pay is offering merchants, and micro and small enterprises access to competitive, commercially attractive, business loans of up to R250,000 to grow their...

African Micro and small business-focused neobank 4G Capital has gone live on Mambu’s cloud banking platform. 4G Capital says Mambu’s platform will enable it to scale and expedite its digital journey to meet customer business needs.

Since its inception in 2013, the firm says it has delivered more than 1.75 million loans and decided to move to a cloud-native banking platform to help facilitate its ambitions to scale. The move is also expected to help it expand its customer base across Africa and grow its financial services portfolio...

The World Bank Group released its report titled, ‘Creating Markets in Namibia – Creating Resilient and Inclusive Markets’, on the 8th of July 2022.The report stated, amongst others, that in Namibia:

• the costs for Internet data services are high, at an average cost of USD8.30 (or N$142.83);
• mobile data adoption is at 36 percent, behind regional peers who stand at 52 percent adoption;
• Fiber rollout and uptake is slow, with 2.5 subscriptions per 100 people...

UNESCO recently revealed that women still account for 28% of people pursuing Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education in sub-Saharan Africa. As a result of the lack of female representation in STEM education, female human capital in STEM professions is underutilised.

GirlCode, a non-profit organisation that’s been creating nationwide networks of coding clubs since 2014, has been bridging this gender gap in STEM fields by sparking an interest in coding among South Africa’s young women through its...

Kenya-based insurtech startup Lami Technologies has raised a US$ 3.7m seed extension to expand its insurtech product across Africa.

The extension was led by Harlem Capital, an early-stage venture firm that invests in seed-stage tech startups, focused on minority and women founders. Participating in the round were early-stage venture capital firm, Newtown Partners; Peter Bruce-Clark, a partner at New York’s research-driven venture capital company Social Impact Capital; Caribou...

Mdundo says it has recorded 20.3 million monthly active users in June 2022, beating the upgraded expected target of 19 – 20 million for the month, a growth of 74% compared to June 2021.

The music streaming service which released its 2025 strategic direction in June 2022 – is aiming at recording 50 million monthly active users and a positive EBITDA for the financial year ending June 2025. Nigeria remains the biggest country for the Kenyan-based company with a total of 4.9 million monthly users, followed by South Africa with 3.7 million...

Odoo announced it has chosen Kenya to establish its first African office, the beginning of operations was on July 1st 2022. Up to 50 new colleagues to join the new offices within a year. Several new software features have been implemented to address the specific needs of Kenyan and African SMEs.

2022 marks the beginning of a new chapter for the software editor Odoo ! The company is opening its first office in Africa and picked Nairobi to establish its local headquarters. As with all Odoo subsidiaries, objectives are ambitious on all fronts...

Adoption of a broader range of digital payment methods is accelerating in the MENA region and the technology fueling the future of payments is already here, according to Mastercard’s New Payments Index 2022.

In addition to being aware of solutions like digital cards, biometric payments, BNPL (Buy Now Pay Later) and open banking, consumers in MENA are increasingly and actively using these solutions in their everyday lives. Mastercard’s New Payments Index 2022 found that 85% of people in MENA...

Steve Flynn, Sales and Marketing Director of ESET South Africa, says South African small businesses are particularly vulnerable to cyberattacks. Why? Business owners aren't taking the necessary precautions to protect their digital assets, often with dire financial consequences.

Despite the significant risks, SMEs seem reluctant to take the same digital preventative measures to secure their IT infrastructure as they would to protect their office equipment or company-owned vehicles. Just as a business owner...

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...

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...

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...

Efayomi Carr is a Principal at Flourish Ventures, a Global Fintech Venture Firm investing in fintech entrepreneurs across the globe, whose innovations help people enhance financial health.

With deep fintech industry and country-specific expertise, Flourish is focused on building its investment in Africa and adding to its growing portfolio of a dozen startups located in Nigeria, Ghana, Egypt and Kenya that includes Apollo Agriculture, Fair Money, Financial Services Innovators (FSI)...

Remote digital biometric authentication and verification are now firmly in the mainstream thanks to the need for businesses to be continuously active online.

For this reason, technologies involving proven facial biometrics to onboard or authenticate customers, employees, suppliers, or the like, have become critical for the security of business operations, and for security and fraud prevention reasons. Using biometrics to access services has largely been popularised through mobile phones and increasingly the...

Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs) are changing the way we think about mobility - and transforming the digital network infrastructure that supports these vehicles. Soon, every car will be connected and able to talk to everything around it using Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) technology, including other cars and smart city infrastructure. 

But as with any connected computing device, the advent of CAVs brings with it security threats, as the number of computing and network components both inside and outside a car will dramatically increase - raising the attack surface...

Despite the significant risks, SMEs seem reluctant to take the same digital preventative measures to secure their IT infrastructure as they would to protect their office equipment or company-owned vehicles.

Just as a business owner wouldn't underinsure a tangible business asset such as a factory, SMEs shouldn't leave their digital assets unlocked and in plain sight of criminals. In a business environment where every cent counts, preventative measures must be weighed against the costs of not having...