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In partnership with Lire en Français اقرأ هذا باللغة العربية Good morning. Egypt may have found a way to keep more of its fintech value at home. MNT-Halan has been in talks since June to list its Egyptian-only business on the Egyptian Exchange, while keeping its operations in markets—such as the UAE, Turkey, and Pakistan—private. Nigeria, meanwhile, is facing the opposite situation: fintechs including OPay and PalmPay are looking at foreign listings. The Nigerian Exchange Group is now asking the government to encourage major fintechs to list locally, or at least alongside foreign listings, arguing that Nigerian investors should also have a chance to benefit from companies built on the country’s market. What would it take for Nigeria to make staying home as attractive as going abroad? Let’s dive in. Become smarter about tech and commerce in Francophone Africa, and the policies shaping them. Read our newsletter here first or subscribe below. Subscribe NCBA’s Multiple Hauliers takeover hits a court roadblock South Africa wants YouTube and TikTok to check your age Nigeria wants to bring its cloud computing back home Kenya says receipts alone won’t beat a KRA tax bill World Wide Web 3 Opportunities Banking NCBA tried to take over Multiple Hauliers. A Kenyan court has stopped it—for now Image Source: Tenor Kenya’s High Court has temporarily stopped NCBA Bank Kenya, one of the country’s largest lenders, from taking control of troubled logistics company Multiple Hauliers (EA) Ltd. Here’s what happened: NCBA says the transporter owes it KES 7.2 billion ($55.7 million). The bank appointed two administrators from consulting firm PwC to take over the company and rescue it or recover money for creditors. Under Kenyan insolvency law, administration is similar to putting a company under external management: the administrators can run the business, control assets, and decide whether it can be saved or should be sold. Multiple Hauliers challenged the appointment in court. A judge has now issued a temporary order blocking the PwC administrators from acting as administrators or taking charge of the company until the case is heard on September 25. Why does this matter? The dispute is much bigger than a single bank loan. Multiple Hauliers reportedly has more than KES 31 billion ($240 million) in claims from various Kenyan lenders and creditors, while its assets are estimated at KES 17 billion ($131.5 million), according to local publication Business Daily. Major banks including KCB, Co-operative Bank, I&M Bank, and others are also exposed. Between the lines: NCBA has not acquired Multiple Hauliers and does not currently control its operations or assets. The court has merely paused the takeover attempt while it decides whether the bank’s appointment of administrators was lawful. The bigger signal is about Kenya’s credit market. When a large logistics company spends years moving between restructuring talks, administration attempts, and liquidation proceedings, lenders recover their money more slowly, which can make banks more cautious about financing transport and logistics businesses across the economy. Zoom out: NCBA is in the middle of a KES 116.3 billion ($794 million) takeover by South African lender Nedbank. On July 21, Nedbank confirmed that it had secured a 66% stake in the Kenyan bank, clearing its path to take control of NCBA. The Multiple Hauliers case shows that one of the bank’s largest corporate debt disputes is still unresolved as the takeover process moves forward. Getting paid in cedis just got easier for African businesses operating in Ghana. Fincra now issues dedicated GHS virtual accounts to enable businesses to collect payments. See how Fincra GHS virtual accounts work. Social media South Africa wants YouTube and TikTok to start checking your age Image Source: Tenor When it comes to policy drafting, South Africa seems to be putting the bigger battles—such as regulating AI—on hold and focusing on a problem that affects far more people every day: what children can watch online. The country is drafting rules that could force social media platforms, such as YouTube and TikTok, to introduce age-verification systems for content deemed harmful or distressing to children. What happened? The proposal is part of a draft online safety framework being developed by the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies (DCDT), the South African government ministry responsible for communications, broadcasting, telecommunications, and digital policy. The same framework would also create an online content ombudsman to handle complaints involving misinformation, harmful content, and material considered unsuitable for minors. Explain like I’m new here: The government is not banning YouTube and TikTok for children. It is saying that platforms may need stronger systems to decide who is old enough to view certain content. The draft draws heavily from the United Kingdom’s Online Safety Act and Australia’s social media restrictions for under-16s. Those models go well beyond the familiar “Yes, I am over 18” checkbox. The UK framework, for example, allows measures such as facial age estimation, ID uploads, or credit-card checks for restricted content. Between the lines: The proposal would also encourage age ratings on uploaded videos and stronger parental control tools. The interesting part is the scope creep. The white paper is not only about child safety; it is also examining whether global streaming services such as Netflix and Disney+ should face a regulatory and tax treatment closer to that of South African broadcasters. The policy is not law yet. The government is still reviewing submissions from industry groups, media organisations, and digital rights advocates, and the consultation process remains open. Zoom out: South Africa is joining a growing list of countries trying to answer an uncomfortable question: how do you protect children online without exposing every other user to the same rigorous ID checks? The technology industry has not found an answer yet, and South Africa is about to test whether regulators can do any better. Download PalmPay. Bank smarter. With PalmPay, you can bank with confidence. Enjoy seamless everyday banking with security features designed to help protect your money. Send money, pay bills, and manage your finances all in one app. Learn more. Digital Sovereignty 85%
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Nigeria is moving to bring more of its cloud infrastructure within the country, in a push to reduce reliance on overseas systems and keep more of the digital economy’s value at home. More than 85% of Nigerian workloads now run on public clouds, according to Kashifu Inuwa, director-general of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA). Nigeria also hosts only 22% of its 1,000 most-accessed websites locally, below the Sub-Saharan Africa average of 34%. Nigeria wants to bring more of its cloud infrastructure onshore, betting that localising the systems that run its digital economy will reduce exposure to foreign infrastructure, keep more technology spending in the country and make critical services more resilient. The push is being formalised through the National Sovereign Cloud Initiative, whose regulatory instruments were signed with Galaxy Backbone Limited, a government-owned ICT infrastructure and shared services provider, on August 5, 2026. The framework sets out the policy, technical and quality requirements for hosting more digital services in Nigeria. Inuwa said the move builds on Nigeria’s 2019 Cloud First Policy, which sought to move government institutions away from standalone server rooms and data centres with high operating costs and towards cloud-based services. “The idea then was, how can we encourage government agencies to stop spending money on building technology and let them patronise data centre providers, both local and international providers,” Inuwa told TechCabal in an interview in Abuja on Wednesday, on the sidelines of the two-day summit where the National Sovereign Cloud Initiative was signed. But the policy also produced an unintended outcome: government and businesses moved rapidly to public clouds, without a corresponding expansion of local cloud infrastructure. “People just started going to public cloud,” Inuwa said. “Yes, it’s easier to move to public cloud, but also we need to encourage building the local ecosystem.” That has raised concerns about how much of the economic value generated by Nigeria’s digital economy is being captured outside the country. “Imagine localising and keeping all that content locally,” he said. “The kind of innovation and economic activities you can create.” The government’s argument is partly economic. Over 90% of Nigeria’s digital data and enterprise workloads are currently hosted on offshore servers, resulting in an estimated $850 million in annual capital flight as local banks, fintechs, and enterprises pay foreign cloud providers in US dollars. This foreign-currency exposure leaves domestic businesses vulnerable to severe foreign exchange volatility and geopolitical risks. Expanding Nigeria’s domestic cloud and data-centre market—projected to reach $782 million by 2031—would allow companies to pay in local currency (Naira), retaining hundreds of millions of dollars locally while creating high-value jobs in network engineering, software, cybersecurity and content delivery. “Imagine if you are paying in naira, jobs will be created in Nigeria,” Inuwa said. “Nigerians will be building content locally,” while investment in large data centres would create additional employment and business opportunities. Inuwa said the push to localise cloud infrastructure is also about making Nigeria’s digital services more resilient. As more critical services move online, heavy reliance on infrastructure and connectivity outside the country can leave businesses and essential services exposed when international links are disrupted. In March 2024, four major undersea cables serving West Africa—MainOne, WACS, SAT-3 and ACE—were damaged simultaneously in waters off Côte d’Ivoire. The outages disrupted internet connectivity across the region, exposing the risks of Nigeria’s reliance on international infrastructure and triggering widespread disruptions for businesses and essential services. “For us, sovereignty is not about protectionism,” Inuwa said. “It’s not about closing our doors against the big cloud service providers, but it’s about asking them to come and build with us in Nigeria.” The objective is to create a more resilient domestic infrastructure network capable of maintaining services even when individual locations or connections fail. “The big picture is how can we build like a digital triangle in Nigeria, where we create resilience and service assurance,” Inuwa said. “Even if there is an earthquake in one location, everything can seamlessly fall over to another location.” Nigeria could also strengthen its position as a regional cloud hub for West and Central Africa, using its large internet market and growing subsea cable capacity to attract hyperscale cloud facilities and carrier-neutral data centres. NITDA said the policy is not intended to displace public cloud services or exclude global providers from the Nigerian market. Instead, the agency wants major cloud providers, or hyperscalers, to deploy and operate more infrastructure locally. Inuwa said the government had previously granted waivers allowing institutions to use public cloud services, but it eventually began pressing providers for clearer localisation plans. “We can’t continue giving you waivers,” he said. “We need to have a roadmap on when you are going to localise some of this infrastructure in Nigeria.” One obstacle was the argument from some hyperscalers that Nigerian data centres did not meet the technical requirements needed to support their infrastructure. It was to address these concerns that NITDA brought hyperscalers and local data-centre operators together at the summit to discuss the technical and regulatory barriers to local deployment. The discussions led to a technical working group comprising local providers and global cloud companies, which developed the framework for the sovereign cloud initiative. The framework includes guidelines covering data classification, technical requirements for cloud service providers and digital quality assurance. Providers will have to meet defined standards and certifications to host certain categories of services. The initiative also seeks to address cost, a major barrier to local adoption, as cloud infrastructure in Nigeria has historically been more expensive than hosting workloads abroad, making overseas public cloud providers more attractive to startups and other businesses. NITDA and Galaxy Backbone are working on a plan to offer startups cloud services at lower costs and allow them to pay in naira, according to Inuwa. He expects greater local capacity to increase competition and put downward pressure on prices. “Today, because of lack of competition, that’s why the hyperscalers choose their own price,” Inuwa said. “But if there is competition in terms of capacity and availability
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Early-stage African startups have found it difficult to raise money this year. In July, GoLemon stopped taking orders after two years and tens of thousands of deliveries, with an average basket of about ₦43,700 ($32). The company said it made money on every delivery, but when it sought capital to scale, it could not raise enough to continue. Its explanation for shutting reflects a position that more African startups have found themselves in as venture funding has tightened. FoodCourt paused orders after failing to raise new capital, while Gigbanc shut down after also struggling to secure funding. The headline funding figures suggest the African tech market has remained relatively resilient. TechCabal Insights’ State of Tech in Africa report puts funding in H1 2026 at $1.44 billion, up 1.4% year on year. But the number of deals fell from 252 to 174 over the same period, while funding that reached early-stage startups dropped to $9 million from $25 million. Africa: The Big Deal, which tracks the market using a different methodology, found that only 190 startups raised at least $100,000 in the first half of 2026, the lowest half-year count since 2021. The number of startups raising between $100,000 and $1 million fell from 179 in H2 2025 to 100 in H1 2026, a 44% drop in six months. If you read this together, the figures suggest that capital is still flowing into African startups but is reaching fewer companies and becoming increasingly concentrated among larger, later-stage businesses. The pipeline of smaller rounds has contracted particularly sharply, narrowing one of the key funding routes for startups trying to move from early experimentation to a more established business. For this week’s Ask an Investor, we asked investors three questions: what has changed in what startups must demonstrate to raise their first cheque? Who should fund the stage that is increasingly being left behind? And what would give more of these companies a better chance at surviving? The responses offer a view into how investors are assessing risk, traction and capital efficiency in a market where simply having a promising idea is no longer enough to attract funding. It is important to note that the views expressed are those of the individual investors and analysts who responded and do not necessarily represent the positions of their respective firms. The interviews have been edited for length and clarity. What changed between 2022 and now in what an early-stage African startup has to show to raise its first cheque? Samuel Frank: In 2022, an early-stage African startup needed to show innovation around an idea and how big a market could be for that idea. What has changed is that you now have to show that a market actually exists for that idea. You have to execute on your idea in some shape or form. Pre-seed investing has changed over the last three or four years. Now, at pre-seed, people expect a startup to be doing maybe $1,500 to $2,000 a month and growing that at 10% to 20% month on month. What they are trying to validate is that you can execute on the idea you developed and that you are proving there is a business around it. Amarachi Nwachukwu: The biggest change is the amount and type of capital available. Between 2019 and 2022, there was a lot of dry powder coming out of Silicon Valley, and investors were willing to deploy into new markets. We saw the likes of Y Combinator and Techstars start investing in our markets. They were willing to underwrite potential, but that appetite has changed. Cheques have slowed, and some investors have stopped deploying into Nigerian markets completely. The bar is now very high. Every investor is asking for evidence like traction, a proven business model, revenue quality, and unit economics. They also evaluate your path to scale. In the early days, investors mostly looked at the team, the market opportunity, and the potential size of the market. Beyond traction, investors look at founder-market fit (who you are as a founder and what assets you have). Then, in this market winter, investors look closely at how a company is going to survive. If we are going to invest $100,000 into your company today, I want to understand how many months of runway that gives you, the runway you already have, and your current burn. We give you a milestone: based on your current product roadmap, can $100,000 unlock a new revenue milestone that makes you more fundable? If we see risk in your business model that could affect the outcome of the investment, we say no, even with traction. We also do the exit maths – what would need to be true for us to generate a return? Another factor is product defensibility. The easier it is to build a product today using AI, the more I want to see what nobody else can replicate over a weekend. That could come from a regulatory angle, such as a licence you have or are working towards that is not easy to get. It could come from the quality of the technology itself. Investors have moved from underwriting possibility to underwriting evidence. Mercy Ndubueze: The bar has shifted from potential to proof. In 2022, investors were more willing to back a compelling founder, a large market opportunity, and early traction. Today, founders need to demonstrate stronger evidence of product-market fit, revenue quality, customer retention, unit economics and, importantly, capital efficiency. Investors are asking not just how big this can become but also what you can achieve with this capital and how efficiently you can get there. Pius Bankong: Fundamentals have been recentred. Most of the funding abundance in 2020-2022 was a result of the global monetary policy at the time (zero interest rate policy). Cheap capital was available, and that reflected in how it was deployed across a number of circumstances. As rates rose and capital tightened, investor priorities recalibrated. Greater emphasis was laid on things that demonstrated likely venture-scale outcomes,
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