Next Wave: The next media business will be a strange one
Cet article est aussi disponible en français <!– In partnership with –> First published August 16, 2026 Something funny is happening in the media business today. The Internet spent 20 years teaching publishers to chase scale, and just as many of them got pretty good at it, the Internet decided that scale was no longer the prize. Google wants to answer the question instead of sending you to the article; AI wants to summarise the reporting instead of sending you to the homepage, and social platforms want your headline, your video and your journalist, but preferably not the bill for the newsroom that produced them. This sounds like a disaster for media, and in part it is. But there is another way to look at it. The Internet may finally be forcing publishers to answer a question they have been able to avoid for years: what, exactly, are people paying you for? This question gets more interesting when you look at what some media companies are doing about it. Puck News is giving journalists equity and tying their pay to the subscribers they attract. Defector Media has gone in the opposite direction, with its journalists owning the company. Hunterbrook has decided that readers are not necessarily the customers at all and is using financial markets to fund investigative journalism. These are very different businesses, but they are variations on the same idea. In this case, if distribution is becoming a commodity, the value has to move somewhere else. And that may be good news for journalism. The middle is where the trouble is Media has always had seasons, and I was reminded of that recently when a friend who works at Microsoft told me he has started thinking about his own career in exactly those terms. He is a software developer, but he joked that he might not be one forever, since he is now building tools that could eventually replace parts of his current work. I got a sense that he understood technology’s seasonality and knew the skills that made him valuable in one cycle might not be the ones that mattered in the next. Media has followed the same pattern. Print had its monopoly, then came digital publishing, when a website could reach a global audience without physical newspapers. Social media followed, with Facebook and Twitter (now X) becoming enormous free distribution systems, before publishers figured out search engine optimisation (SEO) and discovered there was money to be made by answering almost every question anyone had ever typed into Google. The arrangement worked by writing an article, Google finds it, someone clicks, an ad follows them around and everyone gets paid. The catch, as my friend’s story makes clear, is that every season eventually produces the technology that makes the previous season less valuable. Still, the problem was that publishers never really owned the most important part of that arrangement. Now, if Google can answer a search directly, there is less reason to click. If ChatGPT can explain a company, market or technology in a paragraph, there is less reason to open multiple tabs. If an AI-generated answer can absorb the work of tens of SEO articles, the publisher producing those articles has a problem that no amount of better headline writing can solve. Next Wave continues after this ad. The best builders don’t just shape the future – they stay informed. Series V by Ventures Platform brings you the insights, perspectives, trends, and opportunities shaping Africa’s innovation ecosystem. It’s an essential monthly asset for founders, operators, investors, and anyone building the future of the continent. Subscribe now! The publishers most exposed are the ones sitting in the middle, where the business requires a reasonably large newsroom but the journalism is not differentiated enough to command a direct relationship with the reader. It is important to take note of this because the problem is not that people have stopped wanting journalism. Rather, people still want someone to tell them what happened, what everyone else is missing and what might happen next. They just have more ways to get the first answer for free. The “awkward” part is that this could also make journalism a better business. The strange economics of being worth paying for Puck News believes people don’t subscribe because they need another article about whatever matters to them, but because they want to know what people inside those worlds know. Sounds like a small distinction, but it changes the economics because the platform has built its newsroom around personalities and expertise, with annual subscriptions ranging from about $100 to $250. Its journalists can receive equity in the company and earn bonuses linked to the subscribers their work generates. A reporter traditionally builds an audience, owns the subscriber relationship, and receives a salary and perhaps a raise. Puck is effectively arguing that if the reporter is the reason someone pays, perhaps the reporter should own some of the upside. The company has about 240,000 total subscribers, including roughly 40,000 paid subscribers, and raised $10 million in a Series B round that valued it at $70 million. Puck is treating journalism as a creator business without pretending journalism is just content creation. The approach may become more important as AI makes generic information cheaper. If a chatbot can tell you what happened, a journalist has to offer something the chatbot cannot easily manufacture, like access, judgement, sources, taste, accountability and a reason to believe that this particular person is worth listening to. Sounds suspiciously like a good journalist, right? Then there is the anti-VC argument Defector Media’s journalists did not want a venture-backed media company but to own the company themselves. Defector was founded in 2020 by former Deadspin journalists after they left the site following a dispute with its private equity owner. They created a worker cooperative, meaning the people producing the journalism also own the business. This is unusual in an industry where the standard sequence is founder, funding round, growth, another funding round, strategic
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Phones running Android 17 right now (2026)
Table of contents Why some phones have it before others Google Pixel phones running Android 17 Samsung Galaxy phones running Android 17 Motorola phones running Android 17 OnePlus, Xiaomi, OPPO, Vivo, and Honor status Full list at a glance What this means for you Android 17 has been available since June 2026, but only a small group of phones actually have it installed today. Google’s Pixel line leads the way, followed by three new Samsung foldables and one Motorola phone. Other brands, including the popular Galaxy S26 series, OnePlus, Xiaomi, OPPO, Vivo, and Honor devices, are still waiting for a beta or a confirmed release date. This list covers exactly what has shipped as of August 17, 2026, not what brands have promised. Find out whether your phone already has Android 17, and when it is coming if it doesn’t. Why some phones have it before others Google rolls out Android 17 in phases, so not every eligible phone gets the update on the same day. Where you live and which carrier you use both affect when the update reaches your phone. Samsung and Motorola follow the same pattern, and both companies have said their own rollouts depend on region and carrier. There is also a second layer to this update. Having Android 17 on your phone does not guarantee you get Gemini Intelligence, the AI features Google built into the release. Those features need at least 12GB of RAM, a recent flagship chip, and a newer AI engine called Gemini Nano v3. Many phones with plenty of RAM still miss this bar because they run an older version of Nano. The Pixel 9 Pro has 16GB of RAM, more than enough on paper, but it runs Gemini Nano v2 instead of v3. That single detail keeps it out of the Gemini Intelligence group even though it easily qualifies for Android 17 itself. The Galaxy Z Fold 7, the OnePlus 13, and the Galaxy S25 Ultra face the same limit. Devices confirmed to meet the Gemini Intelligence bar include the Pixel 10 series, the Galaxy S26 series, the OnePlus 15 series, and the OPPO Find X9 and X8 series. Google says Gemini Intelligence will reach more phones later this summer, but for now it stays limited to newer, higher-spec hardware. Google Pixel phones running Android 17 Every Pixel from the Pixel 6 onward already has Android 17. Google rolled the update out to these phones on June 16, 2026, alongside the June Pixel Drop, and it has been available ever since. Pixel 6, 6 Pro, and 6a Pixel 7, 7 Pro, and 7a Pixel 8, 8 Pro, and 8a Pixel 9, 9 Pro, 9 Pro XL, 9 Pro Fold, and 9a Pixel 10, 10 Pro, 10 Pro XL, 10 Pro Fold, and 10a Pixel Fold and Pixel Tablet Google announced the Pixel 11 series, including the Pixel 11, 11 Pro, 11 Pro XL, and 11 Pro Fold, at its Made by Google event on August 12, 2026. These phones ship with Android 17 already installed. The Pixel 11 Pro Fold arrives later, in October, while the rest of the lineup should reach stores around August 20, based on how Google timed the Pixel 10 launch last year. The Pixel 6 and 6 Pro are nearing the end of their update life. Google skipped them in the August 2026 security patch, and they will not receive Android 17 QPR2. Support for both phones ends in October 2026. The Pixel 6a has a longer runway and keeps getting updates until July 2027. If your phone is a Pixel 5 or older, it won’t receive Android 17. Google’s support window for that generation has already closed. Samsung Galaxy phones running Android 17 Samsung’s rollout is much narrower right now. Only three phones ship with Android 17 today: the Galaxy Z Fold 8, Z Fold 8 Ultra, and Z Flip 8. Samsung unveiled these at Galaxy Unpacked in London on July 22, 2026, and they reached stores on August 7 across 106 markets. The Galaxy S26, S26+, and S26 Ultra are still on the One UI 9 beta. Samsung opened the beta in May 2026 across six countries, and a fifth beta build was rolling out in August. The stable version has not landed yet, and Samsung has not given a firm date. Some reports point to late August, while others expect it to stretch into late September or October. Treat this window as an estimate until Samsung officially confirms it. Samsung has not published a full list of which older phones will get Android 17. Based on internal testing spotted by Samsung-focused outlets, the Galaxy S25 series, S24 series, S23 series, and older foldables like the Z Fold 7 and Z Flip 7 are expected to get the update later. Samsung is also testing builds on around 50 devices internally. A few older Samsung phones will not get this update, including the Galaxy S22 series, the Galaxy S21 FE, and the Z Fold 4. If you own one of these, One UI 8.5 is the last major update your phone will receive. Motorola phones running Android 17 Motorola is ahead of most other brands except Google and Samsung. The stable rollout has already started with the Motorola Edge 2025, and Motorola’s parent company Lenovo confirmed more than 50 eligible devices in a blog post published around August 10, 2026. After the Edge 2025, Motorola plans to prioritise its newer flagship phones, the Razr 70 series and Edge 70 lineup, before working through the rest of the Moto G series over the coming weeks and months. Two popular models, the Edge 50 Neo and Edge 60 Neo, are missing from Motorola’s list even though they came with a 5-year update promise, and the Moto G56 is also absent. Motorola’s version of Android 17 brings a few new touches, including Live Updates styled like a floating island, a Moto AI assistant called Qira, lock-screen customisation, and a redesigned volume panel. OnePlus, Xiaomi, OPPO, Vivo,
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Android 17 QPR2 features confirmed so far
Table of contents What is Android 17 QPR2 Beta timeline so far Confirmed features in Android 17 QPR2 Which devices are getting Android 17 QPR2 How to try the Android 17 QPR2 beta What happens next Android 17 QPR2 Beta 3 was launched on August 14, 2026, and it is the biggest build in this update cycle so far. It brings a native App Lock, a redesigned Quick Settings editor, more lock screen blur, deeper colour customisation, and new protection against call-forwarding fraud. This quarterly release is nearing a stable launch in December 2026, alongside that month’s Pixel Feature Drop. Beta 3 is the newest version available as of August 17, 2026, and no Beta 4 has shipped yet. Here is a breakdown of every confirmed feature, which devices get them, and what to expect before the update goes stable. What is Android 17 QPR2 A Quarterly Platform Release, or QPR, is how Google updates Android between major versions. After Android 17 went stable in June 2026, Google planned three follow-up releases: QPR1, QPR2, and QPR3. QPR1 is expected to go stable in September 2026. QPR2 is expected in December 2026. QPR3 should follow in early 2027. Each one lands on Pixel phones as a Feature Drop, and each is also released to other Android devices through the Android Open Source Project. QPR2 works differently from a full Android version upgrade. Instead of introducing a major new SDK, it ships a minor SDK release with small API additions. Google says these changes should not affect how existing apps behave, so developers do not need to do extensive testing to stay compatible. Google also changed how it tests new builds. Instead of separate Developer Previews, Android 17 uses an always-on testing track called Android Canary. Some QPR2 features, like the Quick Settings editor and the new colour options, first appeared in Canary builds before they reached the QPR2 beta. Google has not confirmed an exact release date for QPR2, but December is the target. For comparison, Android 16 QPR2 went stable on December 2, 2025, so a similar date is likely this year too. Beta timeline so far Beta 1 arrived on July 20, 2026. It focused on stability rather than new features. Google fixed a handful of bugs, including Bluetooth pairing failures, media controls that flashed on the lock screen by mistake, a crash when you opened Gemini, and notifications that disappeared from the shade until you restarted your phone. Beta 2 arrived on August 3, 2026. It was a light release. Google did not publish a changelog, but testers found a redesigned Settings app icon and a quiet internal name change from “CinnamonBun” to “DEV.” Beta 3 arrived on August 14, 2026. This is the biggest build in the cycle. It introduced App Lock, lock screen blur, the Quick Settings editor, expanded colour theming, multitasking updates for foldables, and the new call forwarding protection. As of August 17, 2026, Beta 3 is still the latest version. No Beta 4 has shipped yet. Confirmed features in Android 17 QPR2 1. App Lock Beta 3 adds a native App Lock to Android for the first time. Long-press any app icon, and you will see an “App lock” option next to App info, Pause app, Widgets, and Remove. Once you lock an app, you need your fingerprint or PIN to open it. Notifications from locked apps stay hidden, and any widgets or shortcuts linked to that app disappear too. You manage this from Settings, then Security & privacy, then App lock. One thing to know: AI agents and services that already have permission to access a locked app can still read its data. The lock stops other people from opening the app on your phone. It does not block automated access you have already approved. 2. Lock screen blur Beta 3 brings a blur effect to more of your Pixel lock screen. Your notification list and the fingerprint icon now show a soft, see-through blur instead of a solid background. Two of your lock screen shortcuts get the same treatment. How strong the effect looks depends on your wallpaper. 3. A customizable Quick Settings layout You can now reorder your Quick Settings shade. Open Quick Settings, tap the edit icon, and go to the new Layout tab. From there, you can drag and reorder the brightness bar and the tiles inside your shade. The media player can be moved as well, though none of these sections can be removed, only rearranged. You can also choose which toggles show up as larger tiles. 4. More colour choices Android 17 QPR2 gives you more control over your phone’s colours. In Wallpaper & style, then Colours, tap the paint palette icon to open a colour slider and pick your own accent shade. A pencil icon in the corner adds four style options: Neutral, Soft, Bright, and Bold. 5. Call forwarding fraud protection This is the only Beta 3 feature Google confirmed in its own official changelog, which makes it the most reliable item on this list. Beta 3 adds new protection against call forwarding fraud. Scammers sometimes trick people into forwarding their calls, then use that access to intercept one-time passcodes from banks and other services. Here is how the protection works: Apps can no longer trigger call forwarding codes quietly in the background using only basic call permissions. If you manually dial a call forwarding code yourself, your phone now shows a confirmation screen before it goes through. Mobile money transfers still work normally. Account balance check codes are not affected either. This matters if you rely on mobile money, since your everyday USSD codes for transfers and balance checks are not affected by the new restriction. 6. Settings icon and other small changes Beta 2 brought a redesigned Settings app icon to everyone. Testers also noticed the internal codename quietly changed from “CinnamonBun” to “DEV.” Beta 3 also improved multitasking on foldable devices. Active windows now show a small handle you can
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What’s new with Samsung One UI 9 Beta 5 update
Table of contents Which phones are getting Beta 5, and where What Beta 5 actually fixes Is this the last beta before stable One UI 9 for your S26 A quick timeline of the One UI 9 beta program Older Galaxy phones are still waiting Should you install Beta 5? What’s next for Samsung’s software On August 12, Samsung released One UI 9 Beta 5 for the Galaxy S26 series, which includes bug fixes and the August security patch for enrolled testers. If you own a Galaxy Z Fold 8, Z Fold 8 Ultra, or Z Flip 8, you already have a stable version of One UI 9. Samsung launched the stable version with those foldables in July at Galaxy Unpacked in London. Your Galaxy S26 is still in the beta program, and Beta 5 is the latest step in that process. Which phones are getting Beta 5, and where Beta 5 is rolling out to the Galaxy S26, Galaxy S26+, and Galaxy S26 Ultra. It started in South Korea, India, and the UK, and it will expand to Poland, Germany, and the US as more testers get it. Firmware version: S94xBXXU4ZZH6 Download size: about 1.1GB Security patch: August 2026, covering 56 fixes Devices: Galaxy S26, Galaxy S26+, Galaxy S26 Ultra Samsung also delayed this beta by about a month. Beta 4 arrived on July 14, and testers were told to expect Beta 5 the following week. A Samsung Beta Operations Manager later apologised for the wait on the Samsung Community forum and said the extra time went into final reviews and quality checks. What Beta 5 actually fixes This update is about fixing bugs, not adding features. Samsung’s changelog lists these fixes. Fixed an issue where the Settings app freezes or shows a white screen in some menus Fixed slow loading and a black screen when you launch the camera widget on the lock screen Fixed the bottom floating bar not showing correctly in the Phone app Fixed a blank screen that appeared briefly when you open the recent files list in My Files Fixed an issue where 1×1 size shortcuts did not appear on the home screen bottom bar Fixed a misaligned or flickering preview screen in Video Editor and Photo Editor Fixed occasional screen flickering Fixed Wi-Fi connection errors and improved connection stability You will not find new features in this build. Most outlets that cover Samsung software, including SamMobile and Android Authority, describe Beta 5 as a cleanup release. Is this the last beta before stable One UI 9 for your S26 Nobody knows yet, and the reports point in two different directions. Tipster Tarun Vats spotted two new firmware builds on Samsung’s servers, one on the beta track and one on the stable track. Sammy Fans and SamMobile report that the beta build could be Beta 6, which would mean more testing before the stable release. A separate tipster, Kailash, spotted a possible stable build for the S26 series. Sammy Fans reports this could mean Beta 5 is the final beta before the stable rollout. Samsung has not confirmed either path. Sammy Fans estimates the stable update could arrive by mid-September, possibly around the same time as the Galaxy S26 FE launch, but that is not confirmed either. Treat both reports as leaks until Samsung says otherwise. A quick timeline of the One UI 9 beta program Here is how the Galaxy S26’s beta program has progressed since May. Beta 1: May 13, 2026, launched in six countries at once Beta 2: May 26, 2026 Beta 3: June 16, 2026 Beta 4: July 14, 2026 Beta 5: August 12, 2026 The first three betas landed roughly two weeks apart. The gap widened to about four weeks for Beta 4 and Beta 5. Older Galaxy phones are still waiting No device older than the Z Fold 8 and Z Flip 8 has stable One UI 9 yet. Reports from Sammy Fans and SamMobile say Samsung has started internal testing on the Galaxy S25 Ultra and Galaxy S24 Ultra, but a public beta for those phones had not opened as of mid-August. If your phone is an S25, S24, or an older model, you can expect to wait longer for the stable update. Should you install Beta 5? This is still beta software, so it comes with some risk. Keep these points in mind before you install it. Back up your phone with Smart Switch first. Samsung itself warns that beta software can cause data loss Skip this beta if you rely on sideloading apps. Some testers have reported that installing APK files does not work properly on this build Know that going back to stable software later usually means a full data wipe, so treat this as a one-way step Check for the update under Settings > Software update if you are already enrolled in the Samsung Members beta program What’s next for Samsung’s software While your Galaxy S26 is still on the One UI 9 beta, Samsung has already started work on One UI 9.5. Tipster Fahad Ali Javed spotted the first build in early August, and leaked screenshots point to a glass-style design with shinier borders and softer shadows. SamMobile and Android Central report that One UI 9.5 is expected to debut with the Galaxy S27 series in early 2027, with a possible beta for the S26 arriving before the end of this year. 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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👨🏿🚀TechCabal Daily – ICASA rolls over
In partnership with Lire en Français اقرأ هذا باللغة العربية Good morning. Welcome to another week. Let’s dive in. Become smarter about tech and commerce in Francophone Africa, and the policies shaping them. Read our newsletter here first or subscribe below. Subscribe ‘A shared understanding with Netflix’ ICASA takes back telco collusion accusation Kenyan exporters could get tariff refunds Airtel and Starlink partner in DR Congo World Wide Web 3 Events Streaming South African lawmakers want Netflix to share its lunch with the SABC Image Source: Tenor Imagine a local bakery that has served the neighbourhood for decades, only for a massive, high-tech franchise bakery to open next door and take all the customers. Instead of trying to close the bakery, the city council now wants both stores to start co-owning the bread they sell. That best describes the latest push by South African lawmakers to force a collaboration between the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), the struggling state-owned broadcaster, and the streaming giant Netflix. What happened? The Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Communications and Digital Technologies, a group of South African lawmakers, is pushing for Netflix to partner with SABC to boost the local film industry. The committee said the “Netflixes of this world” have decimated the SABC’s advertising revenue while operating in a regulatory loophole. The proposal aims to have both parties collaborate on content production and business models, though Netflix and the SABC have reportedly clashed over intellectual property (IP) ownership in the past. Explain like I’m new here: The SABC is South Africa’s state-owned broadcaster, funded by TV licences and ads. Netflix is the global streaming king that doesn’t have to follow the same strict local content rules. Lawmakers believe that because Netflix is “winning” the market, it should help the SABC survive—either through shared production or a proposed “streaming levy” that could see international platforms funding the public broadcaster’s recovery. SABC is facing mounting pressure that is affecting its revenue, including a collapsed TV licence collection rate, the increasing need to shift advertiser spend toward online and pay-TV platforms, and other operational costs. In 2025, the broadcaster lost R253.3 million ($14 million), about 28% worse than the previous year. Lawmakers believe a deal with Netflix could reset SABC on course for a more sustainable future, but it could also force the streaming giant to shoulder some of the costs of the disruption it has helped create. Getting paid in cedis just got easier for African businesses operating in Ghana. Fincra now issues dedicated GHS virtual accounts to enable businesses to collect payments. See how Fincra GHS virtual accounts work. Telecoms ICASA goes back on its “collusion” accusation Image Source: Tenor South Africa’s communications regulator, the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA), suspected that MTN and Vodacom, two telecom operators within the country, joined forces to protest the new rules. It has now taken its word back. What happened? In a Parliament briefing in August, ICASA suggested that MTN and Vodacom might be colluding over their opposition to new data-expiry rules. Both operators have separately gone to court to challenge parts of the regulations, arguing that the regulator overstepped its authority and that some of the requirements are difficult to implement. On Friday, the regulator retracted its statement on the basis of no evidence. Explain like I’m new here: The row goes back to 2022 when ICASA proposed that telecom operators must allow customers to roll over unused data. After years of consultations and pushback from operators, the regulator eventually settled on a rule requiring unused data, voice, and SMS bundles to roll over at least once, free of charge, from January 2027. MTN and Vodacom weren’t thrilled. In July, the operators filed separate court applications asking the High Court to set aside parts of the rules. Which brings us to where we are now: South Africans currently lose eligible unused data when their bundles expire. ICASA wants to change that by requiring operators to roll over unused data, voice and SMS bundles at least once for free. MTN and Vodacom are fighting parts of the rules in court. MTN argues that the rules could reduce competition and push prices up by taking away operators’ ability to offer cheaper bundles without rollover or transfer features. It also argues that the rules create an uneven playing field because mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) aren’t subject to the same requirements. ICASA saw both operators file the same complaint and thought it was collusion. Because it had no evidence to support that, ICASA took back its statement. What happens now? The underlying dispute hasn’t disappeared. From January 2027, operators will have to roll over eligible unused data, voice, and SMS bundles at least once. MTN and Vodacom are still challenging parts of those requirements, while ICASA has withdrawn any collusion accusations; it is defending the regulations. Naira Life 2026 is here! The Naira Life Conference 2026 is bringing together Nigeria’s top finance minds, industry leaders, creators, and business strategists for a full-day of specialised sessions and masterclasses designed for ambitious Nigerians who want to make, keep, grow, and pass on real wealth. Happening on August 22 at the Jewel Aeida, Lekki, Lagos. Secure a seat in the room. Economy Kenya wants US tariffs refunded to exporters Image Source: Tenor Kenya is preparing to help Kenyan companies reclaim tariffs paid during the four months when the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) expired. Explain like I’m new here: AGOA is a duty-free trade pact linking the United States with eligible sub-Saharan countries, including Kenya. Since 2000, qualifying countries such as Kenya have shipped products, including textiles, tea, coffee, and fresh produce, into the US without the usual import duties. In September 2025, the AGOA expired, leaving Kenyan exporters to pay duties on shipments entering the US from October, the following month. The turnaround: Between October 2025 and January 2026, the Kenya Association of Manufacturers, an industry group, said exporters faced tariffs ranging from 15% to 42%. However, in February, the US government
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South Africa is cracking down on undocumented work. Here’s what foreign workers should know
In 2026, South Africa has taken a harder stance against undocumented immigration, stepping up workplace inspections and putting greater pressure on employers who hire foreign nationals without valid work authorisation. On May 21, Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber told Parliament that 8,180 employers had been charged over the previous five years for employing foreign nationals without valid work permits. “Enforcement measures implemented to strengthen compliance with immigration laws include interventions and disruptions through inspections that are intelligence-driven, as well as rapid responses [to] reported incidents that require operations/inspections,” Schreiber said in response to a parliament question from Mnqobi Msezane. He added that penalties and sanctions against employers who hire foreign nationals without valid work permits were imposed under the Immigration Act 13 of 2002. The warning comes as South Africa increases joint inspections involving the Department of Home Affairs, the Department of Employment and Labour, the police and other agencies. The government is also increasing the potential consequences for employers. Under the country’s Immigration Act, knowingly employing an undocumented foreigner can lead to a fine or imprisonment of up to one year for a first offence, two years for a second offence, and up to three years, without the option of a fine, for subsequent offences. Yet, the crackdown does not mean South Africa is closing its labour market to foreigners. The country has been overhauling its immigration system to attract skilled workers, international companies, and remote workers, while tightening the rules around who can legally take up employment. For foreigners considering moving to South Africa for work, the distinction matters. Being legally present in the country does not automatically give a foreign national the right to work. A visitor, for example, cannot simply take a local job because they have secured accommodation and found an employer willing to hire them. South Africa has several legal employment-based pathways. The system was substantially changed in October 2024, when the government introduced a points-based framework for work visas. The main routes into South Africa’s labour market The Critical Skills Work Visa is the clearest route for highly skilled workers whose occupations appear on South Africa’s Critical Skills List, including certain technology roles. The framework requires applicants to reach a 100-point threshold, while applicants in critical-skills occupations can qualify based on the occupation itself, subject to the other prescribed requirements. The visa can be issued for up to five years. The General Work Visa is the broader route for workers who do not qualify through the critical skills route. It uses the same points framework, taking factors such as qualifications, salary, experience, and other characteristics into account. Applicants at this level typically have to demonstrate gross annual earnings of at least R650,796 ($40,249), a threshold Home Affairs said in 2024 would protect jobs at lower income levels while continuing to attract skilled workers. The reforms were introduced partly to make the system more predictable and reduce the discretion that had previously complicated applications. For employees moving within a multinational company, there is the Intra-Company Transfer (ICT) Work Visa. It covers a foreign employee being transferred from an overseas branch, subsidiary or affiliate to a related South African operation. The visa is limited to the relevant employment arrangement and can run for up to four years. It is not renewable. There is also a Corporate Visa, which operates at company level and allows an approved corporate applicant to employ a specified number of foreign workers. It is particularly relevant to businesses that need to recruit foreign workers at scale. Foreign entrepreneurs have a separate Business Visa route, while short-term technical assignments can, in appropriate circumstances, be undertaken under the work-authorisation provisions attached to a visitor visa. These are not interchangeable with ordinary employment visas, and the conditions attached to each matter. For remote workers, South Africa also introduced a Remote Work Visitor Visa in 2024. Its logic is different from that of the employment visas above: it is intended for people employed abroad who want to live temporarily in South Africa while continuing to work for a foreign employer. The government explicitly framed it as a way of bringing foreign spending into the country without competing directly for South African jobs. The distinction is crucial for digital nomads. Working remotely for a foreign company can place someone under a different immigration route from a person taking up a job with a South African employer, even if both people are doing the same work from South Africa. So why does illegal employment exist? The obvious answer is that some migrants cannot obtain, or do not have, the documentation required to work legally. South Africa has a large economy where the demand for workers often extends beyond what the formal immigration system allows. Employers want workers. Migrants want jobs. Some businesses are willing to hire people whose immigration status does not authorise employment. The incentives can become particularly strong where the work is low-paid, insecure, or difficult to monitor, such as the fast food delivery sector. South Africa has acknowledged another part of the problem: undocumented workers can be unusually vulnerable to exploitation. In June, President Cyril Ramaphosa said that some employers deliberately employ undocumented migrants because their precarious legal status makes it harder for them to challenge unfair treatment. He announced plans to increase penalties and rebuild labour-inspection capacity, including the phased recruitment of 10,000 inspectors. Recent inspections illustrate the point. In January, six employers in Rustenburg, South Africa, were arrested alongside 11 undocumented foreign nationals during a labour-compliance operation targeting wholesale and retail businesses. In February, two employers in Newcastle, a major city in KwaZulu-Natal, were arrested after inspectors found 34 undocumented foreign workers in textile operations. Illegal employment in South Africa has become a labour market entanglement that affects even employers, wages, enforcement, and the availability of legal routes into work. The system is being redesigned while the crackdown accelerates This creates an interesting contradiction in South Africa’s migration policy. The government is simultaneously making it easier for certain foreign workers to
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What is Antigravity and why does it matter?
AI coding tools have become good at generating code, fixing errors and explaining what is happening inside a codebase. But Google wants its AI to take on a larger role in the development process. That is where Antigravity comes in. Antigravity is Google’s agentic development platform, designed to allow AI agents handle multi-step coding and knowledge-work tasks. The agents can use tools, work with files, search the web, delegate parts of a task to other agents, and continue working without needing constant instructions from a developer. Google introduced Antigravity in November 2025 as an AI-powered development environment. Since then, the company has expanded it into a broader platform that includes Antigravity 2.0, the Antigravity IDE, CLI and SDK. The idea is simple: instead of using AI only to help with individual pieces of code, developers can give agents larger tasks and then supervise the work they produce. This article explains what Antigravity is, how it works, and why it matters as software development becomes increasingly agentic What is Google Antigravity? Google Antigravity is an agentic development platform that allows users to work with AI agents on coding and other knowledge-work tasks. The easiest way to understand the difference is to compare Antigravity with a traditional coding assistant. A coding assistant might suggest code, explain an error or generate a function when you ask for one. An agentic platform works at a higher level. You can give an agent a broader objective and allow it to plan, use tools, execute commands and work through multiple steps. Google describes Antigravity as a platform built for the agent-first era. Its agents can perform tasks such as reading and writing files, executing system commands, conducting web searches, interacting with Chrome and creating artifacts and implementation plans. The platform now has several different surfaces: Antigravity 2.0: A standalone desktop command centre for launching, monitoring and orchestrating agents. Antigravity CLI: A terminal-based interface for working with Antigravity agents. Antigravity SDK: A Python framework for building custom agentic applications on top of Google’s Antigravity runtime. Antigravity IDE: A full agentic development environment designed for working directly with code. How does Google Antigravity work? 1. You give an agent a goal The biggest difference with Antigravity is the level at which you interact with the AI. Instead of asking an agent to write one function, you can give it a broader task and allow it to determine the steps required to complete it. Antigravity agents can use tools to execute commands, read and write files, search the web, interact with Chrome and work with external services through skills and MCP servers. This changes the relationship between the developer and the AI. The developer does not necessarily have to specify every individual step. They can describe the desired outcome and let the agent work through the task. 2. Agents can delegate work to other agents Antigravity 2.0 supports dynamic subagents, which allow a main agent to create specialised agents for particular parts of a task. These subagents can work in parallel, with workspace isolation helping keep their work separate. Google says this can allow larger tasks to be divided into smaller pieces while preventing multiple workstreams from unnecessarily filling the main agent’s context. In practical terms, instead of one agent doing everything sequentially, it can delegate focused pieces of work to other agents. 3. Agents can work asynchronously Antigravity also supports asynchronous task management. Long-running operations can be moved into background processes so they do not block the agent’s active work. Subagents can also run as background tasks while their progress is streamed back to the main agent. 4. You can schedule agents to work automatically Antigravity 2.0 also includes Scheduled Tasks. Users can set recurring schedules that automatically invoke agents to perform predefined tasks. Google gives examples including daily pull-request digests, hourly checks on live deployments and monthly reports on system architecture changes. This takes Antigravity beyond an AI tool that you manually prompt every time. Once a schedule has been configured, the agent can be triggered automatically according to that schedule. What are Antigravity Artifacts? One of the more important parts of Antigravity is Artifacts. Artifacts are outputs that agents create to communicate their work and progress to the user. They can include things such as implementation plans, rich documents, diagrams, images, browser recordings, and other forms of evidence about what the agent has done. This matters because handing more work to an AI agent creates another problem: how do you know what it actually did? Artifacts give users something to inspect rather than forcing them to rely solely on a final answer. Google has built Antigravity around this idea of communicating progress and results through artifacts, with users able to review the work and provide feedback directly. What models power Antigravity? Antigravity is closely integrated with Google’s Gemini models. Google’s current Antigravity platform highlights Gemini 3.7 Flash, introduced in August 2026 as the platform’s workhorse model for coding and agentic tasks. Google says the model shows notable gains over its predecessor, Gemini 3.6 Flash, on coding benchmarks, along with introductory pricing at roughly half the cost per token. Antigravity is not simply a model, though. The model provides the underlying intelligence, while the Antigravity agent harness provides the environment, tools, permissions, and other capabilities that allow an agent to carry out multi-step work. That distinction is important. Antigravity is a platform for deploying and managing agents, rather than simply another chatbot powered by Gemini. Why does Antigravity matter? The bigger change is the move from AI that helps developers write code to AI agents that can take on larger pieces of work. Traditional software development requires developers to decide what needs to be done, write or modify code, run tests, investigate problems, and repeat the process. Agentic development changes that balance. A developer can increasingly describe an outcome and allow an agent to handle more of the execution. The developer then becomes responsible for directing the work, reviewing the results and making the decisions that
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Nigeria’s SEC admits Yellow Card, Blockchain Africa into crypto sandbox
Nigeria’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has admitted three additional virtual asset service providers and digital investment platforms into its Accelerated Regulatory Incubation Programme (ARIP), expanding the regulatory sandbox to 12 firms since July. On Thursday, the SEC said it had admitted Pisi Payment Solutions, the parent company of Nigerian fintech YDPay, BC Access (Nigeria) Limited, the legal entity of Blockchain Africa—a subsidiary of global cryptocurrency exchange Blockchain—and Yellow Card, the stablecoin infrastructure startup, into the programme. The approvals grant the firms Approval-in-Principle (AIP) status, allowing them to operate within the sandbox’s defined scope while remaining subject to ongoing regulatory and supervisory conditions. In July, the regulator admitted nine firms into the sandbox, including investment platform GetEquity and cryptocurrency exchanges KuCoin Nigeria and Luno. “This development means that these entities would receive the Commission’s Approval-in-Principle (AIP), permitting them to operate within the defined scope of the Programme and subject to conditions stipulated by the Commission,” the regulator said in a statement. “An Approval-in-Principle confirms that an entity has satisfied the Commission’s requirements for admission into the Programme.” The move underscores the SEC’s renewed push to bring crypto-related businesses under a formal regulatory framework following a slowdown in new admissions in 2025. The capital markets regulator is now accelerating the onboarding of digital asset startups into its sandbox as it seeks to balance innovation with investor protection. Launched in June 2024, ARIP is a controlled testing sandbox for virtual asset providers, tokenised product platforms, and other digital investment businesses. The SEC uses the programme to evaluate new technologies and business models before they are allowed to offer products to the wider investing public. The SEC first granted admissions and approvals-in-principle to Nigerian cryptocurrency startups Busha and Quidax in August 2024. Those approvals were expected to lead to full licences after a one-year incubation period. However, the regulator has yet to confirm whether either firm has completed that transition, leaving no clear precedent for how sandbox participants become fully regulated crypto operators in Nigeria. The expansion comes as Nigeria continues to rank among Africa’s largest cryptocurrency markets by adoption, despite years of regulatory uncertainty and periodic restrictions on parts of the sector. Regulators are increasingly shifting from outright caution toward a framework centered on licensing, supervision, and consumer safeguards. “Nigeria is one of Africa’s most important digital asset markets, and participating in the SEC’s ARIP is an important step forward in our long-term commitment to the country,” Owen Odia, general manager for Africa at Blockchain, told TechCabal. “The programme [allows] us to work directly with the SEC in a controlled environment, bring our global experience to the Nigerian market, and help support a framework that protects consumers while enabling responsible innovation.” The SEC noted that ARIP admission does not constitute a final operating licence. The regulator has also imposed minimum capital and corporate governance requirements on digital asset companies, with exchanges and custodians required to maintain capital of up to ₦2 billion ($1.5 million). The latest admissions underscore that Nigeria is moving more decisively toward a supervised digital asset regime, now built around the country’s Virtual Asset Council—along with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Nigeria Revenue Service (NRS) as vice chairs—potentially providing greater clarity for startups, investors, and foreign cryptocurrency firms seeking access to one of Africa’s largest digital asset markets. 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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Germany offered Adekoyejo Kuye a future. He chose Nigeria.
Adekoyejo Kuye has the unhurried air of a man with nowhere else to be. He is the sort of person you can listen to for hours without noticing you have been sitting at the same table. We meet on July 28 at Somerset Westview in Kilimani, Nairobi. Kuye is in town for Halcyon’s Africa Food & Climate Resilience programme, where his company is part of the 2026 cohort. He sits easily, speaks without hurry, and rarely seems to search for a thought. Kuye is the founder of KAMIM Technologies, a Nigerian climate-tech company that builds solar-powered cold storage infrastructure and connects farmers to markets. It is not the company Kuye imagined himself building. In fact, he never imagined building a company at all. The son of a chemical engineering professor and a nurse, Kuye grew up taking toys apart to understand how they worked and expected to become a mechanical engineer working on cars. During his national youth service, he was posted to a rural community in Enugu State, Southeastern Nigeria, where he also worked unpaid for a solar company, carrying panels and batteries into communities, and began to understand the everyday problems farmers faced. He later left for Germany for a master’s in renewable energy, financing his studies with factory jobs and night shifts at Amazon. When he finished, staying offered the safer, more obvious path. Friends and family urged him to take it. Instead, Kuye bought a one-way ticket to Nigeria without telling anyone. “Are they using juju to pull you home?” he recalls someone asking. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Nigeria loses enormous amounts of food before it ever reaches consumers. Was there a single moment when you realised the country’s biggest agricultural problem wasn’t production, but preservation? I have an engineering background and started my career at a solar company. We built mini-grids in rural communities, mainly powering healthcare centres, schools and other infrastructure. It was going into those communities that I began to see the problem. A lot of the people were farmers. We would install mini-grids there, but over time, we noticed that many could not afford to pay for solar home systems because what we were providing did not necessarily have productive value for their livelihoods. That got me thinking: how can we build something that actually improves what these farmers are already doing? I started asking them questions. They told me, “This is what we’re facing. Once we harvest, we have to quickly take everything to the market and sell it because there is no infrastructure to preserve it.” I wasn’t fully aware of the scale of the problem initially. But after those conversations, I started doing my own research. Cold storage at the farm gate was almost non-existent. You see cold rooms in urban areas, supermarkets, and large farms, but they weren’t common near smallholder farmers. Yet we produce a lot of perishables in Nigeria—vegetables, tomatoes, and other produce that are very sensitive to heat. There is something called pre-cooling. Once you harvest, rapidly removing the heat from the produce can significantly extend its shelf life. That basic infrastructure simply wasn’t there. That was when I realised there was a major gap. Kuye speaking at a past Halcyon function. Image source: KAMIM You trained as an engineer. At what point did engineering stop being a profession and become a way of thinking about society? I love being on the field. We go into a community, deploy a system, and leave. I just love the process of building stuff. I had no plan to run a business. I’m not a natural businessman who always knew, “Ah, I’m going to become an entrepreneur.” Everything I know about business, I learned on the job out of necessity. But when we started working on cold storage, I knew we had stumbled on something big. We were solving a real problem affecting people’s lives. Farmers would tell us, “This is the business I use to feed my family. This is what my wife does.” It became more than building cold rooms. Then we discovered another problem: affordability. Smallholder farmers cannot afford to buy cold rooms. So you start asking, “How do you finance them?” How do you create a business model that makes the infrastructure sustainable? Many people avoid this space because it is difficult. Traditional financing institutions ask: How will the farmer pay? Can they pay back? But we said, “We’re already in this thing. We need to find a way to make it work.” I’ve been working on agricultural cold-chain infrastructure full-time since 2019, collaborating with farmers, impact investors, and people in the climate space to develop various models. One experience I’ll never forget was deploying our first solution. When we initially visited the community, farmers told us that after harvesting tomatoes, they put them under a tree or found somewhere cool. That was their storage system. They only knew cold rooms for fish and meat. The idea of storing tomatoes in one place was completely new. So we did an experiment. We kept some tomatoes outside and put others inside the cold room. After 21 days, we showed them the difference. You needed to see their faces. That was when I knew: okay, we are doing something important. Growing up, what was the dinner table like? Were conversations about politics, business, faith, or simply getting through the week? I grew up in an engineering home. My father is a professor of chemical engineering. My mother was a nurse. My sister also studied engineering. It was a very academic home: do your work, do what you’re supposed to do. Like most African homes, ours was religious. You went for Bible study during the week, and church on Sunday. That was always part of our lives. But academics were a big thing. From a young age, I knew I wanted to do engineering. I had toys, and the first thing I would do was scatter them. I wanted to open
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Cascador partners Nigeria’s youth ministry to back young founders
Cascador, a Nigeria-focused platform for growth-stage founders, has partnered with the Federal Ministry of Youth Development (FMYD) through the Nigerian Youth Academy (NiYA), a federal digital empowerment platform, to launch a programme to help youth entrepreneurs build stronger businesses. The NiYA × Cascador Founders Program will begin with a pilot cohort of 20 early-stage Nigerian founders, eight of whom will receive up to ₦5 million ($3,600) each in non-dilutive funding at the end of the programme. Applications for the program will open on August 19, and interested participants can apply on the NiYA website. The programme adds to the Nigerian government’s efforts in supporting young entrepreneurs and early-stage businesses. In November 2025, the government’s Investment in Digital and Creative Enterprises (iDICE) programme invested in Ventures Platform’s $64 million first close of its Pan-African fund II. “For NiYA, training is only one part of the journey. The real value is in helping young people move from learning to enterprise, from ideas to investable businesses, and from potential to sustainable economic participation,” said Ayodele Olawande, Minister of Youth Development. “The partnership with Cascador strengthens that pathway by combining business preparation with access to capital, particularly for young founders who may not yet have the formal structures or financial history that traditional funding often requires.” The program will run for four weeks and cover business fundamentals, investment readiness and pitch preparation, according to the company. It will be delivered in person in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital city, and include virtual touchpoints and one-on-one mentorship. After completion, the eight top-performing founders will receive an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution designed to help them organise and manage their businesses in addition to the funding at a NiYA/FMYD-organised Pitch Day. The funding is non-dilutive, meaning the founders will not have to give up equity in their businesses in exchange for the capital. “NiYA and FMYD have already shown what real commitment to Nigeria’s youth looks like — the platforms, the reach, the ambition to train millions,” said Trish Thomas, CEO of Cascador. “What we’re building together now is the missing piece, a practical bridge from the ideation stage to real capital-readiness. When a Ministry so dedicated to its young people asked Cascador to help build that bridge, it was an easy decision.” Over the course of the program, NiYA and FMYD will handle founder sourcing, training and the day-to-day delivery of the programme, while Cascador will help define eligibility criteria, support investment-readiness training, judge the founders’ pitches and provide the funding for the top performers. The pilot is part of NiYA’s ambition to train and empower seven million Nigerian youth within two years. All 20 founders who complete the program retain NiYA alumni status and receive priority consideration for future opportunities, according to the academy. The program builds on Cascador’s existing work supporting Nigerian founders, including through the Cascador ScaleUp, a program for growth-stage entrepreneurs focused on leadership and strategy. Its ScaleUp alumni gain access to the Cascador Catalytic Fund, which the company said deploys up to $5 million annually through a combination of debt and equity investments. Since 2019, Cascador said it has supported 70 companies that have collectively raised more than $125 million. 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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