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Tech giants used to be BFFs, but now it’s every AI for itself! First, it was Meta announcing it would build its own search engine to reduce dependency on Google and Microsoft. Now, OpenAI is planning to build its own AI chip. Whatever happened to playing nice and sharing toys?

Moniepoint reaches $1 billion valuation with new fund raise

Africa has just minted its latest unicorn.

For a continent that has witnessed reduced VC investment, yesterday’s announcement by Moniepoint, Nigeria’s leading fintech, was a breath of fresh air. The fintech company announced that it had raised $110 million in Series C funding, giving it a $1 billion valuation and making it the continent’s eighth unicorn. 

The valuation comes at a high praise as Moniepoint almost tripled its previous valuation of $400 million when it last raised $55 million. 

Moniepoint which already has a strong presence in Nigeria will use the new funding to expand across the continent. People familiar with the fintech’s plan say it will expand across the continent through strategic acquisition. The startup is expected to begin those acquisitions in Kenya, with talks underway. 

Moniepoint raise comes at a time when funding is particularly hard to come by on the continent. African start-ups attracted a total of $1.4 billion in the first three quarters of the year, down 38% on the same period last year, according to the funding tracker Africa: the Big Deal.

The new fundraise is also a win for previous investors who might have exited in the new funding round. 

Read Moniepoint’s Case Study on Funding Women

After losing their mother, Azeezat and her siblings struggled to keep Olaiya Foods afloat. Now, with Moniepoint, they’re transforming Nigeria’s local buka scene. Click here for a deep dive into how Moniepoint is helping her and other women entrepreneurs overcome their funding challenges.

Access Bank, Nigeria’s largest tier-1 bank by asset base, will issue dollar-denominated bonds in the domestic market to fund its expansion and meet regulatory capital requirements set by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). 

Access Bank’s Managing Director, Roosevelt Ogbonna, stated that these securities will be issued in two tranches, with one batch directed toward development finance institutions (DFIs) and the other available on the open market. The bank is likely to finalise the DFI-targeted tranche by mid-2025.

This move is notable for a few reasons. Firstly, it positions Access Bank to tap into the growing local appetite for dollar assets as Nigerians and firms increasingly seek refuge from naira devaluation. 

When the country’s central bank issued the directive for banks’ recapitalisation in March, it gave lenders only three options: rights issues and offers for subscription, mergers and acquisitions, or downgrading their licences.

Access Bank completed its rights issues and offered ordinary shares to existing shareholders on August 23. The lender planned to raise ₦351 billion ($213 million). Needing at least a further ₦149 billion ($90.4 million) to meet CBN’s ₦500 billion ($303.4 million) target for banks with international operations, the lender will likely look again into acquisitions—an art it has mastered after entering Tanzania this year.

With plans to expand operations into Hong Kong by October and the United States by 2025 or 2026, Access Bank is doubling down on its goal of becoming one of Africa’s largest lenders, extending its reach across 24 countries. 

For investors, the bank’s dollar-denominated securities offer a promising hedge against the naira depreciation.

In September 2024, Nigeria’s telecom company Globacom saw a huge drop in its subscriber numbers. Over 41 million lines were removed, bringing its active users down from 62.1 million in March to 19.1 million. 

This was part of a major cleanup by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), which targeted lines that hadn’t generated any revenue in the past 90 days. Due to this cleanup, active subscriptions across Nigeria fell from 217 million in March to 154 million in September.

Globacom was the hardest hit among telecom providers, with its market share falling sharply from 27% to 12.39%. The main reason for this loss was Globacom’s misclassification of nearly 40 million inactive lines as active, inflating its numbers and violating NCC’s reporting rules. On the other hand, MTN and Airtel were less affected. MTN held its top position with a 50.50% market share, while Airtel’s share rose to 34.76%.

NCC rules require an active line to generate revenue through activities like calls, SMS, or data use within 90 days. They also require SIMs to be verified with a National Identification Number (NIN). The cleanup delayed the release of industry data by six months.

In response to NCC’s increased scrutiny, Globacom is expected to appoint a board of directors and a CEO soon, marking a new phase focused on transparency and accountability.