This Week in African Tech 🌍
Spotlight on Innovation and Growth Across the Continent
Welcome to our "Week in Review" series, your weekly roundup of the most impactful developments in the African tech landscape.
Here's what stood out this week:
Infrastructure and Connectivity
Microsoft is advancing its plans to build a data center campus in Kosmosdal, Centurion, marking its third facility in South Africa. Why? Microsoft wants to drive growth and competitiveness of it’s products in the region.
StarSat Africa, a major importer of Starlink kits to South Africa, announces a 13-20% price cut for Starlink kits. How? SpaceX lowered prices for resellers.
Fintech Innovations
Paystack is expanding its “Pay With Apple Pay” payment option to customers in Cote D’Ivoire and South Africa.
Crendly launched an AI powered lending platform to generate borrower profiles. Why? Less than 10% of Nigerians have access to credit. Crendly’s approach to generating credit worthiness of borrowers will broaden financial accessibility to previously underserved communities.
Absa Bank introduced ChatWallet, offering banking services via WhatsApp to facilitate easier access to financial services in South Africa, catering even to those without bank accounts.
Mastercard strategically invests $200 million for a 3.8% stake in MTN's fintech division. The deal might be a move by MTN to run MoMo as a standalone business.
LemFi Rebrands and Returns to Ghana. Now operating as RightCard Payment Services Limited, LemFi secures approval from the Bank of Ghana, marking its comeback to offer financial services in the country
Education and Mobility
Nigerian edtech startup Klas has secured $1 million in pre-seed funding. Their ambitious plan targets offering online learning to 100,000 virtual schools globally by 2027, with a focus on North America and India.
SafeBoda Accelerates with SAfeCar following its success in Uganda and is looking to expand to the Kenyan market.
And that’s a wrap!
To those celebrating, Happy Lunar New Year!
