AXIAN’s Benjamin Toulouze says CVCs can move faster than VCs
Benjamin Toulouze, the head of corporate venture capital (CVC) at Axian Group, a multinational conglomerate, spent most of his career as a banker at Société Générale, France’s third-largest bank by total assets, working across France and several African markets. These days, he runs the CVC arm at AXIAN Investment, the investment arm of the Madagascar-headquartered AXIAN Group. Based in Dubai, his team of four is split between the UAE and Antananarivo. Toulouze got the green light to launch the corporate VC unit in late 2021, making it one of the first CVC vehicles from an African group. Four years in, AXIAN Investment has invested in 33 startups directly and holds stakes in 38 funds. Its direct portfolio includes MaxAB in Egypt, LipaLater in East Africa, Djamo in Côte d’Ivoire, Curacel, Anda in Angola, WideBot AI, and Nucleon Security in Morocco. Cheque sizes range from $50,000 for very early ideas up to $1.5 million in total exposure per company. AXIAN Group might not be a household name in African tech, but its footprint is significant. The pan-African conglomerate, founded half a century ago by the Hiridjee family, operates in 32 countries across Africa and the Indian Ocean, with interests in telecoms, financial services, energy, real estate, and innovation. Its telecoms arm was ranked 74th on the Financial Times’ 2025 list of Africa’s fastest-growing companies. The firm takes minority stakes of 1% to 5%, deliberately small, Toulouze says, to avoid conflicts with AXIAN’s operating businesses and to keep trust with founders and co-investors. It has not yet had an exit, but as the parent group builds out data centre infrastructure through its STELLAR-IX brand across four markets, the CVC is leaning heavily into AI, cybersecurity, digital assets, and what Toulouze calls the “sovereignty issue”; African countries controlling their own data. In our conversation, Toulouze explains why his team chose Dubai and Madagascar over Lagos or Nairobi, how he pitches against the “CVCs move slowly” objection, why he thinks 1–5% stakes are an important feature, how he sources in North Africa after living there, and what he looks for in founders. This interview has been edited lightly for clarity and length. You started your career as a banker in France before moving into venture capital. How did that transition happen? I actually wanted to be an investor before being a banker. I started my career in France, in Paris, at a big audit firm doing acquisition due diligence, standard CPA work at the time for big French groups listed on the CAC 40. I worked for a fund that wanted to acquire a startup in France. That was in 2004. From then on, I wanted to be an investor. But for different reasons, I got very good opportunities as a banker, first in France and then in different countries. But the dream of being close to the entrepreneur was already there. I came to AXIAN in 2019 with this idea, but it was a bit early. At the end of 2021, we got a green light internally to launch one of the very first corporate VCs from an African group. I enjoy it a lot. You’re based in Dubai, AXIAN is in Madagascar. Those aren’t typical tech markets. Why not operate from Lagos, Nairobi, Cairo, or Johannesburg? We are four at the corporate VC. Two of my teammates are still based in Madagascar, and we are two in Dubai. The point is, we are close to all the markets, including the big operational tech ecosystems in Africa. But the goal is to be everywhere, to be in touch with the entire ecosystem. That’s entrepreneurs, but also venture capitalists locally and internationally. The big tech companies and we have good examples like Flutterwave in Lagos, Moniepoint, FairMoney, or in Egypt, MNT-Halan, are based in their own countries, but they go beyond. That’s what we do. We’re ready to go and be as close as possible to different companies. All these big countries are our major zones of investment: Egypt, Nigeria, Kenya, West Africa, and South Africa. We stay close to all these ecosystems, and we go on-site as soon as possible. We don’t see any issue with not being there permanently. We have a big network in different countries now, so it’s fine. A lot of corporate VC professionals I’ve spoken to say CVCs don’t move as fast as typical VCs or that there can be strings attached. How do you convince a founder that AXIAN is the best partner? We’ve already got these kinds of objections. The first part of my answer is that at AXIAN, we have a very strong entrepreneurship mindset. We are ready to decide quite quickly. Sometimes we move faster than the regular VCs. I don’t have any internal barriers to moving forward. If I need to get all my investment committee members for a decision, I can get one very quickly. Most of the time, when we take time, it’s because we are still questioning the business model and want to go deeper. In terms of governance and decision-making, we don’t have any issues. On convincing the entrepreneur, interestingly, entrepreneurs are really keen to add corporate VCs to their cap tables. Because we have a complementary value proposition to regular VCs. We know the operations, and most of the time we come from the operations themselves. We know the challenges of launching a company, of keeping it striving, of day-to-day operations, HR, accounting, organisation, and strategic vision. One of the values we bring is our experience as intrapreneurs or entrepreneurs who have led either divisions or departments within a very large group. The second thing is, as a corporate VC, we can bring potential new markets for the startup. It’s not a commitment, but when we invest in a company, we try to push for a solid partnership between the startup and the AXIAN Group—synergies, working together, going in the same direction. That’s why entrepreneurs are interested in working with us. We have a complementary value proposition,
Read MoreThe money engines that built Fawry’s $1 billion business
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. When Fawry launched in 2008 as an e-payment switch connecting utility providers and telecom operators to consumers through retail agents, its pitch was simple: Egypt was a cash-heavy economy, and it wanted to digitise it. That limited scope has since expanded into a sprawling financial ecosystem that now serves nearly half of Egypt’s population, powering daily utility payments, loans, insurance, and other financial services. Fawry is now Egypt’s largest mobile money platform, and its revenue has equally grown. In 2017, the company earned EGP 432 million (*$24.2 million) in revenue and netted EGP 53.7 million (*$3 million) in profit. By 2025, its revenue has climbed to EGP 8.65 billion ($166.7 million), while net revenue reached EGP 3.1 billion ($59.7 million). After accounting for minority shareholders, Fawry’s take-home profit stood at EGP 2.89 billion ($55.7 million). Fawry now earns more than 20 times what it did in 2017. Fawry: The $1.3B Money Engines The $1.3B Money Loop Mapping Fawry’s Financial Evolution Select Reporting Period 2017: Start 2025: Scale Total Operating Revenue EGP 8.65B 1,900% increase since 2017 Annual Net Profit EGP 3.1B The Five Money Engines Data Note: 2025 figures represent total year projections and reported segment earnings from Fawry’s latest financial disclosures. Marketplace capitalization as of April 20, 2026. Source: Fawry Filings TechCabal Tools
Read More“I didn’t quite understand the extent of what I was working on”: Day 1-1000 of Citizens’ Gavel
If you ask Nelson Olanipekun how he built Citizens’ Gavel, the non-profit platform that uses AI to help people navigate Nigeria’s justice system, he would start with the story of an elderly woman whose case mirrored something much closer to home. In 2017, he was working as a lawyer in a private firm, whose major clients were banks, when the case landed on his desk. The retired woman had taken an unnamed bank to court after it refused to pay out her savings, plus interest. Nelson’s job was to defend the bank. As the case proceeded, it began to look familiar. Years earlier, Olanipekun’s father was caught in a similar ordeal in which the same procedural tactics nearly cost his family their home. He left the law firm after a few months. He had no plan in mind, but with only the conviction to change the system he was working within, a system, he believed, wasn’t built to protect the people it claimed to serve. Day 1: An idea that didn’t hold The gap in Nigeria’s justice system is significant. According to the World Justice Project, an international civil society organisation aiming to advance the rule of law globally, the country ranks 104th of 143 on civil justice and 90th of 143 on criminal justice, with cost, delay, effectiveness, corruption and discrimination among the biggest barriers. Within that context, Olanipekun began to think about how technology could be used to address some of these gaps. His first idea for an access-to-justice platform powered by technology was not Citizens’ Gavel. He called it Open Judiciary, and it was designed to fight corruption within the judicial system. The idea was built on stare decisis, a legal doctrine that requires lower courts to follow established precedents, especially from superior courts. According to Olanipekun, Open Judiciary was intended to track and monitor whether judgments from lower courts aligned with a precedent from higher courts. In 2017, he joined the accelerator programme at CivicHive, an initiative focused on startups using technology to drive civic engagement. It was during one of the pitch sessions that he was asked to refine his idea. Instead of trying to analyse the system from the outside, he began to think about how to intervene directly and connect people to lawyers to enable them to understand the justice system. That became Citizens’ Gavel, an access-to-justice platform launched the same year. Gavel’s early activities were mainly carried out on social media. On those platforms, people would reach out to organisations to report incidents. Olanipekun said he would pick up cases, follow up on them, and in many instances, travel to locations himself to intervene. By 2018, lawyers who saw the work based on people’s reactions on social media joined Citizens’ Gavel as volunteers. Funding at this stage was little. The CivicHive accelerator provided a fellowship stipend that he used for rent and volunteer support, and there was still no full clarity on what Gavel would become. “I didn’t quite understand the full extent of what I was working on, the full extent of the problem,” he said. “Nothing was clear initially, but I felt that it was unique because I was using technology.” Day 500: Working the #EndSARS movement Olanipekun noted that by early 2019, Citizens’ Gavel’s activities began unfolding in waves. Across Nigeria, there were repeated reports of police brutality, particularly involving the now-disbanded Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), a unit of the police that had long been accused of extortion, unlawful arrests, and violence. Each time there was an incident of police brutality, people would go online to make a post and tag organisations to get help. In October 2020, these scattered incidents became a nationwide youth-led protest, tagged #EndSARS, demanding accountability, reform, and an end to systemic abuse. Protesters who needed legal support, and families who were trying to get their loved ones released, were among the people Olanipekun said reached out to the organisation. According to him, the cases Citizen’s Gavel handled at that time multiplied. Citizen’s Gavel was not alone in that moment. A loose network of organisations, including the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) Nigeria, a human rights advocacy organisation; Feminist Coalition, a women’s rights advocacy group that led emergency response, fundraising, and logistic support for protesters; and Mentally Aware NG, a mental health nonprofit that offered free therapy for illegally detained and harassed protesters, were among the organisations that assisted during that period. To respond to the influx of cases, Citizens’ Gavel had to operate like an emergency system. Olanipekun said that Gavel’s network of volunteer lawyers expanded to 250 across the country, with rapid response legal teams, who could get to police stations and engage authorities quickly, positioned in Lagos and Abuja. According to him, Gavel secured the release of detainees and worked on cases that led to compensation for victims. “That year alone, we were involved in over 400 intervention cases specifically tailored to people who were arrested and detained during the EndSARS protest,” he said. As the cases increased for Gavel’s team, so did the risks. Olanipekun recalled that they received threats and intimidation calls to stop litigation. He also described that witness protection became a part of their job. “#EndSARS was the hardest. It was emotionally draining,” he said. “I had to run away from the country because of the blowback.” By the time the protests slowed, Citizens’ Gavel had operationally gone through a pressure and scale different from what it started as. That experience shaped what it built next. Day 1000: Building structure around scale Post 2020, Olanipekun described activities at Citizens’ Gavel as revolving around putting more structures following the deluge of cases the team handled during the protests. The organisation built products that could handle parts of the process without needing a lawyer at every step. There was Justice Clock in 2021, designed for tracking case files and managing cases launched by the Lagos State Government. There was also Filer, which Olanipekun described as a platform that
Read MoreWhy MTN and Airtel temporarily suspended airtime lending in Nigeria
Nigeria’s largest telecom operators are temporarily suspending airtime and data loan services, a once-sticky feature for prepaid users, as new consumer lending rules force them into full regulatory compliance. On Thursday, MTN Nigeria, the country’s largest telco, temporarily suspended its airtime and data lending product, Xtratime, and Airtel Nigeria, the second-largest provider, followed suit on Friday, citing the need to align with “evolving requirements.” Both companies say customers can still purchase airtime and bundles through standard channels. “MTN Nigeria Communications PLC (MTN Nigeria or the Company) hereby notifies the Nigerian Exchange Limited and the investing public that the Company has temporarily suspended its airtime and data credit advance service (“Xtratime”),” the telco said in its filing. “This relates to the implementation of processes under the Digital, Electronic, Online or Non-Traditional Consumer Lending Regulations, 2025, which introduced a new compliance and licencing framework for entities providing digital or non-traditional consumer credit services.” Nigerian telecom providers are reviewing their digital lending services to consumers following new rules by the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC), passed in July 2025. Those guidelines apply to any entity involved in the provision, facilitation, or administration of digital or non-traditional consumer lending, bringing airtime and data advances into scope and requiring operators to obtain licences and meet the compliance requirements before continuing the services. “Airtel Nigeria remains committed to the highest standards of compliance, transparency, and consumer protection, while continuing to innovate responsibly within Nigeria’s digital ecosystem,” said Ismail Adeshina, the company’s director of marketing, in the statement released Friday. However, in a statement issued on Friday, the FCCPC pushed back against claims that it ordered the suspension of airtime lending services, stating that it “has not prohibited airtime borrowing or data advance services, and no directive was issued preventing consumers from accessing lawful telecom value-added services.” The regulator framed the disruptions as a consequence of operators’ failure to comply with existing rules within the stipulated timelines. The FCCPC’s Digital, Electronic, Online, or Non-Traditional Consumer Lending (DEONCL) Regulations and Guidelines apply to entities involved in digital consumer lending, including services tied to repayable monetary value. Products, such as MTN’s Xtratime, fall within the scope of the framework. The FCCPC said the rules were introduced following “a deluge of consumer complaints” involving opaque charges, unexplained deductions, aggressive recovery practices, and poor disclosure standards across digital lending services. According to the consumer protection watchdog, affected digital lending operators, including telcos, were initially given a 90-day compliance window in 2025, later extended to January 5, 2026, yet relevant operators failed to meet the necessary compliance steps. “In the telecom sector, our findings indicated that some operators engaged in exclusionary third-party technical arrangements in clear disobedience to the provisions of the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Act, 2018. The Regulations sought to unlock the market to allow local participants alongside foreign partners, in line with free market principles. These measures benefit Nigerians by reducing abusive practices, improving transparency, strengthening consumer choice, and encouraging responsible innovation by legitimate operators,” the regulator said on Friday. Any temporary suspension, restriction, or operational change introduced by service providers, including telcos, should therefore be understood as a business or compliance decision by those operators, not a ban imposed by the FCCPC, the statement read. Securing approval under the framework requires service providers to apply to the FCCPC, submit corporate and ownership documents, and disclose their lending models, including interest rates, charges, and default fees. Applicants must also declare all digital lending applications and interfaces used to issue credit, and provide evidence that these systems meet data protection and security standards under Nigerian law. The rules further require formal consumer lending or service-level agreements (SLAs) for any partnerships with banks or fintechs. The FCCPC charges approval and renewal fees under the regulations, including an additional ₦500,000 ($372) for each lending application beyond the initial five permitted under a single approval. While it is usually not reported separately, airtime lending contributes a sizable amount to telcos’ revenue. In 2025, MTN Nigeria’s fintech revenue reached ₦191.3 billion ($142.5 million), growing by 80% from the previous year. About ₦10.9 billion ($8.1 million) accounted for its core fintech revenue, while the rest significantly came from airtime lending and other value-added services. In Airtel’s case, the telco reports airtime credit service under its mobile services revenue segment, and according to how it defined this product in its 2025 financial year, it treats airtime credit as a value‑added service (VAS) classified as a mobile services product rather than a mobile money product. In the nine months to December 2025, Airtel Nigeria’s mobile services revenue grew by 50% to $1.12 billion from $738 million year‑on‑year in constant‑currency terms. Data brought in $576 million; voice contributed $432 million, and “other” revenue—the bucket where airtime and data credit earnings sit—reported $113 million, up by about 44% from the previous year. By comparison, Airtel Nigeria’s mobile money product, SmartCash, earned only $6 million over the same period, underscoring how small its fintech line still is relative to core mobile services income. Airtime and data lending are high-margin businesses for telcos, since they keep the interest on advances, while incurring little to no procurement costs. Airtime credit is also critical for Nigeria’s credit-starved market, where increased telecom tariffs have pushed up the cost of staying online. Other telecom operators operating in Nigeria, including Globacom and T2, are yet to announce similar moves. Both MTN Nigeria and Airtel Nigeria said the suspension is temporary and that the services will resume once they meet the requirements.
Read MoreAfrica runs on digital payments. Now it must build for reliability
Africa’s financial infrastructure did not evolve like Europe’s or North America’s. In many respects, it leapfrogged legacy models altogether. Across much of the continent, mobile money, not cards, is the primary payments infrastructure. Instant payment volumes across the continent have grown at an average rate of 35% annually since 2020, and mobile money volumes now exceed 80 billion transactions per year. Financial inclusion has expanded rapidly over the past decade, bringing millions into formal commerce for the first time. Consumers who were previously cash-bound can now pay for pretty much everything directly from their phones. As Africa’s digital economy accelerates toward a projected $1.5 trillion by 2030, the question is no longer whether African consumers can participate in the digital economy. They already do. The real question is whether this infrastructure can support enterprise-scale trade without creating new systemic risks. When transactions increase from thousands to millions, payments stop being a growth feature and start becoming critical infrastructure. At that point, clarity becomes essential: knowing whether a payment has succeeded, when funds will settle, and who is responsible when something goes wrong. At low volumes, ambiguity is manageable. At scale, it becomes costly. Consider a customer who authorises a payment and is debited, but the business never receives confirmation. Goods cannot be released, and trust is instantly damaged. The stakes are higher in time-sensitive contexts such as transport, food delivery, or credit repayment, where delayed confirmation creates immediate friction. At scale, these failures translate directly into lost revenue and reputational damage. Across the continent, unresolved or failed transactions cost businesses billions annually. These frictions are not edge cases. They are structural symptoms of a system still moving from consumer-scale adoption to enterprise-grade infrastructure. As payment flows become more interconnected across banks, mobile money operators, and fintech platforms, small breaks also stop being isolated issues. A delayed confirmation or a missing status update doesn’t just affect a single transaction or one single customer; it creates uncertainty across reconciliation, customer experience, and cash flow. At scale, that uncertainty compounds. Across multiple payment channels, it becomes harder to determine where a payment failed, who holds the funds, and how quickly it can be recovered. That complexity is greater still in a cross-border context, where siloed regulatory frameworks add further uncertainty to how the individual payment channels interact with one another across different markets. The result is a hidden tax on growth, one that increases with volume. Not because payments are failing more often, but because the cost of not knowing increases. Building for resilience is not about eliminating failure; it’s about making failure visible, attributable, and recoverable within defined timelines. That is what separates infrastructure that can support enterprise-scale trade from systems that simply process transactions at scale. The first phase of African fintech prioritised speed and access, connecting consumers and businesses to digital rails at scale. That mission has largely been accomplished. Now those same businesses are moving into higher-value, cross-border trade. Africa and the Middle East’s B2B payments markets alone are projected to reach $162 billion by 2033. The next phase demands operational certainty: systems that deliver finality, liquidity, and resilience robust enough for enterprise growth. Access to financial systems has unlocked participation. But it is reliability that will determine who can scale. This is particularly true in today’s environment, where regulatory scrutiny is tightening, and enforcement is catching up with transaction volume. Businesses built on opaque or heavily intermediated structures may find it harder to sustain enterprise growth. Over time, I’ve seen that three attributes increasingly define infrastructure built for this scale. First, transaction certainty. Businesses need visibility over every payment, from initiation to final settlement. Not every transaction will succeed; that is a reality of any payment system. But uncertainty about what happened to a customer’s money erodes trust faster than failure itself. Volume does not break payment systems. Ambiguity does. When providers cannot give real-time status, clear settlement timelines, and proper exception handling, merchants carry the risk and the cost as they grow. Second, compliance depth. Licencing should be treated as an infrastructure, not administration. Direct regulatory engagement and meaningful local authorisation reduce reliance on intermediaries, lower structural risk, and demonstrate long-term commitment to safeguarding funds. Third, platform resilience. Uptime should be a technical metric that reflects architectural discipline. In fragmented markets, downstream failures are inevitable. Systems built to anticipate those failures and reconcile them in near real time are the ones capable of supporting enterprise-grade volume. The next phase will be quieter but more demanding, managing complexity to ensure every transaction resolves with certainty. When payments disappear from everyday conversation, that is when they are working. Good payments are invisible; not because they are simple, but because someone else is managing the complexity. ____ Jamie Steell is the Chief Operating Officer at pawaPay, where he has helped build and scale one of Africa’s leading mobile money payment platforms. His background spans high-growth fintech and multinational regulated environments, including senior roles at betPawa, Sportech PLC, and KPMG.
Read MoreNigeria’s Enugu State plans AI insitute in bold bet on digital talent exports
Enugu State in southeastern Nigeria says it is planning an artificial intelligence institute intended to prepare graduates for roles in global digital markets. Arinze Chilo-Offiah, the governor’s special adviser on digital economy and Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises, who leads the project, frames it within a broader economic argument. “If you look at (diaspora) remittances, they rival what we earn from crude,” he told TechCabal on Tuesday during a visit to his Enugu office. “So the question becomes, what is our real competitive advantage?” He argues that talents, particularly in specialised fields such as artificial intelligence, cloud computing, cybersecurity, and software engineering, offer a clearer path for the digital economy of the state. The plan signals a shift in how subnational governments in Nigeria are thinking about economic development, moving from reliance on physical industries toward exporting digital talent into global markets. The Nigerian federal government, through the Federal Ministry of Communications, Innovation, and Digital Economy, plans to train 3 million technical talents by 2027. Building a talent pipeline The AI institute is part of the Enugu government’s broader “talent city” framework that integrates training, outsourcing, and infrastructure into a single pipeline, according to Chilo-Offiah. The idea, he shared, is to align education directly with employer demand, so graduates can move into jobs rather than wait for opportunities to emerge. He said the proposed institution would operate as a specialised AI institute with degree-awarding status under the National Universities Commission (NUC), rather than a conventional university. In the interim, it could function as a satellite campus under the Enugu State University of Technology with a provisional licence, before eventually becoming an independent institution. Under this structure, students—including undergraduates from institutions such as the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN)—could transition into approved academic pathways, subject to admission requirements. He said the model would combine the credibility of a degree-awarding institution with the flexibility and practical focus of a specialised training centre. The wider ecosystem begins with a 750-seat business process outsourcing (BPO) centre already under construction, alongside a larger 2,000-seat knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) facility. These centres are expected to handle global contracts spanning software engineering, AI services, and data operations. The proposed AI institute would sit above this layer as an elite training hub modelled loosely on India’s Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), Chilo-Offiah. Entry would not follow Nigeria’s traditional university admission system. Instead, candidates will be selected through competitive assessments, with preference given to applicants who already possess foundational technical training. Enugu is also working with the NUC to formalise programme recognition, he said. “This is not another mass university,” Chilo-Offiah said. “It’s for the best of the best.” The goal is a direct pathway between education and employment. Graduates would transition into outsourcing roles tied to international clients, earning global incomes while in Nigeria. The government says it is already engaging foreign companies to secure opportunities for future graduates. A bet on infrastructure and partnerships Physically, the project is based on both refurbished facilities and new infrastructure. A key component is an abandoned digital industrial park located in Nike, Enugu, originally built by the Nigerian Communications Commission but left incomplete due to funding shortfalls. The facility will be handed over to the state government under a long-term agreement in June 2026, according to Chilo-Offiah. Nearby, an existing commercial building is being converted into the BPO hub, while a new 21,000-square-metre “tech hall” is planned to house the AI institute and other advanced facilities, including labs, prototyping spaces, and even residential quarters for founders and researchers. The early phases of the broader ecosystem are estimated to cost about $15 million, covering both capital investment and initial operations, according to a document shown by Chilo-Offiah. However, Enugu is not positioning itself as the sole funder. Instead, the state is leaning heavily on private-sector partnerships. Chilo-Offiah disclosed that Special-purpose vehicles (SPVs) will be created to attract investors and operators, with the government playing more of an enabling role than a controlling one. “I’m not a believer in the government doing everything,” he said. “We want the private sector to run it and invest.” This approach mirrors the structure of emerging outsourcing hubs. Ekiti State, for instance, is building a similar talent outsourcing model, though without a dedicated AI institute. In the BPO project, for example, the state is funding renovations, while private partners such as Norrsken are providing equipment and managing operations. Africa’s AI learning ecosystem Enugu’s push to build an AI university comes as African countries experiment with different models for AI education. In Nigeria, most efforts are still embedded within existing institutions, with programmes at the University of Lagos and the Federal University of Technology, Akure leading the way. Momentum has been building. In October 2025, OpenAI selected the University of Lagos to host its first AI Academy in Africa, offering specialised research and training resources. Launched in April 2026, the initiative is part of a broader network of “University Innovation Pods” (UniPods), where AI drives research and commercialisation. Meanwhile, FUTA—long known for its School of Computing—has emerged as a key hub for the national AI research scheme, anchoring postgraduate AI training in West Africa. Elsewhere on the continent, countries like Egypt, South Africa, and Kenya are building more specialised institutions for artificial intelligence research and training. These efforts reflect a shift toward dedicated AI faculties and applied research centres rather than embedding AI solely within traditional university departments. In Egypt, Al Alamein International University was established in 2020 in New Alamein City as part of the country’s fourth-generation university programme. It places AI, data science, and advanced engineering disciplines at the centre of its curriculum. South Africa’s African Institute for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (AfriDSAI) is based at the University of Pretoria and was formally launched in August 2025. The institute focuses on AI research that connects academia with public policy and industry, particularly in areas such as governance, development, and applied machine learning. In Kenya, AI-focused innovation hubs have emerged within universities such as Dedan Kimathi
Read MoreSama to lay off over 1,100 Kenyan workers after Meta contract ends
Samasource Impact Sourcing Inc (Sama), a Kenya-based business process outsourcing firm, will lay off over 1,100 employees in Nairobi after receiving notice from Meta that it will terminate a major content and data annotation contract. The San Francisco-headquartered data labelling firm said in a statement it had issued a formal redundancy notice on Thursday to 1,108 workers at its Nairobi delivery centre, most of whom are tied to the now-terminated workstream. The layoffs are expected to take effect later this month, in line with Kenya’s labour laws. The job cuts deal a fresh blow to Kenya’s fast-growing but fragile AI outsourcing sector and underline the volatility of an industry that has positioned Kenya as a critical node in the global artificial intelligence supply chain, but which remains heavily dependent on a handful of large US technology clients like Meta. Sama said it had attempted to engage Meta following the termination notice in a bid to preserve jobs, but the discussions did not yield a reprieve. “As is standard in our industry, client programmes evolve, and we work closely with our partners to manage these transitions responsibly,” said Annepeace Alwala, Sama’s country lead and vice-president for global delivery. “Our immediate priority is supporting our employees through this change and ensuring continuity across our broader operations.” The company said the redundancy process is being conducted in compliance with Section 40 of Kenya’s Employment Act, which governs layoffs, including notification requirements to employees and authorities. While Sama did not disclose the value of the contract, Meta has been one of its most prominent clients, relying on outsourced workers in Nairobi to label and moderate data used to train artificial intelligence systems. The relationship has previously drawn scrutiny from labour activists over working conditions in content moderation and data annotation roles. The layoffs will ripple beyond Sama’s workforce, hitting a segment of Kenya’s labour market that has been actively promoted as a source of digital jobs for young people. Nairobi has in recent years emerged as a hub for “impact sourcing”, a model that employs workers from underserved communities to deliver digital services for global firms. Sama has been one of the most visible players in that ecosystem, marketing itself as an ethical outsourcing partner that provides living wages, medical cover, and mental health support to workers handling often sensitive or distressing content. Alwala said the company would extend support to affected staff, including counselling and transition assistance. “We recognise the significant impact on the team and the local community,” she said. The development raises questions about the sustainability of Africa’s role in the AI value chain, where companies such as Sama, OpenAI contractors, and other outsourcing firms provide the human labour underpinning machine learning systems built by global tech giants. Sama said it would continue focusing on its core business of data annotation and model evaluation, and maintaining standards in data security and responsible AI, even as it navigates one of the largest workforce reductions in its Nairobi operations to date. The Meta contract was one of Sama’s most high-profile engagements in Nairobi, anchoring a large share of its workforce in data annotation work tied to the development of artificial intelligence systems, including the company’s AI-enabled Ray-Ban smart glasses. A recent investigation by Swedish newspapers Svenska Dagbladet and Göteborgs-Posten, working with Kenyan journalists, shed light on the nature of that work. It found that footage captured by users of Meta’s AI glasses is routinely reviewed and labelled by contracted workers in Nairobi to help train the underlying models, raising questions about privacy, consent, and the global division of AI labour.
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The solar-powered medical kiosks bringing doctors to remote Chadians
When Abakar Mahamat was completing his Master’s in Information Technology (IT) engineering at ISGA (Institut Supérieur des Génies et des Affaires), Morocco, in 2021, he did not think he would end up building medical kiosks. At first, he tried to build an app that would connect patients to doctors in his home country, Chad, because of the healthcare access gap he found during his research. What stood out to Mahamat was the effort it took for people to get a consultation. Chad has about 0.8 physicians per 10,000 people, far below the global benchmark of 2.5 medical staff per 1,000 people, according to data from the World Health Organisation (WHO). For many patients, getting care means travelling long distances and spending on transport to navigate a system that is physically out of reach. An app felt like a clean fix to bring medicine closer to the people. However, as Mahamat began to sketch what would eventually become Telemedan, the idea changed. An app assumes that patients have smartphones and stable internet connectivity enough to sustain a consultation. In Chad, where internet penetration stands at 13.2%, a purely digital solution might struggle to solve the problem it was built for. “Remote areas in Chad have a very low rate of electrification and connectivity,” Mahamat said. “The Internet is expensive for remote areas, so developing a mobile app for this context was not suitable.” Diagnosis required more than just talking. For doctors to get an accurate diagnosis of a patient, they need to conduct tests such as checking the blood pressure and what the heartbeat sounds like, checking for muffled sounds in the lungs, knowing the body temperature, and the blood oxygen level. “During the teleconsultation, what if the doctors need to know the temperature or the blood oxygenation levels in the patients? An app doesn’t have tools to get that data,” he said, reflecting on the early stages of the idea. In 2021, Mahamat and Ahmed Kotoko launched Telemedan, a solar-powered medical kiosk that connects Chadians in rural provinces to medical doctors. Inside the kiosk Telemedan works like a small clinic, designed to handle consultation and diagnosis of a patient in one place. A patient could walk in, book an appointment to connect with a doctor using video conferencing. According to Mahamat, Chad’s Ministry of Health provides the doctors through a 2022 partnership Mahamat explained that the doctors follow a pre-screening process and are selected through the National Digital Health Program, a government initiative for the effective implementation of digital health tools in the country. “This ensures that the clinicians involved are qualified, aligned with national standards, and integrated into the public health system,” he said. A man using Telemedan’s Kiosk. Image source: Telemedan The kiosk is equipped with a set of medical devices that allow the doctor to gather real-time diagnostic data during the session. These tools are what Mahamat describes as on-site diagnostics, and include a dermatoscope for examining skin conditions, a stethoscope for heart activity, an otoscope for ear examinations, an oximeter for measuring blood oxygen levels, and temperature sensors. For maternal care, the kiosk also includes a probe that can be used to monitor the foetus. This setup is meant to close the gap that a standard video consultation cannot, because the doctors are receiving inputs that emulate a physical examination. Interacting with these tools is not always known, particularly for first-time users. Because of this, each kiosk is manned by a trained local operator who steps into position to set up the devices and provide assistance. “The kiosk is placed in a private area where there are only the patients and their doctors. The local operators can be nearby if the patient needs help with the on-site diagnostics,” he added. Telemedan’s kiosks also handle care continuity; doctors can issue prescriptions at the end of a session, which patients can print directly from the kiosk. At the same time, patients receive updates and reminders through SMS on their phones to ensure that they can follow up on appointments or treatment without needing a smartphone. For users with a smartphone, Telemedan is extending this information and follow-up layer through a mobile application that is currently in development. According to Mahamat, this app will allow patients to access their prescriptions and medical records as an extension of the Kiosks. Mahamat noted that the kiosks are optimised for environments with unreliable infrastructure; they are solar-powered and connect to the internet using a mix of 4G and satellite systems, depending on what is available in each location. “In some areas it’s working perfectly,” he said of 4G, “but in some areas that are very, very far we are using the satellite antenna… for more efficiency.” Assembly of Telemedan Kiosk. Image source: Telemedan Each kiosk takes about two weeks to produce, according to Mahamat, because some components, like the touchscreen, are imported before local assembly. He noted that the kiosks are designed to be low-maintenance, not needing constant intervention. Local operators are trained to handle minor physical issues, such as disconnected components, while more complex software problems are resolved remotely by the Telemedan team. “If you have a problem with the software, we can fix that at a distance,” he said, but for hardware issues like a broken screen, the team may need to step in physically. Telemedan has begun to layer in additional capabilities, more recently, an AI-powered tool used for detecting diabetic retinopathy through retinal scans, Mahamat noted, describing it as one of the first steps in integrating AI into the system. Partnerships and pricing Telemedan’s business operation is such that the people who need the service the most are not the ones who pay for the infrastructure. The kiosks themselves cost about $10,000 per unit, and that cost is not passed on to patients, because Telemedan sells directly to governments and public health programmes and organisations that are working to expand access to care. This structure makes Telemedan a business-to-government (B2G) and business-to-business (B2B) model, with patients as
Read MoreThree million Nigerians in gig economy, nearly a quarter in ride-hailing, Bolt report says
Three million people now work in Nigeria’s gig economy, and nearly a quarter of them are in ride-hailing, according to a new report by Ipsos, a global research firm, commissioned by Bolt, obtained by TechCabal. At an estimated value of $5.18 billion, the gig economy is no longer a minor layer of Nigeria’s labour market. In 2023, there were about 17.5 million online gig workers in Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa, according to the World Bank. Prolonged inflation crisis and shrinking formal job opportunities have pushed more young people into self-employment and digital gig work. By the third quarter of 2023, 87.3% of employed Nigerians were already in self-employment. The report disclosed that ride-hailing, in particular, was filling a gap the formal economy had failed to close. Ride-hailing ranks second only to e-commerce in gig-work participation, ahead of freelancing, micro-tasks, and remote work, Ipsos noted. Nearly six in 10 participants (59%) remain active for more than one year. Ipsos said it surveyed over 250 drivers each in Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa. “Flexible earning opportunities are becoming an essential part of how many Nigerians earn today,” said Teddy Appa-Dankyi, Senior General Manager, West Africa at Bolt during the report’s presentation on Tuesday. Across Africa, drivers’ motivations are consistent. In South Africa, drivers point to financial stability; in Kenya, independence and self-sufficiency. In Nigeria, it is the ability to earn extra income on demand. But the appeal in Nigeria is increasingly colliding with reality. Ride-hailing may be expanding access to income, but higher petrol prices, naira depreciation, rising vehicle maintenance and spare parts costs, and fixed platform commissions are squeezing drivers’ margins. Fuel prices in Nigeria have risen from less than ₦1000 ($0.74) to over ₦1,200 ($0.89) in 2026. While 64% of the surveyed participants said their standard of living had improved, drivers also described working longer hours just to stay afloat. “I drive several hours just to recover costs, but every extra fare helps me keep the car and feed the family,” one of the surveyed drivers was quoted as saying in the report. There are also structural gaps. Participation remains overwhelmingly male-dominated, with women accounting for only 4% of ride-hailing workers in Nigeria. In markets like Kenya and South Africa, targeted inclusion efforts are beginning to shift the balance, Ipsos stated. For policymakers, the implication is becoming harder to ignore. “As flexible earning opportunities become more common across Africa, there is an opportunity for policymakers, platforms, and stakeholders to work together to ensure the gig economy continues to expand access to opportunity while remaining sustainable and inclusive,” said Weyinmi Aghadiuno, Head of Regulatory and Policy, Africa at Bolt. While the report noted that ride-hailing will remain a primary livelihood source for many across Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa, economic volatility and rising operational costs will continue to pressure drivers’ earnings. But platform innovation, including electric vehicle adoption, and drivers expanding into parcel delivery and food logistics, may offer respite, the report noted.
Read MoreWelcome to TechCabal 4.0: Become an Insider
You’ve been reading TechCabal for free. That’s not changing. But some of our reporting is moving behind a gate. The stories built on sources nobody else has. Investigations that don’t stop at what happened but push into why it happened and what comes next. To read them, you need to become a TC Insider. It takes less than 15 seconds: drop your email, get a code, punch it in. On the other side, reporting no other publication on this continent does. Early and discounted access to our events, including our flagship conference, Moonshot, in October. And a look behind the curtain at how we make the work. Welcome to the other side. A few weeks ago, I wrote to you about TechCabal 4.0. This is it. We’ve reorganised our newsroom into four verticals: Money, Startups, Enterprise & Policy, and Life & Work. Each vertical has dedicated reporters whose job is to go deeper than the headline, find sources nobody else has, and tell you what it means for how technology is reshaping life and work on the continent. That’s what you just unlocked. As a TC Insider, you also get early and discounted access to our events, including Moonshot, our flagship conference in October. And periodically, we’ll pull back the curtain on how we report and produce our best work. Welcome to TC 4.0.
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