Former Branch Kenya CEO Rose Muturi joins Moniepoint to lead Kenya operations
Moniepoint Inc has appointed Rose Muturi, former Branch Kenya CEO, as the chief executive for Kenya, as the Nigerian fintech unicorn bolsters its expansion strategy in East Africa following the acquisition of Sumac Microfinance Bank earlier in the year. The Nigerian fintech, in an emailed response on Tuesday, confirmed the appointment, stating that Muturi has been brought on board to oversee the company’s strategic direction and not to manage its new local subsidiary. The appointment suggests that the unicorn is moving from securing a regulatory foothold in East Africa’s biggest economy to building a banking business. The acquisition of Sumac gave the company the licence required to operate in the market, but expanding operations will require local banking expertise as competition intensifies among banks, fintechs, and mobile money platforms. “We can confirm that Rose Muturi has joined Moniepoint Inc. as CEO to lead our Kenya operations, driving the group’s strategic direction in the country rather than managing a standalone subsidiary,” Edidiong Uwemakpan, Moniepoint’s vice president for corporate affairs, said in a statement. She added that Muturi is employed by Moniepoint Group, while Sumac Microfinance Bank “is a separate entity with its own leadership team.” Muturi joined Moniepoint in June, according to her LinkedIn profile. Before joining Moniepoint, Muturi spent more than four years at Branch, rising from East Africa managing director to chief executive of Branch Kenya. During her tenure, Branch became a neobank after acquiring Century Microfinance Bank, using its licence to expand beyond digital lending into broader banking services. Muturi has also held senior leadership positions at HF Group, Tala, TransUnion Kenya, Chase Bank, and Standard Chartered Bank. She founded the Digital Lenders Association of Kenya and serves on the board of the Association of Microfinance Institutions Kenya. Expanding beyond payments While Moniepoint has disclosed a few details about its Kenyan strategy, its recent acquisitions suggest ambitions beyond payments. Sumac holds a deposit-taking microfinance banking licence, allowing it to mobilise deposits and extend credit. Combined with the appointment of an executive experienced in running a regulated digital bank, the acquisition gives Moniepoint both the regulatory infrastructure and local management needed as it expands beyond payments in Kenya. Shortly before completing the Sumac deal, the company also acquired restaurant software provider Orda, extending its push beyond payments into software, lending, and banking services for small businesses. In Nigeria, Moniepoint offers merchant payments, banking, credit, and business management tools through a single platform, a model it could replicate in Kenya. The company also appears to be building out its Kenyan team. Its careers page currently lists tens of open positions globally, including roles in Nairobi such as People Business Partner, Financial Planning Analyst, and Head of Product Control and Accounting, suggesting it is assembling the local leadership needed to support its expansion. “Moniepoint is building capacity in Kenya as it works to bolster its strategy in the market,” Uwemakpan said. True scale demands moving beyond surface-level integrations to robust execution. We’ve filtered the noise out of Moonshot 2026, optimising the conference strictly for high-calibre connections between startup founders, global financial operators, enterprise leaders and individuals rewiring Africa’s technical frameworks. Get 20% off Early Bird tickets for a limited time.
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Supercell offers African game studios grants worth up to $200,000
Supercell, the Finnish game company behind Clash of Clans, Hay Day, and Clash Royale, has opened applications for its first Developer Grants Program, offering equity-free funding of between $20,000 and $200,000 to African game development studios. The programme is designed to help legally registered game studios build sustainable businesses, strengthen an emerging games ecosystem, and grow alongside the teams building the next generation of games, according to the company. Supercell will select three to five studios for the inaugural cohort. Applications close on August 9, shortlisted studios will be notified in October, and funding is expected to begin in December. Africa’s gaming ecosystem is expanding, with more studios entering the sector, yet access to early-stage funding remains one of the industry’s biggest constraints. Several initiatives have been recently launched to boost funding in the ecosystem, including Google Play’s $1 million equity-free fund for independent game studios across 32 African countries. “Africa is one of the most vibrant creative regions in the world. The ideas, the stories, the talent emerging from Africa will help shape the future of global gaming,” Ilkka Paananen, CEO and cofounder of Supercell, said in a video message at the MaliyoCon gaming conference in December 2025. “Our investment in Africa is both commercial and social. We are backing ambitious developers and committing to the continent’s long-term future.” The grants are open to studios whose primary operations and most of their teams are based in Africa. Although a studio with a holding company registered outside the continent can still apply, provided it discloses its legal structure. According to Supercell, studios can submit more than one game as part of their portfolio, but must identify a single one as the primary focus of the funding request. Previous investment, grants, or accelerator programs participation will not affect eligibility, and the company noted that it welcomes applicants across all platforms and business models. The grants are non-dilutive, meaning Supercell will not take equity or ownership in participating studios or their intellectual property. The game company noted that funding could be used across a range of development needs, including salaries, contractors, engineering, art and design, software, quality assurance, marketing, live operations and other costs that help studios reach their next stage of growth. “At Supercell, we believe the best teams make the best games,” the company said in its announcement. “Some of the most exciting creative energy and distinctive cultural narratives today are emerging from Africa, and we believe this talent will help shape the future of global gaming.” Eligible studios can apply through the portal with their pitch decks, gameplay trailers, links to previous games, and a funding plan. According to Supercell, applications will be evaluated based on the strength of the team, the quality and originality of the game’s creative vision, evidence of player engagement, the studio’s potential to build a sustainable business and contribute to Africa’s gaming ecosystem, and a clear plan for how the funding will accelerate its growth. The company first signalled its plans months before applications opened, at MaliyoCon in Lagos, where Deborah Mensah-Bonsu, global social impact lead at Supercell, told the room of the grants even as the company was still working out the criteria. “We believe there are incredible teams here on the continent that we want to support. We believe in the future of this ecosystem, and so we’re really excited to partner,” she said. “It (the grant) is really about trying to catalyse and accelerate some of the studios on the continent.” True scale demands moving beyond surface-level integrations to robust execution. We’ve filtered the noise out of Moonshot 2026, optimising the conference strictly for high-calibre connections between startup founders, global financial operators, enterprise leaders and individuals rewiring Africa’s technical frameworks. Get 20% off Early Bird tickets for a limited time.
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This region wants to build Africa’s most connected fintech ecosystem
14 juillet 2026 Hello , Welcome back to Francophone Weekly by TechCabal, your weekly deep dive into the tech ecosystem across French-speaking Africa. For readers who want to understand Francophone Africa beyond headlines—through markets, startups, and systems. New editions of the newsletter will land directly in your inbox every Tuesday at 12 PM WAT. By default, this newsletter is in French. If you’re reading this in your email inbox, click the “Read in English” button below to switch to the English version. If you’re reading on our website, you can either click the button below or toggle the language selector at the top right-hand side of the page to view the English edition. Read in English Le 3 juillet, le Pullman Abidjan a accueilli Catapult : Inclusion Africa, une conférence organisée par la Luxembourg House of Financial Technology (LHoFT) dans le cadre de son programme d’accélération Catapult plus large, qui a déjà déployé des éditions similaires en Asie du Sud-Est. Soutenu par le gouvernement luxembourgeois, l’Agence Luxembourgeoise pour la Coopération au Développement (LuxDev), la Banque Centrale des États de l’Afrique de l’Ouest (BCEAO), le Groupement Interbancaire Monétique de l’Union Économique et Monétaire Ouest-Africaine (GIM-UEMOA), la Banque Africaine de Développement (BAD), Appui au Développement Autonome (ADA), l’Association Fintech de Côte d’Ivoire, et plusieurs institutions luxembourgeoises de développement et de finance, l’événement a réuni régulateurs, investisseurs et fondateurs autour d’un seul thème : comment construire un secteur fintech inclusif et finançable à travers les huit pays de l’Union Économique et Monétaire Ouest-Africaine (UEMOA). La journée s’est articulée autour de trois panels animés — réglementation, innovation pour la finance inclusive, et intelligence artificielle (IA)/cybersécurité — avant de laisser la parole à quinze fondateurs de fintechs pour une session de pitchs au rythme soutenu, puis de se conclure par une discussion orientée investisseurs sur le financement et les actifs numériques. Ce qui s’est dégagé ressemblait moins à un salon professionnel qu’à une séance de travail sur la plomberie d’un marché de 150 millions d’habitants que régulateurs, banques et startups s’efforcent tous de refaire en même temps. Voici pourquoi l’UEMOA pourrait devenir la prochaine frontière fintech de l’Afrique. 1. La réglementation comme fondation, pas comme obstacle Source de l’image : Seneweb. Le panel d’ouverture, piloté par la BCEAO et GIM-UEMOA, l’opérateur d’infrastructure de paiement partagée de la région, a donné le ton. Deux chantiers réglementaires convergent simultanément sur la région. Le Cadre d’Audit de la sécurité des systèmes d’information (CAF-STI/SSI), la certification de cybersécurité requise pour les acteurs de l’écosystème de paiement, est désormais obligatoire pour tout opérateur dans l’écosystème, avec un délai de grâce de deux ans accordé aux nouveaux entrants pour satisfaire douze exigences couvrant la sécurité des données, l’interdiction des mots de passe par défaut et la formation périodique des collaborateurs. L’académie de GIM-UEMOA et ses partenariats avec Stru Team, un cabinet de conseil en cybersécurité basé au Luxembourg, et l’Africa Cyber Security Centre (ACSC), une organisation de renforcement des capacités en cybersécurité travaillant avec des institutions financières africaines, existent précisément pour accompagner les entreprises vers cette conformité. En parallèle, la Plateforme d’Interopérabilité des Systèmes de Paiement Instantané (PISPI), la plateforme d’interopérabilité des paiements instantanés de la BCEAO, lancée le 30 septembre 2025, impose une connexion obligatoire à partir du 30 juin 2026. Le positionnement de PISPI est sans détour : une seule connexion couvre les huit pays de l’UEMOA et leur population combinée. Les virements de compte à compte (A2A) se règlent en moins de cinq secondes sur une plateforme gratuite, remplaçant un processus de virement classique pouvant prendre 48 heures et coûter jusqu’à 12 000 francs CFA (20,87 dollars). GIM-UEMOA occupe un terrain adjacent mais distinct, centré sur l’interopérabilité monétique et l’homologation des solutions d’acceptation de paiement, les deux institutions étant explicitement présentées comme complémentaires sous la supervision de la BCEAO. Les intervenants ont également précisé que PISPI ne remplace pas le système de règlement brut en temps réel de la région, le Système de Transfert Automatisé et de Règlement (STAR). Le moment le plus marquant du panel reste toutefois la discussion sur l’open banking, qui s’est appuyée sur le déploiement européen de la Deuxième Directive sur les Services de Paiement (DSP2) comme mise en garde. La réglementation sur l’interopérabilité ne fonctionne que là où le régulateur la fait réellement appliquer face à des banques réticentes — et de nombreuses fintechs européennes se sont trompées en se connectant aux interfaces de programmation d’application (API) bancaires sans modèle économique viable derrière la plomberie, une erreur qui pousse désormais certaines vers le Treasury Management comme source de revenus alternative. La BCEAO a déjà inscrit des obligations d’open banking dans sa nouvelle loi bancaire, même si les textes d’application restent en attente pendant que PISPI absorbe l’essentiel de l’énergie réglementaire pour l’instant. Le conseil pratique donné aux fondateurs était direct : cartographier chaque réglementation applicable, s’auto-évaluer par rapport à elle, et se présenter devant le régulateur avec un dossier préparé plutôt qu’à vide — en traitant la conformité comme une stratégie de croissance plutôt qu’une contrainte. GIM-UEMOA a ajouté son propre double défi, spécifique aux fintechs : démontrer leur valeur ajoutée aux banques en tant que partenaires plutôt que concurrentes, et devenir techniquement interopérables avec PISPI plutôt que de rester en silo — en soulignant que puisque tous les acteurs font face au même régulateur et aux mêmes contraintes, c’est finalement la qualité du management qui fait la différence entre les gagnants. IA et cybersécurité : un attaquant plus rapide qu’un défenseur Le deuxième panel a abordé un sujet plus inconfortable : l’IA arme les attaquants plus vite qu’elle n’arme les défenseurs. Les grands modèles de langage (LLM) offensifs ont été cités comme permettant des tests d’intrusion automatisés à vitesse machine — un exemple donné faisait état de 600 vulnérabilités détectées sur une application critique, contre les cinq environ qu’une équipe corrigerait habituellement en un an via une revue manuelle. La fraude d’identité suivrait directement le rythme des nouvelles versions de LLM, avec une plateforme de paiement citée comme subissant des millions
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Why South African banks still charge for instant payments
Three years after the launch of PayShap, South Africa’s real-time payment system, the technology behind instant bank transfers is no longer the issue. The question is why consumers are still paying to move their own money. Digital challenger banks argue that instant payments should be treated as a core banking service rather than a premium feature. “Every bank has its own commercial model and pricing strategy, so we can’t speak for the decisions other institutions make,” Cheslyn Jacobs, CEO of GoTyme Bank South Africa, told TechCabal in an interview. “From GoTyme Bank’s perspective, we believe that instant payments are a core banking service rather than a premium feature.” As technology evolves and payment infrastructure matures, Jacobs said customers should not have to think twice about moving their own money because of transaction fees. The debate extends beyond GoTyme’s pricing strategy. It reflects a shift in South Africa’s banking sector. With instant payments now widely available, banks are increasingly competing on price and customer experience. Although every major bank now supports real-time payments, customers pay very different fees depending on their bank, raising questions about whether those charges are still justified. According to publicly available pricing, GoTyme Bank offers PayShap transfers free across all supported transaction values. Other banks charge between R1 ($0.061) and R10 ($0.61), while Discovery Bank charges up to 0.5% of the transaction value, capped at R35 ($2). Nedbank, one of South Africa’s big four banks, also charges different fees depending on whether money is sent to a cellphone number or directly to a bank account. For consumers who regularly send money to relatives, pay domestic workers, split bills, or pay small businesses, those charges can add up. Banks maintain that instant payments carry real costs. Running the service requires investment in payment infrastructure, fraud prevention, cybersecurity, compliance, and settlement systems. Transaction fees help recover part of those costs while contributing to non-interest income. GoTyme argues that those costs should increasingly be absorbed as part of delivering a modern banking service. “For us, offering free PayShap transfers reflects our broader philosophy of making banking simpler, more rewarding and more accessible, because that is how banking should be,” Jacobs said. The debate is not unique to South Africa. Brazil’s Pix, launched in 2020, became the country’s dominant payment method by allowing consumers to send money instantly at little or no cost. India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) followed a similar path, processing billions of transactions every month while making free instant payments the norm. Jacobs believes South Africa has already built the infrastructure needed to achieve similar adoption. “International markets have shown that adoption accelerates when digital payments are simple, convenient, and affordable. Pix and UPI demonstrate that when customers can make instant payments easily and at little or no cost, those services quickly become part of everyday life,” he said. “South Africa has made significant progress by establishing a modern real-time payment infrastructure through PayShap. The next phase is encouraging widespread everyday usage.” PayShap was introduced to make digital payments faster, cheaper, and more accessible, particularly for lower-income consumers and the informal economy, where cash remains dominant. Greater adoption could also reduce the costs and risks of handling cash for small businesses. Despite banks using the same payment rail, pricing remains inconsistent, suggesting that competition is moving beyond instant payments themselves and towards the overall digital banking experience. “We believe the opportunity isn’t simply to make payments faster; it’s to make digital payments so easy and accessible that they become the default way South Africans exchange value,” Jacobs said. Whether transaction fees disappear altogether remains uncertain. South Africa’s largest banks continue to earn revenue from payment services, and none has indicated that free instant transfers will become standard across the industry in the near future. Still, Jacobs expects banking competition to continue evolving. “We believe the industry is moving towards a future where instant payments increasingly become a standard feature of everyday banking rather than a service customers pay extra to access,” he said. “Whether every bank reaches that point within five years will depend on each institution’s strategy, but the long-term direction is clear.” As instant payments become commoditised, banks are likely to compete less on transaction fees and more on the overall customer experience. For consumers, the bigger question is whether paying to send money will remain part of everyday banking. True scale demands moving beyond surface-level integrations to robust execution. We’ve filtered the noise out of Moonshot 2026, optimising the conference strictly for high-calibre connections between startup founders, global financial operators, enterprise leaders and individuals rewiring Africa’s technical frameworks. Get 20% off Early Bird tickets for a limited time.
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Why raising $50,000 may be harder than $10 million
This article is based on a conversation from Voices & Visions, a podcast produced through a partnership between Tutto Passa Agency and TechCabal, which explores the people and ideas shaping Africa’s innovation economy. One of the strangest realities of African business is that finding someone to invest $10 million can sometimes be easier than finding someone willing to write a cheque for $50,000. This is according to Francis Nasyomba, founder of Nairobi-based investment advisory firm Raising Capital. It sounds counterintuitive because smaller investments should, in theory, carry less risk. Small African companies are seeking modest capital to buy another production line, open a new branch, hire five more people, or digitise operations. They are not looking for $10 million, but may be seeking $100,000. Paradoxically, Nasyomba argues, that may be the hardest cheque to raise in African business today. “The value of death in fundraising in Africa is anyone raising between a million dollars and $3 million,” says Nasyomba in a recorded conversation on Voices & Visions, a podcast backed by Tutto Passa Agency and TechCabal. “If you’re raising below $50,000, there are many different sources of capital—grants, family, friends, banks. But once you start going above that, especially above half a million dollars, it shrinks significantly.” The contradiction exposes a deeper flaw in how capital is allocated across the continent. Africa has become successful at attracting global investment capital. Venture funds, private equity firms, development finance institutions, and impact investors oversee billions of dollars earmarked for African businesses. Institutional investors But those pools of capital have largely evolved to fund venture-scale opportunities or projects large enough to justify institutional attention. Nasyomba’s firm sits between entrepreneurs seeking capital and investors seeking opportunities. In theory, those two groups should complement each other. But that is not usually the case; they talk past one another. His conclusion is not that Africa lacks capital. It is that the continent has become remarkably good at financing the two extremes of business while neglecting everything in between. A market trader can borrow a few hundred dollars from a digital lender. A venture-backed startup can raise millions of dollars from international investors. But the manufacturer trying to expand production or the healthcare company opening clinics discovers there is no obvious home for businesses that have graduated beyond survival but have not yet reached institutional scale. Economists have long described this as the “missing middle”. But hearing it from someone who spends every day matching businesses with investors reveals something more fundamental. The problem is that the economics of investing discourage exactly the kind of financing that growing businesses need. “If I’m to raise a fund, I need to invest in maybe five to ten businesses at most,” Nasyomba says. “If I’m investing half a million dollars, I’m looking at a $5 million fund. A $5 million fund doesn’t make fund economics.” Due diligence takes weeks regardless of the deal size. Portfolio companies demand board meetings, reporting requirements, and strategic advice, whether they receive half a million dollars or twenty times as much. This means that large cheques simply justify the effort better. The result is an investment market that naturally drifts upwards, leaving thousands of businesses stranded in the middle. But Nasyomba does not blame the investors. Fundraising is not a success One of the biggest misconceptions in African business, he argues, is that raising capital has become synonymous with building a company. Somewhere between accelerator programmes, pitch competitions, and billion-dollar valuations, fundraising acquired a status it was never meant to have. Capital has become a measure of success, and that misunderstanding has consequences. His firm declines roughly nine out of every ten companies that approach it. Surprisingly, the reason is rarely the absence of investors. “They think because they have an idea and access to money,” he says. “No. You don’t have a business model. You don’t know what you’re selling. You don’t know who you’re selling to.” It is an uncomfortable observation because it challenges one of the dominant narratives surrounding African entrepreneurship. In the past decade, the ecosystem has largely argued that capital is one of the biggest constraints. Nasyomba sees it differently; he believes that readiness is the major constraint. He believes that the companies that survive are the ones that gradually stop revolving around their founders and fundraising. “We have a joke in the office,” he says. “You should not play Jesus.” His point is less theological than managerial. Too many entrepreneurs insist that every decision passes through them. They remain chief executive, head of sales, finance director, and operations manager long after the business has outgrown that model. In doing so, they create companies that cannot exist without them. Perhaps it is why the only business book he consistently recommends to first-time founders is Built to Sell by John Warrillow. The lesson from the book, he says, is frequently misunderstood. The objective is not to build a company for sale, but one that can survive its founder. Obsession with unicorns It also explains why he is sceptical of Africa’s enduring obsession with unicorns, privately held companies valued at more than $1 billion. The continent has produced about 10 unicorns, including Flutterwave, OPay, Wave, Andela, and Chipper Cash; most of them are fintech companies. “Not every business is going to be a unicorn,” he says. “Forget even billion-dollar valuations. Not every business is going to be valued at $100 million… It doesn’t have to. It’s okay.” For much of the past decade, Africa’s tech ecosystem has celebrated exceptional companies. The harder task may be building ordinary ones extraordinarily well. According to Nansionba, the businesses most likely to transform African economies may not be those capable of raising $10 million. They may simply be the ones that finally manage to find their first $50,000. Listen to the full podcast on Spotify. True scale demands moving beyond surface-level integrations to robust execution. We’ve filtered the noise out of Moonshot 2026, optimising the conference strictly for high-calibre connections between startup founders, global financial
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Kenyan court holds banks, telcos liable over $34,000 SIM swap fraud
Mercy Wairimu Kariuki woke up on the morning of February 8, 2022, to a stream of alerts showing that KES 4.4 million ($34,000) had been withdrawn from her Diamond Trust Bank (DTB) account overnight, two days after fraudsters hijacked her phone line in a SIM swap she had already reported and believed had been resolved. On June 18, Kenya’s High Court ruled that both Diamond Trust Bank and Safaricom bore responsibility for the theft, finding that separate failures by the lender and the telecom operator enabled the fraud to succeed. Justice Asenath Ongeri upheld a lower court’s decision to split liability between the two companies, rejecting arguments from both that the other’s failures broke the chain of responsibility. The ruling raises the standard of care for banks and telecom operators handling SIM swap fraud, holding that each owes customers an independent duty to prevent foreseeable losses even when the fraud originates outside its own systems. Ongeri upheld a chief magistrate’s court decision that split liability between DTB Kenya, the Nairobi Securities Exchange-listed lender, and Safaricom, the telecommunications company behind M-PESA, ordering the bank to pay Kariuki KES 1,788,601 ($13,800) and Safaricom KES 2,630,000 ($20,300). The 40:60 split reflected the court’s finding that while Safaricom’s SIM swap failure enabled the fraud, DTB independently breached its duty of care by failing to detect and halt a series of suspicious transactions that should have prompted further checks. The underlying sequence is one that fraud investigators in Kenya’s mobile money ecosystem have seen before. According to the ruling, fraudsters swapped Kariuki’s SIM on February 6, and she reported the incident to Safaricom customer care the same day after receiving suspicious alerts, only for the swap to go through regardless. Her line was restored the following day at a Safaricom shop, but by the morning of February 8, her DTB account had already been emptied through a combination of mobile banking transfers and Pesalink withdrawals, structured to stay just under the bank’s KES 2 million ($15,400) daily limit by straddling a weekend reset. In the same ruling, DTB argued that its systems had worked exactly as designed, since every disputed transaction followed successful entry of Kariuki’s PIN. It also argued that the SIM swap itself was a novus actus interveniens, an intervening act that severed any chain of liability running back to the ban. Ongeri rejected that framing directly. “A bank cannot hide behind a customer’s PIN when it is presented with a series of transactions that are so glaringly out of the ordinary that a reasonable banker would have been put on inquiry,” she wrote, pointing to the rapid succession of transfers to unrelated accounts and phone numbers as red flags the bank ought to have caught. The bank’s secondary argument fared no better with the court, which was unmoved by the claim that the fraud fell outside normal monitoring because part of it occurred over a non-business day. “The banking system operates on an automated 24/7 basis,” the judgment states, adding that mere compliance with a transaction ceiling “does not satisfy the broader duty of care to protect a customer from loss.” Ongeri treated the daily limit reset not as a technical safeguard working in the bank’s favour, but as evidence of precisely the vulnerability it was obliged to guard against. Safaricom’s cross-appeal against its larger 60% share of liability was dismissed on similar grounds, with the court declining to treat the SIM swap and the subsequent withdrawals as separate events with separate causal chains. Ongeri ruled that both companies owed Kariuki concurrent and independent duties of care, drawing on the standard for bank liability set in Fidelity Commercial Bank v Italian Market Kenya and the threshold for flagging suspicious transactions established in Joe Owaka Ager v Barclays Bank of Kenya. The ruling arrives as SIM swap fraud remains a persistent threat to Kenya’s mobile money-linked banking system, and it complicates the argument, advanced by Safaricom through Wachira v Safaricom, that telecoms operators and banks occupy separate regulatory lanes. The implication for lenders is that a system capable of waving through an unusual fraud pattern without human review is no longer a defence in itself. True scale demands moving beyond surface-level integrations to robust execution. We’ve filtered the noise out of Moonshot 2026, optimising the conference strictly for high-calibre connections between startup founders, global financial operators, enterprise leaders and individuals rewiring Africa’s technical frameworks. Get 20% off Early Bird tickets for a limited time.
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Why LAVA believes the best of Africa’s Web3 ecosystem is yet to come
Yoseph Ayele spotted a pattern years before he raised a single dollar for LAVA, an early-stage Web3 fund backing African crypto startups with cheques ranging from $100,000 to $500,000. The pattern emerged while he was building Borderless Africa, a platform he launched in 2021 to connect African founders and talent with global capital and infrastructure. Time and again, founders in Lagos, Nairobi, and Johannesburg were solving meaningful local problems, yet the investors and infrastructure providers best positioned to help them scale had little understanding of those markets. A month-long tour across four African countries with Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin sharpened his conviction. Throughout the trip, he realised that many founders—despite spending months in the same online community—were meeting one another in person for the first time. For Ayele, the problem extended beyond access to capital or international attention. Africa’s early-stage crypto ecosystem lacked a coordination layer: a space where founders could exchange ideas, learn from one another, and build relationships, much like entrepreneurs do in Silicon Valley or Asia’s established crypto hubs. Ayele launched magma, a biannual founder residency programme run through Borderless Africa, that connected early-stage builders and infrastructure providers. According to Ayele, the programme has supported more than 40 startups building financial infrastructure and decentralised trust solutions across the continent. Following the end of the zero-interest-rate policy (ZIRP) era in 2022, early-stage capital became significantly harder to access. Founders repeatedly told Ayele that fundraising had become their biggest constraint. He sat with the problem for several years before launching LAVA in 2024 to back startups building what he described as the financial layer and trust infrastructure underpinning Africa’s digital economy. According to Ayele, LAVA raised $11 million to back early-stage Web3 startups developing stablecoin apps, payments infrastructure, and digital identity solutions. About 16% of LAVA’s portfolio is based in East Africa, including stablecoin fintech HoneyCoin. Half of the fund has been deployed into West African startups—predominantly Nigerian companies—while the remainder has gone to pan-African or globally focused ventures. Those investments include Shield3, a digital transaction security app, and Ultramarkets, a prediction-market-leveraged infrastructure startup founded by Emmanuel Njoku and Justice Eziefule. Njoku previously co-founded the now-defunct Nigerian crypto payments startup Lazerpay. LAVA counts investors such as Coinbase chief executive officer (CEO) Brian Armstrong; Paradigm co-founders Fred Ehrsam and Matt Huang; Figma CEO Dylan Field; and the founders of Notion, Polygon, Celo, Base, Centrifuge, Huobi, Nonce, and TADA among its backers. The fund has deployed more than half of its $11 million fund across 18 startups in its first two years, according to Ayele. TechCabal spoke with Ayele, founder and managing partner of LAVA, and Andy Tudhope, the firm’s chief technology officer (CTO), who leads its technical diligence, about why the fund prioritises founders over markets, how the fund decides which startups to back or pass on, why exits remain scarce across Africa’s Web3 ecosystem, and what the sector still lacks. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Why do you describe LAVA’s investing strategy as operator-led, and how has that helped you build conviction in the companies you’ve backed? Ayele: The top funds in the world are run by founders, not professional money managers. In the global startup world, that has been a consistent pattern: your chances of identifying quality talent early and being a good contributor to the startups you invest in are much higher if you have gone through the journey yourself. Having gone through the process of building technology, building companies, fundraising, and making a whole lot of mistakes, that doesn’t make us experts in everything. It gives us the ability to understand the practicalities of what it takes for the founders pitching to us and the capacity to empathise with the competing priorities and challenges they’re about to go through. Relating to our founders from an operator lens allows us to be pragmatic and hands-on where it matters and hopefully add value that’s actually meaningful for them. You’ve said LAVA prioritises the founding team over the product or the market when evaluating a startup. What informs that order, and what have you learned about what works at the earliest stage? Ayele: If you’re investing at an early stage, it’s all about talent. You’re backing founders. Companies pivot, markets shift, but the one constant is the founder. The pace at which a company grows is predicated on the talent, market understanding, psychology, the founder’s decision-making, and the team they build around themselves. That’s the most critical element of investing early, and we’re not the first to say it. It’s consistent across successful funds globally, including early-stage investors across Africa. The market still matters because quality talent alone doesn’t move mountains. Finding an opportunity in a market and having clarity on which problems to solve is critical. But even that comes down to the founder’s capacity to identify those opportunities and be exceptional within that vertical. There’s also a hierarchy we believe in that sometimes gets flipped in venture capital, where the investor gets placed above the founder. We believe it’s the other way around. The founder is the higher priority, and the investor is secondary. Practically, that means we’re in the business of participating in founders’ success, and we only get involved in startups where we can understand, contribute to, and be part of that success. Early-stage investing isn’t really a science; it’s more of an art, and we’re constantly learning ourselves. What we know today is different from what we knew three months ago, let alone a year ago. There have been moments where we’ve said no because there was a lot we didn’t fully understand, and then come back to a company further down the road. You’ve backed 18 startups, but you must have interacted with far more. How do you decide when a startup makes business sense and is likely to return capital, and what leads you to pass on others? Tudhope: Each investment decision is highly contextual, so there’s no single global reason why we didn’t invest in a
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Africa’s crypto payment experiment is finding its first believers at local stores
This is Follow the Money, our weekly series that unpacks the earnings, business, and scaling strategies of African fintechs, financial institutions, companies, and governments. A new edition drops every Monday. In Juja, a busy area in Kenya’s Kiambu County, Faith Mbinya, a local mom-and-pop trader, proudly displayed an orange-and-white banner bearing a quick response (QR) code that read “Bitcoin accepted here.” Inside the household goods shop she runs, customers browse plastic buckets, cookware, electronics, toiletries, and cleaning supplies. Every so often, someone pays for a dustbin, toilet brush, or other household item with Bitcoin. Mbinya began accepting the cryptocurrency in November 2025 after a friend introduced her to it. For her, the appeal has little to do with Bitcoin’s price and everything to do with the cost of moving money. “I accept Bitcoin because it reduces the transaction cost, which is a very major problem when we go to our Kenyan local banks or local M-PESA,” Mbinya told TechCabal. “It helped me save on those little transactions.” Most of her customers still pay in Kenyan Shillings. However, she says four or five customers—a handful of the foot traffic—each month ask to pay with Bitcoin. One customer recently paid KES 6,000 ($46) in Bitcoin for household goods. Mbinya says most of the people who ask to pay this way are Bitcoin users (Bitcoiners) under 35, reflecting a growing community of young Kenyans already familiar with the cryptocurrency. Verified Ledger The Micro-Merchant Tax Comparing verified Safaricom transfer tariffs against Fedi network routing. Infrastructure Note: Fedi App Traders use the Fedi to handle community e-cash. They migrated to this app because it combines receiving Bitcoin, converting currencies, and spending into a single wallet, solving the storage strain on low-cost Android phones. Internal transfers inside a federation are free, while external outbound transfers across the Lightning Network carry a minor 21 basis points (0.21%) fee. Monthly Customer Payments (fixed at 130 KES / $1 each): 100 payments ($100) CUMULATIVE PROCESSING FEES Total Business Volume: $100.00 $5.38 Safaricom M-PESA7 KES Flat Transfer Fee $0.21 Fedi Network Rail0.21% External Routing The Cash-Out Reality: While a 7 KES Pochi la Biashara / Till transfer amounts to $26.92 at max slider volume, if the merchant withdraws those funds via an offline agent, Safaricom’s standard 29 KES fee applies—bringing total operational friction to $111.54. By operating purely on-chain via Fedi, micro-merchants protect their margins from compounding flat fee brackets. Data source: Safaricom Official Tariffs (Latest Update) & Fedi Processing Metrics. USD/KES conversion pegged at 130. In Lagos, the appetite centres on stablecoins Across Africa’s cryptocurrency hubs, a growing number of merchants are beginning to accept digital assets as payment. But while Mbinya embraces Bitcoin itself, some businesses in Lagos have adopted a different model. Trib3 Lagos, a fine-dining restaurant in Victoria Island, an upscale part of Lagos, Nigeria, accepts cryptocurrency payments, although customers typically pay with stablecoins, digital tokens pegged to the value of fiat currencies. The restaurant, however, has no interest in holding digital assets after a transaction is complete. “We are an all-inclusive restaurant, catering to mostly those in the formal sector, and quite a number of Nigerians, mostly young people who deal in crypto, want to pay with that, hence the reason,” Franklyn Obinna, business development manager for sales and events at Trib3 Lagos, told TechCabal. “We sell an experience, and that extends to how payments are made.” Obinna said that although the restaurant accepts Bitcoin, Ether, Solana, USDT, and other digital assets, it converts every crypto payment into Naira immediately. “We transact in our local currency [Naira] daily, so we always have to convert all crypto payments to local currency immediately,” Obinna said. Mbinya and Trib3 represent two ends of the same spectrum. One accepts Bitcoin both as a means of payment and as a store of value. The other accepts digital assets only as a payment rail, converting every transaction into local currency. The Crypto Payment Pipeline Compare how crypto settles at checkout in Kenya vs. Nigeria. The Juja Model (Hold) The Lagos Model (Convert) Customer Sends $46 in BTC Fedi / Self-Custody Wallet Merchant Receives BTC System Insight: The Circular Economy Mom-and-pop stores hold the native cryptocurrency. They absorb the exchange-rate risk directly, relying on community rebates if the asset’s price drops sharply. Source: TechCabal Reporting Businesses like Trib3 accept cryptocurrency largely because customers increasingly expect that option. Their confidence comes from knowing they do not have to hold the assets themselves. Startups, including CoinCircuit and Mular, bridge that gap by receiving cryptocurrency from customers, converting it almost instantly, and settling merchants in local currency. The model allows cryptocurrency holders to spend the assets they already own while enabling merchants to continue operating in the currencies they already use. For years, cryptocurrency payments have struggled to move beyond speculation into everyday commerce. Bitcoin’s price volatility, network congestion, and tax treatment have discouraged many merchants from accepting it directly. Stablecoins remove much of the volatility, but they do not solve another challenge. Most businesses still keep their accounts, pay suppliers, and settle taxes in local currency. Any payment system that expects merchants to hold cryptocurrency, therefore, requires them to change the financial infrastructure on which their businesses operate. The startups and communities emerging across Nigeria and Kenya are betting on a different approach. Rather than asking merchants to become crypto businesses, they are building infrastructure that enables customers to spend digital assets while merchants continue receiving local currency. Building the missing payment rail Startups building crypto payment infrastructure across Africa argue that t persuading merchants to adopt cryptocurrency is the wrong way to think about the market. h Instead, they see the opportunity in serving consumers whose money is already on-chain. Across Nigeria and much of Africa, stablecoins and other digital assets have become an increasingly common way for freelancers, remote workers, exporters, and crypto traders to receive cross-border payments. Spending that money, however, still typically requires converting it into local currency before making everyday purchases, often incurring conversion fees and withdrawal charges along
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👨🏿🚀TechCabal Daily – Sunset at Gigbanc
In partnership with Lire en Français اقرأ هذا باللغة العربية Good morning. Welcome to another capitalism-filled work week. I’m (begrudgingly) on lede duty all week, so you’re stuck with me until Friday. Since you have no choice but to give me your attention, here’s a question for you: We’re near the end of the 2026 World Cup, and despite not being much of a football fan myself, I can’t escape the debates. So, who are you backing to lift the trophy (no, you can’t change your answer after the final whistle)? Before someone starts another ‘Messi vs everybody else’ debate, here’s today’s dispatch. — Yemi Get smarter about Francophone Africa with our newsletter, Francophone Weekly—the startups, tech policies, and institutions building the pipelines for ecosystem growth. Subscribe Gigbanc winds down operations SA wants devices that check a foreigner’s status KRA posts record tax collection for FY2026 Portugal and Morocco want to build a subsea electricity cable World Wide Web 3 Job Openings Startups Nigerian fintech Gigbanc winds down its operations Gigbanc team If Africa’s tech ecosystem had a town crier, it would echo what the players already know: investors are becoming more selective. Startups are finding that building a product is one challenge, but raising enough money to keep building it is another. What happened? Gigbanc, a Nigerian fintech that built cross-border payment products for freelancers, is winding down its operations after three years. Customers have until July 31 to convert their balances to Naira and withdraw non-fraudulent funds to Nigerian bank accounts free of charge. The startup also said that it is in talks to be acquired. The ecosystem has money problems: Gigbanc’s closure comes at a curious time for African startups. Funding into the continent ticked up slightly in the first half of 2026, but the number of disclosed deals fell sharply from 252 in H1 2025 to 146 this year. Meaning that investors are still writing cheques, but they’re writing them for fewer companies. Where Gigbanc fits in: Gigbanc said it struggled to raise fresh capital while operating a business that is expensive to run. Cross-border payments require customer verification (KYC), compliance, banking relationships, and payment infrastructure, all of which cost money even before a startup becomes profitable. The startup tried to change tack away from cross-border fintech operations, but didn’t secure enough money to fund that ambition. Like Chimoney, another Nigerian-founded cross-border payments startup, that shut down in May after its founder said the startup could not raise additional funding. Early-stage startups need capital to build products, acquire customers, prove their business works, and reach the scale investors want to see. But investors now want to see the scale before writing the cheque. That leaves many founders stuck in the middle. Zoom out: Gigbanc said it processed more than ₦10 billion ($7.2 million) in payments, served 150,000 users across more than 30 countries, and built products for Africa’s growing freelance economy. Yet, even that wasn’t enough to guarantee survival. Modern Rails for Africa’s Economy: How Fincra is helping businesses collect, pay out, convert, and settle across African markets. Read more here. Policy South Africa wants to introduce handheld biometric scanners to identify undocumented migrants DHA minister Leon Schreiber. Image Source: Polity SA If you’ve ever gone through passport control at an airport, you’ve probably seen an officer scan your passport, take your fingerprints, and know almost immediately whether you should be allowed through. South Africa wants that same experience to happen on the street. What’s happening? South Africa’s Department of Home Affairs (DHA), the government department responsible for immigration, citizenship, and civil registration, wants to buy 600 handheld devices that will let immigration officials scan fingerprints and faces, then check in real time whether someone is legally in the country. Instead of relying on passports or permits that could be forged, officials would verify a person’s biometrics directly against the DHA’s database. Explain like I’m new here: The idea isn’t entirely new. Since April 2024, the DHA has been live-scanning people arrested on immigration grounds into its Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS), allowing officials to identify repeat offenders and people previously deported. The new handheld devices simply take that same system into the field, so officers can verify someone’s status within seconds instead of taking them to an office first. Today, immigration enforcement often depends on physical documents and follow-up checks that can take time. The proposed system shifts the focus from documents to identity itself. If your fingerprints or face already exist in the DHA’s records, officials can immediately confirm your immigration status. If they don’t, your biometrics can be captured and stored for future enforcement. Why now? Immigration has become one of South Africa’s most politically charged issues. The DHA says deportations have increased—over 53,000 people had been processed for deportation or voluntary repatriation by July 11—as it invests heavily in border technology, while anti-immigration groups continue to pressure the government to crack down on undocumented migrants. Faster biometric checks are meant to make enforcement quicker and reduce reliance on physical documents that can be forged or borrowed. The catch: Buying scanners is easier than fixing the immigration system behind them. The technology assumes the DHA’s records are accurate, up to date, and accessible wherever officials are conducting operations. Mistakes, outdated records, or connectivity problems could leave people wrongly questioned or detained. Even if the system works perfectly, identifying more undocumented migrants only helps if detention centres, tribunals, and deportation processes can keep pace. Zoom out: South Africa is moving immigration enforcement closer to real-time policing, where identity can be verified almost instantly. Whether that makes the system fairer or simply faster will depend less on the scanners than on the institutions behind them. Naira Life 2026 is here! The theme for this year’s Naira Life Conference by Zikoko is “All About Wealth.”Join 2,000+ in Lagos on August 22 for a day of practical money conversations and workshops designed to move you from simply earning an income to building lasting wealth. Get 15%
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The Next Wave: The million-dollar asset that no one can buy
Cet article est aussi disponible en français <!– In partnership with –> First published on 12 July, 2026 For more than a decade, venture capitalists and founders have clung to the belief that if a high-growth startup runs out of cash, its proprietary technology will retain enough value to soften the blow. An administrator can sell the company’s code, platform, or data to a strategic buyer and recover at least part of the investment. It is also often wrong. When a tech startup fails, its assets are worth only what a buyer can legally use. Delivery trucks depreciate. Custom software can become a liability. If a company’s data practices, licences or regulatory compliance are flawed, even technology developed at significant cost may become unsaleable. In insolvency, regulatory compliance, rather than intellectual property, often determines whether any value remains. Why data privacy is the ultimate gatekeeper Every consumer-facing technology company regards its customer database as one of its most valuable assets. That assumption has shaped startup valuations for years, as user data is seen as the foundation for future revenue. When United States retailer RadioShack filed for bankruptcy in 2015, its database of 65 million customer profiles was widely regarded as one of the few assets with significant value. Without it, the brand itself was considerably less attractive. A decade later, the collapse of genetic testing company 23andMe exposed the limits of that assumption. Its database contained genetic and health records that could not simply be sold alongside the rest of the business. More than 25 US state attorneys general, together with the US Trustee Program intervened, arguing that any transfer of such sensitive information required close judicial scrutiny. The court appointed a Consumer Privacy Ombudsman to assess whether any proposed sale would honour the privacy commitments made to customers. The same legal tension exists in Kenya under the Data Protection Act, 2019. The Office of the Data Protection Commissioner (ODPC) has progressively narrowed the circumstances in which organisations may rely on broad or implied consent when collecting and sharing personal data. Decisions such as Nancy Wansato Maroa v Vivo Energy and Artcaffe have established that organisations must clearly explain why personal data is being collected and identify any third parties with whom it may be shared. Consent that does not meet those standards may be deemed invalid. For an insolvency practitioner, those rules can turn a seemingly valuable customer database into an unusable asset. A startup that promised customers it would never sell their personal information cannot simply abandon that commitment because it has run out of money. Any attempt to transfer the database may expose the company and its directors to regulatory sanctions while leaving the buyer unable to lawfully use the data. The result is a striking inversion of conventional venture capital logic. The database may still exist, but without the legal right to transfer and use it, much of its commercial value is lost. Get smarter about Francophone Africa with our newsletter, Francophone Weekly—the startups, tech policies, and institutions building the pipelines for ecosystem growth. Subscribe For digital lending platforms and other non-deposit-taking credit providers, the principal asset on the balance sheet is the loan book: the portfolio of outstanding loans and receivables. Conventional financial thinking suggests that a distressed loan book is a liquid asset that can be sold or assigned to a commercial bank or a specialised debt collector. In fintech, however, regulatory compliance is the determining factor in whether those assets are enforceable. Under Section 33S of the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) Act, operating a non-deposit-taking credit business without a valid CBK licence is a criminal offence. Next Wave continues after this ad. What happens when investors, visionary founders, policymakers, enterprise leaders, and innovators share the same room? ForgeTech Summit 2026 is bringing together leaders shaping the future of technology, capital, policy, and innovation across Africa and beyond. Designed as a highly curated gathering, ForgeTech creates the environment for meaningful conversations, strategic partnerships, and opportunities that extend well beyond a single day. 31 July 2026 | Nairobi, Kenya Request an invitation. The consequences of non-compliance were illustrated in the landmark case M-Collect Limited v Mbana Kalua, in which the High Court of Kenya dismissed 139 debt recovery suits brought by digital lenders. The court held that unlicenced lenders lacked legal standing to recover debt, collect outstanding sums or exercise statutory powers of sale against defaulting borrowers. Consider a digital lender entering administration with a loan book valued at KES 500 million ($3.9 million). If that company operated without a valid CBK digital credit provider licence, the portfolio’s recoverable value may effectively be zero because the debts cannot be legally enforced. Furthermore, under the Business Laws (Amendment) Act, an unlicenced entity may face statutory fines of up to KES 20 million ($155,000) or three times the financial gain derived from non-compliance. What appeared to be a valuable asset can quickly become a legal liability. Even if an administrator attempts to assign the debt, the absence of a registered financing statement on the electronic registry established under the Movable Property Security Rights Act (MPSR) may leave the security interest unperfected and ineffective against competing creditors. The case of climate tech The collapse of Koko Networks in January 2026 offers a cautionary case study for the climate-tech and clean-cooking sectors. Over more than a decade, Koko invested an undisclosed sum in developing a carbon-financed bioethanol cooking network serving 1.5 million Kenyan households. Its business model relied on selling subsidised smart cookstoves and fuel while generating certified emissions reductions that could be monetised as carbon credits in international carbon markets. That model unravelled after the Kenyan government declined to issue the Letter of Authorisation (LoA) required under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement for the relevant cross-border carbon credit transactions. Government officials, concerned about preserving the nation’s domestic carbon budget and reacting to academic critiques of cookstove emission methodologies, refused to greenlight Koko’s cross-border credit transfers. Without the required sovereign authorisation, Koko’s carbon-credit revenue stream ceased,
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