In Nigeria today, the rising cost of brand-new laptops has pushed many consumers towards fairly used or “second-hand” systems. While these pre-owned devices offer a more affordable option, many buyers end up with laptops that barely last three hours on battery, despite paying between ₦150,000 and ₦300,000 ($90-$190 at $1/₦1,600) or more. One of the

The Nigerian government has moved to adopt a unified national credit system that links individuals’ credit score to their National Identification Numbers (NIN), to enable financial institutions to access comprehensive and traceable credit profiles of customers seeking loans. This was announced by Uzoma Nwagba, Managing Director of the Nigerian Consumer Credit Corporation (CREDICORP) during a

In Kampala, Uganda, on June 19, just past 9 a.m., electric buses rolled through the gates of Kololo Independence Grounds, ferrying investors, policymakers, and tech founders into what has become the most critical stage for Uganda’s tech ambitions.  The 2nd Uganda Investor Summit was not an event for flashy app demos and fevered pitches but

Plus: TikTok has been granted yet another reprieve This is today's edition of The Download, our...

Once upon a time, in the back room of a bustling ministry, sat a policy, born from months of consultations, late-night drafting sessions, and the collective hope of a continent eager for digital evolution. Its cover gleamed, and its pages were crisp with promise. But now, it languished on a shelf, lonely, dusty, and yearning

Africa’s neobanks are not “challenging” the big banks. That war never started, and likely never will. Standard Bank, Ecobank, KCB, GTBank, and the National Bank of Egypt — these institutions are too entrenched. They’re politically connected, well-capitalised, and integral to state economies. They handle government salaries, disburse donor funds, and sit at the centre of

In April, Mark Zuckerberg, as tech billionaires are so fond of doing these...

But the full picture is not so simple. Weight loss isn’t always healthy...

Nigerian B2B e-commerce startup Sabi laid off roughly 50 staff members, about 20% of its workforce, in a broad restructuring to pivot to traceability services in Africa’s minerals and agricultural commodities market. In recent months, the company, founded in 2021 to provide digital tools for logistics and financing to merchants, has scaled back certain products

Nigerian telecom operators have officially begun migrating banks to a new billing system that allows customers to make short codes or  Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) transactions directly from their airtime balance. In the past, banks deducted USSD fees from customers’ bank accounts but often failed to remit payments to telecom providers. The new billing

Visa has partnered with Yellow Card, a pan-African stablecoin infrastructure company, to bring cross-border stablecoin payments in countries across Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa (CEMEA) where Yellow Card operates. The partnership will allow both companies to test stablecoin integration on Visa Direct, a service which lets businesses send money directly to customers’

Most mainstream AI chatbots can be convinced to engage in sexually explicit exchanges, even...