Bhluemountain is effective, reliable, and easy to work with. Schedule a free consultation and we’ll show you why we were named one of the top IT firms in Nigeria
start Now
We are a team of top-accredited professionals who are unceasingly committed to delivering trailblazing solutions that ensure your maximum productivity. We help our customers build the core foundation for a successful and secure digital transformation journey
Quality is at the heart of everything we do, and we continuously challenge ourselves to improve our services to meet or exceed the needs and expectations of our customers, while always complying with regulations and specifications.
Whilst we have a big smile on our faces about our recognition, we never forget that our team and our clients work together as one, so thank you for all of your support.
Together with our team of accredited experts, we assist businesses in navigating their current IT estates and digital future through informed and cost-saving IT models.
At Bhluemountain we help small and large enterprises, run their mission-critical systems and operations while modernizing IT, optimizing data architectures, and ensuring security and scalability across public, private and hybrid clouds. We deploy our technology solutions and services to enable businesses drive performance, competitiveness, and customer experience.
Whatever your industry area, we provide full-spectrum IT support services to help you meet changing business needs.
Effective Cloud Solutions and strategies that help you drive overall efficiency and scale effortlessly.
Gain key insights from data to drive impactful outcomes for strategic objectives.
Technology and industry consulting expertise to help you drive your digital transformation journey.
Media King Group, a Croatian smart public WiFi provider, is setting its sights on Nigeria, one of Africa’s most challenging connectivity markets, to test a new public WiFi model that could reshape how cities stay online. Founded in 2017 by Darko Kraljević, the company has spent nearly a decade building what it calls a “smart WiFi” system designed to fix a familiar problem: networks that buckle under heavy demand. Now, through a local partnership led by Nigerian entrepreneur and film producer Charles Okpaleke, Media King is preparing its first large-scale African rollout, with Nigeria as the launchpad for a broader continental push. “We don’t want to just be local in Nigeria,” Kraljević told TechCabal in April 2026. “Nigeria will be the starting point for the entire African market.” Media King is betting that a cloud-managed WiFi architecture can succeed where earlier public access efforts have stalled. Big Tech-backed initiatives, including Meta, Google, and Microsoft-linked deployments via Tizeti, have all struggled to make free public WiFi viable at scale in Nigeria. Unlike earlier attempts to “blanket” areas with standard Wi-Fi protocols, which struggled with Nigeria’s high user density and power instability, Media King’s approach rethinks the architecture. Instead of relying on access points that both connect users and process traffic, it shifts the heavy lifting, traffic management, routing, and bandwidth allocation into the cloud. The company claims that the approach makes networks cheaper to deploy, easier to scale, and more resilient in high-density environments where demand typically overwhelms infrastructure. Traditional systems rely on access points that both connect users and handle computing tasks. But as more users pile on, those systems quickly overload, leading to the familiar experience of slow speeds or complete failure in crowded areas like airports, malls, or city squares. Media King shifts that computing burden away from the hardware into a centralised cloud-based system. In Kraljević’s telling, access points become little more than “antennas,” while the heavy lifting, traffic management, bandwidth allocation, and routing are handled remotely and dynamically. The result, he claims, is a network that can support an unlimited number of concurrent users without degrading performance. Instead of rationing bandwidth equally, the system allocates resources in real time, prioritising users with heavier data needs while maintaining overall stability. That promise has already been tested in Croatia, where Media King was born and deployed what was described as Europe’s fastest public WiFi network along Split’s busy waterfront. The system has since been used in shopping malls, public transport systems, hospitals, and government buildings, often in high-density environments where conventional networks struggle. For the Nigerian partners, the appeal lies not just in the technology but in its potential to succeed where previous public WiFi efforts in the country have failed. “The challenge was that existing infrastructure couldn’t reliably deliver quality service,” said Afam Anyika, CEO of Media King Nigeria. “With 60–70% of budgets going into infrastructure, we’ve partnered with Media King Global to cut upfront costs while still rolling out our systems nationwide.” Nigeria has seen multiple attempts at public connectivity, from government-backed initiatives to experiments by global tech giants. Still, most have struggled with sustainability, high infrastructure costs, and poor service quality. In many cases, networks deteriorated quickly or failed to scale beyond pilot phases. “The real issue has always been that traditional infrastructure cannot meet real-world demand,” said Anyika. “Even when you solve for access, the quality drops as more people connect.” Media King believes its model addresses both the technical and commercial challenges. By partnering locally, the company avoids the heavy upfront costs typically associated with infrastructure deployment, instead focusing on operations, workforce development, and market expansion. Crucially, the service will be free for end users, a non-negotiable, according to Kraljević. “It must be free, because someone else pays,” he said. That “someone” is expected to come from a mix of advertisers, government use cases, and data-driven services built on top of the network. Media King’s platform includes an integrated digital layer that turns each WiFi hotspot into a communication and advertising channel. When users connect, they can be directed to targeted content, public service announcements, or brand campaigns. Beyond advertising, the system also offers anonymised data insights, such as foot traffic and dwell time, to help businesses and governments make decisions about urban planning, service delivery, and customer engagement. The company says it has already deployed the model in Croatia, where its network supported public health messaging during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is now exploring similar use cases in Nigeria, spanning education, healthcare, and local government services. However, expanding into Nigeria comes with notable execution risks, particularly on the regulatory front. As of 2026, the introduction of the Internet Code of Practice has tightened oversight, clearly defining the obligations of Internet Access Service Providers, including those offering public WiFi hotspots. Under NCC guidelines, commercial or public WiFi is no longer plug-and-play—operators must obtain a valid ISP licence, typically renewable every five years, and register each hotspot location with the Commission. Media King, however, maintains that it does not require additional licencing because it operates on existing public WiFi frequencies and partners with local internet service providers. The company also plans to fully localise its deployment, from data infrastructure to operational teams, to reduce latency and better align with regulatory expectations. Initial rollouts are expected later this year to target high-density urban areas and underserved communities with limited broadband access. In some cases, the company says it could combine its system with satellite connectivity, such as Starlink, to extend coverage to remote locations without traditional fibre infrastructure. For now, the focus is on getting the first deployments off the ground. The company says it is already in discussions with government and private sector partners, with early rollouts expected this year. “We spent years proving this system works,” Kraljević said. “Now we are ready to take it global, and Africa starts with Nigeria.”
Read More
In my short life on earth, I have started many businesses. In 2020, I was making face masks. One year later, I was convinced skincare was my calling, so I started making black soap. Now, that idea never made it off the ground because I never quite mastered the craft, but for a while, I was all in. Then there was the online restaurant, freelance gigs, a brief attempt at making clothes, and a handful of other ideas that felt just as promising at the time, but sometimes, translating those ideas into a product that actually worked was difficult. Recently, I found myself once again sitting on a product idea that felt exciting but slightly out of reach. This time, I wanted to try something different instead of letting it sit in my notes like many others before it, and that was how I ended up on Projectmaven. Founded in March 2026 by Olaotan Towry-Coker, a serial entrepreneur who previously founded AfriTickets, a ticketing platform, and Cranium One, a Coworking space, Projectmaven is designed to turn an idea into a product. “I have been building in the tech space since 2011,” Towry-Coker told me when we spoke last Friday on the phone. “Non-technical founders who are trying to build technical products typically run into a layer of friction, which is that if you don’t understand the technical aspect of what you’re building, you’re going to run into problems when you have to describe it to your developer.” Projectmaven is his attempt to remove that friction. The platform uses artificial intelligence (AI) to take a rough idea and turn it into a structured plan with proposed features, target users, third-party integrations, technical architecture, timelines, and cost estimates. How Projectmaven works I get a lot of messages—emails, SMS, WhatsApp—sometimes simultaneously. To reduce the overwhelm and make responding easier, I dreamt of an app that could notify me of a message with a summary of what the sender said and three possible replies I could tap to send. That was the idea that I took into Projectmaven. When I loaded the website, it started with a single prompt asking for my idea, and I typed it in as it was in my head. Typing my idea into Projectmaven. Image source: TechCabal From there, Projectmaven began a nine-step process to help me figure out what my product was. The first step is product description, where the AI agent reflected my idea to me in a more structured format. It broke down what it understood I was trying to build and how it would work. It also highlighted the parts of the app I had not thought about, such as access to third-party messaging apps, privacy concerns, and difficulties in accurate message summarisation. It showed me similar existing products and suggested ways my version could stand out. Towry-Coker explained that Projectmaven uses a mixture of OpenAI and Gemini frontier models for its tasks. “We’ve implemented fine-tuned prompts, custom prompts that allow the system to understand the client’s request,” he told me. “What it’s doing is that it takes the idea, does a web search, crunches all the data points, and then it presents the data in a fixed format.” Projectmaven’s breakdown of my idea. Image source: TechCabal The next step is selecting the product scale, where the AI agent prompted me to choose if I wanted the product to be extra small, small, medium, or large, depending on my goal. I selected a small-scale product, basically a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). According to Olaotan, every choice a user makes at each step determines the result in subsequent ones. “Every step has an output that we’re trying to achieve… when you’re speaking to an AI agent, the prompt essentially dictates the outcome that it gives you,” he said. “We fine-tuned our prompts to specifically focus on each step that we’re building upon.” After selecting the scale of my product, the website prompted me to choose my target audience for the app. The AI agent recommended options based on my idea, which included busy professionals, business owners, customer support agents, gig workers, and visually impaired users. In the next step, I had to select features, out of a curated list, that made sense for the product I described. It allowed me to either accept them or tweak them. I didn’t have to do either because I hadn’t thought that far. I selected the agent’s recommendations and moved to the next step, integrations. Step 5: Integration. Image source: TechCabal At this stage, it was getting more technical as I had to select the external tools and Application Programming Interface (APIs) the product would need to function, such as Gmail APIs, AI models for summarisation, and messaging systems. After integrations, it moved into design preferences, where it displayed different visual directions the app could take, prompting me to pick one. The next step was technical integration. This is where users start seeing things like React Native, Firebase, Flutter, and native iOS—mobile app development and backend service platforms. The user could either choose themselves or let the platform decide for them. On any other day, this is where I would check out, but I let Projectmaven choose. From there, it moved to the developer experience, which required me to select what level of developer I needed and showed estimated hourly rates. I chose a junior developer. I then selected a timeline, determined by how complex a product is and how fast a user wants it built. Twenty minutes and nine steps later, Projectmaven generated a full project summary detailing cost estimates, a statement of work, a product requirements document, design direction, technical stack, and integrations. Product summary by Projectmaven. Image source: TechCabal For my app, it estimated a cost of about $5,720 over 160 hours, and broke the cost estimate down by feature, hours required, and the developer rate I had selected. Projectmaven goes a step further, allowing users to start building the app on rapid AI app builders
Read MoreRosanne Whalley has been investing in Africa for 17 years. In that time, she has done early-stage equity, growth-stage equity, debt, fund investments, and mezzanine structures across several African countries. She has seen what works and what does not. She believes that the financial performance of Africa’s investment industry has been mixed, and most investors are only now starting to reassess how capital should be allocated on the continent. Whalley thinks debt funding is the best option for investors and founders. Whalley runs AHL Venture Partners, a Nairobi-based impact-focused venture capital firm founded in 2007 by a high-net-worth European family that wanted to support African entrepreneurs. For over a decade, AHL did a bit of everything, issuing equity cheques, fund commitments, and debt deals while building networks and learning the hard way what the continent rewards and what it punishes. Around 2020, the family behind AHL gave Whalley and her team a rare gift in African institutional investing: a blank canvas. No limited partner mandates. No sector restrictions. They gave her just one question: What can make money and have a durable impact? The answer they arrived at was private credit. Debt recycles faster than equity in African markets, the returns are more predictable, and the liquidity profile lets you fund more businesses over time, Whalley said. AHL cleaned up its legacy equity portfolio and reoriented around lending to scaling businesses with strong cash flows and management teams that do not go quiet when things get hard. The firm has now invested in over 35 businesses and is raising a dedicated debt fund to scale the strategy. But Whalley’s read on the broader market is sharp. She thinks impact investing has underdelivered financially, that development finance institutions treat private credit managers more as competition than partners, and that loading early-stage founders with sustainability and gender requirements before they have found product-market fit does more harm than good. In our conversation, Whalley and Kerry Nasidai, AHL’s investment manager, walk through why they abandoned equity for debt, how they price currency risk when lending in dollars in Africa, what red flags make Whalley walk away from a founder, and where she thinks African private credit is heading. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. AHL moved from equity-type investments to debt. Why did that transition happen? Kerry Nasidai: We’re in a unique position in that we have quite a long history. We were founded back in 2007 by a high-net-worth European family who had done some work on the continent and were thinking about how they could support the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Africa. At that initial stage, it was very much about supporting the ecosystem from different angles. That meant doing some very early-stage equity investments, but also debt investments, mezzanine-type products, and even fund investments. We did that for years, building our networks and expertise with each new deal. Then, around 2020, there was an internal reframing of how we make all the impact we are creating sustainable. That ended up looking like: can we shift our focus more toward debt investments? There were a couple of reasons. Debt is more liquid and still very important to the market, but you can also be more prudent in how you deploy capital. The liquidity profile is quite different, and the returns profile is also quite different from equity in the African market. From 2020, Rosanne took over with this new strategy, which was primarily increasing our debt investments but also helping to clean up our equity and fund portfolio. The aim was to create a more sustainable structure for AHL because with more sustainability, more money comes back in, and we are able to support more businesses across the continent. Now we are at a very interesting stage where we are looking to set up a separate fund, building on the expertise we have developed since 2007 and the strong track record we have shown on debt. There has been more interest from the initial family that set up the foundation capital, but also from other investors we have interacted with. We are now in the process of beginning to close another fund, focused purely on debt. Rosanne Whalley: I have had the opportunity of investing across the region for the last 17 years, across everything from early-stage and growth-stage equity, debt, and fund investments. We had a very unique opportunity in 2019 and 2020, where we did not have a top-down strategy or mandate. If you think about it, most funds are dictated by their source of capital. LP capital tends to drive behaviour and strategy, especially in Africa, where a lot of capital is still development finance institution (DFI) and impact-driven. In our case, the family behind AHL essentially said: you as a team, work out what can make money and have a durable impact. That forces you to step out of “this is what I need to do” and instead think about what works, based on everything you have seen and where the market actually is. Because we had experience across fund investments, equity, and debt, and we were seeing how each was performing, we could assess what truly works for entrepreneurs, investors, and capital allocators in the region. That’s how we landed on the private credit strategy. Even within private credit, we’re not a typical lender. We want to partner with strong teams building defensible business models at scale and then finance them over a long-term journey. Over that journey, they will need different types of capital, like senior secured working capital, mezzanine financing, or bridge funding, at different points. What’s been a privilege at AHL is that we’ve been able to build this strategy bottom-up. That’s often not the case. Usually, strategies are dictated top-down. I think that’s been a key part of our ability to pivot and execute in a way that is actually working and now scaling. You’ve been investing in Africa for two decades. What’s the biggest structural shift you’ve seen
Read More
