Exclusive: Flutterwave invested in PiggyVest’s parent company in 2023
Flutterwave, Africa’s most valuable startup, invested in Piggytech, the parent company of PiggyVest, the Nigerian fintech that made saving fashionable in mid-2023, TechCabal has learned. The deal is structured as a SAFE (Simple Agreement for Future Equity), which means Flutterwave made the cash investment into PiggyVest with the promise of receiving equity in a funding round in the future. “Terms of the deal are not being disclosed at the moment,” Piggyvest told TechCabal in an official statement confirming the deal. Two sources with knowledge of the matter put the investment amount at $3 million. Until this investment, Piggyvest had only disclosed $1.1 million in venture funding. The fintech giant said it had received $5 million in venture funding since 2016, a detail that has not been previously reported. The recent investment by Flutterwave comes amid PiggyVest’s broader push to raise external funding, which has been in the works for more than two years, according to people familiar with the situation. Disagreement over valuation terms and the global economic downturn have affected fundraising, those people said. Flutterwave’s investment allows the payments company to have a deeper relationship with PiggyVest while the latter forges ahead with its investment round. Flutterwave did not immediately respond to a request for comments. PiggyVest’s last major venture funding round was in 2018, when it raised $1.1 million from a roll call of angel investors. In 2021, Nigerian investment firm VFD Group said it had acquired a 12% stake in the company and became a major partner in the rollout of Pocket and Patronize. VFD Group’s acquisition of 12% in PiggyVest was a mix of cash investment and a merger of a competing VFD Group product, people with knowledge of the matter told TechCabal. PiggyVest has maintained decent growth while claiming to be profitable. The holding company posted annual revenue of around $25 million in 2021, while its 2022 revenue grew slightly to roughly $27 million, said people familiar with the company’s finances. Those figures have not been previously reported. Founded in 2016, PiggyVest is as old as Flutterwave and was created by four co-founders as a savings platform for young Nigerians looking for a better way to stash their money and learn financial discipline. The app allows people to keep funds in their savings accounts on the app and accrue interest on their deposits. Customers can only access their funds four times a year or incur a fee penalty for early withdrawal. Since its creation, the platform said it has paid out over ₦1.1 trillion ($1.37 billion*) to customers by the end of 2022 through fixed withdrawal timelines. The platform disbursed ₦400 billion ($497.3 million) last year alone and claims it now has over 4.5 million registered users on its wealth management service. However, PiggyVest’s business model has evolved over the last few years. The platform originally started out as a deposit holding service that invests consumer funds in government assets, such as bonds and treasury bills. Until the end of 2022, PiggyVest’s website claimed the company had a partnership with AIICO Capital, a licensed Nigerian fund manager, where customer deposits were “warehoused” and managed. The partnership helped PiggyVest navigate Nigeria’s regulatory environment, although it’s unclear how this partnership is structured. In recent years, PiggyVest has been reconstituted as a holding company called PiggyTech Global Holdings Limited, incorporated in the UK and Nigeria, according to information on the company’s website and B2B Hints, a business registration directory. The company operates multiple services, including PiggyVest, the wealth management app; Pocket, a consumer payments app; and Patronize, a point-of-sales product that allows retail stores to accept payments offline. Since mid-2023, PiggyVest’s website shows the holding company now has a fund manager license from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) through an affiliate company, PV Capital, allowing it to manage customer assets as a fund manager. *Exchange rate used is $1 = N804.4
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👨🏿🚀TechCabal Daily – Nigeria’s content creator tax
In partnership with Share this newsletter: Lire en Français اقرأ هذا باللغة العربية Good morning We’re excited to invite you to our inaugural edition of Moonshot Conversations 2024 in Nairobi, Kenya this Friday, February 16. Join us for an evening of discussion around all things AI, with cool demos from innovators doing interesting stuff with AI. It promises to be an evening filled with networking opportunities and fun at our post-event mixer. If you are an AI expert, enthusiast, regulator, or innovator within Kenya’s tech ecosystem, this is an experience not to be missed. Hurry now and register by clicking on the link below, we can’t wait to welcome you. Register now. In today’s edition Nigerian court frees Flutterwave’s $1.9 million Botswana clamps down on Starlink resellers Nigeria backtracks on content creator tax SA announces digital nomad visa Visa partners with Egyptian bank group The World Wide Web3 Opportunities Fintech Court orders banks to unfreeze accounts tied to Flutterwave’s $1.9 million hack Over the last two years, Flutterwave made headlines for being smack dab in the face of regulators. In Kenya, the courts froze $55 million of Flutterwave’s funds over fraud and money laundering claims in 2022. The case was withdrawn and Flutterwave recovered $52.5 million in March 2023, with $3 million left. The same regulators set the fintech free last week when a Kenyan high court unfroze the $3 million belonging to the fintech giant and two of its associates, ending the legal wrangle. Now, the fintech is focused on recovering lost funds in Nigeria. The fintech startup has received a second court order from a Lagos court, ordering 27 banks to unfreeze accounts tied to its 2023 hack of ₦2.9 billion ($1.9 million). This follows a court order last week to recover $24 million lost through unauthorised transactions by point of sale (PoS) merchants on October 10, 2023. What 2023 hack? In March 2023, Flutterwave denied a Techpoint report that hackers stole ₦2.9 billion($1.9 million) of customer funds from its account in February 2023. In its response to the story, Flutterwave said it noticed unusual activities in its systems and told users to activate safety protocols. While Flutterwave insisted that customers did not lose any funds, it scrambled to freeze accounts and initiate legal action in February 2023. As the Fintech company continued to pursue legal action, in April 2023, Flutterwave reportedly denied a second and third breach on March 1 and 14 respectively, which was estimated to be about ₦550 million ($365,448). Many of the account holders affected were cryptocurrency merchants who claimed that the money was moved from Flutterwave’s accounts, and used to buy USDT on crypto platform Binance. What now? One year after the ₦2.9 billion ($1.9 million) hack, and many other hacks, Flutterwave seems to still be recouping some lost funds. However, two banks— Access Bank and Providus Bank—allegedly remain defiant, refusing to comply with the court order to unfreeze accounts. Access payments with Moniepoint You don’t have to take our word for it. Give it a shot like he did Click here to experience fast and reliable personal banking with Moniepoint. Internet Botswana joins Starlink to clamp down on resellers Yesterday, we reported that Starlink took action against some of its resellers in South Africa, citing violations of its terms of use and copyright infringements. At least 400 customers using reseller services, like StarSat, have reported blocked connections, and both Starlink and some southern African regulators have asked resellers to cease all unauthorised resales immediately. Botswana’s telecom regulator BOCRA, has joined the fray and has warned against importing, using, and reselling Starlink devices. BOCRA stated that the satellite internet service is not licensed in Botswana, and anyone engaging in these activities without authorisation from Starlink would be committing an offence against the company. Travellers attempting to enter Botswana with Starlink devices will also be denied entry. The service isn’t licensed in Botswana yet as the country rejected Starlink’s application to launch due to “missing requirements” that haven’t been addressed, delaying the planned Q4 2024 launch. A roaming loophole: While using Starlink devices in unlicensed countries is illegal, there’s a legal caveat. The “roaming” option allows users with legally purchased devices from licensed countries to utilise the service elsewhere on the continent. However, this doesn’t extend to importing or reselling. With pending applications and regulatory disputes in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Senegal and Botswana, and plans to expand to 19 more countries in Africa, it remains to be seen how the SpaceX-owned service intends to navigate regulatory hurdles and enforcement actions from regulators. Secure payment gateway for your business Fincra’s payment gateway enables you to easily collect Naira payments as a business; you can collect payments in minutes through bank transfers, cards, virtual accounts and mobile money. Create a free account and start collecting NGN payments with Fincra. Policy Nigeria backtracks on content creator tax In Kenya, content creators are facing the heat with the country’s latest Finance Act. Skitmakers, digital creators, and TikTokers will have to pay a 1.5% tax on their earnings across social media. The Act was furiously contested before it came into force, but the Kenyan government didn’t budge. Nigeria’s, however, is. Last week, content creators in Nigeria briefly faced tax fears after the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) targeted them as a “major block of tax evaders,” and announced plans to tax them. However, there’s been a swift turnaround. The FIRS has now issued a new statement clarifying that it does not intend to tax individual content creators as they do not fall under its jurisdiction. According to an FIRS source, personal income tax, which governs individual creators, falls under state government jurisdiction. The FIRS itself focuses on Company Income Tax, targeting businesses exceeding ₦25 million ($16,638) in profits. A new framework in the works: Meanwhile, the FIRS is pushing forward with a new structure focused on modernising tax administration. According to Zacch Adedeji, the Executive Chairman of the FIRS, the revamped system will utilise technology and simplify the
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Bolaji Agbede to head Access Bank after Wigwe’s demise as share prices tumble by 6.26%
Access Corporation has appointed its most senior director to head the bank after Wigwe’s demise. Access Corporation, the parent company of Access Bank, Nigeria’s biggest bank by assets, has appointed the most senior executive director, Bolaji Agbede, to head the company two days after the death of Herbert Wigwe, the company’s founding Group CEO. Agbede will hold the position of Acting Group Chief Executive Officer (GCEO), according to a statement signed by the bank, joining the league of women banking CEOs in Nigeria. Wigwe had died along with his wife, son, and three other passengers, including Abimbola Ogunbanjo, the former chairman of the Nigerian Exchange Group (NGX), aboard a helicopter identified as a Eurocopter EC130 by the US Federal Aviation Administration on Sunday bound for Las Vegas. Share prices of Access Holdings tumbled by 6.26% on Monday in the Nigerian stock market. Lots of trading activities were observed around Access stocks as 24.90 million units of ACCESSCORP were sold yesterday—making it the highest traded stock this week. “The appointment of Agbede is in alignment with our robust succession planning practices,” said Abubakar Jimoh, chairman of Access Holdings in a statement published on the NGX. “We are strongly convinced that Agbede, being the company’s most senior executive, would provide the much-needed leadership to steer the company towards the attainment of its strategic vision,” he added. Agbede’s appointment as acting GCEO is subject to regulatory approvals by the Central Bank of Nigeria and comes as a fulfilment of the Access board’s promise to appoint a successor to build on the bank’s legacy of growth and operational excellence. Agbede holds a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and Statistics from the University of Lagos (1990) and subsequently obtained a Master of Business Administration degree from Cranfield University in 2002. She is also a member of the Chartered Institute of Management UK and the Chartered Institute of Personnel Management of Nigeria. Before this appointment, Agbede spent two years serving as the bank’s most senior founding Executive Director in Business Support. She has spent 21 years at Access Bank, having first joined as the Assistant General Manager, responsible for managing the bank’s portfolio of chemical trading companies. Agbede is a versatile professional with over 27 years of experience in Human Resources management, customer relationship management, and banking operations. She has a proven record of successful people integration during mergers and acquisitions, culture transformation and execution of corporate strategies. She had formerly served as the bank’s head of Group Human Resources for 12 years between 2010 and 2022.
Read MoreEthiopia’s inflation jumps to 28.7% as central bank acknowledges alleviation difficulties
Inflation in Ethiopia has hit 28.7% with the National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE) acknowledging that it has been one of the country’s most challenging macroeconomic issues for many years. Based on its monetary policy statement, the country, home to nearly 120 million people, has struggled to tackle rising inflation, with an average inflation of 16% per year recorded over the last ten years. “Inflation outturns over the past two years have risen even beyond this average historical rate and persisted for much longer than initially expected,” read a statement from the NBE. According to data from the NBE, Ethiopia recorded consecutive months of inflation below 30%. In December 2023, the annual inflation rate increased to 28.7% from 28.3% in November 2023. Food prices, which comprise over half (53.5%) of the consumer price index (CPI) grew to 30.6% compared to the same period in 2022, and slightly higher than the 30% recorded in November 2023. The jump was linked to the nation’s internal conflict, the Tigray war. An overlap in malnutrition, disease, and food insecurity has worsened the situation. About 4 million people have also been affected by the ongoing drought. “Some supply-side and cost-push factors found to be statistically significant in contributing to inflation have included the internal conflict that disrupted local food transport/distribution networks and the large jump in key global commodity prices,” said the NBE. Other items besides food increased to 26.1% in December 2023 from 26.0% in the prior month, influenced by a weaker currency, the Ethiopian birr. Nonetheless, the NBE wants to reduce inflation to under 20% by June 2024 and under 10% by June 2025. They plan to do this by managing how much money is lent and cutting back on giving money directly to the government. Performance of the Ethiopian birr In December 2023, the birr lost value by 4.8%, ending the year at 56.1 birr for $1 from 53.6 birr recorded in December 2022, per a statement shared by Safaricom Ethiopia. The government made some changes in September 2022 to bring more foreign currency into the country. For instance, the NBE halted foreign currency use for purchasing in the country. Ethiopians can only keep foreign currencies for 30 days, instead of 90 when they return to the country from foreign trips. At the same time, the NBE made it easier for people to bring foreign currency into the country. Ethiopians can bring up to $4,000 without declaring the cash at customs. However, the amount of money non-citizens can bring in without alerting customs officials has more than tripled from $3,000 to $10,000.
Read MoreStarlink importation, use are an offence in Botswana, says regulator
Botswana’s telecoms regulator has warned the public against the importation, use, and reselling of Starlink devices in the country. The importation, use, and reselling of Starlink devices are punishable offences in Botswana, according to the Botswana Communications Regulatory Authority (BOCRA). Starlink is not yet licensed in the country and the regulator has stated that it is currently vetting the service’s application. “Starlink has not authorised anyone to import, [use] and/or sell its devices in Botswana,” BOCRA said via email. “Anyone doing so without authorisation from Starlink would be committing an offence [against Starlink].” It is unclear what charges Starlink could bring against offenders but per Starlink’s terms of use, importation into and reselling in a country where the service is yet to launch is not allowed. Reports indicate that some owners of Starlink devices, who claim to be using them for personal use, are being barred from entering the country with them at the Kazungula border post with Zambia, where the service has officially launched. “I was told to return the device to Zambia, and I was not allowed to cross the border into Botswana with it,” one person, who asked not to be named, told TechCabal. Another person who tried to bring in a Starlink device was told by border control to call the regulator for permission. Their request was unsuccessful. “Until BOCRA licenses the service and allows us to let the devices in, the devices will not be allowed into the country,” a customs agent told TechCabal. Despite being against importation and reselling, using the “roaming” option, it is legal for Starlink users to utilise the devices in different locations on the continent, including countries where it is yet to be licensed. This requires that the user has legally bought the device in a country where Starlink has been licensed. Starlink resellers like Starsat, based in Mozambique where the service has been licensed, seem to be taking advantage of this “loophole” to offer the import and delivery of Starlink units to countries including South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, and Zimbabwe. However, according to MyBroadband, last week Starlink cut off the accounts of hundreds of customers who bought the Starlink kits via Starsat and other resellers, citing a violation of terms of use.
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Next Wave: Venture investing is for everyone. Especially corporations
Cet article est aussi disponible en français <!– In partnership with –> <!–TopBanner Join us for TechCabal Battlefield, Moonshot’s startup competition where you can showcase your startup idea to a global audience and an esteemed panel of judges and stand a chance to win up to 2.5 million naira in funding for your business! Click to register for TC Battlefield First published 11 Febuary, 2024 Investing venture capital may be one of the esoteric branches of high finance, but the core concept of venture investing—taking distributed risks on the chance of enormous upside and limited downside—is not something that only nominal venture capitalists should do. Governments, and corporations especially, should be bigger venture investors than they currently are. Why? Because venture investing is a philosophy about risk versus returns more than it is a financial activity. This does not simply mean that governments should pour more money into startups—even though they should. Or that corporates should create more programmes that finance early businesses—even though it would be welcome. The point is that when large organised groups of people (whether they are governments or corporations) lose ambitions that are moonshots and cease to venture beyond comfortable cocoons, they inevitably lose an essential dynamism that is part of the human experience. “Venture investing is for everyone” means that investing resources, not just money, into a process, with the potential for big positive returns, even if there’s a risk of losing everything, is progress nonetheless. Next Wave continues after this ad. TechCabal is taking Moonshot Conversations to Nairobi! We’re excited to invite you to our inaugural edition of Moonshot Conversations 2024 in Nairobi, Kenya this Friday, February 16th. Join us for an evening of discussion around all things AI, with cool demos from innovators doing interesting stuff with AI. It promises to be an evening filled with networking opportunities and fun at our post-event mixer. If you are an AI expert, enthusiast, regulator, or innovator within Kenya’s tech ecosystem, this is an experience not to be missed. Hurry now and register by clicking on the link below, we cannot wait to welcome you. And more! It will be remembered as the year that reset the trajectory (hopefully) for the better. Register now! If you strip off the “tech” and “startup” façade from how venture investing is commonly understood, you will quickly see that humans often try to spread out the amount of risk we carry at any point in time, in every area of endeavour. From education to career and relationships, it is almost intuitive to “not put all your eggs in one basket”. Venture capital investing is exactly this same activity, but with financial maths, wads of money, and “tech” in the picture. The other thing that separates venture investing from regular investing is that, as a financial philosophy, it only works when risks are distributed based on enormous potential for oversized gains and a significant downside that is limited to zero. Understanding the risk-reward balance of venture investing is why this type of thinking is inherently challenging. All technological progress (including economic progress) has always been the child of venture investing in some form, whether what you’re considering is the launch of the rocket that put a man on the moon or the socio-economic reforms that helped China lift millions from extreme material poverty. It is the same philosophy that helped Steve Jobs rebuild a floundering Apple, and in our opinion, it is the same reason why partnering with OpenAI makes sense to Microsoft’s C-Suite and board. To bring the point closer to home, it is easy to legitimately point fingers at the many failures of venture capital and call for a more conservative approach to financing things like startups. But venture capital and venture investing are not necessarily the same thing. In fact, for the purposes of this essay, it is helpful to think of venture investing as investing in anything that has the potential to deliver outsize positive returns relative to the risk that the investment goes to zero. Think about human capital development, think about core services and infrastructure, and think about a corporate DNA that keeps pace with global business and technology changes so that it is relevant to customers and workers. Africa’s technology ecosystem, and indeed economy, may not grow to the admirable heights we dream of if everyone, from your local town government head to the suits in boardrooms, does not take investing in ventures (not just startups) seriously. This is not an argument for everyone to ditch their jobs and become financiers of startups. Rather, if we allow an overreaction to poorly thought-out venture capital investing to affect our understanding of the risk-reward balance of investing for significant positive outcomes across all aspects of the economy and social structure, then we will have created another issue. In essence, more of Africa’s mature companies need to take part in the business of venture investing—again, this is more than simply providing capital. Many examples surely showcase that this business can work very well for firms and people willing to put in the work. Safaricom, Kenya’s leading telco, has had multiple tries at it with varying levels of success. For instance, it launched the $1 million Spark Venture Fund more than a decade ago, which supported the likes of Sendy, a logistics company that has since closed shop. The company seems to have learned its lessons and modified its strategy to include more than just investing capital. There should be more of this from African telcos, African retail giants, and African governments. In fact, the big foreign international companies could significantly increase their impact if they convert a portion of their idle resources into venture investing assets. Who knows, it may do far more good than their current CSR initiatives. Kenn Abuya and Abraham Augustine Senior Reporters, TechCabal Thank you for reading this far. Feel free to email kenn[at]bigcabal.com, with your thoughts about this edition of NextWave. Or just click reply to share your thoughts and
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👨🏿🚀TechCabal Daily – Star leaked
In partnership with Share this newsletter: Lire en Français اقرأ هذا باللغة العربية Congratulations to Côte d’Ivoire As Nigeria takes a step back with second at the African Cup of Nations (AFCON), we’re also taking a look at ecosystems that have fallen outside the limelight in Nigeria’s bustling tech ecosystem. Nestled into the edge of Western Nigeria, Lagos is where some of the continent’s biggest startups kicked off. If there’s a tech event happening in Nigeria, it’s also most definitely going to hold in Lagos. It’s also the state most investors, who fly in for these events, focus on. But Nigeria has 35 other states, what’s happening there? What’s it like building a tech ecosystem outside of Nigeria’s tech capital? We’ve got answers in the debut of our Weekend Features. In today’s edition Africa waves goodbye to Herbert Wigwe Starlink clamps down on South African resellers Bayobab lands two subsea cables in Ghana and Nigeria Funding African civic tech How much was lost to ransomware attacks in 2023? The World Wide Web3 Opportunities Features Africa waves goodbye to Herbert Wigwe One point we hammered in our monthly recap is how one Nigerian commercial bank, Access Holdings, is giving startups a lesson in acquisitions. Last month, Access Holdings, the parent company of Access Bank, completed three acquisitions across two countries. Before that, the bank made waves in 2019 with the $239 million acquisition of another commercial bank, Diamond Bank. It also pushed an expansion project across the continent, absorbing banks and corporations across Mozambique, Zambia, Uganda, Botswana and several other countries. In the first half of 2023, the company also reported a 52% jump in profits. More recently, in January 2024, the bank crossed the ₦1 trillion market capitalisation mark on the Nigerian Stock Exchange for the first time. And at the helm of Access’ sprawling empire was Herbert Wigwe who served as CEO of the corporation since 2014. Herbert Wigwe Tragically, Wigwe lost his life on Saturday night in a helicopter crash in the US that killed six including his wife Doreen, and their first son Chizi. The crash also claimed the life of former group chairman of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) Abimbola Ogunbanjo as well as the lives of the two pilots on board. Africa celebrates Wigwe’s life: The deaths were confirmed by Access Bank in a post honouring his visionary leadership. Since then, Africa’s business and tech leaders have taken to social media to honour Wigwe’s legacy. “Herbert Wigwe was the best of the best. The finest of the finest. Ah. No. The most hardworking person I know. Such a survivor. Always restless. Always hungry. One step ahead. So strong. So, so strong. The most ambitious person I know. And he had so much more to give. He was only just getting started.” Ola Brown, Founder at HealthCap Africa. “I am saddened by the tragic death of Herbert Wigwe, CEO and co-Founder of Access Bank, his wife & son. He was a visionary and brilliant banker. May God comfort your aged parents, children, the Wigwe family and the staff and management of Access Bank. You will be greatly missed.” Akinwumi Adesina, President, African Development Bank (AfDB). “The passing of Dr. Herbert Wigwe, Group CEO of Access Holdings PLC, his wife and son, is a huge loss to our financial sector and country as a whole. Dr. Wigwe was a true pioneer and fine gentleman who blazed the trail in revolutionising our banking industry and more recently in education. Also saddening to hear was the loss of Mr. Abimbola Ogunbanjo, former chairman of the Nigeria Exchange Group PLC.” Bosun Tijani, Nigerian Minister for Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy. “Terribly saddened by the news of the terrible loss of Herbert Wigwe, Group CEO Access Bank @HerbertOWigwe , his wife and son as well as Bimbo Ogunbanjo in a helicopter crash. My deepest sympathies and condolences to the Wigwe family, the Ogunbanjo family, Access Bank Group employees and Management @myaccessbank and my younger Brother Herbert’s partner Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede. May the souls of the departed rest in perfect peace.” Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Director-General at the World Trade Organisation. Access Corporation has also revealed that the board will soon announce an acting CEO for the Group who will carry on Wigwe’s legacy. Access payments with Moniepoint You don’t have to take our word for it. Give it a shot like he did Click here to experience fast and reliable personal banking with Moniepoint. Internet Starlink clamps down on South African resellers Over the past year, satellite internet service Starlink has launched in some of Africa’s biggest economies—except one. The Space X-owned service which kicked off in Nigeria has snaked its way across the continent, launching in Kenya, Rwanda, Zambia even eSwatini, all while avoiding South Africa. Starlink won’t give itself up: Starlink is now active—and licensed—in seven African countries with plans to be available in 19 more by the end of 2024, and 10 more by 2025. South Africa isn’t on this list. The reason? Well, Starlink won’t acquiesce to South Africa’s equity requirement: that 30% of its company—or any foreign company launching in the country—must be owned by South Africans. That hasn’t stopped South Africans from using Starlink though. At least 14,000 South Africans are using the service via resellers like IT Lec and StarSat. These resellers buy Starlink roaming packages available in licensed countries for South Africans, register the services in those countries and manage subscriptions for users. Starlink is pushing back: Now, Starlink is fighting some resellers. Over the past week, at least 400 StarSat customers have reported that their Starlink service has been blocked. Per MyBroadBand, Starlink says resellers are violating its terms of use, and its copyrights by using the Starlink logo for their marketing. The SpaceX-owned company has also asked resellers to cease all unauthorised resales immediately. Regulators also push back: Southern Africa resellers are also finding themselves fighting both the company, and the regulators. In November, South Africa’s communications regulator, ICASA, warned against resale of Starlink
Read MoreAccess Bank mourns Herbert Wigwe, to announce acting Group CEO soon
Access Bank has announced the death of Herbert Wigwe, the company’s founding Group CEO alongside his wife, son, and three other passengers, including the chairman of Nigerian Exchange Abimbola Ogunbanjo, in a plane crash. The company also said that the board will soon announce the appointment of an acting Group CEO who is expected to build on the “legacy of growth and operational excellence.” “The Access family has suffered a major loss with the passing of Dr. Wigwe who was a great friend and fine gentleman. He had a prodigious intellect, admirable personal qualities, and vast business experience which he brought to bear on the Access Family and for which we owe him a debt of gratitude,” said Abubakar Jimoh, chairman of Access Holdings in a statement. The helicopter carrying Wigwe and the other passengers was identified as a Eurocopter EC130 by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration. The aircraft was headed to Las Vegas when it crashed near a border city between Nevada and California on Friday night, as per reports. The 57-year-old CEO was a key figure in the transformation of Access Bank to a holding company and the largest bank in Nigeria by total assets. The bank is also one of the largest retail banks in sub-Saharan Africa with over 60 million customers in 20 countries. Apart from the banking sector, Herbert Wigwe was also invested in education with his latest project being a university named after him and located in Rivers State.
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A revamped Showmax begins its march to 50 million subscribers with a branding masterclass
Editor’s note: For the best viewing experience, click the half-moon icon ☾ at the top right corner of the page to switch to dark mode. Weeks after Amazon Prime beat a hasty retreat from Africa, Showmax, the streaming service majorly owned by MultiChoice, presented a spectacle that shows how much it is betting the house on African streaming. For four days in the first week of February, the Showmax team went to great lengths to show its guests—journalists whose stock in trade is skepticism—who were in Johannesburg for a grand launch, how much it believes in its ability to crack Subscription Video On Demand (SVOD) in Africa. The grand launch of the revamped Showmax For months, the company has talked up Showmax 2.0, its second iteration, the new technology that underpins the new app, the partnerships it believes will serve as a competitive advantage, and its unique understanding of the African market. A fun game would be taking a shot whenever a Showmax executive mentions their unique understanding of the African market. First review of the new Showmax: A big leap forward with content & UI But this is not a game. Instead, last week was the final stretch before it migrates all of the data from the old app on February 12. It was about celebrating the sheer amount of work that has gone into this moment: the beginning of what the company hopes will be a long march into dominating and making a solid business of African video streaming. L to R: Event compere, Andrea Zappia and Calvo Mawela Showmax, which started as an idea three years ago, wants to attract 50 million paying subscribers in five years—a fifth of Netflix’s 260 million subscribers in Q4 2023. However, all markets are not created equal, and 50 million African subscribers in the SVOD market is ambitious. A mix of a startup mentality and riding the coattails of an established parent business will be critical for success. The Showmax grand launch “We’re over here because we began as a startup, and we wanted that startup mentality. We wanted to begin without the guidance of our parent company,” said a member of the company’s marketing team, explaining why the Showmax office sits in the corner of the MultiChoice campus, away from the rest of the main building. Showmax’s office is quirky and has all the clichés of a fashionable startup office in the middle of a big launch: whiteboards in spaces designated as war rooms, employees hunched over big screens, drinking too much coffee and looking stressed, and a Lego board the design team uses to destress.“We had more than three meetings every day,” one person tells me, explaining the pace of work in the lead-up to the launch party. Everything had to be right. As launches go, Showmax pulled off a masterclass in branding, with its colourful X logo prominent. The stars of some of its original shows, like Wura, The Real Housewives of Abuja, Spinners, and Adulting, were on hand, and the team created experience booths for those shows. Despite the entertainment, the conversations were serious, and the theme was Showmax’s plan to become the king of African streaming. While most tech publications would call it a bet, Andrea Zappia, the former Sky executive recently named chairman of the Showmax, disagrees. “This is a logical investment,” he told an excited crowd of about 400 people at the MultiChoice dome, the venue of the launch, on Tuesday evening. Alongside Calvo Mawela, the group CEO of MultiChoice, the pair discussed some behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing that made this iteration of Showmax possible. “It took a lot of convincing for these partners (Comcast, NBCU) to make their first investment in Africa,” said Mawela, referring to NBCU’s 30% equity investment in the streaming company. The conversations began in 2020 and were slowed down by the pandemic, but now everything is in place. Technology, check. Important partnerships, check. Extensive investment, check. Passion, check. Now the race is on for MultiChoice, a publicly listed company, to show its shareholders that it can pull off this bold bet. And if it’s feeling any pressure from Canal+ breathing down its neck, the company’s executives and employees didn’t show it. Just before the party started, Mawela told the crowd, “Showmax and streaming are not just a project, it’s a passion.” But passion doesn’t pay any bills. The company has set its own goals publicly, and now we must measure success or failure by its ability to capture 50 million paying subscribers by 2029. The journey starts now.
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What is it like to build a tech ecosystem in Nigeria outside the country’s tech capital?
Editor’s note: For the best viewing experience, click the half-moon icon ☾ at the top right of the page to switch to dark mode. Sanusi Ismaila moved from Lagos to Kaduna in 2014 to set up a technology hub that trained people to solve real-world problems. He believed it was essential to inspire and cultivate tech ecosystems outside of Lagos because local issues need to be solved by locals who understand the nuances. After a while, he ran into his first problem: no talent pipeline to sustain startups nationwide. So, he went one step backward on the value chain to produce the talent needed to build high-quality products and startups. In 2016, Ismaila launched CoLab, and it became Kaduna’s first tech hub and the second in northern Nigeria. Today, CoLab is a community for those building tech careers and dreamers looking to connect and learn from each other. CoLab Lagos is to the Nigerian tech ecosystem what Silicon Valley is to the North American ecosystem. Yet, unlike the United States, where other states like New York, Seattle and Chicago still have thriving ecosystems that complement Silicon Valley, tech ecosystems outside Lagos struggle to build their identities or grab significant attention from stakeholders. As a result, some of the best tech talents from these regions frequently feel the need to migrate to more viable regions to attract better opportunities. After a brief conversation with these men, he discovered they were CoLab members; the following month, he signed up to learn data analytics. Six years on, he now works at AltSchool and is the director of people and head of data science programs at CoLab while still living in Kaduna. What started as a small community of young people wearing hoodies and sitting around with used HP laptops has become one of northern Nigeria’s biggest tech talent pipelines. CoLab has over a thousand alumni, with some collaborating to build startups like Sudo Africa and others working in organisations like Paystack, Microsoft, and Google. The community became such a force that in May 2022, the Kaduna State Governor, Nasir ElRufai, provided them with seven hectares of land to set up a campus and train even more tech talents. Image via Benjamin Dada Excel Ajah, who built writersgig, an online platform for freelance writers, has struggled with finding tech talent, and he believes that this is a significant contributing factor to the slow growth of the tech ecosystems in the East. “Because ecosystems like Lagos are more advanced, it’s easier to find people who can do exactly what you want,” he shared. The tech ecosystem in Imo State is in its earliest stages and didn’t begin to take shape until 2020. According to Ajah, its inception can be traced to when he and a couple of people started hanging out in public facilities to work and discuss other tech ecosystems like Lagos. In no time, they attempted to replicate these communities and events they saw in Lagos and soon organised The Owerri Business Week and Social Media Fest, which attracted a lot of attention and have become annual events. SM Fest, for the Owerri tech ecosystem While still running writersgig, Ajah launched Silicon Africa, a tech innovation centre dubbed after its counterpart in San Francisco. With a new company came hiring needs, which was where he encountered his first challenge. Scarcity of talent. It was difficult for Ajah to find strong developers in the region to work for his company, so he began training them instead. “Some of the early developers I hired still work with me and are now senior developers who now train other early-stage developers in the centre,” he shared. “This has been interesting to watch because it has become a cycle, and those they train now train others.” For Chidi Duru, another founder who operates from Owerri, the problem of the ecosystem in Imo precedes a scarcity of talent. For him, it’s a lack of interest in learning tech skills driven by the popularity of internet fraud in the region, especially in the past years. Duru’s tech hub, CodeAnt, provides coding classes to young people with support from Google, but it is still difficult to convince young people to focus on learning tech skills. As a founder, building from Owerri limits him from a network of people who understand what he’s building. Recently, in Lagos, he walked around at a centre wearing a CodeAnt hoodie merch and had a couple walk up to him to discuss the classes and company. “This has never happened in all the years I’ve been wearing our merch in Owerri,” he shared while laughing. “I even contemplated moving to Lagos for some minutes.” While it’s a lot of work, Duru says that he’s committed to putting in the work to ensure that aspiring tech talents in Owerri have a space that’s dedicated to their growth and learning. So far, they’ve trained about a thousand young people with coding and digital marketing skills. The CodeAnt primary team who are working to develop a tech ecosystem in Owerri Beyond a talent pipeline, Lagos has a more structured ecosystem that encompasses the talent, the investors to fund these ideas, and the media to tell stories about said ideas. In newer ecosystems like Imo, for example, securing avenues to tell their stories on the centre stage can be difficult. Most tech media is focused on more vibrant ecosystems like Lagos, which makes getting their attention “a bit challenging,” in the words of Duru. During a fireside chat in January, Sim Shagaya, the founder of u-lesson and Miva, both Abuja-based ed techs, shared that one of the reasons why tech ecosystems outside Lagos have struggled is a lack of structured institutions in these regions. Before the rise of the tech industry in Lagos, it was already home to tertiary institutions like The University of Lagos, Lagos State University other private and open universities, providing it with a high mass of young people from these institutions to feed into the
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