As Africa’s struggling currencies hinder growth, should startups fundraise in local currencies?
For African startups that raised funds in foreign currencies, rising inflation and currency devaluation have affected how they report revenue to investors. Can raising funds in local currencies help reduce the effect? A reversal of fortune—that’s one way to describe the state of VC funding in the African startup ecosystem in 2023. After seven years of exponential growth, 2023 is the year of the bear, and African startups have raised only $1.6 billion year-to-date. As VC firms, once eager to write cheques, are pumping the brakes, African startups also have to deal with inflation and currency devaluation. Last week, Jumia blamed a 15% revenue decline on currency devaluation in nine of its ten African markets. The past decade has seen African startups attract unprecedented funding from foreign investors. Per Partech, VC funding on the continent grew exponentially from $277 million in 2015 to $6.5 billion in 2022, representing 2,246% growth in seven years. Like Jumia, many other African startups report their revenues in dollar terms, and as currency devaluations happen, it produces a paradox where revenues dwindle even as their businesses are growing. In Nigeria, for instance, a company with N100 million in revenues would have reported $216,450 in January 2023. Today’s exchange rate will mean it will now report $110,987 for the same Naira revenue. “We have five portfolio companies in Nigeria, so we understand how inflation can reduce our overall returns because of the conversion rates,” Efayomi Carr, the principal at Flourish Ventures, told TechCabal. Image Source: Faith Omoniyi/TechCabal The Egyptian pound has lost 50% of its value against the dollar since February 2022. In Nigeria, the Naira has lost 67% of its value against the dollar since June. To work around this peculiar FX and revenue problem, some investors believe startups should be raising funds in local currencies rather than dollars. Startups that raise funding in local currency would have an easier time returning investments to their investors. “A key part of all entrepreneurial ecosystems is actually building significant domestic investment for startups,” Bolaji Balogun, the CEO of Chapel Hill Denham, a Lagos-based investment bank, told TechCabal. He added that startups that earn in local currency but raise foreign capital are often evaluated by foreign investors in dollar terms, which is not always reflective of their actual progress because of currency devaluation. Startups seek out dollar-backed investments for two main reasons: because they incur some costs in dollars and a shortage of available local capital for later-stage rounds. But there’s an extra incentive for raising in dollars: it exposes startups to a global pool of investors for follow-on funding and exit opportunities. “In Ethiopia, businesses have to raise local capital because they have strict currency controls. As a result, Ethiopia has a small venture capital industry because it can’t attract external capital. There’s not enough local capital to grow that ecosystem,” Carr added. Raising funds in local currency for African startups is difficult because local VCs also get capital in dollars. According to Abaz Ibekwe, a venture builder, “The local VC industry in Africa is still in its infancy, and there is a need for more key players to pump money into startup investment on the continent by funding VCs.” Adedeji Olowe, the founder of Lendsqr, a Nigerian fintech, told TechCabal that most local investors who could invest in startups with local currencies are either affected by the economic downturn or are not “sophisticated” enough to invest in startups. Balogun, however, thinks it’s a waiting game and told TechCabal that startups should find opportunities to engage with local investors to educate them on their businesses. “There is a fair amount of serious domestic investors in startups from pre-seed all the way out to Series A. From Series A and beyond, where businesses have some degree of maturity, I wouldn’t say there’s a lot of domestic capital available, but it will come. We have pension assets worth ₦16.7 trillion (over $20 billion) which can reach ₦100 trillion in 7-10 years, and some of that money will end up in more mature startups that are bottom-line profitable,” he said. However, some founders think that the currency startups raise in does not matter if African economies are still struggling. “If they [investors] give you money in dollars and your economy is doing well, you are going to be fine,” Olowe told TechCabal. He added that raising capital in foreign currencies might be more advantageous for startups to do global benchmarking, which increases their exit potential. Another reason investment in local currencies has been touted is that it reduces the ecosystem’s overreliance on capital from foreign sources. Briter Bridges said more than 74% of investors in the top 20 funding deals on the continent in 2021 came from foreign sources. Moustapha Ndoye, the CEO of Chargel, a Senegalese logistics startup, told TechCabal that startups should raise money locally, even if it’s not in African currencies, and he finds it “heartbreaking” that startups have to go to foreign investors for early-stage rounds. “It’s on startup founders to build profitable businesses with exits. This will make more people want to invest in startups,” he added. Oswald Osaretin Guobadia, a senior special assistant on digital transformation under the Buhari administration, told TechCabal that a combination of investor education from startups and creating incentives for local investors could improve the local VC scene. “In the Nigeria Startup Act, we provided incentives for investors to keep their money locally, for angel investors, and for a credit scheme if founders want to raise credit,” he said. Guobadia added that he believes there are no disadvantages to startups raising funds in local currencies. With the implementation of the Startup Act and a guarantee that startups could return dividends and enforce corporate governance, local investment could rise in Nigeria, he said. By raising capital in local currencies, startups can be better protected against external shocks and plan for the long term without constant shocks. In a dry funding environment where startups struggle to raise capital, turning to local
Read MoreAs BRICS bloc announces de-dollarisation plans, how will it impact SA startups?
With de-dollarisation a hot topic at the ongoing 15th BRICS Summit, how will the process, if effected, impact startups in South Africa? BRICS leaders, including Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa and Vladimir Putin of Russia, are outlining plans to reduce dependence on the US dollar at the 15th BRICS summit. In his speech on Wednesday, Ramaphosa stated that global payment systems, including the SWIFT system for international transfers, were continuously used in political differences and urged member countries to use local currencies to facilitate trade. “We will continue discussions on practical measures to facilitate trade and investment flows through the increased use of local currencies. This is a matter we believe further discussions need to take place, particularly between our finance ministers,” Ramaphosa said. Putin said that BRICS nations are already developing effective mechanisms for trade settlements, currency and financial control. The payment mechanism will revolve around local currencies and sideline the U.S. dollar for cross-border transactions. “We are working to fine-tune effective mechanisms for mutual settlements and monetary and financial control,” Putin said. What does de-dollarisation mean for SA startups? According to experts who spoke to TechCabal, the de-dollarisation proposal by BRICS leaders presents both opportunities and challenges for startups. On one hand, easier access to capital in regions moving away from the US dollar could attract domestic and regional investments. Tshepo Magagane, an investment banker, says that reduced dependence on the dollar could present an opportunity for local limited partners to play a more significant role in VC funds. “Institutions such as the Public Investment Corporation in South Africa [would] need to play an increasingly important role in backing LPs looking to deploy capital locally. Local currency funding for local projects remove the headache of currency risk for all concerned, ” Magagane told TechCabal. There has been an increasing participation of local LPs, especially institutional investors, in the South African VC market over the past year. In May, the SA SME Fund announced that it had secured the first close of its R1 billion (~$51 million) Venture Capital Fund of Funds (VC FoF) at R600 million (~$30 million) against an initial target of R500 million (~$25 million). For the first time, one of the LPs of the fund was a local pension fund, the Consolidated Retirement Fund, which contributed R250 million of the R600 million raised. “A lot more institutional capital is likely to come into VC and we are also very proud that we were the first to convince a pension fund to allocate capital to a VC fund. We are expecting at least one more fund, if not more, to partake in the next raise of fundraising and we are very proud of that because it is a needed development in the growth of VC in South Africa,” Ketso Gordhan, CEO of SA SME Fund, told TechCabal. Despite this potential advantage of de-dollarisation in boosting local investor participation, Magagane emphasised that the importance of the dollar to South Africa. “The EU,US and China are important trading partners for South Africa, so the country should always position their FX holding accordingly,” he added. Without using the dollar, attracting international investments from dollar markets may be hindered by currency concerns. With the Rand having nosedived against the world’s leading currencies in the last ten years, dollar-denominated investors might be weary of cutting checks for the South Africa ecosystem. Despite the increase in participation by local LPs, international LPs, especially in dollar markets, still contribute a significant amount of capital to South African VC funds. “The reason why the US capital is important, is that all savings across the world find their way into US capital markets given the liquidity, price discovery, optionality, and the extremely important idea of political security.Global companies will continue to [need to] tap into US capital pools just given how deep and varied they are,” Magagane added.”Investors are more focused on a stable currency, given that is what inserts the foreign exchange risk into their planning.” Additionally, de-dollarisation could make cross-border transactions more complex, leading to higher transaction costs and operational challenges. This is important to note for South African startups whose expansion plans usually feature entrance into dollar-leaning markets. According to Will Green, founder of Co.lab, a holding company for collaborative ventures, stated that although this could be hedged by South African startups expanding to more BRICS markets, the reality is that there is not much activity by startups in those markets. “There still isn’t much activity between the startups ecosystem of most of the BRICS nations mainly because of language and culture restrictions. Even in VC most funds in South Africa are either raised locally or in dollar markets. Until we get to a point where there is a significant amount of cross-activity between the ecosystems of these countries, in the case of de-dollarisation, it would be difficult for South African startups to scale beyond our borders,” Green told TechCabal. To address these bottlenecks, Green believes there should be consolidated efforts between the member countries to assist startups setup their presence in these markets. “BRIC nations can help fill the disparity in the VC market where at the moment, African VC activity accounts for only 1% of the global total. If I were to rank the countries by order of which South African and Africa would be most aligned with, it would be India, China, Brazil, Russia,” Green said. With the good and the bad of de-dollarisation for South African startups established, beyond just speeches at the BRICS Summit, how likely is the process to happen in the next few years? Magagane believes that it is not very likely. “This is more of a political statement than an economic or a financial one. Countries should be focusing on local capital formation and they will have functioning economies,” he concluded.
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👨🏿🚀TechCabal Daily – TikTok opens up in Kenya
In partnership with Share this newsletter: Lire en Français اقرأ هذا باللغة العربية Happy salary day As you reap the fruits of your labour today, help us reap ours by moving TC Daily to your Main/Primary folder. If you’re on desktop, drag and drop this email from Promotions to Main, and if you’re on mobile, simply click on the menu button and move to Main. In today’s edition TikTok to open office in Kenya MTN launches funeral insurance Jamit is hosting podcasts on the blockchain Funding tracker The World Wide Web3 Event: The Moonshot Conference Job openings Social Media TikTok to set up Kenyan office for content moderation TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew and President William Ruto. Image source: Pulse Kenya TikTok has bought more time for itself in Kenya. Yesterday, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew met with the Kenyan president, William Ruto, to discuss setting up an office in Kenya to improve content moderation and TikTok’s African operations. This comes after Bob Ndolo, CEO of a digital consulting firm, Bridget Connect Consultancy, submitted a petition to Kenya’s National Assembly to ban the social media platform. According to Ndolo, the country’s Communications Authority has failed to regulate the social media platform, which he claims is promoting violence, explicit sexual content, hate speech, and offensive behaviour among the youth. While the Kenyan Parliament, at the time, said a complete ban would be impossible, they launched a probe into the activities of the platforms. Now, President Ruto’s meeting with the TikTok CEO has changed things. TikTok won’t be banned in Kenya, but it will work with the Kenyan government by opening an office in the country, and hiring more Kenyan content moderators. Monetisation concerns remain: President Ruto’s statement about the meeting doesn’t say anything about improving Kenya’s monetisation of the platform. Currently, no African country can earn money directly from TikTok, only through influencer marketing, affiliate marketing, or the marketing of their goods and services. Zoom out: Inquiries into the potential threat posed by TikTok to cultural and religious values, along with security apprehensions, are gathering momentum throughout the continent. Starting yesterday, August 24, TikTok was banned in Somalia after the government accused it of being one of the platforms where nude images and other materials deemed offensive to Somali culture and Islam were circulated. Get a working card from Moniepoint With the Moniepoint personal banking app, you get reliable payments every time and a card that always works. Enjoy seamless payments powered by the infrastructure that 1.5 million businesses trust. Download the app. Telecoms MTN launches funeral insurance via WhatsApp GIF Source: DMForCredit MTN is making a play at insurance services. Under its new brand, Khava, MTN will offer budget-friendly funeral insurance covers to its South African consumers, the telecom announced on Thursday. The price of the prepaid funeral starts at R75 ($4). MTN said the product—MyMTN Prepaid Funeral Khava—is the first of a range of insurance products designed for the local market in South Africa. The insurance scheme is backed by Sanlam and facilitated by aYo Intermediaries South Africa. How do I get on board? Users will get onboarded through WhatsApp, while MTN’s Mobile Money platform will be used to receive payments. MoMo customers can secure coverage for either 6 or 12 months via a one-time premium payment. “From as little as R75 and no other fees, MoMo customers can secure coverage for either six or 12 months via a one-time premium payment, with benefits extending up to R20,000 ($1,063) under the MyLife Khava plan for individuals, and a collective sum of R33,750 ($1794) for the MyFamily Khava plan, which extends coverage to family members,” MTN said in a statement. Zoom Out: MTN’s new play at the insurance products comes as the telco is finding new revenue sources beyond voice and data products whose margins of profit have come under pressure. Creator Economy Jamit upgrades web app for podcasters Image Source: Jamit Jamit, a platform for podcasters and voice creators, has launched its upgraded web app. The new beta app is powered by blockchain technology and gives creators 100% ownership of their audio content files. Jamit in beta: The team at Jamit says the app is perfect for new and seasoned podcasters who want to turn their passion for storytelling into something they can monetise and promote to larger audiences. Jamit also provides more precise insights into audience demographics, listening rates, and session durations to help creators better understand their listeners and create content that is more engaging and relevant. Furthermore, the new web app also comes with a Virtual Studio feature for podcasters and audio storytellers to be able to record solo sessions or invite guests or co-hosts to join their studio sessions. In addition to the new features and tools, Jamit is also adding four original podcasts to its network. These podcasts feature diverse voices, podcast themes, genres, and categories. Zoom out: Because Jamit is 100% powered by blockchain technology, creators get complete ownership of their audio content, even after it has been published and distributed. Jamit also allows creators to connect directly with their subscribers, giving them more control over their community. TC Insights Funding Tracker Image Source: Deal Tracker This week, Global fintech company LemFi received $33 million in Series A funding in a round led by Left Lane Capital. Other participating investors include Y Combinator, Zrosk, Global Founders Capital, and Olive Tree. Here are the other deals this week: Kenyan fintech company Zanifu received $11.2 million in debt-equity in a pre-Series A funding round led by Beyond Capital Ventures. South African esports company Nibble Africa raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from E Squared. That’s it for this week! Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn for more funding announcements. You can also visit DealFlow, our real-time funding tracker. Crypto Tracker The World Wide Web3 Source: Coin Name Current Value Day Month Bitcoin $25,941 – 1.41% – 10.49% Ether $1,650 – 1.41% – 11.17% CyberConnect $3.82 – 7.02% + 111.13% XRP $0.51 – 2.39% – 27.23%
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Retrieve lost content from deleted websites 2023
The internet is an ever-evolving landscape, where websites can emerge and disappear in the blink of an eye and even your hosting platforms may not be able help you. However, thanks to the marvels of web archiving, valuable digital content need not be lost forever when a website goes offline. Internet archives have become the digital libraries of the modern era, allowing users to access and explore content from deleted websites. Here you’ll learn how to retrieve lost content from hacked or deleted websites through select notable internet archives that serve as virtual time machines for the online world. 1. The Wayback Machine Perhaps the most renowned internet archive, the Wayback Machine by Archive.org has been capturing snapshots of websites since the late 1990s. Users can simply enter a URL to view archived versions of a website dating back years and see/retrieve lost content from hacked or deleted websites. Its vast collection makes it a treasure trove for historians, researchers, and anyone curious about the evolution of the internet. 2. Google Cache While primarily a search engine, Google also caches versions of web pages. If you search for a specific URL and click on the dropdown arrow next to the result, you may find a cached version. This can provide access to some content even after a website has been deleted or hacked, and importantly, help you retrieve lost data from them. 3. WebCite Focusing on preserving academic content, WebCite allows users to create snapshots of online resources, ensuring that references remain valid even if the original source is deleted. This is particularly useful for researchers who need to cite web-based information in their work. 4. Archive.is This service captures and stores snapshots of web pages, allowing users to create permanent archives of online content. Archive.is is known for its ability to capture not just text and images, but also the entire layout and functionality of a webpage. This makes it a very reliable platform to retrieve lost content from hacked or deleted websites. 5. Memento Time Travel Memento enables users to see what a web page looked like on a specific date. By entering a URL and a date, users can retrieve an archived version of the page as it appeared at that time. 6. Use Perma.cc to retrieve lost content from deleted websites Targeting the legal community, Perma.cc allows users to create permanent links to web pages which makes it easy to regain data from those pages in case they are deleted or hacked. This is particularly important for legal references, as the content cited in legal documents needs to remain accessible regardless of changes to the original site. 7. Use Archive.today to retrieve lost content from deleted websites Similar to Archive.is, this service captures and stores snapshots of web pages. Users can save copies of online content for future reference, even if the original site is no longer available. Final thoughts on how to retrieve lost content from hacked or deleted websites In a world where digital information can vanish as quickly as it appears, internet archives play a critical role in preserving the history and knowledge stored online. These archives empower users to revisit deleted websites, access valuable content, and track the evolution of online platforms. Whether you’re a researcher, historian, or simply curious about the past, these internet archives offer a glimpse into the ever-changing landscape of the World Wide Web.
Read MoreLemFi raises $33 million to bring free remittance payments for global migrants
On the back of successfully serving African migrants in Canada and the UK, LemFi has raised $33 million in Series A funding to simplify remittance payments for immigrants globally. The round was led by Left Lane Capital. Other investors included Y-Combinator, Zrosk, Global Founders Capital, and Olive Tree. LemFi’s $33 million Series A means it has received just shy of $34 million since it was founded in 2019. Every year thousands of migrants move to Europe, Canada and the United States to work, study or reside permanently. In 2019 for example, Canada (pop. 37 million at the time) welcomed 341,000 new permanent residents. It was the fifth time in the country’s history that more than 300,000 people moved there in a single year. The previous highs for immigration to Canada were the years from 1911 to 1913, and 2018. Since then more people have come to Canada each year compared to the last. With the exception of 2020 when immigration to Canada fell to 184,000, the lowest since 1989. Most immigrants to Canada come from Asia. In the 2019 example mentioned earlier about 86,000 of the 341,000 were Indians. Less than 20,000 immigrants were Africans from Nigeria and Eritrea. The numbers are similar for people who are moving to Europe. Regardless of the country they come from, immigrants face several common problems. One prominent problem is that newcomers feel worried and overwhelmed by the banking systems of their new homes. And sending money back home is a part of where they struggle. In 2022, migrant remittances reached $626 billion globally. For many African countries, these remittances are an important source of foreign exchange. Some countries even encourage their citizens to find work overseas so they can send money back home. But this several hundred billion dollar migrant remittance market is a broken sphere. Local and large international banks sit on one side with global transfer messaging systems like SWIFT. Traditional money transfer services like Moneygram occupy another side of the table. Informal transfer operators (popularly known as the Hawala system) dominate the black market portion of the global money transfer table. Navigating this array of systems is conflicting and expensive. Especially for Africans. Making Lemonades In 2020, the year when global migration contracted due to the pandemic, Ridwan Olalere (age) and Rian Cochran (age) decided it was time to launch their mobile remittance service. Initially called Lemonade Finance, now shortened to LemFi, the service would offer instant international transfers to the African diaspora community in Canada. Prior to LemFi, sending money back home meant stitching together different payment or money transfer services with fees eating up to 8% of the transaction. To receive money from home was even harder and more convoluted. “In 2020, set out to begin to stake our claim and the area of global financial services. For immigrants starting with Africans first and got our first authorization in Canada,” Cochran tells TechCabal. “As a money service business we began by offering remittance services and then just slowly built out the footprint,” he adds. LemFi cofounded and CEO, Ridwan Olalere helped build one of Flutterwave’s key payment products and once led Uber’s Nigeria business. Cochran on his part had worked his way up in Opera Software AS from 2008 to 2020, rising to the position of Senior Finance Director as the company’s payment product, OPay grew rapidly in Nigeria. Both men met while working on OPay where Olalere also once led the development of payment products at the company. From Canada, Lemonade Finance grew quickly and by 2021, the company had expanded to the UK. About 2.5% (1.4 million) of the population of England and Wales are estimated to be of African origin, according to the UK government’s ethnicity facts and figures research. At the same time, the company was working to add more African countries where users could send money to or from. By the end of 2021, it had added 10 new African remittance corridors. Now LemFi wants to bring simpler zero-fee money transfers to migrants from emerging market countries. Instead, the company makes money from narrow FX spreads. Because LemFi’s UK licence only permits creating wallets and holding user funds, the company does not offer lending (to earn interest on user deposits) in the same way a bank would. Migrant workers everywhere, rise! The company does serve intra-African transfers unlike some of its peers. “We’re really focusing first and foremost on immigrants who now have residency in North America and Europe,” Cochran says. That is good news for African governments currently battling rapidly drying foreign exchange reserves. Some like Egypt are debating asking fintechs for help after initiatives to promote formal remittances through banks failed to generate significant adoption. Earlier this year, LemFi announced that it had received an International Money Transfer Operator (IMTO) license from the Central Bank of Nigeria. The IMTO license means LemFi users can send funds directly to Nigerian bank accounts without the need for intermediaries. This is yet another contrast to other remittance fintechs which enable cross-payments using stablecoins (crypto versions of fiat currency). “There’s money to be made in Africa. But for what we were trying to do, we didn’t feel like what we wanted to do was already being done in North American Europe. Whereas what we wanted to do, there was already a lot of competition for that in Africa,” Cochran explains. There are a lot of parallels that exist for emerging market migrants now living in North America and Europe, so the company wants to be known as the remittance service devoted to migrants from the Global South working and living in the Global North. “We looked from a global perspective and said, ‘Look, there’s still a lot of opportunity to build something, either for Africans now living abroad, or really just generally speaking immigrant communities that are similar to do those Africans living abroad that need the same products and services.’” Cochran says. The company is now preparing to acquire EU licenses to bring
Read MoreTikTok to set up a Kenyan office and employ more Kenyans for content moderation
TikTok has agreed to set up a Kenyan office for better content moderation and African operations. Despite existing legal troubles around content moderation in Kenya, the president’s statement about the meeting ignores TikTok’s involvement with one of the key parties, Majorel. After meeting with President Ruto William, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew has agreed to set up a TikTok office in Kenya to coordinate its operations on the continent. The meeting was held on Thursday, August 24, 2023; it was a timely conversation given the recent debate about banning the platform due to explicit content posted by users. President William Ruto said the move will ensure that content on the platform is moderated to fit community standards. There are many difficulties around content moderation, and earlier this year, former content moderators sued Meta and Majorel for wrongful dismissal. A court ruled that Meta can be held liable for labor rights violations despite the moderators being employed by third-party contractors like Majorel. As the lawsuit gained attention, an internal TikTok document leaked, showing that the company was preparing for investigations into its treatment of outsourced content moderators in Kenya. The president’s statement about the meeting also says nothing about improving Kenya’s monetisation of the platform. When announcing the meeting the day before, President Ruto said he would talk with Mr. Chew about extending monetisation channels to Kenyans. Currently, no African country can earn money directly from the platform, only through influencer marketing, affiliate marketing, or the marketing of their goods and services. Ruto said he had previously interacted with social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter concerning monetisation strategies. However, it remains unclear if those conversations influenced the decisions of YouTube and Facebook to enable monetisation in Kenya. While he claims that his talks with YouTube have led to the East African country is one of the only four African countries that gained access to the platform’s monetisation program last year, news reports dating back to 2015 show that Kenya and several other African countries have had access to the YouTube Partner Program (YPP) for nearly a decade. YPP offers creators enhanced access to monetisation features, which are presently accessible to 12 African countries, contrary to President Ruto’s claims that only four countries have access to them. Kenya is among the four African countries— Nigeria, Ghana, and South Africa— that can monetise content through Facebook’s Ad Breaks feature, allowing video creators to earn revenue from advertisements. However, they gained access to it in 2019—when President Ruto was deputy president to Uhuru Kenyatta. It’s uncertain if he or the Kenyan government influenced the selection of these countries. In the first quarter of the year, Facebook announced the feature was now available to Kenya, the country ranked fourth among African countries for citizens’ social media usage, suggesting that the decision could have been data-driven. President Ruto wants a similar monetisation arrangement between Kenyan content creators. There are direct monetisation channels such as Livestream gifts and the Creator fund, but they are not available in any African country. Africans on TikTok currently earn through influencer marketing, affiliate marketing, and possibly advertising their products or services.
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👨🏿🚀TechCabal Daily – A 20% cut
In partnership with Share this newsletter: Lire en Français اقرأ هذا باللغة العربية Happy pre-Friday Elon Musk might not be fighting Mark Zuckerberg, but he’s definitely fighting to ensure everyone finds X, and stays on X. The Twitter X owner has confirmed that the site plans to remove headlines from links and news articles posted on the site. When a link is posted, all that will appear is the feature image and the URL. The reason? It’ll “greatly improve the esthetics [sic],” says Musk. It’s definitely not a bad idea for a platform that says it wants to fight disinformation. As the saying goes, beauty before brains, always. In today’s edition Cellulant to lay off 20% of its employees Flutterwave gets a nod in Kenya China to lessen the load in South Africa SA sets new rules for social media The World Wide Web3 Event: NTICE Expo 2023 Opportunities Layoffs Cellulant to lay off 20% of its employees Ashkay Grover, Cellulant CEO Cellulant is restructuring. The payments platform is parting ways with 20% of its workforce. The exact number of employees wasn’t disclosed, but Cellulant has about 634 employees on LinkedIn which means close to 126 employees will be affected. The company cited “organisational restructuring” as the basis for the layoff. According to a statement seen by TechCabal, the layoffs will be implemented in the coming days. Affected employees will be offered exit packages alongside extended medical cover for themselves and their families. “Our goal is to treat our impacted colleagues with dignity and respect. As such, we provide comprehensive separation packages and extended medical coverage for every impacted employee and their families in every country,” Cellulant added. Zoom out: This is Cellulant’s second round of layoffs, following a reduction in early 2023. While the economic downturn might have played a major role in the layoffs, Cellulant cites that it has been honing its business over the last two years which has led to consolidating some roles and creating new ones in the process. Get a working card from Moniepoint With the Moniepoint personal banking app, you get reliable payments every time and a card that always works. Enjoy seamless payments powered by the infrastructure that 1.5 million businesses trust. Download the app. Fintech Flutterwave gets a nod in Kenya Things are looking up for Flutterwave in East Africa. A year after the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) accused the Nigerian fintech of operating without a permit in Kenya, the fintech has taken the first step to remedy its position. This week, CEO Olugbenga Agboola revealed, in an interview with Bloomberg, that the company has been given the approval to apply for a money remittance licence in the country. Per Agboola, Flutterwave has also registered its name in Kenta. Flutterwave CEO, Olugbenga Agboola While the money remittance licence is yet to be approved, the CEO expects that it will be issued soon. Moving forward with IPO plans: The company is also moving forward with its plans to go public which were stalled by the string of accusations it faced from regulators last year. “There’s some kind of customers we’ll attract when we are public,” said Agboola. “The large global clients who need you to have the same level of compliance and level of global view that they have.” By attaining these licenses, the company looks to relay to clients that Flutterwave is “the most reliable platform to use”. Electricity China donates $9 million of power equipment to South Africa Image Source: Zikoko Memes South Africans are about to get load shedding lifted off their shoulders. The country shared that China is donating power equipment worth R167 million ($9 million) to about 500 public places in South Africa, ensuring these locations have a backup power supply without any interruptions. Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, the minister of electricity, revealed this information while formalising a Memorandum of Cooperation (MoC) with eight Chinese organisations. What are the donations? The contribution consists of generators, power supply vehicles, and off-grid PV energy storage supply systems. Furthermore, approximately R500 million ($27 million) is being granted to support development efforts. As stated by Ramokgopa, the power equipment’s capacity varies from 6kW to 200kW. This 200kW capacity is substantial enough to sustain both a clinic and a medium-sized hospital, providing significant relief to the people of South Africa. So far, the South African government has taken steps to prevent around 76 hospitals from experiencing load shedding. Efforts are also in progress to safeguard at least 46 additional hospitals from the rotating power cuts that are currently being enforced across the nation. Zoom out: As of May this year, the primary provider of electric power in South Africa, Eskom, cautioned about the possibility of implementing more severe stages of load shedding to cope with the rising demand during the winter season. In June, Telkom, the country’s major mobile network operator, reported a significant 76.6% decrease in profits, attributing this decline to factors including load shedding. Even the prominent South African retail conglomerate, Mr Price, experienced a negative impact, with the company’s June revenue dropping by R1 billion ($54 million) due to load shedding. Social media SA set new rules for sharing content on Facebook and WhatsApp Image Source: Zikoko Memes The South African regulatory body for film, the Film and Publication Board (FPB), has published a new draft of industry codes and guidelines aimed at preventing online harm and providing guidance for peer-to-peer content sharing in the country. The new codes and guidelines were published in three parts. These parts span classifying harmful content, preventing online harm, and guidelines for peer-to-peer video sharing. Why? The FBP said it is obligated to improve how it regulates prohibited and harmful content, “due to the proliferation of child sexual abuse material cases” it deals with daily. The proposed regulations include forcing online platforms to implement mechanisms to lessen online harm. A must: The regulatory body also published draft guidelines for peer-to-peer video sharing in South Africa to guide consumers on how to share
Read MoreModi calls for BRICS cooperation in space exploration as India lands on the moon
India has urged other BRICS member states to cooperate in space exploration programs. Indian prime minister Narendra Modi has urged BRICS member countries to form a “space research consortium” to deepen cooperation in space. He spoke at the plenary session of the BRICS Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa. BRICS is a grouping of the world economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa formed by the 2010 addition of South Africa to the predecessor BRIC. The theme for this year’s summit, to be held from 23-25 August, is “BRICS and Africa: Partnership for mutually accelerated growth, sustainable development and inclusive multilateralism.” “We are already working on the BRICS satellite constellation, but to move a step further, we should think about establishing a BRICS space exploration consortium,” Modi said. Additionally, the Indian head of state also pitched cooperation in the education, skill development, and technology sectors “in order to make BRICS a future-ready organisation”. Interestingly, on the same day that Modi made the pledge, 385,000 kilometres away, Indian spacecraft, Chandrayaan-3 landed on the southern polar region of the moon. The craft is set to begin exploring an area of the moon that has yet to be visited. The landing makes India the first country to ever reach this part of the lunar surface in one piece—and only the fourth country ever to land on the moon. Despite currently not having an active space programme, South Africa has in the past launched missions to the stars. In the 1980s, work on the development of a launcher and a satellite had been in progress but was discontinued after 1994. In 1999, South Africa launched its first satellite, SUNSAT from Vandenberg Air Force Base in the US. A second satellite, SumbandilaSat, was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in 2009.
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IHS Towers records 9% decline in revenue, blames naira devaluation
IHS Towers, the world’s fifth-largest independent TowerCo, said the naira’s devaluation in June this year cost it $31 million. The company has revised the expected revenue for the year downwards but will not change how much it plans to spend. After four consecutive quarters of revenue growth, IHS Towers recorded a 9.4% decline compared to Q1 2023. IHS says the decline in revenue, which put it $46 million below the last quarter’s revenue was due to the naira’s devaluation. “Our expectation for revenue would have otherwise increased by $31 million had the average FX rates previously assumed in our guidance remained unchanged,” Sam Darwish, IHS Chairman and CEO, said in a statement. “We are encouraged by the recent policy changes implemented in Nigeria that are intended to put the country on a better economic path. In the near-term, however, these changes will cause some anticipated friction, including the significant devaluation of the Nigerian Naira that occurred in mid-June,” the statement read in part. 67% of IHS Towers’ revenue in the second quarter of 2023 came from Nigeria, the largest market of the telco infrastructure company, which also operates in 10 other countries, including Brazil, South Africa, Zambia, Egypt and Kuwait, its Middle Eastern foothold. In June, Nigeria’s new president, Bola Tinubu, instituted reforms that sent bank stocks and local prices soaring. The decision to loosen controls on exchange rates hit several firms operating in Nigeria, which reported lower revenues on the back of having to restate numbers in line with the newly managed floating naira-dollar rates. IHS Towers’ biggest customer in its biggest market, MTN Nigeria, also reported a foreign exchange loss in its 2023 second-quarter report which dragged profits for the period down by 64%. IHS Towers and MTN Group are locked in a boardroom fight over MTN’s request for more control of the tower company. MTN Group holds 26% of IHS Towers but only controls 20% of the voting share. Why IHS Towers is facing a shareholder revolt However, the naira’s devaluation was not all bad news for IHS Towers as it reduced its debt by $155 million. On the other hand, the company’s cash balance was reduced by $19 million due to the devaluation. IHS reviews and resets exchange rates quarterly. The company expects to have a clearer picture of the naira’s devaluation by the end of the year.
Read MoreExclusive: Cellulant to lay off 20% of its employees in organisational restructuring
Cellulant is parting ways with 20% of its headcount as it focuses on becoming a product-driven company. Cellulant is undergoing a restructuring exercise that will impact a fifth of its workforce. In a statement to TechCabal, Cellulant, which operates across 19 markets, disclosed that these changes will be implemented in the coming days as the company focuses on a product-led approach that ideally creates user-centric products for growth. The company has clarified that this strategic shift has been in development for some time and has come to mutual agreements with affected employees. While Cellulant has declined to disclose the exact number of employees leaving the company, Cellulant has 634 employees per LinkedIn. “Cellulant is moving towards a product-focused strategy which will, unfortunately, see approximately 20% of our pan-African team transitioning out of the company. We are committed to supporting our employees as we transition and cannot comment on their separation,” Cellulant said. The affected workers will be served with exit packages, alongside extended medical cover for themselves and their families. “Our goal is to treat our impacted colleagues with dignity and respect. As such, we provide comprehensive separation packages and extended medical coverage for every impacted employee and their families in every country,” Cellulant added. Admittedly, the market has been challenging for African startups and the rest of the world. Other than that, Cellulant says it has been honing its business in the last two years to become “a merchant-focused payments business led by the productisation of its services and a complete revamp of its technology stack.” According to the company, these changes have led to the expansion of its customer network and 100% year-on-year revenue growth in its core offerings. Our next phase of growth required a shift to an agile product-driven organisation,” Cellulant shared. Cellulant is consolidating some roles and creating new ones in the process. However, it has not closed any departments; instead, the payments company has “resized and reorganised for leaner efficient operations.” This marks the Cellulant’s second round of layoffs, following a trimming in early 2023. While rumours circulated about substantial workforce cuts in specific markets, Cellulant has re-confirmed its presence across all markets. For instance, it highlights Nigeria as a key market, where it serves as the payment partner for various businesses such as airlines, QSR, e-commerce, ride-hailing, retail, and remittances. Cellulant has also clarified that it did not lay off 30% of its workforce earlier this year. Instead, 27 employees left the company, with only four coming from Nigeria. Full company statement Leading Pan African payments firm, Cellulant, has announced adopting a product-led structure as its anchor for increased growth across the continent. This is part of its new organizational strategy that will see the company enhance its service offerings to evolving customer needs across the 19 countries it operates in. The fintech, which powers payments for over 1,500 global, regional and local businesses across the continent, said the new strategy is informed by emerging market dynamics, investments in automation, and the recent consolidation of their product offerings in four already successful categories that are anchored by its robust banking, card, and MoMo wallet solutions on its payments platform. “We remain cognizant of the ever-dynamic operating environment, influenced by many factors not limited to technological changes, consumer needs and market dynamics,” said Akshay Grover, Chief Executive Officer. “We’re therefore pursuing a leaner product-led strategy to support our scale and increase customer base. We also aim to drive operational efficiency measures to support our growth and operations in multiple geographies.” Cellulant started operations in Kenya in 2003 and has since grown to become one of the largest pan-African payments companies offering both online and offline payments, with businesses across various sectors such as oil and gas, ride-hailing, e-commerce, travel, logistics, retail, airlines, and fast-moving consumer goods, in its client list. Grover said the new implementation of the strategy business shift would entail consolidating essential functions and creating new roles. “Cellulant has come a long way to become a leader in the pan-African payments space. Innovation, efficiency, and agility will underpin our narrative over the next few years, and these are the first of critical steps,” he said.
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