In December 1947, three physicists at Bell Telephone Laboratories—John Bardeen, William Shockley, and...

This story is part of MIT Technology Review’s "America Undone” series, examining how...

MTN Nigeria cemented its dominance in the country’s fixed broadband market, more than doubling its subscriber base between May and July 2025, according to latest data from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC). The operator’s fixed broadband users jumped from 14,424 in May to 29,314 in July—an increase of 14,890 subscribers, representing all of the industry’s

The video was not an elaborate production—it was directed by cofounder Zhang Tao and...

After growing up without reliable power at home, Iwnetim Abate is working to develop...

Luno, the UK-based crypto firm operating in four African countries, has launched tokenised US stocks in Nigeria, one month after rolling out the product in South Africa, where it has already attracted 10,000 users.  From September 8, Luno will allow its Nigerian users to invest in 60 tokenised US stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) for

At two gatherings in Abuja and Lagos last week, MTN Nigeria chief executive Karl Toriola made an unusual case for Africa’s digital future. If the continent wants to keep pace in artificial intelligence, he said, it will need nuclear power to run the data centres behind it. His warning taps into a wider concern among

Streaming is warfare. That’s how Osita Oparaugo described the business on our call. The 3x Nigerian founder, formerly chief executive of Ogelle, a content sharing app which he founded in 2019, said it was a battle fought on multiple fronts: market adoption, capital, and global competitors with deep pockets. “I lost $18 million building Ogelle,”

Safaricom is quietly changing how its customers use digital products by moving everyday services into its flagship M-PESA app, raising questions about the future of its long-running self-care platform, the mySafaricom app. This week, users began noticing that functions once exclusive to the mySafaricom app—such as airtime purchases and home internet management—appear inside the M-PESA

Two years after Lagos governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu first floated the idea of hosting GITEX Africa, the continent’s biggest startup show, in Lagos, his dream has finally materialised. He was beaming with happiness as he toured the exhibition area at Eko Hotel and Suites on Wednesday, and later declared on stage, “Lagos is not just a

In Harare’s informal markets, business happens in social media chatboxes. A grocery vendor takes orders over WhatsApp, a carpenter closes deals on Facebook Messenger, and payments are made either in cash or via mobile wallets such as EcoCash. For thousands of Zimbabwe’s small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), these chats are the backbone of commerce, but

On August 21, 2025, developer Dara Sobaloju posted what he thought was just another idea on X: “I want to build a Bible presentation AI agent for church use. Imagine Bible verses coming up on screen as the pastor preaches just based on what he’s talking about or his paraphrases and quotes. I want to