Hello! Hello. It’s the first edition of 2026! Welcome back to Francophone Weekly by TechCabal , your weekly deep dive into the tech ecosystem across French-speaking Africa. Previous editions have been published on the web , but email versions of the newsletter will land directly in your inbox every Tuesday at noon. By default, this

NALA, a pan-African payments startup operating in 18 countries, has partnered with UK-based payments infrastructure provider Noah to launch a cross-border settlement network for Africa and Asia. It will allow merchants in emerging markets to receive stablecoin payments and convert instantly to local currencies. Building on the March 2024 debut of its B2B payments platform

Silverbacks Holdings, an Africa-focused private investment firm, has recorded its 10th portfolio exit following the acquisition of Nigerian open banking fintech startup Mono by payments company Flutterwave, as the firm expands its bets into sports. The exit, completed in an all-stock deal in early January, underlines a broader pattern in African venture markets: fintech, particularly

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To...

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC)’s newly released 2025–2030 Spectrum Roadmap aims to bring broadband to 23 million people across 87 unserved and underserved clusters, according to the Universal Service Provision Fund, Nigeria’s primary financial vehicle for closing the digital divide. The roadmap, released in December 2025, sets out how Nigeria plans to allocate, price and

Long before Africa’s venture capital (VC) ecosystem became as visible as it is today, Ido Sum was already helping shape it. As one of the earliest partners at TLcom Capital, an Africa-focused venture firm managing over $250 million, Sum spent 14 years investing across the continent and helping define the firm’s strategy from its London

In 2025, venture capital returned to parts of the world outside the US and China. African startups raised more money than in the previous year, with the continent securing $3.24 billion by the end of 2025, representing a 44.6% year-on-year increase. However, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) stood out as one of the

Emissions from air freight have increased by 25% since 2019, according to a...

MTN Group’s long-discussed plan to reduce its shareholding in MTN Nigeria is no longer on an immediate timeline. While the Nigerian unit has returned to profitability and resumed dividend payments,  shifting tax dynamics have complicated the path to a public sell-down. Speaking during the company’s Q3 2025 earnings call in November, MTN Group president and

It’s easy to be cynical about technology these days. Many of the “disruptions”...

Terra Industries, a Nigerian defence-technology startup that integrates hardware and software by building drones and monitoring locations through proprietary software, has raised $11.75 million from U.S. investors. The round, the largest yet in Africa’s nascent defence-tech sector, sets Terra apart from a wave of smaller regional players and signals growing investor confidence in vertically integrated

In February 2025, cyberattackers thought to be linked to North Korea executed a...