To harness the development benefits of using mobile channels to send and receive remittances, the UN’s International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) announced its first grant to a digital payments company, MFS Africa, to promote the use of mobile remittances in marginal rural areas in five African countries; Ghana, Kenya, Senegal, The Gambia and Uganda.

Mobile remittances, the money that migrant workers sent home through digital channels using mobile technology, can play a catalytic role linking individuals and businesses to the formal economy, while providing access to key financial...

Nigerian fintech Flutterwave has announced Google Pay, a mobile payment service, developed by Google, as a payment method on Flutterwave.

As part of this collaboration, Google Pay will serve as an additional payment option for merchants on Flutterwave for business. This collaboration will offer safe and seamless payments, as well as convenient checkout experiences for customers. Google Pay is a safe, simple, and helpful way to make contactless payments in store, and also payments in...

Mastercard and Ecobank Group have partnered to connect millions of smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa to Mastercard’s Farm Pass – a digital platform that makes it safer and easier for farmers to sell their produce at a fair price.

Under the partnership, Ecobank will extend the reach and impact of the Mastercard Farm Pass platform leveraging its Pan-African network of 33 countries. Many smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa face several challenges. These include limited access to markets, working capital to finance...

Clickatell has partnered with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to deliver eNaira banking services to all Nigerians using the USSD channel.

The two partners have launched a USSD channel for its eNaira Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) as part of the country’s drive to make basic banking accessible to all Nigerians, ultimately driving financial inclusion. The eNaira was launched in October 2021 when the Nigerian President, Muhammadu Buhari, said Africa’s first central bank-backed digital...

Avanti Communications (Avanti), the provider of high throughput satellite capacity across EMEA announced a new 5-year partnership with Turkish communications satellite operator, Türksat Uydu Haberleşme Kablo TV ve İşletme A.Ş. (Turksat), to deliver extensive combined Ka-band coverage across Africa and Middle East.

Avanti and Turksat already have a strong working relationship dating back several years. This latest agreement is set to deliver extensive, continuous coverage across Africa and the Middle East to Avanti and Turksat customers in regions...

Africa's e-commerce leader Jumia has today announced a partnership with the Coca-Cola Africa Operating Unit to offer consumers access to Coca-Cola products from the comfort of their homes.

The partnership will provide a steady supply of Coca-Cola’s beverage portfolio to consumers who prefer to shop online through the Jumia platform and ensure they receive their orders in the shortest time possible. “We are happy to partner with Coca-Cola to meet consumer demand for everyday...

Cybersecurity firm Trellix has announced the establishment of the Trellix Advanced Research Center to advance global threat intelligence.

Comprised of hundreds of the world’s most elite security analysts and researchers, the Advanced Research Center produces actionable real-time intelligence and threat indicators to help customers detect, respond and remediate the latest cybersecurity threats. “The threat landscape is scaling in sophistication and potential for impact,” said Aparna...

Remedial Health, a healthtech startup that develops solutions to make Africa’s pharmaceutical value chain more efficient, has raised $4.4 million in seed funding to accelerate its expansion across Nigeria and to provide access to credit for inventory purchases for its growing customer base of neighbourhood pharmacies, Proprietary Patent Medicine Vendors (PPMVs) and hospitals in the country.

The seed funding round was led by Global Ventures - a leading MEA venture capital firm, who re-invested after participating in the previous round. Tencent, Y Combinator, Cathexis Ventures, LightSpeed Venture Partners Scout Fund, Ventures Platform...

Inpixon, the Indoor Intelligence company, announced a collaboration agreement with Schauenburg Systems, an original-equipment manufacturer of mine safety systems and equipment, to sell Inpixon's real-time location technologies to mining companies in South Africa.

Under the agreement the parties will aim to achieve sales of hundreds of thousands of nanoLOC chips and other core technologies of Inpixon that provide real-time tracking, collision avoidance and proximity applications for the mining...

Nigerian blockchain payments startup Bitmama announced a pre-seed extension of $1.65 million, adding to the $350,000 it received last October, thus closing the round at $2 million, led by Africa-focused venture capital firms Unicorn Growth Capital and Launch Africa, with participation from existing and new investors.

The U.S.- and Nigeria-based company, which has built a distributed remote team across Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya, says it’s working to democratize Africa’s highly fragmented payment system by leveraging blockchain-based solutions...

Unicorn Growth Capital, an Africa-focused venture fund investing at the intersection of traditional finance (TradFi) and decentralized finance (DeFi), and EchoVC, a technology-focused, early-stage venture capital firm for underrepresented founders and underserved markets, have joined the Celo Foundation to support growth of Web3 projects across Africa through newly dedicated Celo ecosystem investment funds.

The Celo Foundation, a U.S.-based non-profit organization that supports the growth and development of the carbon-negative, mobile-first, layer-1 Celo platform, continues to strengthen its presence in Africa, nurturing a robust ecosystem of cutting...

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has teamed with the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) to tackle some of the criminal activities bedeviling the telecom industry, such as telecom equipment vandalism and fraudulent registration of Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) cards among others.

Executive Vice Chairman of NCC, Prof. Umar Danbatta, who addressed a gathering of senior management staff of NSCDC in the South West Zone, at an exclusive workshop organised by the Commission, hailed the Memorandum of...

Cryptocurrency firm Binance has launched a crypto education tour across five French-speaking African countries.

The tour aims to drive blockchain adoption and fuel greater financial accessibility in the region. Participants will get a chance to learn the basics of blockchain and discover various user cases that are applicable in their daily lives. The meet-up kicked off in Togo in Cotonou, Benin on September 10^th with scheduled visits in Togo, Côte D’Ivoire, Cameroon, and...

Boost Africa Technical Assistance Facility and AfricaGrow Technical Assistance Facility hosted 40 leading fund managers from select African investment funds for an in-person programme held at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School. 

The aim of the programme is to engage in dialogue and extend expertise in leading Africa’s exponential growth in the tech venture capital (VC) space. The ‘Africa Venture Finance Programme’ is designed specifically for VC fund managers...

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...

Tesh Mbaabu is a serial entrepreneur who lives to blend commerce and technology. He is the Co-founder and CEO of Kenyan-based B2B platform for retail distribution of consumer goods and digital financial services in Africa Today, MarketForce MarketForce.

Where is MarketForce headquartered and where else do you have offices? 

MarketForce was founded in Kenya by Mesongo Sibuti and I in 2018. We are headquartered in the US and have offices in Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda. For our readers’ better understanding, who is MarketForce and what...

Nixon Kanali is a Kenyan-based tech journalist, blogger and digital influencer. Since 2014 he has been running TechTrendsKE, a platform that highlights developments and trends in the tech space.  

He is also the Tech editor at Africa Business Communities. Nick has been nominated in the 2022 Pulse Influencers Awards under the Tech Influencer of the year award category. To vote for him click here...

Last year, Facebook Marketplace passed one billion global users. With this, it has become a giant in the consumer-to-consumer commerce space, allowing individual Facebook users to buy and sell seamlessly.

Online retail in South Africa has more than doubled in just two years and with 29.5 million-strong Facebook users, more than half of the country’s population has a Facebook account...

In emerging markets all across the globe, marginalized groups face limited access to both financial services and financial literacy.1 As a result of the financial exclusion, many developing countries face extreme poverty rates which leads to instability and hinders sustainable economic growth.2.

Improved access to digital payments is crucial in emerging markets as it ensures formal services are more affordable, accessible and readily available, which helps alleviate poverty and income inequality.2. In Ghana, financial inclusion has...

By switching to software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN), many enterprises in East Africa and around the world are accelerating their digital transformation. While SD-WAN was initially developed as a flexible inter-branch connectivity solution, it currently accomplishes much more.

No matter where they are located, it improves productivity, efficiency and collaboration for businesses and their employees by combining connectivity and security to create a user experience that is unparalleled. In the age of remote...