‘People should move their money freely’: Eswatini’s Central Bank on opening the payments market
Although Eswatini—a country of 1.2 million people—is still catching up with more established African central banks, its central bank is overhauling the payment system by building interoperability from the start across all major players. This includes the four commercial banks—First National Bank (FNB) Eswatini, Standard Bank Eswatini, Nedbank Eswatini, and Eswatini Bank—and the newly licenced Building Society, and three mobile money operators, including MTN MoMo and Instacash. On Wednesday, I spoke with Sabelo Gama, Deputy Director of Operations for Payments at the Central Bank of Eswatini (CBE), about the country’s push to build an interoperable instant-payments system. The CBE is also preparing to move into new offices about 12 kilometres from Mbabane, where construction is underway for a 22-storey headquarters. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Eswatini’s mobile money growth is strong. How is the CBE balancing rapid innovation by non-bank players with the need to protect consumers and maintain financial stability? Our latest data shows financial inclusion at about 87%. Ten years ago, most activity sat around the 50% mark and came from the banking sector. The jump has come from mobile money. Non-bank providers drove most of the gains, and banks have since responded by launching their own wallets. The market now has a mix of mobile money operators and bank-led products. We can start from the consumer’s point of view. People should move their money freely, so interoperability is key, which means customers shouldn’t be locked into one provider. We also regulate how agents work. In this case, agents can’t sign exclusive agreements with a single operator. This keeps the market open and avoids behaviour that would limit choice or competition. We also set clear rules for complaints. Each provider must follow defined steps for handling disputes. Our national switch supports this process by tracking cases and enforcing response timelines. The goal is to keep the market open, safe and fair while letting new products grow. As Eswatini builds its instant payments system, how will the CBE ensure it connects everyone and not just banks, but mobile wallets and fintechs as equal participants from day one? One of our early gaps was that most payment infrastructure had been built for banks, yet banks don’t reach most people. Mobile money covers far more of the population, but its link to bank-owned systems was limited. The switch (Eswatini Payment Switch or EPS) was designed to close that gap from the start. We built interoperability into the project, where all banks and mobile money providers were part of the governance group. The central bank funded the project, but both sides shaped the technical work. That helped us design a system that serves everyone, not only the incumbents. Connection timelines varied because each provider had different systems and capacities. We issued clear regulatory expectations to keep the onboarding process moving. In total, we have eight participants: four banks, three mobile money providers and Building Society (which received a banking licence in October). The final participant goes live this coming weekend, so at that point, everyone in the country will be reachable on the switch. The first phase was about getting every provider connected. The next phase is about reaching the channel level, making sure people can send and receive from every channel their provider offers. Talk me through the onboarding process of a new fintech or mobile money service provider in Eswatini. A new mobile money provider must first go through our licencing process. The National Payment Systems (NPS) Act of 2023 sets out our powers and the obligations for payment system providers, participants and anyone operating in the value chain. We are also finalising regulations that spell out timelines, documentation and detailed requirements, but for now, we use our mobile money guidelines. The applicant submits core documents that cover ownership, directors, the business model and how the firm plans to operate. We then involve other units inside the central bank. Market conduct reviews pricing and the proposed model. The payments team checks how customer funds will be protected and where the trust account will be held. Our financial integrity unit looks at anti-money laundering (AML) controls and the processes the firm will rely on. Once approved, the firm receives a provisional licence. That stage lets them operate with close monitoring. They must submit regular data on volumes, values and other indicators through our reporting system. We track performance and compliance as they scale. This regime is lighter than banking rules by design. It lowers barriers to entry, but it doesn’t open the door to anyone. Applicants must meet security, governance and operational standards before joining the ecosystem. Many citizens have mobile money accounts but use them mainly for P2P transfers. What are the biggest barriers preventing broader use for payments, savings, or credit? Most mobile money services started with peer-to-peer (P2P). As they grew, they added bill payments and small credit products. One provider offers limited credit today (MTN). Some government payments already flow through mobile money, but only through one provider. From a regulatory point of view, it needs to move onto the switch so every provider can support those use cases. The main barrier is the limited range of things you can pay for inside the wallet. People send money, then cash out because most real transactions still happen in cash. That cycle weakens digital savings and makes it harder for new services to take off. Our focus now is on building a broader digital ecosystem, which means person-to-government and government-to-person payments. It also means merchant acceptance, so that people can pay directly from their wallets. We are working on domestic e-commerce through open banking and bringing in payment gateways. The aim is to give people enough reasons to keep money in their wallets. Once that happens, products like savings and credit can grow on a stronger base. Beyond the Payment Systems Act, what legal or regulatory updates are most urgent to support digital finance, especially for remittances, data privacy, and digital identity? The
Read MoreJumia narrows losses, cuts 7% staff as AI reshapes operations
E-commerce giant Jumia inches closer to profitability with narrowing losses and growing revenue in the third quarter of 2025. The gains come as the company deepened its use of artificial intelligence to streamline operations and cut operational costs. Revenue rose 25.28% to $45.6 million in Q3, 2025, from $36.4 million a year earlier, according to its recent financial statements. For the first nine months of the year, revenue increased marginally by 4.68% to $127.5 million. Operating loss fell 13.43% to $17.4 million, while loss before income tax declined slightly $17.7 million. Jumia has reduced its workforce by 7% since December 31, 2024, with just over 2,010 employees on payroll as of September 30, 2025. The company said the cuts were part of a broad cost-optimisation strategy enabled by AI-driven automation. “We are leveraging AI across key functions to enhance productivity and reduce operating expenses,” Jumia said. “AI-driven workflows in customer service, marketing, and technology operations are improving efficiency, streamlining processes, and supporting a leaner cost structure. These initiatives are contributing to ongoing reductions in total operating expenses and improved scalability.” The company’s general and administrative expenses decreased by 7% to $17.6 million in Q3 2025, with further reductions expected as it continues to ramp up operational efficiency initiatives over subsequent quarters. Technology and content expense are down 10% to $8.7 million, driven by ongoing headcount optimisation and savings from recently renegotiated contracts. Beyond AI, Jumia is driving other efficiency measures to further trim costs. The company is lowering fulfillment unit costs by boosting warehouse productivity and automating parts of customer support. Aside from cost optimisation efforts, higher-order volumes and an uptick in active customers drove Jumia’s growth in Q3. Total orders rose 34% year-over-year, Gross merchandise volume (GMV) climbed 26%, while active customers ordering physical goods grew 23%. The company noted that its momentum in Nigeria has continued, with orders up 30% and GMV up 43%. CEO Francis Dufay described the quarter as a period of “significant acceleration in customer demand and order growth,” adding that Jumia has reached an inflection point due to its value proposition and operational discipline. “We continue to strengthen our cost structure and sharpen operational discipline, reinforcing our path toward profitability,” he said. “Our focus remains on execution and customer engagement as we build a more efficient business. We believe that we are on track to reach breakeven on a Loss before Income tax basis in Q4 2026 and achieve full-year profitability in 2027, positioning Jumia for long-term growth and value creation.” The long-term success of Jumia’s AI strategy remains to be seen. Many firms walking the same path have discovered that while AI may boost efficiency, human workers remain central, especially to customer experience and operational nuance.
Read MoreSouth Africa’s Vodacom resists Kenyan push to split M-Pesa from Safaricom
Vodacom Group, South Africa’s largest telecom, has ruled out separating its M-Pesa mobile money platform from Safaricom and listing it separately, despite renewed pressure from Kenyan authorities to unbundle the telecom operator’s core businesses. The company, which holds a 40% stake in Safaricom alongside the Kenyan government, said M-Pesa’s operations were too closely integrated with the telco’s core business to justify a separation. “What we’re trying to position is we’re not looking to separately list the financial service businesses because we do see it intricately linked to our value proposition that we’re providing to the customer,” Vodacom CEO Mohamed Joosub said during an earnings call on Tuesday. “In fact, we see it more closely linked and then coupling that with loyalty going forward.” The statement comes amid ongoing discussions in Kenya over whether Safaricom— Kenya’s largest listed company—should be divided into separate units. Spinning off M-Pesa would give regulators more control over Kenya’s most important mobile money platform. Still, for Safaricom, it could disrupt a business that now brings in nearly half of its revenue and saddle the company with a massive tax bill. In August, the Treasury Secretary told Bloomberg that the plan to split Safaricom into three separate units—its core telecom business, a tower company, and the mobile money giant M-Pesa—was in motion, a move that could also involve the state selling part of its 35% stake in the company. Mbadi said a recent assessment found “huge benefit” to the state from such a restructuring, but added that a final decision will need cabinet approval before anything moves forward. The split would also enable the government to revalue Safaricom’s business units and list them separately in the future. A stalled split The Treasury and the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) have argued that such a structure could also strengthen regulatory oversight and consumer protection in a market where mobile money has become a critical financial infrastructure. Safaricom prefers a group reorganisation that keeps M-Pesa under the same corporate umbrella, arguing that a complete spin-off would only make sense if it adds value for shareholders and customers, not simply to meet regulatory demands. M-Pesa has grown into the most profitable arm of Safaricom, contributing KES 88.1 billion ($560 million) in revenue for the six months to September, a 14% increase from the same period a year earlier. The business now accounts for 44% of Safaricom’s total revenue of KES 199.9 billion. “Take a market like Kenya, the market is still growing very, very strongly, but our fintech services is sitting at 44% of revenue,” Joosub said. While CBK governor Kamau Thugge has pushed for the split to increase the regulatory oversight on the mobile money platform, he has also warned that separating M-Pesa could trigger a tax liability of KES 75 billion ($500 million), complicating any restructuring effort.
Read MoreFrom side hustle to $731 million in trades: Bootstrapped crypto startup Obiex says it is now profitable
Obiex, a Nigerian crypto startup that allows users to speculate and trade digital assets, says it is now profitable. The bootstrapped startup has processed $731.5 million in annualised trade volume, serving more than 100,000 retail users. It claims that a significant portion of this activity comes from high-value retail customers who trade large volumes daily. Low retail transaction volumes and narrow spreads often push crypto startups to focus on institutional clients. Obiex, however, is building around high-volume retail traders as its core users, proving that the segment can still generate significant value and profitability. “We started making money from day one,” Ikechukwu Okeke, Obiex CEO, told TechCabal. “We bootstrapped Obiex and have reinvested everything back into the business to keep growing.” The startup’s total transaction volume (TTV)—the cumulative value of executed trades on its platform, excluding deposits and withdrawals—grew from $588 million in 2024 to $832 million so far in 2025. About 70% of its trading volume comes from retail users and 28% from business customers. Year-to-date in 2025, the platform’s active users traded an average of $211,000 each, according to internal data seen by TechCabal. While Obiex launched an over-the-counter (OTC) business in April to provide services to high-net-worth individuals and institutions that want to buy and sell digital assets in bulk, most of the startup’s revenue still comes from high-frequency retail crypto traders who speculate on price movements daily. Obiex operates primarily in Nigeria, runs a trading app in Cameroon, and is now planning an expansion into Ghana, a market that recently published a regulatory framework for virtual assets. A bootstrapped journey from payments to trading Obiex’s story starts almost a decade ago. In 2016, Okeke discovered Bitcoin while teaching private lessons as a university student. He soon abandoned tutoring to explore what he called a “game-changing” idea. His first product was a crypto payment gateway that allowed merchants to accept Bitcoin and, later, stablecoins. Okeke describes it as “a Paystack for crypto.” But the product struggled to scale. Businesses saw crypto less as a payment tool and more as a store of value. By 2018, the founders—Okeke and Chidozie Ogbo, who serves as CTO—pivoted to what became the first version of Obiex: an off-ramp product that allows users to convert crypto to naira instantly through a “sell wallet.” It worked until the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) ban on crypto in February 2021, which blocked exchanges’ access to banks and payment partners. “When the CBN pulled the plug, we couldn’t process automated payouts anymore,” said Okeke. “We tried to run it manually, but it wasn’t scalable.” The ban cut Obiex off from the payment service providers and partner banks it used to automate transactions, making its off-ramp product impossible to sustain. The startup went back to the drawing board to rethink what traders actually needed and how it could keep serving them without direct banking access. In June 2021, the crisis forced another reinvention. Obiex rebuilt itself as a retail trading platform that solved one of the hardest problems for local traders: volatility and confirmation delays. Okeke said most crypto startups now enable fiat deposits and withdrawals through payment service providers. Making crypto trading faster and less risky Before Obiex’s trading platform emerged, Nigerian crypto traders often had to wait for multiple confirmations before seeing Bitcoin deposits reflect on exchanges, exposing them to sudden price swings. Obiex built a system that allows traders to lock in value instantly, removing that risk. It turned out to be a simple change with an outsized impact. Traders could now buy and sell in seconds, even during volatile market conditions. “We helped create trading volume in the market,” said Okeke. “People started trading more because they could manage their risk better. For many traders, Obiex isn’t just a wallet. It’s part of their trading journey.” Since its last pivot in 2021, Obiex has processed $2.93 billion in total swaps, and is on track to cross $3 billion by the end of 2025. It currently employs 40 people and continues to operate without venture funding. Running a profitable business Obiex’s founders say they’ve collectively invested about $150,000 in operational funding and provided liquidity themselves in the early days to keep trades flowing. The startup sources its liquidity in-house, allowing it to control spreads and keep execution fast. While Okeke declined to share specific revenue figures, he claims Obiex is capital-efficient and ranks among the top retail crypto platforms in revenue per active user. After establishing itself in Nigeria and Cameroon, Obiex now has its sights set on Ghana, South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya, and Rwanda. The startup says Ghana is its immediate priority, partly because of the Bank of Ghana’s (BoG) new policy paper on virtual assets, released on November 5. The paper outlines a path for regulating crypto trading and wallets, noting that over 3 million Ghanaians already use digital assets. The regulatory clarity forming in the country is enticing for players like Obiex, said Okeke. Tanzania and South Africa are also attractive, he adds, because of their growing adoption and “openness to digital assets.” In a market where African digital asset operators, such as Yellow Card, are pivoting toward institutional-grade clients, Obiex is doubling down on the retail trading opportunity. The startup believes there’s still value in serving the high-frequency, high-value crypto users who trade daily and treat digital assets as speculative instruments rather than payment tools.
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The AI helping African companies automate work while humans stay in control
Last week, I started a conversation with Pheneas Munene, a passionate Nairobi-based builder. His company, Phindor, which he launched alongside his co-founder, John Maina, in 2018, is working within the part of the African business that has been getting attention over the last few months; the daily work conducted through WhatsApp chats, phone calls, SMS, and small internal task lists. These repetitive workflows are admittedly complex to manage at scale. Teams answer the same questions multiple times daily and follow up on leads, confirm orders, and escalate issues only when necessary. One person can do this easily, but when a company grows, the work becomes cumbersome. Phindor built JuaFlow (“Jua” is Swahili for “know”) to solve this problem. The product enables companies to create AI agents that handle repetitive tasks, such as lead qualification messages, delivery confirmations, basic HR requests, and product lookups. When the situation requires judgment, the agent hands it off to a human, Munene said, because this helps keep everything in context. The aim is not to replace people but to keep work moving, reduce back-and-forth, and prevent tasks from stalling. Why this matters Munene and Maina spent seven years building automation for medium-sized organisations. The work was similar across clients, but always built differently. That made every deployment slow and expensive, and with only a few organisations that could justify that cost, scaling across many clients was hard. The shift occurred when a retail company sought a more cost-effective way to manage high-volume WhatsApp and Instagram conversations. The founders wanted quick replies, simple lead qualification, and a human handoff for cases that required judgment. That solution evolved into Lisa, an artificial intelligence (AI) business assistant that was launched in July 2024. According to Munene, Lisa gained adoption because teams could use it without changing their existing workflows. As more teams used Lisa, new requests appeared. Some wanted internal task handling while others wanted logistics updates. The idea expanded from messaging automation to general work support. Lisa was re-worked and renamed JuaFlow to reflect this broader use. “Our client wanted a cheaper way to handle repetitive inquiries automatically without compromising customer experience, like identifying valuable leads and responding instantly,” Munene said. “That project became Lisa, the Intel-l-igent S-tore A-ssistant, which eventually evolved into JuaFlow, a platform that allows teams to build governed AI agents that streamline and speed up customer/employee-facing tasks while under human oversight.” Get The Best African Tech Newsletters In Your Inbox Select your country Nigeria Ghana Kenya South Africa Egypt Morocco Tunisia Algeria Libya Sudan Ethiopia Somalia Djibouti Eritrea Uganda Tanzania Rwanda Burundi Democratic Republic of the Congo Republic of the Congo Central African Republic Chad Cameroon Gabon Equatorial Guinea São Tomé and Príncipe Angola Zambia Zimbabwe Botswana Namibia Lesotho Eswatini Mozambique Madagascar Mauritius Seychelles Comoros Cape Verde Guinea-Bissau Senegal The Gambia Guinea Sierra Leone Liberia Côte d’Ivoire Burkina Faso Mali Niger Benin Togo Other Select your gender Male Female Others TC Daily TC Events TC Scoop Subscribe How the JuaFlow idea formed The core lesson Phindor drew from consulting work was that AI agents need some kind of structure. If an agent takes actions without checks, minor errors spread through teams. If an agent cannot explain why it acted, no one can adjust it. At the same time, if the agent cannot hand off at the right time, staff lose trust in it. To avoid these problems, JuaFlow treats each task as a sequence of steps. Before running any action or tool call, the system checks two things: whether the action has the right data, and whether it follows the organisation’s rules. If either check fails, the agent stops and hands the task to a human to avoid silent failures. According to Munene, this approach is not complex, but it enables companies to integrate agents into real workflows without the risk of runaway actions. How does JuaFlow work? Most teams use the Studio, a control room where the team sets up agents. They define identity and tone, add documents and references, and build workflows in a graphical editor. Just like other platforms, like WayaWaya’s conversation AI tool, no code is required to get a working agent. Each conversation maintains a small “state” record, which tracks the workflow step, the agent’s confidence, and the applicable policies. Short-term memory stays with the active task, while long-term memory is stored separately and retrieved when needed to keep the operations light. Grounded answers come from a knowledge base that the team maintains. Say, if the agent is confident, it responds. If confidence is low, it asks a clarifying question or hands the query to a human. Munene added that the AI agent allows a company to add a chat widget to its website, connect to Slack, or integrate the system with internal tools through an API. The system also supports multiple workspaces, so departments or partner accounts can be separated while sharing only what they choose. What comes next Despite Lisa launching in July 2024, the company’s first enterprise customer came three months later. Munene claims that from February to July 2025, usage rose from about 15,000 interactions to over 700,000. When JuaFlow launched in July 2025, it went live with 15 companies and about one million recorded interactions. Munene said pricing for the service is credit-based, where these credits cover messages, knowledge access, and workflow steps. Credits do not expire as long as the account remains active. Enterprise customers, as expected, can negotiate terms. Many people across the region communicate through voice notes and calls, and many use local languages in daily work. Phindor is working on supporting these patterns as part of its plans. “Our main focus is rebuilding parts of our LLM layer to support local languages and voice. Africa is multilingual, and AI should adapt to that,” Munene said. 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Buying Starlink in Nigeria? Here’s the current cost and where to get it
Table of contents Official Starlink pricing in Nigeria Current Starlink availability status in Nigeria Getting Starlink now when your area is on the waitlist Starlink reseller prices in Nigeria Should you import Starlink to Nigeria? Starlink, which officially launched in Nigeria in January 2023, is now available across much of the country including major cities such as Lagos, Abuja, Kano, Ibadan, Port Harcourt, and Enugu. However, in high-demand zones, it currently asks potential customers to join a waitlist. You can still order the kit online and have it delivered (with warranty and support), but availability in some urban areas has been temporarily paused while capacity is expanded. What has been less stable is the price. The hardware and monthly subscription have undergone several changes, mainly due to fluctuations in the exchange rate. The current official subscription rate is ₦57,000 monthly, and the hardware price reflects the current importation cost. If the Naira shifts again, these prices may move too. Here is what Starlink currently costs in Nigeria, and the safest ways to purchase it. Official Starlink pricing in Nigeria If you want to get Starlink in Nigeria, the costs fall into two categories: hardware (one-time payment) and monthly subscription. Hardware costs The main Starlink Standard Kit in Nigeria costs about ₦590,000 when you buy directly from the official Starlink website. The box comes with the dish, router, mount, and cables. You can install it yourself without hiring a technician. Starlink also offers the Starlink Mini Kit for about ₦318,000. It is smaller and easier to carry around if you frequently move or need to stay connected while travelling. Both kits bought from the official Nigerian website usually include shipping and support. Monthly subscription costs The Residential Plan is the most common plan for homes and small offices. The current monthly price is ₦57,000. If you run a business with higher data needs, the Business or Priority Plan costs about ₦159,000 monthly. This plan is designed for multiple users, offices, and sites that require increased capacity. There are also Roam Plans for users who move around. The Roam plan costs ₦38,000 monthly, while advanced roaming or global roaming plans can be significantly higher, depending on usage and region. Some people try to use the cheaper Roam plan at home as a workaround, often leading to service restrictions later, so it is safer to choose the plan designed for your type of use. Current Starlink availability status in Nigeria In some parts of Nigeria, particularly high-demand locations such as Victoria Island, Ikoyi, Lagos Island, Surulere, Lekki, and specific areas of Abuja, Starlink has temporarily paused new Residential Plan orders due to network congestion and capacity limitations. When you try to place an order from these areas, Starlink now displays a message stating that service is at capacity. Instead of being able to purchase the hardware immediately, new customers are asked to pay a refundable deposit and join a waitlist. You will only receive the kit once additional capacity is made available. Starlink has not provided a confirmed timeline for when these areas will open again. The company states that it is actively adding more satellite capacity and expanding coverage, but this depends on infrastructure upgrades and, in some cases, regulatory clearances. After joining the waitlist, customers are required to submit identification details that must match the name used during the order process. Orders are not fulfilled unless this verification is completed. This is not the first time Starlink has paused new activations in Nigeria. In late 2024, nationwide orders were halted for several months due to bandwidth limits and regulatory adjustments. Orders resumed again after upgrades in mid-2025, but demand in major cities quickly reached capacity. Starlink engineers have explained that limiting new sign-ups in congested areas helps maintain stable speeds and service quality for existing users. For now, existing Starlink users in Lagos and Abuja remain unaffected and continue to receive service. The pause only affects new customers trying to register in high-demand zones. Suppose you are located in one of these areas and need Starlink urgently. In that case, you may either join the waitlist or check whether nearby towns or neighbourhoods without capacity issues still allow direct orders. Getting Starlink now when your area is on the waitlist Starlink is not immediately available in some parts of Lagos and Abuja. As a result, people have developed various ways to stay connected while they wait. Many of these approaches came from people we spoke to, who shared what has worked for them and what to avoid. “We just cannot sit and wait without the internet,” said Chinedu, who works remotely from Orchid. “People are sharing information everywhere. Twitter, Nairaland, Telegram groups. Everyone is just trying to figure out how to stay online.” Buying a used Starlink kit Since new kits in these high-demand areas require a waitlist, many people attempt to purchase used Starlink kits from individuals who already have an active Residential plan. The idea is simple. If the kit is already tied to a Residential plan, you will continue to pay the normal ₦57,000 monthly fee and avoid being forced into the higher ₦159,000 Business or Roam plan. As a result, used kits are now selling for more than the official price. While a new kit from Starlink costs approximately ₦590,000, used kits can range from ₦700,000 to ₦1,000,000, depending on the seller and the current plan the kit is on. You are essentially paying extra upfront to maintain a lower monthly fee in the long run. “There is a risk when buying used,” said Aisha, who bought hers through a referral group. “The seller has to remove the kit from their account first. If they do not do it properly, you are stuck. You have to trust the person you are buying from.” Activating the kit in another location Another approach is to order a kit and activate it in a state where Starlink is still accepting new customers. People often use addresses in places like
Read MoreChowdeck’s new ‘Bills’ feature and Mira migration show its super app ambitions
Chowdeck, the Nigerian on-demand delivery platform, is no longer just delivering meals. With a new feature that lets users pay bills, it’s now delivering financial services too. The new Bills tab allows users to buy airtime and data directly from the app, marking Chowdeck’s first consumer-facing fintech product. It comes one week after the company said it processed a record one million orders. At the same time, Chowdeck has completed the full technical migration of Mira, the point-of-sale (POS) startup it acquired in June 2025. A merchant email sent on Monday, November 10, confirmed the integration of Mira’s businesses and infrastructure onto Chowdeck’s system. With both moves unfolding within the same window, Chowdeck is executing a two-pronged rollout that extends its reach from consumers to merchants, each side of a growing marketplace now tied together by Chowdeck’s rails. This shift represents a clear evolution in strategy. Frequency creates habit, and habit creates the opportunity to layer financial services on top. Adding bill payments shows that Chowdeck is taking the first step to monetise its user base beyond delivery fees, turning transactional behaviour into financial engagement. On the merchant side, the Mira migration anchors the company’s position as a technology provider rather than merely a logistics partner, giving it control over both the consumer’s wallet and the merchant’s till. Chowdeck is building a closed-loop ecosystem where the money spent on food orders and bill payments can circulate within its own infrastructure. This transition moves it away from the thin margins of delivery into the higher-value territory of payments and financial flows. For users, it means a single app that handles everyday needs, from ordering meals to ordering groceries and topping up airtime and data. This will potentially make Chowdeck a daily-use utility rather than an occasional convenience. For merchants, the integration promises a unified tool for delivery, in-store payments, and settlement, reducing the operational complexity of juggling multiple providers. The timing is deliberate. Chowdeck announced a $9 million Series A in August 2025 and has since positioned itself as more than a logistics company. As competition intensifies in Nigeria’s crowded fintech market, where fintechs like OPay and PalmPay dominate consumer payments, Chowdeck’s advantage lies in its existing behaviour loop: thousands of users opening the app several times a week for food orders. Extending that loop to payments allows it to convert attention into financial activity. Still, the road to becoming a super app is fraught with challenges. Integrations add technical complexity and can expose companies to regulatory scrutiny under KYC and anti-money laundering rules. On the merchant side, retention will depend on the reliability of Chowdeck’s POS system: its uptime, settlement speed, and reconciliation accuracy. Each of these details will determine whether Chowdeck can sustain the seamless experience that made its delivery product successful. Nigeria’s platform wars are accelerating, with nearly every major platform fighting to become the country’s default digital lifestyle app. Chowdeck’s bet is that the road to that future runs through food, where daily frequency becomes financial dominance. Whether it can translate delivery efficiency into financial trust will decide if it can truly bridge the gap between the wallet and the till.
Read MoreNigeria unveils strategy to turn creativity and skills into a $10 billion export engine
The Federal Executive Council (FEC), Nigeria’s cabinet of ministers, on November 6, approved three policies that together form a cohesive economic strategy designed to build a multi-billion-dollar export model. The plan is to create a new economic engine projected to inject $10 billion annually into Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2030 and create one million high-paying jobs, according to the FEC. The initiatives, presented by the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Dr Jumoke Oduwole, include the National Intellectual Property Policy and Strategy (NIPPS), the ratification of the AfCFTA Protocol on Digital Trade, and the establishment of a national coordination mechanism for services exports, to be led by the National Talent Export Programme (NATEP). Each policy tackles a different layer of that ambition to protect the products and services originally created by Nigerians, open the channels and markets through which those ideas could be exported, and aid in training and scaling the workforce that produces them. Secure the idea The new National Intellectual Property Policy and Strategy (NIPPS), a unified framework to secure, commercialise, and enforce intellectual property rights, is the first of its kind. Creators, tech founders, researchers, and designers have always been productive, but their original ideas don’t often yield economic returns due to unclear IP ownership and weak enforcement of IP laws. Without strong IP frameworks, ideas are a currency you can’t take to the bank. NIPPS establishes a coordinated IP system that links copyright, patents, trademarks, and creative works under one strategic framework, streamlining the registration process. The process of developing this initiative began in 2020, led by the Ministry of Industry, Trade, and Investment, the Ministry of Justice, and the Ministry of Arts, Culture, Tourism, and the Creative Economy, according to the FEC. Its core aim is to establish a coherent ecosystem that connects innovators, creators, researchers, and financial institutions and turns intellectual assets into tradable and bankable capital. Get The Best African Tech Newsletters In Your Inbox Select your country Nigeria Ghana Kenya South Africa Egypt Morocco Tunisia Algeria Libya Sudan Ethiopia Somalia Djibouti Eritrea Uganda Tanzania Rwanda Burundi Democratic Republic of the Congo Republic of the Congo Central African Republic Chad Cameroon Gabon Equatorial Guinea São Tomé and Príncipe Angola Zambia Zimbabwe Botswana Namibia Lesotho Eswatini Mozambique Madagascar Mauritius Seychelles Comoros Cape Verde Guinea-Bissau Senegal The Gambia Guinea Sierra Leone Liberia Côte d’Ivoire Burkina Faso Mali Niger Benin Togo Other Select your gender Male Female Others TC Daily TC Events TC Scoop Subscribe Open the marketplace With ideas secured, the next step is building a marketplace. The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is a free trade area that establishes protocols on trade in goods, services, investment, and competition policy. AfCFTA aims at accelerating intra-African trade and boosting Africa’s trading position in the global market. The AfCFTA Protocol on Digital Trade is a framework tasked with defining the desired digital environment for digital trade within Africa. Ratifying this protocol enables Nigeria to influence the rules governing cross-border data flows, taxation, and digital services trade. The move is designed to lower the barrier for Nigerian fintechs, creative-tech companies, or startups across all sectors to operate seamlessly across all African countries and ensure Nigeria leads the efforts in the continent’s digital transformation. Create an army of talent to export The final piece of the strategy is the National Coordination Mechanism for Services Exports, led by the National Talent Export Programme (NATEP) under the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment. Services already contribute more than half of Nigeria’s GDP, yet, along with other non-oil exports, they represent less than 10% of the country’s export income. Recognising this, the initiative takes direct aim at building, funding, and formalising Nigeria’s growing services workforce. This initiative aims to completely re-engineer Nigeria’s workforce by training 10 million Nigerians specifically for the global services market to create a certified, world-class talent pool ready for export. This trained workforce becomes the new product with an economic target to generate $10 billion in sustainable revenue annually. The framework is also designed to attract over $15 billion in new investments into the digital and creative industries as capital, which will be used to build the tech hubs and creative studios that will employ this new generation of talent. This structure positions Nigeria as a global outsourcing destination and Africa’s hub for service exports that is anchored on talent and technology. These three approvals are an integrated architecture that forms the government’s official blueprint for a new economic model. It is a clear bet that the future of Nigeria’s wealth lies beyond the export of oil, in the skill and creativity of its people.
Read More“Africa doesn’t have a talent problem, it has a discovery problem” – Day 1-1000 of ProDevs
William Nwogbo still remembers the phone call. One of the talents ProDevs had placed with a foreign company, a developer from somewhere outside Lagos, rang him with news. He’d built a house in his village. And he was building another in Lagos. “I was like, wow,” Nwogbo recalls. “Even I myself have not started building, but you’re building.” It’s the kind of impact that might catch some founders off guard because it inverts the typical startup success story where founders cash out and employees get leftovers. Here, the mission—making invisible talent visible and creating pathways to prosperity—is working exactly as intended, even if it means the wealth gets distributed before it concentrates at the top. This is not the story ProDevs tells on its homepage. But it’s the story that defines what the company has become: a bridge between Nigeria’s hidden technical talent and the global companies desperate to hire them, built on a thesis that Africa’s real problem isn’t a talent shortage, it’s a discovery problem. Day 1: The friend who changed everything The spark that became ProDevs came in 2014, but not in the way Nwogbo expected. Fresh out of university, he was doing what thousands of Nigerian graduates do every year: applying to jobs on every platform, sending CVs into the void and hearing nothing back until a friend intervened. “A friend of mine introduced me to a company called Andela,” Nwogbo says. The friend vouched for him, told the company Nwogbo was worth a shot. Nwogbo was given a test to complete in 48hours. He finished it in four, and got the job. “For me, the theme behind it was a friend had to introduce me to that company, telling them that this person is a good engineer and it’s worth giving him a chance at least to see if he’s good enough,” Nwogbo reflects. “And it made me think: there are many people out there that are looking for positions, and they don’t necessarily have someone who is speaking for them.” That insight that talent exists, but access is gatekept, would become the entire foundation of ProDevs. But first, Nwogbo had to spend years working in the industry, watching the problem play out at scale. By 2018, Nwogbo had co-founded a software development consultancy called Fluturetech with his co-founder, Faith Dike. They were building products for clients, doing well enough, but they kept noticing something strange in the market: Nigerian companies weren’t hiring. They were poaching. “Access Bank would poach from GT Bank, this bank would poach from the other bank,” Nwogbo says. “And we’re not talking about senior positions here. We’re talking about mid-level, junior positions.” Nobody was spending time discovering talent. Everyone assumed the best people were already employed somewhere else, so they’d just steal them. Meanwhile, exceptional developers in Jos, Enugu, Imo—outside the Lagos-Abuja axis—were invisible. Cheaper, too. “These guys were not seeing access to those opportunities, and they were not as expensive as developers in major cities like Lagos and Abuja,” Nwogbo notes. By 2020, Fluturetech had pivoted entirely. The consultancy became ProDevs, a talent marketplace designed to solve one problem: help companies discover the people who’ve been there all along. “And it made me think: there are many people out there that are looking for positions, and they don’t necessarily have someone who is speaking for them.” — William Nwogbo, Founder and CEO, ProDevs The grind: Bootstrapped in a boom Launching a recruitment platform in 2020 was either perfect or terrible timing, depending on how you looked at it. The pandemic had just hit. Remote work was suddenly viable. Every other founder with a laptop was promising to connect Nigerian developers to dollar-paying jobs abroad. The space was crowded. “There were a lot of companies promising they would put people in dollar jobs,” Nwogbo says. “The space was saturated.” But Nwogbo and Dike had advantages that others didn’t. They were engineers themselves—Dike was a product manager, so they could spot good talent from bad. They’d spent years in the trenches, so they understood what companies actually needed versus what they said they needed. And most importantly, they understood the economics of recruitment. “We took our time to study the market,” Nwogbo explains. “We learned really early that in recruitment, different clients are different strokes.” But then there was outsourcing, the monthly revenue stream that kept the lights on. “Outsourcing is typically monthly,” Nwogbo says. “You’re generally making money on a monthly basis.” Their first client was INITS. Their first placement was a developer from Imo or Owerri, Nwogbo’s memory is hazy on the exact city, who got relocated to Lagos to work with Interswitch. That developer became proof of concept. If they could find one person and change their life, they could find more. By the end of 2020, ProDevs had generated ₦20 million in revenue, which was not bad for a bootstrapped startup. But the real test wasn’t revenue; it was trust. Day 500: The trust tax Building a recruitment platform in Nigeria, the founders soon found, comes at a cost. “When we started going into the international space, one of the things people would ask is: why should I trust anything coming out of Africa?” Nwogbo says. “The whole Nigerian fraud thing was in the news, and people are like, why should I trust that you would get me talent that will not jeopardize my code or do something dubious in my business?” It’s the invisible barrier African startups pay at the border: every deal starts from a deficit of trust, and you have to earn your way back to zero before you can even begin to sell. ProDevs handled it the only way you can, by being obsessive about quality. They built a multi-stage vetting process that was, by Nwogbo’s own admission, almost painfully thorough. “When a talent comes into our platform and fills out all the information, we have a team that vets,” Nwogbo explains. “We check their CVs, LinkedIn profiles, GitHub profiles. For designers,
Read MoreDigital Nomads: Mark Irozuru left Nigeria to chase stability. Now he’s building it into Bitcoin
Every digital product we use, from mobile banking to newer emerging technologies like blockchain, depends on a quiet layer of work we rarely see. Servers hum, code runs, networks talk to each other, and everything stays alive because someone makes sure it does. In Slough, a town west of London, UK, one of those people is Mark Irozuru, who leads the DevOps team at Botanix Labs, a blockchain research company building a new network on top of Bitcoin. “DevOps is about keeping things stable,” said Irozuru. “You only notice us when something breaks.” Irozuru spends his days making sure the systems that move money and data stay reliable. He and his team maintain the invisible infrastructure that powers Botanix’s Layer 2 blockchain—a network that allows people to send Bitcoin faster and use it for more than storing value. At first, his work sounds abstract; he’s plumbing data and optimising code pipelines, completing blockchain and validator audits, and ensuring uptime. But underneath it is a craft built on discipline, precision, and patience, to build a highly technical product he believes will “change the game” for millions of users. Get The Best African Tech Newsletters In Your Inbox Select your country Nigeria Ghana Kenya South Africa Egypt Morocco Tunisia Algeria Libya Sudan Ethiopia Somalia Djibouti Eritrea Uganda Tanzania Rwanda Burundi Democratic Republic of the Congo Republic of the Congo Central African Republic Chad Cameroon Gabon Equatorial Guinea São Tomé and Príncipe Angola Zambia Zimbabwe Botswana Namibia Lesotho Eswatini Mozambique Madagascar Mauritius Seychelles Comoros Cape Verde Guinea-Bissau Senegal The Gambia Guinea Sierra Leone Liberia Côte d’Ivoire Burkina Faso Mali Niger Benin Togo Other Select your gender Male Female Others TC Daily TC Events TC Scoop Subscribe Finding a path in Web3 Irozuru relocated to the UK in 2022 through the study route. Before then, he lived in Nigeria and worked remotely as a DevOps engineer at a crypto startup. Life was predictable: morning workouts, long hours of code, power cuts, and calls across time zones. He liked the rhythm, but over time, a mix of safety worries and a sense that he had reached a ceiling in his career nudged him to look abroad. He chose the UK, where he studied cybersecurity at Bournemouth University. The move gave him a window into how global tech teams operate. “London’s tech community is one of the best in the world,” said Irozuru. “The structure, the network, the speed. It forces you to grow.” His path into blockchain had begun a few years earlier, through mentorship. He reached out to a senior engineer on LinkedIn, asking for guidance. That connection led him to a DevOps-as-a-Service company that supplied engineers to startups across the world. One of those clients was a Web3 company experimenting with smart contracts and decentralised finance (DeFi). “I was one of the first engineers to work directly under the CTO,” he said. “That project opened my eyes to how much the internet was changing.” It was his first taste of blockchain infrastructure, a field that blends finance, cryptography, and engineering, where, as he puts it, the next frontier of tech is to build trust. As a DevOps engineer, his mission-critical task is to ensure Botanix, the layer 2 blockchain network being built by Botanix Labs, never has downtime. If it does, trust evaporates, especially at its early stages of development. Building systems that never sleep At Botanix Labs, Irozuru helps build a Layer 2 blockchain network on Bitcoin, which is designed to make transactions faster and to allow developers to build decentralised financial tools. To understand how it works, imagine Bitcoin as a highway. It’s secure, but slow. Botanix’s Layer 2 is like an express lane built above it, one that moves faster but still connects back to the main road when needed. The network runs on a system of independent computers called validators, said Irozuru. Each validator keeps a copy of the blockchain and checks that every transaction is legitimate. Together, they maintain a shared, unbreakable record of truth. “Validators are like referees,” said Irozuru. “They make sure no one cheats and that every action is verified.” His daily routine, he describes, starts with the gym, then breakfast, and then a stretch of technical work that can last all day. His team is scattered across Europe, Asia, and the United States, so collaboration is constant. “I might be on a call at 3 a.m. with a validator in Singapore,” he said. “You learn to balance your energy because the system never stops. It has to keep running.” In July, he led the Botanix mainnet launch—the live rollout of the blockchain network to users. It took months of testing, security checks, and coordination with 16 global validator partners, including mining operators in China and Europe. “The auditing was intense,” he said. “We had to go through every partner’s security record, make sure their systems had never been compromised. It was weeks of sleepless nights.” The launch was flawless. The network has maintained 100% uptime, and Irozuru calls it his proudest achievement. “It’s beautiful when you see everything running perfectly,” he said. “You realise all the invisible hours mattered.” For him, DevOps is about anticipating them and preventing chaos before it starts. “People think DevOps is about firefighting,” he said. “It’s actually about engineering calmness. You design stability. You make things boring in a good way.” Get The Best African Tech Newsletters In Your Inbox Select your country Nigeria Ghana Kenya South Africa Egypt Morocco Tunisia Algeria Libya Sudan Ethiopia Somalia Djibouti Eritrea Uganda Tanzania Rwanda Burundi Democratic Republic of the Congo Republic of the Congo Central African Republic Chad Cameroon Gabon Equatorial Guinea São Tomé and Príncipe Angola Zambia Zimbabwe Botswana Namibia Lesotho Eswatini Mozambique Madagascar Mauritius Seychelles Comoros Cape Verde Guinea-Bissau Senegal The Gambia Guinea Sierra Leone Liberia Côte d’Ivoire Burkina Faso Mali Niger Benin Togo Other Select your gender Male Female Others TC Daily TC Events TC Scoop Subscribe Competing in the global Web3 DevOps market Working in the UK
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