This is Follow the Money, our weekly series that unpacks the earnings, business, and scaling strategies of African fintechs, financial institutions, companies, and governments. A new edition drops every Monday. After a bruising 2024 defined by foreign exchange losses and negative earnings, 2025 marked a full reset for MTN Nigeria, with revenue of ₦5.2 trillion ($3.77

After operating in secrecy for years, a startup company called R3 Bio, in...

Hamilton Labs, a U.S.-based financial infrastructure provider, has raised an undisclosed investment from AXIAN Investment, the venture arm of pan-African conglomerate AXIAN Group, to scale its dollar stablecoin infrastructure across Africa. This funding will support the launch of Hamilton’s flagship stablecoin, USDh, and its expansion through integrations with fintech platforms to serve African consumers and

Good morning.☀️ Welcome to another week. It’s the end of Q1 2026. How has the quarter been for you? A few exciting things happened in African tech: we witnessed the “Terra moment,” a major signal that hardware tech can truly win in Africa. Fintechs are increasingly layering credit operations, data pipelines, and banking-grade services onto

Being a digital nomad, not simply in name only, can feel like a dream. Barring the cost and effort it takes to plan, prepare, and travel on short notice, frequent trips offer plenty of chance encounters, but they also test your tolerance for misadventures. Shelter is where fantasy usually collides with reality. According to three

“Think of this as a human body,” says Javier González. In front...

Africa Bitcoin Corporation (ABC), the South Africa-based Bitcoin treasury and SME-finance company, now holds 5.0246 BTC in its corporate treasury, according to its real-time analytics dashboard. The SME lender and advisory firm has set an ambitious 2030 target of holding 21,000 BTC.  Its 2030 target would make it the largest African-listed company holding Bitcoin on

Table of contents Q1 2026 is drawing to a close, and the Nigerian job market has had a rough three months. Across the banking sector, the startup world, and the crypto industry, companies have been laying off staff, in some cases quietly and in others more publicly. Two things drove most of these decisions. The

Nigeria’s telecom regulator, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), is tightening its grip on the mobile phone number. New regulatory proposals would require telecom operators to flag high-risk phone numbers in real time, an intervention aimed at curbing rising fraud and restoring trust in digital systems. At the centre of this effort is the proposed Telecoms

Kenya’s draft rules for virtual asset firms will place a heavy burden on startups, who say high capital demands, costly insurance, and ongoing fees could push many of them out of the regulated market, according to Rober Salim, chief executive officer of the Virtual Asset Association of Kenya (VAAK), an industry group representing 50 crypto

The story of Nigeria’s fintech boom is usually told as one of founders moving fast and regulators catching up. But that framing misses something fundamental. For over two decades, the Central Bank of Nigeria has been laying down infrastructure, payments rails, identity systems, licensing frameworks, that every major fintech in the country now runs on.

On Wednesday, March 25, employees of Kuda, a Nigerian digital bank, were invited to a video call with senior executives. Before it ended, hundreds were told their contracts had been terminated as part of a company-wide restructuring. The job cuts affected multiple departments, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter and official documents obtained