A revamped Showmax begins its march to 50 million subscribers with a branding masterclass
Editor’s note: For the best viewing experience, click the half-moon icon ☾ at the top right corner of the page to switch to dark mode. Weeks after Amazon Prime beat a hasty retreat from Africa, Showmax, the streaming service majorly owned by MultiChoice, presented a spectacle that shows how much it is betting the house on African streaming. For four days in the first week of February, the Showmax team went to great lengths to show its guests—journalists whose stock in trade is skepticism—who were in Johannesburg for a grand launch, how much it believes in its ability to crack Subscription Video On Demand (SVOD) in Africa. The grand launch of the revamped Showmax For months, the company has talked up Showmax 2.0, its second iteration, the new technology that underpins the new app, the partnerships it believes will serve as a competitive advantage, and its unique understanding of the African market. A fun game would be taking a shot whenever a Showmax executive mentions their unique understanding of the African market. First review of the new Showmax: A big leap forward with content & UI But this is not a game. Instead, last week was the final stretch before it migrates all of the data from the old app on February 12. It was about celebrating the sheer amount of work that has gone into this moment: the beginning of what the company hopes will be a long march into dominating and making a solid business of African video streaming. L to R: Event compere, Andrea Zappia and Calvo Mawela Showmax, which started as an idea three years ago, wants to attract 50 million paying subscribers in five years—a fifth of Netflix’s 260 million subscribers in Q4 2023. However, all markets are not created equal, and 50 million African subscribers in the SVOD market is ambitious. A mix of a startup mentality and riding the coattails of an established parent business will be critical for success. The Showmax grand launch “We’re over here because we began as a startup, and we wanted that startup mentality. We wanted to begin without the guidance of our parent company,” said a member of the company’s marketing team, explaining why the Showmax office sits in the corner of the MultiChoice campus, away from the rest of the main building. Showmax’s office is quirky and has all the clichés of a fashionable startup office in the middle of a big launch: whiteboards in spaces designated as war rooms, employees hunched over big screens, drinking too much coffee and looking stressed, and a Lego board the design team uses to destress.“We had more than three meetings every day,” one person tells me, explaining the pace of work in the lead-up to the launch party. Everything had to be right. As launches go, Showmax pulled off a masterclass in branding, with its colourful X logo prominent. The stars of some of its original shows, like Wura, The Real Housewives of Abuja, Spinners, and Adulting, were on hand, and the team created experience booths for those shows. Despite the entertainment, the conversations were serious, and the theme was Showmax’s plan to become the king of African streaming. While most tech publications would call it a bet, Andrea Zappia, the former Sky executive recently named chairman of the Showmax, disagrees. “This is a logical investment,” he told an excited crowd of about 400 people at the MultiChoice dome, the venue of the launch, on Tuesday evening. Alongside Calvo Mawela, the group CEO of MultiChoice, the pair discussed some behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing that made this iteration of Showmax possible. “It took a lot of convincing for these partners (Comcast, NBCU) to make their first investment in Africa,” said Mawela, referring to NBCU’s 30% equity investment in the streaming company. The conversations began in 2020 and were slowed down by the pandemic, but now everything is in place. Technology, check. Important partnerships, check. Extensive investment, check. Passion, check. Now the race is on for MultiChoice, a publicly listed company, to show its shareholders that it can pull off this bold bet. And if it’s feeling any pressure from Canal+ breathing down its neck, the company’s executives and employees didn’t show it. Just before the party started, Mawela told the crowd, “Showmax and streaming are not just a project, it’s a passion.” But passion doesn’t pay any bills. The company has set its own goals publicly, and now we must measure success or failure by its ability to capture 50 million paying subscribers by 2029. The journey starts now.
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What is it like to build a tech ecosystem in Nigeria outside the country’s tech capital?
Editor’s note: For the best viewing experience, click the half-moon icon ☾ at the top right of the page to switch to dark mode. Sanusi Ismaila moved from Lagos to Kaduna in 2014 to set up a technology hub that trained people to solve real-world problems. He believed it was essential to inspire and cultivate tech ecosystems outside of Lagos because local issues need to be solved by locals who understand the nuances. After a while, he ran into his first problem: no talent pipeline to sustain startups nationwide. So, he went one step backward on the value chain to produce the talent needed to build high-quality products and startups. In 2016, Ismaila launched CoLab, and it became Kaduna’s first tech hub and the second in northern Nigeria. Today, CoLab is a community for those building tech careers and dreamers looking to connect and learn from each other. CoLab Lagos is to the Nigerian tech ecosystem what Silicon Valley is to the North American ecosystem. Yet, unlike the United States, where other states like New York, Seattle and Chicago still have thriving ecosystems that complement Silicon Valley, tech ecosystems outside Lagos struggle to build their identities or grab significant attention from stakeholders. As a result, some of the best tech talents from these regions frequently feel the need to migrate to more viable regions to attract better opportunities. After a brief conversation with these men, he discovered they were CoLab members; the following month, he signed up to learn data analytics. Six years on, he now works at AltSchool and is the director of people and head of data science programs at CoLab while still living in Kaduna. What started as a small community of young people wearing hoodies and sitting around with used HP laptops has become one of northern Nigeria’s biggest tech talent pipelines. CoLab has over a thousand alumni, with some collaborating to build startups like Sudo Africa and others working in organisations like Paystack, Microsoft, and Google. The community became such a force that in May 2022, the Kaduna State Governor, Nasir ElRufai, provided them with seven hectares of land to set up a campus and train even more tech talents. Image via Benjamin Dada Excel Ajah, who built writersgig, an online platform for freelance writers, has struggled with finding tech talent, and he believes that this is a significant contributing factor to the slow growth of the tech ecosystems in the East. “Because ecosystems like Lagos are more advanced, it’s easier to find people who can do exactly what you want,” he shared. The tech ecosystem in Imo State is in its earliest stages and didn’t begin to take shape until 2020. According to Ajah, its inception can be traced to when he and a couple of people started hanging out in public facilities to work and discuss other tech ecosystems like Lagos. In no time, they attempted to replicate these communities and events they saw in Lagos and soon organised The Owerri Business Week and Social Media Fest, which attracted a lot of attention and have become annual events. SM Fest, for the Owerri tech ecosystem While still running writersgig, Ajah launched Silicon Africa, a tech innovation centre dubbed after its counterpart in San Francisco. With a new company came hiring needs, which was where he encountered his first challenge. Scarcity of talent. It was difficult for Ajah to find strong developers in the region to work for his company, so he began training them instead. “Some of the early developers I hired still work with me and are now senior developers who now train other early-stage developers in the centre,” he shared. “This has been interesting to watch because it has become a cycle, and those they train now train others.” For Chidi Duru, another founder who operates from Owerri, the problem of the ecosystem in Imo precedes a scarcity of talent. For him, it’s a lack of interest in learning tech skills driven by the popularity of internet fraud in the region, especially in the past years. Duru’s tech hub, CodeAnt, provides coding classes to young people with support from Google, but it is still difficult to convince young people to focus on learning tech skills. As a founder, building from Owerri limits him from a network of people who understand what he’s building. Recently, in Lagos, he walked around at a centre wearing a CodeAnt hoodie merch and had a couple walk up to him to discuss the classes and company. “This has never happened in all the years I’ve been wearing our merch in Owerri,” he shared while laughing. “I even contemplated moving to Lagos for some minutes.” While it’s a lot of work, Duru says that he’s committed to putting in the work to ensure that aspiring tech talents in Owerri have a space that’s dedicated to their growth and learning. So far, they’ve trained about a thousand young people with coding and digital marketing skills. The CodeAnt primary team who are working to develop a tech ecosystem in Owerri Beyond a talent pipeline, Lagos has a more structured ecosystem that encompasses the talent, the investors to fund these ideas, and the media to tell stories about said ideas. In newer ecosystems like Imo, for example, securing avenues to tell their stories on the centre stage can be difficult. Most tech media is focused on more vibrant ecosystems like Lagos, which makes getting their attention “a bit challenging,” in the words of Duru. During a fireside chat in January, Sim Shagaya, the founder of u-lesson and Miva, both Abuja-based ed techs, shared that one of the reasons why tech ecosystems outside Lagos have struggled is a lack of structured institutions in these regions. Before the rise of the tech industry in Lagos, it was already home to tertiary institutions like The University of Lagos, Lagos State University other private and open universities, providing it with a high mass of young people from these institutions to feed into the
Read MoreWelcome to TechCabal Weekend Features!
More than being a global pop star, The Weekend is the time we use to catch up on all the shows that our pesky jobs don’t allow us to watch during the weekday. It’s also for reading delightful articles that make you sigh joyfully while sipping coffee/orange juice/beer/wine. Because, let’s face it, you’re really not going to read that article you bookmarked on Monday about understanding the intricacies of the Russian-Ukraine war. So this weekend, we’re bringing you two articles we guarantee will spark joy. The first is about what it’s like to build a tech company outside of Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital. It might not be something you often think about, but like Nigerian music, it’s difficult to “blow” outside Lagos. We spoke to three people building in Kaduna and Imo, and the story is worth every minute of your weekend. Read the story here. Our second delightful story for your weekend is from our newsroom editor, who abandoned us visited Johannesburg last week for the grand launch of the new Showmax. Pros of reading this article: Helping me meet my KPIs pictures of the MultiChoice office and also, paragraphs like this: For four days in the first week of February, the Showmax team went to great lengths to show its guests—journalists whose stock in trade is skepticism—who were in Johannesburg for a grand launch, how much it believes in its ability to crack Subscription Video On Demand (SVOD) in Africa. Read the story here. Here’s what you can expect from future editions of TechCabal’s Weekend Features: Long-form content: These aren’t your bite-sized news stories; these Weekend Features will include well-researched, long-form stories that promise to keep you engaged for the weekend. Finding hidden gems: Learn more about the startups tackling the continent’s challenges in ways you never thought possible. Going beyond the hype: Dive deep into the intricacies and social impact of emerging technologies. Meeting the masterminds: Get exclusive insights from the incredible people driving the ecosystem forward, especially the underdogs. TC’s Weekend Features is more than just reading; it’s an experience. We promise to keep you busy and interested with visually compelling storytelling, weaving together data, personal narratives, and expert opinions to create stories that inform, inspire, and entertain. Join us every Saturday as we explore untold stories that fuel Africa’s tech revolution in visually engaging ways.
Read MoreWasoko merger fallout: employees claim startup hid deal for six months
Wasoko, a Kenyan e-commerce platform, did not share its merger plans with Egypt’s MaxAB with employees for over six months, fearing that leaks could scuttle the transaction, two former employees told TechCabal. The merger is expected to be completed by the end of March 2024. The B2B e-commerce startup, which was founded in 2013 and raised over $140 million from investors like 4DX Ventures and Avenir Growth Capital, first told employees about the merger in a video call attended by the MaxAB executives in early December 2023, the same month the deal was announced. The meeting, which was not recorded, surprised many employees, although some had figured out there were plans for a merger and eventual redundancies. On January 15, Wasoko laid off over 100 employees across engineering, product, and business intelligence departments in Kenya and India. Following the layoffs, nine employees sued Wasoko, claiming they were unfairly fired. They argued the company did not give them sufficient time to prepare for their exit and that while Wasoko said it would follow local labour laws during the layoffs, it was a way out of paying them sufficient severance. The severance package compensated employees based on how long they had worked with the company, how many leave days they had accrued, and the number of days left before their January 15th exit. The former employees told a court that the severance package favoured those who had been with Wasoko for an extended period. Wasoko and MaxAB say merger will create a clear e-commerce leader with tens of millions of runway The court has blocked Wasoko from firing the nine employees. Other employees said they had taken bank loans, believing their work with the e-commerce platform was secure. Wasoko said it would discuss the matter with its banker, Standard Chartered, and ease repayment for six months, said one former employee. It also promised to provide health insurance coverage until March 2024. Exclusive: Flutterwave gets court order to recover $24 million lost to unauthorized POS transactions “We initiated notice of intention to declare redundancies for a portion of our staff on December 5, 2023 as previously announced.” Wasoko said in a statement to TechCabal. “Impacted employees were provided with the legally mandated period of notice and are receiving the required severance packages as stipulated by applicable employment law.” However, the company declined to comment on specific claims since the matter is already in court. Following the lawsuit, Wasoko has prepared an exit document barring employees from suing the company after receiving their exit packages, one person told TechCabal. The case will be heard in court on February 13th.
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👨🏿🚀TechCabal Daily – Leatherback’s pushback
In partnership with Share this newsletter: Lire en Français اقرأ هذا باللغة العربية TGIF Tomorrow, TechCabal will be launching a new weekend series. For our audience who enjoy long-form feature articles, we promise to hook you up. Every Saturday, we will publish one story to keep you engaged during the weekend across a variety of topics. If you want to get tomorrow’s edition, sign up to TC Scoops and we’ll send you an alert as soon as it’s published. In today’s edition Flutterwave moves to recover lost $24 million Leatherback CEO sues EFCC after “defamation” incident Kenya has a new AI bill Ethiopia will ban non-electric cars Funding tracker The World Wide Web3 Opportunities Cybercrime Flutterwave to recover $24 million lost to unauthorised POS transactions Last month, we wrote about financial institutions coming together to fight fraud. Our exclusive today will tell you why they have good reason to. African fintech giant Flutterwave is seeking to retrieve $24 million illegally transferred in October 2023 through a combination of a “technical glitch” and potentially fraudulent activity by POS merchants. Following a High Court ruling on February 1, the fintech company will reach out to over 6,000 account holders across 35 banks and financial institutions involved in the unauthorised transactions. The incident: On October 10 2023, a technical issue caused unauthorised transfers from a Flutterwave client to over 6,000 accounts across 35 banks and fintechs. Flutterwave quickly alerted the institutions, temporarily suspended the affected accounts to prevent further losses, and offered the institutions indemnity for reversing the transfers. Now, a recent High Court ruling will allow Flutterwave to contact account holders via email, SMS, and WhatsApp messages, with assistance from a recovery agency to recover the funds, according to court documents KYC in focus: Amidst increasing fraud attempts in Nigeria’s financial sector, the Central Bank of Nigeria has mandated stricter KYC measures. These require customers’ Bank Verification Number (BVN) or National Identification Number (NIN) for account opening by March 2024, alongside plans to introduce new security features on Point of Sale (PoS) terminals. The success of Flutterwave’s fund recovery efforts hinges on accurate customer information held by banks and fintechs, highlighting the importance of robust KYC protocols. Access payments with Moniepoint Moniepoint has made it simple for your business to access payments while providing access to credit and other business tools. Open an account today here. Fintech Leatherback CEO sues EFCC for defamation After three months of turmoil, Ibrahim Ibitade, CEO of Leatherback, a cross-border payments startup that operates in seven countries, has successfully cleared his name following an intense episode with Nigeria’s anti-graft agency, the EFCC. Ibitade deemed the EFCC’s actions “bullying” and is now seeking accountability for the agency’s lack of due diligence. Here’s what happened: In September 2023, rumours were circulating that Leatherback lost money to SDQ Facilitators—an unregulated Nigerian currency trading company. Leatherback denied the rumours, but an EFCC investigation into SDQ Financials was launched. The investigation revealed that SDQ used Leatherback’s naira and USD wallets, but Leatherback claims they were unaware of any fraudulent activity. Subsequently, in November 2023, the EFCC declared Ibitade wanted for allegedly conspiring to obtain money under false pretence and posted a now-deleted photo of him on their Instagram page. CEO fights back: In November, Ibitade denied that he was hiding from the EFCC and has now stated that he has been cleared of any wrongdoing. The agency deleted their Instagram post of Ibitade after two petitions from Leatherback, and now, the payments company is suing the EFCC for defamation and wants them held accountable for their actions. Leatherback says it will continue its trajectory towards success, as the company claims it processed $500 million in monthly transactions by June 2023 and was nearing the $1 billion mark before the EFCC episode. Secure payment gateway for your business Fincra’s payment gateway enables you to easily collect Naira payments as a business; you can collect payments in minutes through bank transfers, cards, virtual accounts and mobile money. Create a free account and start collecting NGN payments with Fincra. Regulation Kenya to penalise unregistered AI firms with $6,250 fine Kenya, a nation at the forefront of African tech advancement, has proposed an AI and robotics law that includes fines of up to $6,250 for unlicensed businesses. The Kenya Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Society Bill 2023 introduced the fine to regulate and support the growing sector. The bill also outlines the establishment of the Robotics Society of Kenya (RSK), a proposed regulatory body empowered to issue licences and levy the $6,250 fine on unlicensed businesses. Failure to comply could even land offenders in jail for two years. This body will also advise the government on emerging trends in AI and robotics. Innovation booster or tax grab? The proposal has sparked discussions among AI enthusiasts and advocates, who view the law as a “severe threat to innovation and growth” and believe that it is merely another avenue for the government to create unnecessary bureaucracy and generate revenue. This isn’t the first time Kenya has faced such criticism. In 2022, a similar proposal to regulate ICT professionals was shot down by the then-president, Uhuru Kenyatta, after it faced immense pushback for creating excessive hurdles and stifling freelance work in a sector already struggling with a talent shortage. AI in Africa: The AI sector is growing across Africa. Of the 2,400 AI companies on the continent, as of 2022, 40% were established in the previous five years. If Africa captures even 10% of the global AI market, analysts predict a staggering $1.5 trillion boost to its GDP by 2030. For other African countries, Mauritius was the first country in Africa to publish a national AI strategy in 2020. In 2021, Egypt launched its national AI strategy to deepen the use of AI technologies and transform the economy. In 2023, the Nigerian government invited global AI researchers of Nigerian descent to collaborate on the national AI strategy. Mobility Ethiopia to ban importation of non-electric cars Ethiopia is making headlines
Read MoreBreaking: NCC withdraws disconnection notice on Glo after N2bn interest payment to MTN
The Nigerian Communications Commission has lifted a disconnection notice placed on Globacom after it reached an interest payment agreement with MTN Nigeria. Both telcos ended a 15-year-long dispute over interconnection fees after MTN agreed to accept N2 billion in interest payments instead of the original sum of N3 billion, TechCabal exclusively reported this week. Globacom had initially paid N1.6 billion as the principal debt but had disputed the interest accrued on the debt, a source close to the matter told TechCabal. This prompted the NCC to set a timeline of 21 days for both parties to agree on the interest amount and when it would be paid. The NCC intervened to prevent any possible disruptions to the over 61 million subscribers on the Globacom network. “The Commission reiterates that strict adherence to the terms and conditions of licenses, particularly those delineated in interconnection agreements, is imperative for all Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) and other licensees within the telecommunications industry,” said the NCC statement. Henceforth, mobile network operators must submit records and regular updates regarding interconnectivity to the NCC. The commission also said it would adopt a transparent approach towards industry indebtedness.
Read MoreExclusive: Flutterwave gets court order to recover $24 million lost to unauthorized POS transactions
Flutterwave, Africa’s most valuable startup, will contact over 6,000 account holders across 35 banks and financial institutions to recover ₦19 billion (*$24 million) illegally transferred by POS merchants after a High Court ruling on February 1. “In 2023, we discovered that certain POS device merchants abused their access by conducting unauthorized transactions. In response to this, we temporarily suspended the accounts where funds were improperly transferred,” Flutterwave said in a statement to TechCabal. The company insists that no customer funds were lost. The February order —a Mareva injunction— lets Flutterwave recover the funds and assets of the identified account holders, which is crucial because the account holders may have spent the funds received in October 2023. “We continue to actively engage with the relevant authorities to investigate and address the situation,” Flutterwave added. An earlier court order placed debit restrictions on those accounts two months after the incident, court documents obtained by TechCabal show. Per the most recent order granted on February 1, 2024, 35 financial institutions, including Opay, Paga, Palmpay, Access Bank, VFD Bank, Zenith, Polaris and Providus Bank, must share the email addresses and telephone numbers of the account holders. Flutterwave will contact the over 6,000 account holders “through their respective email addresses and by SMS and Whatsapp messages to their respective telephone numbers,” per court documents seen by TechCabal. The fintech company may use a recovery agency for this, a lawyer familiar with similar processes told TechCabal. A timeline of the incident “On 10th October 2023, there was a technical glitch in our client’s operating system, which resulted in funds being automatically transferred to the bank accounts of customers listed in Schedule A of this memorandum,” a letter from Flutterwave’s lawyers said. Immediately after the “technical glitch” was discovered, Flutterwave contacted the bank and fintechs, notifying them of the glitch and the resulting erroneous funds transfers. “The merchants listed did not provide any service to our client and were not entitled to funds that were erroneously transferred and have continued to keep said funds,” the letter from Flutterwave’s lawyers added. Flutterwave also offered indemnity to the banks if they reversed the erroneous transfers. Typically, a reversal request would require the receiving bank to also go to court to seek further approval. Flutterwave incident highlights the importance of KYC The success of Flutterwave’s recovery efforts will depend on financial institutions like Opay, Palmpay and Moniepoint having accurate customer information. It also relies on banks having up-to-date information on their customers. However, recent fraud incidents show this may not always be true. Neobanks, in a drive to boost financial inclusion, have popularised easy-to-open accounts with lax KYC requirements, and traditional banks do not necessarily have accurate information either. For instance, customers are not mandated to tell their banks when they change addresses, emails or phone numbers. These KYC troubles are happening while there’s also a significant rise in fraud attempts in Nigeria’s financial services industry, and traditional banks have placed the blame on the neobanks. Fidelity Bank, a commercial bank that holds ₦3.1 trillion ($2.1 billion) in customer deposits, blocked transfers to several neobanks over concerns that neobank wallets and accounts were an easy way to move monies that had been fraudulently obtained, TechCabal reported in October. In December, the Central Bank of Nigeria mandated all financial institutions to implement stricter Know Your Customer (KYC) measures, requiring all customers to provide their bank verification number (BVN) or a national identification number (NIN) for account or wallet opening by March 2024. *Additional reporting by Ngozi Chukwu * The exchange rate in October 2023 was $1 = ₦789 Customers report frozen accounts over illegal transfers from Flutterwave Exclusive: Flutterwave denies being breached for a second and third time even as it pursues legal action to recover funds
Read MoreAirtel Africa pushes infrastructure expansion with investments in 2Africa cable and IHS
Airtel’s plans to significantly boost its telecom infrastructure across the continent to grow its market share see the company investing in Meta’s submarine cable and strengthening old partnerships. After seeing a 1.4% revenue decline within nine months in the connectivity business, Airtel Africa is pushing to correct this trend by entering into infrastructure expansion collaborations with companies like IHS Towers and investing in the 2Africa cable network system. The deal with IHS Towers allows Airtel Africa, through its subsidiary Airtel Nigeria, to take 3,950 tenancies over the next five years. Airtel Africa also extended the term of its existing tenancies covering approximately 6,000 tenancies until December 2031. The agreement includes 2,500 collocations in addition to 5G amendments and build-to-suit sites to be owned and operated by IHS Nigeria. Taking tenancy at a tower site is part of the strategies telecom operators use to curtail or reduce the cost of operating the business. Also, telcos that own tower sites often deal with tower companies like IHS or American Tower Company to lease and manage them. For example, MTN Nigeria is the biggest client IHS has. “Airtel Nigeria, as well as Airtel Africa we serve in other markets in Africa, has been a long-term partner of IHS, and I am delighted that we continue to strengthen our collaboration to help facilitate mobile connectivity in our largest market, supporting our customers in rolling out new sites throughout Nigeria,” said Sam Darwish, chairman and CEO, IHS Towers. The telco has also launched Telesonic Limited, a subsidiary that will use Airtel’s ground fibre assets and submarine cable systems to meet the growing demand for wholesale data in Africa. The subsidiary will offer comprehensive terrestrial fibre and submarine cable solutions. Apart from managing Airtel’s extensive fibre network (75,000km of terrestrial fibre) across the continent, Telesonic has also invested in Meta’s 2Africa submarine cable system. 2Africa is one of the largest submarine cables interconnecting 33 countries in Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. The 45,000km cable was landed in Accra, Ghana and Lagos, Nigeria this January by the Bayobab Group, marking the third and fourth in a series of six landings from the 2Africa subsea cable system. 2Africa’s successful landing in Lagos brings the number of submarine cables to eight that have so far landed in Nigeria. “No doubt, Africa is experiencing a digital revolution, with surging demand for data centres across various sectors, especially by the continent’s growing youth population. With robust and scalable infrastructure, we aim to bridge the digital divide and unlock opportunities for innovation and economic growth. Our investment signifies not just a technological advancement but also a catalyst for progress, connecting people and ideas across borders,” said Segun Ogunsanya, Group CEO, Airtel Africa. Airtel is also concluding plans to break ground on its mega data centre, known as Nxtra, in Lagos, Nigeria in March. The facility will be designed to host high-density racks and integrate the latest practice construction to achieve a 1.3 power usage effectiveness (PUE). The data centre which will go live in mid-2025 will also deliver 34 megawatts of total power, making it the first of its kind in Nigeria. Airtel told TechCabal that the data centre will be industry-agnostic, hence any company from any sector can host their data in the facility.
Read MoreKenya’s AI and robotics bill proposes a $6,250 fine for unregistered entities
Per experts, the proposed AI and robotics law is an avenue for the Kenyan government to introduce more taxes to the people. The Kenya Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Society Bill 2023 seeks to introduce fines of up to KES 1 million ($6,250 according to the current exchange rate), a prison sentence of up to two years, or both on unlicensed entities operating robotic and AI businesses if they fail to register their organisations with the Robotics Society of Kenya (RSK). Part of the bill reads, “The Society may grant the licence applied for subject to such terms and conditions as the county executive committee member shall consider appropriate.” It adds, “A person who contravenes the provisions of (the section) commits an offence and is liable, on conviction, to a fine not exceeding one million shillings.” The RSK is a proposed body that will oversee and support the growth of the robotics and AI sector by creating rules and guidelines with other authorities. It will also ensure that companies follow these rules and provide advice to the government on new trends in AI and robotics. The proposal, introduced to lawmakers in parliament in November 2023, has been controversial and has attracted heated discussions among AI enthusiasts and advocates in the country. According to AI Kenya, an initiative that seeks to democratise and support the growth of data science and robotics in the country, the bill poses a “severe threat to innovation and growth of the vibrant tech ecosystem”. Elizabeth Mutua, a lecturer at Dedan Kimathi University of Science and Technology, said that the proposal is another avenue for the government to create new offices and taxes without proper AI legislation. “We need a proper law to regulate AI and emerging technologies,” she told Business Daily. The bill is akin to the shelved ICT practitioners bill that parliament passed in June 2022. Then-president, Uhuru Kenyatta, declined to sign the bill into law after multiple complaints from the ICT industry since it created obstacles in a field that lacked enough skilled workers and added expensive bureaucracy for freelance ICT workers. The proposed law further blocked self-taught people from offering ICT services, which could then stifle innovation. The bill suggested that ICT professionals in the field must have a degree to work. The bill sought to create an institute to register and licence ICT professionals, approve their education, and conduct exams. It also set a minimum qualifications for certification; otherwise, they would not be able to work.
Read MoreLeatherback CEO Ibrahim Ibitade sues EFCC for defamation after he was wrongly declared wanted
Ibrahim Ibitade, the CEO of Leatherback, a cross-border payments startup that operates in seven countries, is suing Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for defamation after the agency declared him wanted three months ago without “conducting due diligence.” In November 2023, the antigraft agency declared Ibitade wanted for allegedly conspiring to obtain money under false pretense. An Instagram post of Ibitade on EFCC’s official handle has now been deleted after two petitions from Leatherback. “We have instituted an action against the EFCC, and we are already in court for defamation of character,” Ibitade told TechCabal. Ibitade characterised the EFCC’s action as “bullying” and an attempt to see if his company would roll over, and he asked that the anti-graft agency be made to answer for their actions. “There have to be consequences because it almost put a dent in what we are building at Leatherback over the last five years,” he added. A spokesperson for the EFCC declined to comment. From zero to N15 Trillion in transactions: Hydrogen’s plans for Nigeria’s bustling payments space SDQ Financials and an EFCC investigation The company originally at the heart of the EFCC’s investigation was SDQ Financials, an unregulated entity that lost billions in client funds in questionable FX deals. Some of those funds were received using Leatherback’s service. The fintech startup has repeatedly insisted that while SDQ Financials used its Naira and USD wallets, it did not know about the alleged fraudulent deals. Exclusive: How Float’s lucrative but risky FX trades led to ₦5 billion in losses While Ibitade didn’t offer details about the amount the EFCC is trying to recover from SDQ Financials, he believes some of the funds in the question may no longer be recoverable because of the way the EFCC went after him instead of following the money trail. While the EFCC incident was unpleasant for the company, Ibitade is already looking forward and remains bullish on the Nigerian market. “We have gone through the phase with the EFCC, and at no point did we shut down our business. As a global business, we did not structure ourselves in a way one country would pull our business down. At the same time, Nigeria is significant for us,” Ibitade added. Leatherback says it processed $500 million in monthly transactions by June 2023 and was nearing the $1 billion mark before the EFCC episode.
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