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.
In partnership with Lire en Français اقرأ هذا باللغة العربية Happy midweek. For millions of informal workers in Central Africa, earning money isn’t the problem. Getting a loan is. This week in Francophone Weekly, we look at how Cameroonian startup BEE is using motorcycles and other everyday assets to help informal workers get formal credit. Go read it. Meanwhile, Nigeria wants the government to become a much bigger customer of local cloud infrastructure. Its new cloud policy makes cloud the default for government systems and sets out how ministries, departments, and agencies (MDAs) will buy cloud services, where sensitive data can be stored, and how the government plans to attract $750 million in private investment into the sector over two years. Become smarter about tech and commerce in Francophone Africa, and the policies shaping them. Read previous editions here first and subscribe below. Subscribe Standard Bank wants OPay pre-IPO stake Absa eyes pan-African expansion SA to telecom firms: make public-benefit websites free New VAT rules proposed in South Africa World Wide Web 3 Opportunities Fintech Standard Bank wants a piece of fintech company OPay Image Source: Zikoko Memes Standard Bank Group, South Africa’s largest lender with a market cap of R534 billion ($33 billion), is in talks to acquire a stake in Chinese-backed OPay, ahead of the fintech’s planned initial public offering (IPO) in the United States, where it is seeking a $4 billion valuation. What happened? OPay, the Nigeria-focused fintech famous for its army of green handheld point-of-sale (PoS) devices, is working with underwriters such as Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, and JPMorgan to list in New York later this year. According to Bloomberg, Standard Bank is seeking a pre-IPO stake in the company. Backed by SoftBank and Sequoia, OPay has scaled to over 50 million users, becoming a cornerstone of Nigeria’s mobile money and digital payments economy. Explain like I’m new here: Standard Bank would be buying into OPay before the fintech goes public. If OPay gets its $4 billion valuation on the US stock market, an early stake could become more valuable, and Standard Bank gets a direct relationship with one of Nigeria’s biggest digital payment platforms. OPay, meanwhile, gets a major African bank as a strategic investor just as it prepares to make its case to global investors. Between the lines: This is a strategic hedge. In H1 2026, Standard Bank reported record headline earnings of R26.1 billion ($1.59 billion), but it knows that traditional banking scale is being challenged by fintech agility. By buying into OPay, the old guard could be paying for a seat at the table of the new guard that has mastered high-volume, low-margin transactions in Nigeria. Zoom out: This is bigger than Standard Bank wanting a slice of OPay. Africa’s banks and fintechs are moving from competition to coexistence: banks bring capital, licences, and institutional trust; fintechs bring distribution, speed, and millions of digital customers. The biggest example of this in 2025 was FirstRand and Optasia’s partnership. If this deal closes and OPay pulls off its US listing, one of Africa’s biggest banks will have effectively bought a front-row seat to the next version of African banking. Every business owner needs to watch this. The business questions you Google, answered by experts. Watch for free. Banking Absa’s home ground keeps the lights on Image Source: Tenor After a strong half-year performance where its key African markets—South Africa, Ghana, and Kenya—powered it to a good result, Absa Group, the tier-1 bank, is eyeing further expansion outside its home markets, Bloomberg reported. Combined, its three main African markets contributed 80% of its profit. Between the lines: In the six months to June, the bank recorded R58.8 billion ($3.60 billion) in revenue, growing 4% compared to the previous year. However, it was its South African lending operations that accounted for its growth, more than in other African countries. During the period, Absa’s South African business grew its earnings by 17% to R9.19 billion ($564.8 million). The group recorded R12.8 billion ($788 million) in half-year headline earnings, increasing by 8% from the previous year. Celebrating its run, the bank said it would pay shareholders R8.5 ($0.52) in dividends per share. Explain like I’m new here: Absa makes money from two broad engines: lending and fees. South Africa, its biggest market, did most of the heavy lifting this time. Earnings from its other African operations fell 10%, partly because interest rate cuts in markets such as Kenya—early in the year before they steadied—and Ghana squeezed lending income. When central banks cut interest rates, banks typically earn less on the loans they give out, narrowing the spread between what they charge borrowers and what they pay to fund those loans. State of play: Absa still wants to grow outside South Africa. It sought to increase its stake in Absa Bank Kenya to 85% through a $238.7 million tender offer, but only raised its stake to 71.99% after minority shareholders took up 21.1% of the shares offered. It is also looking at Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia as part of its wider pan-African expansion strategy. The challenge is making that expansion translate into stronger earnings rather than simply a bigger footprint. The results show an interesting tension in Absa’s African strategy: South Africa is currently carrying the group, even as the bank is betting on the rest of the continent for future growth. That makes its next expansion moves worth watching closely. Naira Life 2026 is here! The Naira Life Conference 2026 is bringing together Nigeria’s top finance minds, industry leaders, creators, and business strategists for a full-day of specialised sessions and masterclasses designed for ambitious Nigerians who want to make, keep, grow, and pass on real wealth. Happening on August 22 at the Jewel Aeida, Lekki, Lagos. Secure a seat in the room. Telecoms South Africa’s mobile operators have five months to make websites free Image Source: Zikoko Memes If you’ve ever opened a health or government website and received a notification pop-up that you will be browsing (that
Read More
Nigeria’s new National Digital Cloud Policy will require federal ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) to prioritise cloud infrastructure when building new digital systems and services, potentially making the government a major new customer for the country’s cloud providers. On Monday, Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy released the National Digital Cloud Policy, a framework for how Nigeria will build, regulate and use cloud infrastructure. The policy is the government’s latest effort to reduce reliance on overseas systems and bring more of its cloud infrastructure in-country. 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. The implementation of this policy will expand Nigeria’s cloud and data centre market, projected to reach $782 million by 2031. “Nigeria must move from being primarily a consumer of global cloud infrastructure to becoming a competitive location for the infrastructure, investment, skills and digital services that will define the next phase of the global digital economy,” Bosun Tijani, Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, said in a statement. The policy is a bet that collectively moving government systems to the cloud would make them faster and more reliable. This means that the government platforms Nigerians rely on to access public services, manage records and verify their identities could become less prone to disruptions. The policy makes cloud the default deployment model for government workloads and requires MDAs to assess their existing systems and develop phased cloud migration plans. It also sets rules for where sensitive government and regulated data can be stored and processed, how the government buys cloud services, how cloud providers are registered, how businesses can move data between providers, and what incentives the government will offer to attract investment in data centres and other digital infrastructure. The new policy supersedes the Nigeria Cloud Computing Policy 2019, which first introduced the Cloud First principle for federal public institutions. The new policy noted that the 2019 principle was implemented unevenly because there was no single framework coordinating government cloud demand, procurement, funding, security and monitoring. The policy attempts to close those gaps with aggregated procurement, a government-wide cloud marketplace, cloud provider registration and binding compliance requirements. “The National Digital Cloud Policy therefore provides a balanced framework — one that promotes investment and competition, strengthens indigenous capability, modernises Government and applies sovereignty requirements only where they are genuinely necessary,” the minister noted. Under the policy, all MDAs must, by default, design new digital systems, services, and workloads for cloud deployment. An MDA can only skip this by securing a published, time-bound exemption, which must be assessed by the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) according to section seven of the policy. “Applications for exemption will be assessed by NITDA against published criteria and determined within published timeframes,” the policy stated. “Exemptions will be time-bound, subject to periodic review, and recorded in a register maintained by NITDA.” Galaxy Backbone Limited (GBB), the agency that builds and runs digital infrastructure for government services, will aggregate cloud demand from multiple registered providers, including domestic and international companies. Rather than each government institution negotiating for capacity separately, GBB will pool that demand and negotiate framework agreements The government will manage the procurement through a National Digital Marketplace. NITDA will handle provider registration and listing; the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) will oversee procurement compliance; and GBB will handle aggregation, framework agreements, and commercial arrangements with MDAs. The policy also created a four-level classification system that sorts government and regulated data by sensitivity and the degree of national control required. Data classified at Level 4, covering national security, defence and critical infrastructure information, must be hosted exclusively on infrastructure physically located in Nigeria. Level 3 data, which includes financial, health, biometric and identity data, must be stored at rest in Nigeria, with processing permitted elsewhere only under strict regulatory safeguards. Level 2 data, covering internal government operational records, can be deployed in hybrid environments, including approved infrastructure outside Nigeria, but only with prior authorisation. Level 1 data, intended for public access or otherwise low-risk, can be hosted anywhere without residency restrictions. “Classification takes precedence over data type: the same category of information may attract different treatment depending on the context in which it is held and the consequence of its compromise,” the policy stated. The policy does not impose a blanket rule that all data generated in Nigeria must remain in the country. The classification and residency requirements apply to data generated by the Federal Government itself, or data generated under a federal regulation, licence, permit or directive that has been formally designated as sovereign data. For regulated businesses that generate data, including fintechs and healthtechs, being regulated does not automatically mean that every category of data they hold becomes subject to the sovereignty rules. However, a regulator such as the Central Bank of Nigeria or the Nigeria Data Protection Commission can apply to have a category of data it regulates designated as sovereign data, bringing that data category under these residency rules. The policy creates a division of responsibility among government institutions. The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) will provide regulatory oversight, standards, and assurance. Galaxy Backbone Limited (GBB) will be responsible for operational delivery, shared infrastructure and aggregation, while the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) will oversee alignment with public procurement requirements. Providers and MDAs that fail to comply can face remediation directives, deployment suspensions and, for providers, sanctions or suspension and revocation of registration. Material breaches involving Level 3 or Level 4 data can be escalated to the Office of the National Security Adviser and other competent authorities. The government now has a 24-month roadmap to move the policy from a framework into implementation. During the first six months, it will focus on activating the policy, conducting baseline assessments, issuing implementation directives, establishing the required institutions and putting investment-facilitation measures in place. Between the sixth and twelfth month, the government plans to operationalise the National Digital
Read More
“The bank of the free.” That was Kuda’s promise when the Nigerian digital bank launched in 2019, selling a simple idea: banking should not mean transfer fees, queues or trips to a branch. Its purple branding and standalone “K” quickly became shorthand for a new kind of Nigerian bank. Seven years later, Kuda is leaving that identity behind. On August 6, the digital bank unveiled “More Life,” its biggest brand overhaul since launch, replacing its familiar standalone “K” with a full wordmark and introducing a new typeface, colour palette, photography and visual language. “People are no longer just trying to break free in 2026,” Emmanuel Femi-Adejobi, Kuda’s senior brand manager, told TechCabal in an interview. “People are trying to move up, to rise financially, socially, professionally, and they are trying to be more. They are trying to live more.” Kuda says the redesign reflects a shift in who its customers have become. When it launched, the pitch was freedom from the frustrations of traditional banking, including slow transaction times, hidden charges, long queues in banking halls, and network downtimes. Now, the digital bank says those same customers are building businesses, juggling multiple income streams, and looking for more from their money. The ambition behind the new look is to move from being just the app customers use to spend to the one they use for everything. In Kuda’s new identity, the instantly recognisable standalone purple ‘K’ has been replaced by the full Kuda name, spelt out in geometric letterforms. The colour purple remains, but the palette now includes lavender, off-white and a darker grey. In the imagery, instead of using obvious banking cues such as cards, phones, transfers or money, the new brand uses scenes of everyday Nigerian life, from beaches to markets. Kuda’s repositioning comes as Nigeria’s fintech market enters a more mature phase. The features that helped digital banks win customers—instant transfers, mobile-first banking and low fees—are now standard across much of the financial system. Fintechs are increasingly looking beyond their original products and licences to capture a larger share of how customers save, borrow, invest and move money. In January, Nigerian payments startup Paystack restructured into a holding company, the Stack Group, which now houses Zap, Paystack Microfinance Bank and a venture studio, TSG Labs. Flutterwave has also been expanding beyond payments, acquiring open-banking startup Mono in January, a deal that gave the fintech access to a national microfinance banking licence and a route into deposit-taking and other banking services. As payments become more competitive, Nigerian fintechs are seeking licences, products and distribution that allow them to capture more of their customers’ financial lives. The Access to Finance (A2F) 2023 survey report found that Nigeria’s formal financial inclusion improved to 64% from 56% recorded in 2020, fuelled by the use of non-bank financial institutions such as fintechs. With 26% of adults still financially excluded, it leaves room for fintechs like Kuda to sell customers more financial products, including credit, savings, investments, and insurance. Kuda said the repositioning will also come with product changes. The bank is doubling down on Kuda Premium, its existing rewards programme, with discounts, exclusive experiences and partnerships built around customers’ lifestyle interests. “Our customers have levelled up. Now their bank has to,” Femi-Adejobi said. What changed with Kuda? Dropping the standalone ‘K’ for the full Kuda name in geometric letterforms drew inspiration from Nigerian art and architecture, the company said. “We knew that the K was very iconic and stood out, and people could tell this was Kuda from the jump,” Adeniyi Okeowo, Kuda’s head of creative, told TechCabal. “But the main reason we went with the name stack instead was legibility. We are in the age of social media, and attention is very crucial. We felt spelling the name on the logo would stand out the most.” “We still wanted that connection with our customers, who have identified us as the bank that uses purple a lot, so we wanted to keep that consistency and introduce complementary colours,” Okeowo said, explaining why the brand’s purple stays, but the company introduced lavender, off-white and a darker grey to the logo. What appeals most about Kuda’s new identity is what it chooses to illustrate through its imagery. The new identity is filled with scenes that have little to do with making payments or transfers, including images of people at Tarkwa Bay, Lagos markets and other everyday Nigerian spaces. Kuda’s creative team said they deliberately avoided making the financial transaction the hero. Kuda billboard showing new logo. Image source: Kuda “We didn’t want it to just be your typical photographs where somebody’s doing a fist bump after making a transfer,” Okeowo said. “We didn’t want to show things that were literally financial but to show things that money can enable you to do.” That makes the new identity feel more like a brand trying to insert itself into the life around the transactions people make with money. Kuda is not the first African fintech to find that its old identity no longer fits what it is becoming. In November 2025, Moni became Rank after acquiring AjoMoney and Zazzau Microfinance Bank, as it moved from its community-based lending model to providing more regulated financial services. In March that same year, Payhippo became Rivy and pivoted from lending to small businesses to financing solar systems for businesses struggling with unreliable electricity. Out with “bank of the free,” in with “More Life” Kuda’s creative team framed the new platform around a single idea that money is not the destination. “For us, More Life is basically our commitment to the customers. We feel money enables life,” Okeowo said. “It enables you to do things. When you have money, you can go on holidays, you can take care of your family, you can save for the future.” They noted that the idea came from research Kuda conducted before the redesign, including a pan-Nigerian study that asked customers who they had become since 2019 and what they now expected from
Read More
