The AfricaGoGreen Fund (AGGF) has raised $47 million in combined investments from top financial organizations, including the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the African Development Bank (AfDB), the Nordic Development Fund (NDF), and the Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa (SEFA).

The AGGF is the first structured debt fund in Africa focused on energy efficiency solutions. The fund targets reaching between $230 million and $250 million at the final close. With the current fundraising round, the organization’s total funding...

Bolt has announced plans to invest €500 million (Ksh.67 billion) to enhance its operations across Africa over the next two years. The company says the funds will be used to expand Bolt services in the region and create opportunities for over 300,000 new drivers and couriers to join the platform in 2023.

The announcement was made by company founder and CEO Villig Markus who is leading a team of Bolt’s global leadership on a tour to meet the company’s teams in Kenya and South Africa. “Over the past seven years, we have built a strong...

Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA) recently hosted a delegation from the Egyptian Commercial Services (ECS).

ITIDA's Acting CEO, Engineer Ahmed Elzaher, welcomed the ECS delegation, headed by the Minister plenipotentiary, First undersecretary, and Head of Egyptian Commercial Services, Mr.Yahya Elwathik Bellah. The meeting discussed bilateral cooperation opportunities between ITIDA and ECS' offices overseas, aiming at increasing Egypt's IT offshoring (ITO)...

Optii Solutions, the hotel operations software, has announced the appointment of Carmen Franklin as Sales Manager for Europe, Middle East, and Africa.

In her role, she will help the company respond to increasing demand for its productivity focused hotel operations solutions, as labor challenges continue for hoteliers in most markets. Franklin joins Optii with over 30 years of experience in sales and account management, across a multitude of industries. She notably supported OYO’s UK expansion plans prior to...

PowerSchool, a provider of cloud-based software for K-12 education in North America, has announced the expansion of its Global channel partner initiative, the PowerPartner Program, with the program’s first channel partner in Africa, OneConnect.

OneConnect is an innovative provider of turnkey technology services and solutions in South Africa and throughout the African continent. The PowerPartner Program leverages PowerSchool’s regional channel partners to support localized...

Vodafone Group Plc has completed the transfer of its 70% majority shares in Vodafone Ghana (Ghana Telecommunications Company Limited – GTCL), to the Telecel Group after successfully obtaining all the necessary regulatory approvals, including the agreement of the Government of Ghana, as a minority shareholder. 

This is the most recent major change for the Ghanaian telecommunications company since 2008 when Vodafone Group Plc purchased a controlling interest in GTCL and established Vodafone Ghana. Telecel is an Africa-focused...

Tigo Tanzania and Ericsson  have entered a partnership to launch 5G and to fully modernize and expand the existing 4G network across the country. 5G is now launched in Dar Es Salaam, Dodoma, and Zanzibar and will be gradually rolled out across the country at strategic locations.

Ericsson is currently upgrading Tigo Tanzania’s existing 4G network with Radio Access Network (RAN) products and microwave solutions (MINI-LINK 6000). Leveraging the latest energy-efficient products from the 5G Ericsson Radio...

Sopra Banking Software, a global financial technology service provider has partnered with Kenya Commercial Bank Kenya to further bolster the lender’s digital capabilities.

The Bank has contracted Sopra Banking Software to design, build, deliver, and support the savings and lending products portfolio through the KCB Vooma, the Bank’s lending, savings, and payments platform. With the rollout of payments, savings, loan products, and the migration of KCB M-PESA and KCB Mobile loan products to the Sopra Banking Platform, KCB...

Infosys, a global player in next-generation digital services and consulting, has announced that it will expand its collaboration with Microsoft, to help accelerate enterprise cloud transformation journeys worldwide.

According to the Infosys Cloud Radar, enterprises can add up to $414 billion in net new profits, annually, through effective cloud adoption. The report also calculated that adopting cloud improved speed to market and the ability to discover new revenue streams and resulted in increased profit growth by...

Co-Creation Hub (CcHUB), touted as Africa’s largest innovation and incubation hub, has announced it is launching a $15 million accelerator program for targeting ed-tech startups. The initiative dubbed The EdTech Fellowship Program is set to benefit 72 startups in Nigeria and Kenya over the next three years.

The accelerator program will support and expand the impact of ed-tech startups across Africa, as well as support founders offering tech solutions that address learning innovation across the education sector. Reports say that ed-tech is the eighth...

Samsung Electronics, a world player in advanced semiconductor technology, today announced that it has secured standardized 5G non-terrestrial networks (NTN) modem technology for direct communication between smartphones and satellites, especially in remote areas.

Samsung plans to integrate this technology into the company’s Exynos modem solutions, accelerating the commercialization of 5G satellite communications and paving the way for the 6G-driven Internet of Everything (IoE) era. “This milestone...

Kenya’s second-largest mobile operator Airtel has today announced the launch of eSIM (embedded SIM) for its customers in the country. The telco becomes the second operator to roll out the technology after Safaricom. 

eSim is a digital SIM that enables customers to access same functionality as someone using a physical SIM. It offers several benefits over the traditional SIM cards as it is quick and simple to set up online, it is planet-friendly (plastic free/zero carbon emission). It also provides an easy extra...

MDXi Appolonia, the data center subsidiary of MainOne, an Equinix company in Ghana, has received its Tier III Constructed Facility certification (TCCF) from the Uptime Institute.

With this new milestone, MDXi Appolonia becomes the leading data center provider in Ghana with the top 4 certifications in the industry; the Tier III Constructed Facility certification, TCCF; the PCI-DSS certification which certifies the Data center to process payment card information; ISO 27001 and ISO...

Smart African Group (SAG) a company that builds technology solutions for Africa has launched Rifaly, a content aggregation platform aimed at sharing information and knowledge about the continent through digital media.

Riflay is a creation of Smart Foundry, a subsidiary of Tanzania-based Smart Africa Group. The company says the platform is made available and accessible to anyone with a smartphone and internet access. There is a wide collection of content that visitors can read, listen to, or stream. “Rifaly is a curated...

Kaspersky is highlighting the surge in attempts to access phishing resources mimicking Google services. In January 2023, experts witnessed a 189% increase in attempts worldwide, (compared to December 2022), with the trend set to continue in February.

Such phishing pages are designed to lure unsuspecting users into giving up their login credentials, allowing attackers to gain access to multiple users and accounts within a company’s ecosystem. Google’s YouTube video hosting platform is a...

Mikhail Marchenko is the Co-founder of JuicyScore, which recently launched its operations in Kenya. JuicyScore offers anti-fraud and risk management solutions to digital lenders, insurance companies, e-commerce, and classifieds and create technologies for fraud prevention in online business and financial products risk reduction.

What is your prediction for the year and how can Fintechs cushion themselves from risk-related issues in 2023?

The consumption of digital credit will significantly increase this year. This can be attributed to increased financial inclusion, smartphone penetration, and easy access to credit. However...

End-user security training has traditionally been an important aspect of cybersecurity efforts, as it aims to educate and empower employees to identify and prevent potential threats. 

However, with the advancement of artificial intelligence (AI), end-user security training is becoming less effective in protecting organizations from cyber attacks. This is because AI-powered threats are becoming more sophisticated and harder to detect, making it difficult for even well-trained...

Boasting one of the fastest-growing economies in Africa, Kenya is on the rise to become a powerhouse of innovation on the continent. This is largely in part due to the country’s thriving culture of entrepreneurship and its significant startup ecosystem.

Kenya has a long and storied history with entrepreneurship as the country’s early start to independence led to the growth of its informal sector and meant many Kenyans were self-employed in their own small enterprises. As such, the government sought to facilitate the development of the...

Business leaders are facing an increasingly disruptive business environment, driven by supply chain constraints, critical skills shortages, hyperinflation, slowing economic growth, and persistent energy challenges, to name a few.

Following the devastation caused by the COVID pandemic, business leaders are now faced with navigating yet another set of disruptive market conditions. Armed with valuable lessons from the chaos caused by COVID, the key question for business leaders in this ever-changing and challenging...

Most successful cyber breaches have one thing in common: People. Your company can be protected from every tech angle, with the latest security updates and most advanced threat detection, but it takes just one employee accidentally sharing their password for a major breach to occur.

Human-targeted attacks will remain the number one threat to cyber security and will only keep increasing in volume and complexity this year. As even casual observers have become more adept at spotting emails that don’t look quite right...

Business has finally gone truly global, even though this has all happened in the online space. The secret has been the manner in which technology and the internet have become so widespread that the global village has arguably become a reality.

Two of the most important and interesting aspects of these developments for African business development have been e-commerce and FinTech. This article looks at how these aspects of the modern, tech-driven world have affected business on...