M-KOPA closes one of Africa’s biggest rounds at $250m with plans to go into e-mobility
M-KOPA closed a $75m drive back in February 2022. Today, the lender, which also offers other fintech-based services has supplemented its finances with a fund led by Standard Bank Group and has plans to venture into additional markets, among other new and interesting propositions. Digital financing firm M-KOPA has announced it has closed more than $250 million in debt and equity financing. The funds, according to the company, will be used to boost its fintech-based operation in new markets, particularly across Sub-Saharan Africa. M-KOPA, which closed a similar deal back in February 2022 valued at $75 million, has revealed that the round is one of the largest not just for the company, but also in the African tech sector. Standard Bank Group, M-KOPA’s strategic partner, arranged over $200m in sustainability-linked debt financing. Other lenders include IFC, Lion’s Head Global Partners, FMO, British International Investment, Mirova SunFunder, and Nithio. Sumitomo Corporation, an existing investor, contributed $36.5m in equity investment. Blue Haven Initiative, Lightrock, Broadscale Group, and Latitude also participated in the round. M-KOPA has found success in the Kenyan market following the launch of its solar-powered solutions for local households. At the beginning of its operations, the firm connected homes with solar systems, which included panels, batteries, LED lights, and charging stations for mobile devices. The selling point of the service was its ability to gainfully replace paraffin lamps with clean lighting and power sources for off-grid homes. All these services, which have since been improved over the years with more products such as access to TV services, are offered through M-KOPA’s pay-as-you-go model that allows users to make affordable instalments using mobile money (M-PESA). Customers can, for instance, pay as little as KES 100 (under $1) per day to keep their lights on. M-KOPA says it has sold over 3 million of these products through its sales model that has an agent network of over 10,000. This means it has sold a million more assets in more than one year. With more than $1 billion in cumulative credit provided to underbanked customers in Africa, M-KOPA has been a success story in East Africa. It expanded to Nigeria in 2021, with a more recent footprint in Ghana. According to the firm, it recorded an 85% compound annual growth rate in new customer acquisition from 2020 to 2022. Fueled by new funding M-KOPA plans to boost its smartphone financing offering, expand into additional markets, and prioritize sustainability. It is also committed to driving women’s financial inclusion and developing eco-friendly electric mobility solutions in the East Africa market. What they said Speaking on the round, Jesse Moore, M-KOPA CEO and Co-founder said, “At M-KOPA, we are working hard to create a positive environmental and social impact by systematically addressing the barriers to digital financial services. We have already unlocked $1bn in cumulative credit to over 3 million customers, and are proud of the thousands of local jobs we’ve created during tough economic times. As we continue to scale we remain committed to building a sustainable business and closing economic and digital gender gaps. We are delighted to have the support of new and existing investors who share our vision and mission.” “Supporting M-KOPA is in line with our purpose of driving sustainable growth for Africa and her people. Financial inclusion not only enables economic growth, it also accelerates it. M-KOPA has, in a short time, managed to positively impact so many lives by enabling access to power and smartphone connectivity, which are a vital part of enabling the economic empowerment of all.” added Nick Riley, Corporate Financing Solutions at Standard Bank
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Gricd raises $1.5 million, rebrands as Figorr
Gricd, a hardware startup that develops Internet of Things-powered solutions to support the last-mile delivery of perishable goods, has raised $1.5 million in seed funding as it overhauls its brand identity to Figorr. Founded in 2018, Gricd (now Figorr) had previously disclosed $512,800 in funding raised through grants, convertible notes, and angel funding. It also raised an undisclosed sum from Katapult VC. This latest round was raised by Atlantica Ventures with participation from VestedWorld, Jaza Rift Ventures, and Katapult VC. The company’s rebrand as Figorr, signals its new focus on software solutions. Oghenetega Iortim, the CEO of Figorr, told TechCabal that the rebrand represents the company’s new direction. “When I started the business, it was largely supposed to solve an agriculture problem, but now we’re doing so much beyond the agricultural space. We work with multiple sectors, including agriculture, healthcare, and logistics. We also recognize that our real superpower is data, which is why we went with Figorr (pronounced as figure).” According to Iortim, Figorr uses a hardware device, MOTE, which is “about the size of a pack of cards”, to transmit the location, humidity, and temperature of sensitive and perishable products in real-time to the cloud and customers. Customers can access this data either through a mobile app or an online dashboard. In instances where products are exposed to harsh conditions, Figorr will send an email or SMS notification immediately. During the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, Figorr’s solution helped Nigeria’s National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) track 40 million vaccine doses, according to Iortim. How Nigeria is using Gricd’s tech to save 4.2 million vaccines from wastage With this new funding, Figorr now plans to help its customers access insurance for their perishable products. Due to poor storage facilities and a lack of technology, Nigeria loses 50% of its food to poor storage. Across Africa, that number drops to 30%. These losses equate to total losses for the farmers and traders, which are then passed on to the end customer. According to the IMF, on average, Africans spend almost half of their income on food. “Insurance companies tend to shy away from underwriting these sorts of commodities [perishable commodities], which means that for my customers there’d be a 100% burn if they lose their goods. With our data, that’s gradually changing. We can show that a customer has done a great job in terms of the storage and transportation of certain commodities over a long period. The insurance companies are then a little bit more lenient and willing to underwrite those sorts of risks”, Iortim told TechCabal. Figorr’s MOTE “We’ve tracked over 200 million cold chain items, and the value of those items is well over $600 million. With the data that I have, if I were an insurance company, I would bet on about a third of those products. If you make 10% of that[ $20 million], it’s a lot of money to overlook, in my opinion”, he added. Figorr already works with some of the leading pharmaceutical manufacturers and food companies in Nigeria and across Africa to enable the effective transportation and storage of food and pharmaceuticals. It says it has successfully tracked more than 110 million perishable items and supported its customers to realise more than $200 million in savings. The startup makes money by charging its customers a monthly subscription fee to access data from one device. The subscription fee is charged per device per month, so if a customer has multiple devices, they pay for each one separately. The devices also do not consume more than 5MB of data per month and rely on 2G connectivity and SMS. They also use global roaming network providers, which means that they can latch on to the best available network. This is especially important for a continent with poor internet connectivity and penetration. Venture capital firms tend to shy away from hardware startups because of the long period they typically require to scale, the unpredictability of the business model, and the complicated process of sales and marketing. Iortim shared that Figorr also faced the same challenges; before this seed round, the company had raised $512,000, which mostly came from grants. Iortim told TechCabal that building a relationship with investors and the amount of data Figorr has gathered since 2017 helped overcome this hurdle. “For the investors that we currently have on board, we had to build a relationship with them and show them the numbers. Plus, we have gotten to a point where we have deployed a few thousand devices in about seven countries, so there’s a lot of value we can drive based on the data,” he said. Figorr will also use the new funding to expand to East Africa. Echoing Iortim, Aniko Szigetvari, founding partner at Atlantica Ventures, said, “Tega and the Figorr team have built a powerful suite of products and services to support the cold chain industry and ensure the quality of perishable goods and pharmaceutical products in Nigeria and across the continent. We are excited to support the growth and regional expansion of the company”.
Read MoreWhat is the next frontier in the evolution of tech media in Africa?
When TechCabal launched ten years ago, mostly covering startup activity in Yaba, Lagos, it was more of a passion blog than the pan-African publication it is today. According to Tomiwa Aladekomo, CEO of Big Cabal Media, publisher of TechCabal, not only has the publication grown in reach, but also in the maturity with regards to the content that it covers. “From Yaba, TechCabal eventually started covering Nigeria and then the rest of Africa. Additionally, the coverage started to go beyond just startups and into a broader tech picture that includes everything from the global tech industry to banks, telcos, and regulations,” said Aladekomo. As TechCabal grew, so did the African tech ecosystem, which had started to become more appealing to international venture capital firms, circa mid to late 2010s. As the capital flowed in and interest surged, the industry saw the upspring of tech media publications who saw the value of covering the African tech ecosystem. Some of these publications include Disrupt Africa (launched 2016), Techpoint (launched 2015), Weetracker (launched 2018), Ventureburn (launched 2012) and Bendada.com, launched in 2018 by Benjamin Dada. Dada, who started his dabble in journalism through blogging and freelancing with another Nigerian tech publication for the better part of two years, started Bendada.com to fill what he saw as gaps in tech coverage with incumbent publications. “After that time blogging as a freelance journalist, I figured that the only way I could control the quality, pace, and a whole bunch of things about my tech coverage was through my own publication. I started out as the sole writer and then people started reaching out to write for the platform, and because I already had some experience with running a Medium publication, I allowed it.. And that’s how Bendada.com became what it is today,” Dada tells TechCabal in an interview. In order to motivate a business case for the publication, in an ecosystem where competition was already strongly competitive, Dada had to think of an alternative model which went beyond just news publication. “When I started out on my own thing, I had to figure out how to make revenue. It was a toss up between content creation and just traditional news publication. In the end, I chose the route of content creator, which is people would pay me for the time and expertise I put into putting together a story about them or their business, because whenever I put out a story like that, it would help them acquire customers or promote their offering to the audience. We started with mostly interns and freelancers but we have since grown to have full time staff which is great progress,” added Dada. Running a digital media brand in the midst of a digital media downturn At the start of the 2010s, digital media boomed as venture capitalists started to see the value in backing publications which told the stories of technology startups and their mostly eccentric founders. However, the past few months have seen the industry, especially in the US, going through a rough patch. Layoffs and shutdowns have been the order of the day as executives try to find profitability models to sustain their businesses beyond journalism. Fortunately, Africa’s digital publications have not experienced these challenges, and there is much optimism that they won’t. “I think African digital publications are not going to fall to the same fate as the US ones because most of them were not built off of VC money. This means they are not under pressure to achieve difficult growth rates and other pressures which come with the backing of VCs,” Dada says. But even for the few venture-backed publications on the continent, he believes the peculiarity and sheer amount of opportunity that is present in tech media in Africa will allow them to weather the digital media crisis storm. Some of the tech media brands that have raised venture capital in Africa include Big Cabal Media, publisher of TechCabal, and Stears Insights. “The media brands who have raised capital obviously have deeper pockets, connections, networks, and are able to explore numerous revenue channels which helps them diversify their stream beyond just traditional media revenue baskets. I believe there are a lot of low-hanging fruits which can be reaped with the backing of VC capital. I think the only challenge now will be for maybe newer entrants into the media space, who need to figure out how to establish themselves in a competitive market,” says Dada. Newsletters, the new frontier? As the news publication space has grown to near saturation over the last few years, a new frontier in the African tech media space has opened up: newsletters. Some prominent newsletters in the industry include Communique, Notadeepdive, TechSafari and Afridigest. Newsletters have proven to be a hit with readers, with many growing their readership to significant heights. They particularly enjoy the advantage of not being shackled to a corporate setup, which has seen some tech news publications constantly accused of favouritism and bias in their reporting. When Caleb Maru, who stated that he has no journalism background, started TechSafari, he did not anticipate that it would blow up to the proportions that it has today. “The whole media thing came almost as an accident. I was just trying to understand the tech ecosystem in Africa and I wanted to force myself to learn so I figured the best way to do that was to actually just write about what I was saying and to share that publicly, and force myself to put stuff out there and hopefully get people responding and sort of crowdsourcing the learning,” Maru told TechCabal. Maru, who has lived in Australia and had his first interaction with the African tech ecosystem through his startup Entry Level, which helped people get tech jobs in Africa, adds that he has also been investing in early stage startups for the past year and a half. After writing a few stories in his newsletter, he realised the knowledge gap that existed between
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Next wave: The non–digital infrastructure Africa’s digital economy needs
<!– In partnership with –> Cet article est aussi disponible en français Roads, power, rail and agriculture input do not sound like components of digital innovation, but as I have sought to establish previously on Next Wave, a digital economy is unreservedly physical. This is the last essay in my four-part review series based on selected episodes from Season 1 of the Next Wave show. This week, I am listening to episode 8, a conversation between Tomiwa Aladekomo, Big Cabal Media’s chief executive, Andrew Mori, CEO of Deimos, a software company, and Clément Martineau, co-founder and operations director at IXAfrica Data Centre. The topic is centred around digital infrastructure (watch here). But for this essay, we’ll look away from digital infrastructure for a bit. All digital processes seek to produce a physical change in how people live by influencing inanimate objects and human behaviour. So, until a piece of technology produces an effect on something material (other than the atoms that make up technology itself) the chain is incomplete. Right? As a journalist covering the business of technology in Africa, I hear about (and use) digital innovation a lot, perhaps too much. Even though I understand the appeal and potential of digital technologies, I cannot help feeling occasionally like it is a copout for our failures at getting the basics of a modern economy right. It is not rocket that the non-digital aspects of living and working in Africa are more important than we often give them credit for. At one level, especially for those of us for whom Africa has been home since we were born, it’s easy to not even see these non–digital spaces (or the effect of the lack thereof). So we attempt to replace these gaps with street smarts (which are important, don’t get me wrong). But there is only so much street smart that can get your fresh fish through markets, or your beautiful software into corporate systems. Very quickly we find that innovation, even the digital version, needs feet to stand on. To get over the artificial limits imposed by having no feet, or two left feet (having too much of one good thing), we will need… Roads, power, rail and agriculture input Roads (especially), power, and things like fertiliser subsidies have been held over the heads of the voting populations of Africa by politicians. All three have also received huge financing commitments and fat allocations from government revenue, development partners, and other lenders. Despite this, the African Development Bank suggests that the continent’s infrastructure needs amount to $130–170 billion a year, with a financing gap in the range $68–$108 billion. Knowing African governments, I believe it is safe to say that these figures could have been several times lesser, but that in fact, they may end up several times more expensive than estimated. A long way to go to meet adequate infrastructure needs. | Chart by: Tomisin Bamidele – TechCabal Insights. There’s really nothing more to add to the well-established conversation that we cannot “startup” or digitise our way out of the rut other than to say that there is an unyielding limit beyond which the infrastructure needs of the continent cannot be leapfrogged. Take the growth of African cities as one example. Lagos, Africa’s most populated city, consistently ranks in the low rungs of liveability indexes. In 2021, it was ranked last infrastructure-wise in a list produced by The Economist’s intelligence unit (EIU). But the city won’t stop growing in population. By 2035, the UN projects it will be home to close to 25 million people—the largest population centre in an emerging megapolis that could house as many as 51 million people on the West African coast. How will Lagos keep up? How will any other city in Africa (the continent may double its population by mid-century) keep up? Only a little over 70 years ago, Africa accounted for only 10% of the global population, now the continent is hurtling towards 25% (mid-century) or as much as 40% (by the 2100s) of people on earth. Smart cities built around technology alone are an inadequate solution for managing this growth. Partner Message Join hundreds of African tech entrepreneurs, investors, media and ecosystem stakeholders at Africa’s biggest tech gathering in Morocco! Register now There’s no order to this list (road, power, rail and agricultural input). And the list is frankly not exhaustive. But, as a general guide, it provides a sufficient overview of the very material aspects of our lives that need to be transformed in an equally material way if our digital economy experiment will not falter and return to stagnation. But the seemingly apparent failure of investment in infrastructure translating into economic development has led experts like David Ndii, chairman of Kenya’s presidential economic advisory council and founder of Kenya’s first economic think-tank, the Institute of Economic Affairs, to call for the model to be revisited in favour of an agriculture-led model. “African policymakers should embrace a more pragmatic economic agenda that recognises and capitalises on Africa’s comparative edge: a greater abundance of land rather than low-cost labour,” the professor argued. But Ndii’s argument would carry better weight if we could demonstrate that agricultural efficiency only ended at improved productivity and better yields. Improved productivity for smallholder farmers may not be economically sound if they can only sell locally because they are limited in market access. Similarly agricultural improvements at a national level will be limited in impact if excess yield has little to no access to markets because roads are poor and seaports are inefficient. There are no easy answers. In my book, agricultural input includes offtake capacity, quality management, logistics, processing and retail value. All of this requires different forms of infrastructure to be efficient and cost-effective. Sponsored: Meet Billpoint, the revolutionary bill payment solution In short, agricultural input is, in fact, infrastructure itself. Meeting the infrastructure needs of Africa is not a contest between investing in agriculture versus roads or ports. And a digital economy will be a severely
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👨🏿🚀 TechCabal Daily – Nigerian telecoms may pause USSD
Lire en français Read this email in French. 15 MAY, 2023 IN PARTNERSHIP WITH Good morning Twitter has a new CEO. Over the weekend, ex-Chief Twit, Elon Musk, announced Linda Yaccarino, former chairman of advertising at NBC Media, as the new CEO of the platform. Yaccarino’s profile, however, says she’s been CEO since March 2023. Starboy Musk will now take on the chief technology officer (CTO) position at Twitter where he will lead the ruination growth of Twitter’s features and product offerings. In today’s edition Nigerian telecoms may disconnect USSD SA to pay citizens for saving electricity Wasoko expands to Zambia TC Insights: Mitigating Africa’s cyber risks The World Wide Web3 Report: The State of Tech in Africa Job openings NIGERIAN TELECOMS TO DISCONNECT USSD OVER $260 MILLION DEBT Nigerians may find some of their banks’ USSD services unavailable in the near future. Last week, Nigerian telecoms announced that they had received the approval of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to disconnect several Deposit Money Banks (DMBs). Per the telecoms, the disconnection order comes due to the banks’ failure to pay over ₦120 billion ($260 million) in USSD debts. Side bar: Every time you perform a USSD transaction on your mobile phone, telecoms charge a ₦6.9 fee to your bank. The money is removed from your account at the end of the month, and banks then remit that money to telecoms. Or at least they should. Per the Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), banks have failed to remit payments for USSD transactions for an undisclosed period. History repeats itself: This is the third time in five years that telecoms are threatening to shut down USSD services for the same reasons. In 2019, ALTON, for the first time, threatened to shut down the service over a disagreement on who should bear the cost of the transaction fees—customers, banks or telecoms. Again, in June 2021, two months after the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) approved that users would bear the costs for USSD transactions, ALTON threatened to shut down the service after banks failed to remit ₦47 billion ($102 million) for the USSD service. Zoom out: For past occurrences, resolutions were passed before disconnections happened, but that might not apply to this situation. At this stage, telecoms have stated that they have received no cooperation from banks to resolve the issue. MONIEPOINT RANKED 2ND FASTEST-GROWING AFRICAN COMPANY Moniepoint is Africa’s second-fastest growing company, as shown in FTs latest report. We also processed 1 billion transactions worth $43 billion in Q1 alone. Read all about it here. This is partner content. SA TO PAY CITIZENS FOR SAVING ELECTRICITY South Africa’s load shedding is reaching dire levels with experts claiming the country experienced level 8 load shedding—over 12 hours of blackouts per day—last week. Eskom, South Africa’s power generating company, has also proposed plans for up to level 16 load shedding, which could mean up to 23 hours of blackouts. There’s hope and reward: In a media briefing on Friday, however, electricity minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa announced that Eskom would be implementing an incentive programme—the Distribution Demand Management Programme—that will reward South Africans who reduce their power consumption. Per the minister, for every megawatt an individual or business saves—through reduced demand—they will get R3 million ($154,000). Side bar: A megawatt-hour of power could power two refrigerators non-stop for a year, toast 89,000 slices of bread or drive an electric vehicle for 3,600 miles—the distance from Cape Town, South Africa to Cairo, Egypt. Per the minister, the incentive programme will help the country re-distribute excess power during peak demand periods. The reward isn’t automatic, though. Eskom will independently verify and measure all applications to prevent abuse of the programme. Big picture: This is the second electricity-related programme that’s set to reward South Africans. In January, the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (NERSA) approved a new scheme that allows residents of Cape Town to feed excess electrical power from their own generators into their power system, in exchange for cash. WASOKO EXPANDS TO ZAMBIA Wasoko, a pan-African B2B e-commerce company with a presence in East and West Africa, has expanded to Zambia. The company will launch its operations in Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, and says it will invest $1 million in its first year to “support local Zambian businesses and communities to get more essential goods for less through the power of e-commerce”. Wasoko, formerly Sokowatch, uses its platform to allow informal retailers to order products via SMS or its mobile app for free, same-day delivery, to their stores. The platform also provides retailers with credit offerings by leveraging purchasing history. A new model: Wasoko will also pivot to a hub and spoke logistics network (a model that uses a large distribution centre to dispense inventory to multiple fulfilment centres) and will use Lusaka as the central hub for Zambia. The company says it is pivoting to this model to drive stronger operational efficiency and significantly boost its capacity for faster regional expansions. In addition to its latest expansion, Wasoko will double its service radius across all of its existing locations in Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Uganda, where it says it has amassed a network of over 200,000 informal retailers and delivered more than 5 million orders to date. JOIN UNICAF’S CYBERSECURITY TRAINING Experience the best in cybersecurity learning at our virtual event. Register here and get a scholarship of up to 75% to pursue an internationally recognised Bachelor’s, Master’s or Doctoral degree from one of Unicaf’s UK partner universities. This is partner content. TC INSIGHTS: MITIGATING AFRICA’S CYBER RISKS Africa’s growing digital economy is dependent on digital tools like bank apps, e-commerce apps, and streaming platforms. However, this shift from physical to virtual comes with major risks, including a rise in cybercrime. In 2022, internet users in Africa grew by 8.4%, reaching 570 million, yet cyber attacks have also increased. According to the African Union, cybercrime has been on the rise in Africa, particularly in financial fraud and identity theft.
Read MoreNigeria’s new blockchain policy leaves crypto in the cold
With its latest national blockchain policy, Nigeria seems to be going big on blockchain technology. But the West African nation does not seem to be welcoming crypto anytime soon—blockchain policy or not. On May 3rd, the Federal Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy (FMCDE) announced the approval of a national blockchain policy. Essentially, this means that the government is throwing its weight behind an emerging technology which it hopes can “facilitate the development of the Nigerian digital economy and enable citizens to have more confidence in digital platforms.” The move was lauded as game-changing and reflective of the government’s pro-technology position. However, several industry watchers are raising questions concerning implementation and asking a critical question: why is crypto still banned by a pro-blockchain government? Blockchain is an advanced technology that uses database mechanisms to record transactions in a decentralised public ledger. Advocates of blockchain describe it as a next-generation technology that can be applied to optimise every facet of human life, ranging from financial services and healthcare to supply chain and identity management. According to research firm Gartner, the business value added by blockchain will increase to over $3 trillion by 2030—a pie the Nigerian government is now hoping to plug the economy into. Crypto is still not welcome For the Nigerian government, approving a national blockchain policy does not amount to accepting cryptocurrency (which remains the most prominent use case of the blockchain). In July 2021, the CBN banned banks from facilitating crypto transactions and asked that banks “close accounts of persons or entities involved in cryptocurrency transactions.” The bank cited terrorism financing and money laundering as its key reasons for the action, maintaining that it was protecting Nigerians from the risks of crypto adoption. Meanwhile, the national blockchain policy draft reveals that the Nigerian government is still crypto-averse as it seeks to develop a regulatory framework for other use cases of the blockchain. “Blockchain technology undoubtedly holds great potential for the development of Nigeria’s digital economy. A lot of the focus has been on cryptocurrencies, especially bitcoin. However there is a lot more that blockchain can do for the economy and this strategy document aims to redirect the focus to other areas,” the draft reads in part. Christian Duffus, founder and CEO of blockchain startup Fonbnk, explained to TechCabal that the blockchain policy may be a reactionary measure by the government to send out a clear signal that it is not broadly against blockchain technologies, especially after the publicity of its ban on crypto. “The blockchain policy is an important move by the government to accommodate blockchain innovation in the country. After the ban on crypto, they can’t afford to be seen as a government that associates illegality with blockchain operators. Interestingly, this policy also provides a framework for eNaira, the blockchain-powered digital currency released by the CBN,” he said. Oluwatobiloba Ajayi, blockchain expert and founder of B2B crypto startup Ivory Pay, remains unruffled by the exclusion of crypto from the national blockchain policy. “Crypto significantly takes control and oversight of finances off the government’s watch. And they don’t want that, so I’m not sure this policy will help crypto,” he said on a call with TechCabal. How does the blockchain policy help? According to the FMCDE, the overarching goal of the policy is to create a blockchain-powered economy that supports secure transactions, data sharing, and value exchange between people, businesses, and government. The policy practically serves as a government-led approach to the adoption of blockchain technology in Nigeria. While the next steps in the implementation process remain unclear, the fact remains that through this policy, the Nigerian government is announcing itself as a collaborator for blockchain-related innovation in the country. Nnamdi Uba, the CEO of HouseAfrica, a startup that leverages blockchain to solve land title ownership in Africa, spoke to TechCabal effusively about the national blockchain policy. “I am one of the people that have been working on that policy project for the past three years,” he revealed. “We want to unlock the power of blockchain in our national economy through a government-led approach. The goal is to entrench the use of blockchain in government processes, then roll it out to the masses.” “However, we must realise that blockchain does not start and end with crypto. My real estate company, for example, is blockchain-powered, yet we don’t use crypto. Blockchain can help in many ways, including the tokenisation of properties, supply chain tracking, and authentication of documents. We will also see more interesting use cases come up in the future. As you know, the incoming administration has also promised to focus on blockchain technology,” he shared. Some initiatives outlined in the policy’s strategy framework include the promotion of blockchain business incentives programmes and the establishment of a national blockchain sandbox for proof of concepts and pilot implementation. These ambitions by the government convey a friendly regulatory framework for blockchain startups in the country. “Historically, we have seen government policies work against tech startups—as the case was in Lagos’ ban on ride-hailing. This is one time we are seeing the government roll out a policy that incentivises builders and investors in this niche, It’s a big deal, but for it to work, the government must be at the forefront. They must drive its implementation and integrate the technology into their own systems,” Ajayi said.
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Eclipse Nkasi created an entire music album in three days with AI and thinks everyone else should too
To prove that AI could create compelling music on a budget, Eclipse Nkasi, created an AI music album in three days with less than $500. Image source: Dall-E/Ngozi A few months ago, AI-generated images could easily be identified by the awkward drawing of human hands. At the time, we mocked AI’s inability to draw hands and questioned the claim that it could replace creatives. But AI-generated images have improved, and these days, it can be difficult to differentiate between images produced by AI and those created by human artists. The same is happening with music, as AI can now mimic the voices of popular artistes and sing in their styles. Despite these advancements, many still doubt that AI can produce good music. Independent artist and former promoter for Nigerian record label Chocolate City Music, Nkasi, tells TechCabal, “When it came to music, people were very sensitive or emotional about their stance with AI. People felt it wasn’t possible that AI could originally create art. You hear arguments like AI lacks soul or it is not possible to generate anything close enough. I took that as a challenge.” Image source: Dall-E/Ngozi While AI music generators can produce impressive and unique sounds across various genres with generic or detailed prompts, there aren’t as many capable of generating impressive original songs. Models like Google’s MusicLM, which was opened to the public yesterday, can make interesting instrumentals. But these models stumble when it comes to lyrics. The lyrics written by MusicLM months ago were reportedly jumbled and incoherent, similar to how words can be scrambled on images generated by OpenAI’s image generator Dall-E. This version that was publicly released will not generate songs with the voice of someone singing, as that may attract copyright problems just like most of the songs featuring the voices and music of known artists have recently. Spotify recently took down thousands of AI-generated songs due to copyright concerns. Read also: What will happen now that AI can sing like your favourite Nigerian musician? Something original and more affordable Most of the popular AI-generated songs feature the AI-cloned voices of popular artists singing already existing songs, not new ones. Remember the AI-generated song featuring Drake that went viral in April? That was not an original. It was a rap acapella reworked with an AI-generated Drake voice. The new vocals were placed over an already-existing beat that had been modified. Nkasi wanted most if not every, creative element of the album to be originally created by AI, so he used different AI tools to work on each part—lyrics, instrumentals, and singing—and put them together. Image source: Dall-E/Ngozi Not only did Nkasi want to prove that AI could create original and emotionally compelling music, he also wanted to show that AI could do it on a tight budget. This ambition was motivated by the former Chocolate City music promoter’s curiosity and his experience handling the music business as part of a label and as a solo artist. “Music is very expensive to create and promote, especially for new artists,” Nkasi told TechCabal. According to him, a music album project generally costs ₦2 million ($4,339) to ₦3 million ($6,509) for an average artist. “You need to pay for beats and the average music producer in Lagos who knows what they are doing would charge you about a ₦100,000. Producers like Masterkraft charge well over a million naira. If you want to do this on a basic level, ₦100,000–₦200,000. If you are going to do 13 songs, you can do the math. Also, mixing and mastering can cost around ₦100,000.” But Nkasi wanted to create an album for less than $500 (₦231,000) in three days. The result of his efforts is an album titled Infinite Echoes, which he published on streaming platforms like Spotify and YoutubeMusic under his studio name, Eclipse Nkasi. “Apart from the overheads of generators and so on, it was insanely cheap. I don’t think I spent more than half of the $500 budget I had. The most money I spent on any one tool was the voice synthesis tool that allowed me to create an AI singer that I christened Mya Blue. That cost me about $168 for the software and voice bank. Extra voice banks cost around $70,” Nkasi said. Read also: Google is set to change how you create and listen to music with its AI music generator Creating the album Save for some input from him, Nkasi insists that the entire creative process of producing the nine-track album was done with artificial intelligence. According to him, AI suggested the title, “Infinite Echoes.” It also conceptualized the album, created the album cover, wrote the songs, and created the tracklist, song versions, and instrumentals. AI also sang most of the songs. “I am well aware of what it takes to create an album on the artist and business sides, but I just wanted to get the album done in three days,” he told TechCabal in an interview. Image source: Dall-E/Ngozi Nkasi developed the album’s instrumentals on an AI music generator, SoundRaw. The generator has a bank of royalty-free instrumentals generated by AI. “You can tailor the length, tempo, composition, instruments, and genre of the sounds to suit your needs,” he said, adding that he has a paid account that costs $15 a month. He downloaded most of the instrumentals he needed in two days, and he had 28 days left to access many more instrumentals. “It is so cheap. If I was still a hustling artist, like in my early days, it would have helped me create multiple albums in a few days,” he said. Aside from SoundRaw, Nkasi also used AI tools such as voice synthesizers, ChatGPT, and the image generator Midjourney AI for the album. ChatGPT wrote the lyrics and suggested prompts for other AI tools, such as the image generator Midjourney, which was used to create the cover of the album. “I paid for a few other tools that I eventually didn’t use. Of all
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Kenya says Sama must pay salaries
Lire en français Read this email in French. Editor’s Note Week 19, 2023 Read time: 5 minutes The weekend is here, let us rejoice! Start off your weekend reading the compelling stories that await you in this edition of Tc Weekender. Enjoy! Pamela Tetteh Editor, TechCabal. Editor’s Picks Kenya to tax content creators Kenyan content creators are in for a tax-y ride! The Kenyan government is slapping a 15% withholding tax on every payment that goes into the pockets of our beloved digital creators. Learn more. SA gets on the greylist South Africa has landed itself on the “grey list” for financial crime, courtesy of the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF). It appears the country has been caught snoozing on its efforts to combat illicit financial flows and terrorism financing. Learn more. Sama must pay moderators Sama’s “layoff party” was cancelled weeks ago, and now the Kenyan court is asking the former content moderation upstart to ensure that the moderators it has been trying to fire get paid their salaries. Learn more. Safaricom’s new license Safaricom Ethiopia scored a license from the National Bank of Ethiopia to offer mobile money services. With Safaricom’s track record, the Ethiopian fintech scene should expect the telecom to spice things up and bring the heat. Learn more. MTN wants to sell its West African assets It appears that MTN is dialing down its operations in certain regions. Word on the wire is that MTN is engaging in talks to unload some of its West African assets to Axian Group, a pan-African investor in telecoms. Learn more. NBC can no longer fine stations A Nigerian Federal High Court has dropped a bombshell ruling, saying that the Nigerian Broadcast Commission (NBC) doesn’t have the power to dish out fines to broadcast stations for any reason. Learn more. TC Daily Get the most comprehensive insights and stories about Africa’s tech and business ecosystem. TC Daily goes out every week at 7 AM (WAT). . Zimbabwe’s gold currency Zimbabwe is moving forward with the launch of its gold-backed digital currency this week. Despite the IMF labeling it a wrong move, the country used nearly 140 kilograms of gold reserves to back the first sale of its digital money. Learn more. Mozambique gets 5G East Africa’s Mozambique joined the club of countries embracing the cutting-edge fifth-generation network (5G), all thanks to telecom company Vodacom. Learn more. Khazna plans for $250 million data centre in Egypt Guess who’s joining the party? Khazna, the UAE-based wholesale data center provider is set to shell out a staggering $250 million to build a brand-new data center in Egypt. Learn more. Updates from Google I/0 At this year’s Google I/O, the tech giant announced a folding phone, key software updates, and of course, generative AI which will most notably be coming to Search. Read more. Who brought the money this week? South African Health-Tech company Quro raised $1.3 million in an undisclosed funding round from Mineworkers Investment Company (MIC). Egypt-based fintech company Balad closed an undisclosed amount in a pre-seed funding round. The round was led by Acasia Ventures. Other investors in the round include Launch Africa, Future Africa, V&R, Magic Fund, First Circle, Sunny Side, and several family offices. Kenyan fundraising company, Raise, secured undisclosed funding from Carta, a San Francisco-based company specialising in capitalisation table management and valuation software. DigsConnect, a South African student housing company, received undisclosed funding from Itaba Capital. What else to read this weekend? We are doing 5G wrong in Africa Lazerpay shut down, high on hope but short on capital Meet the African streaming platform trying to take on Netflix Fintechs fight chargebacks with decline fees What does marketing look like for companies nowadays? What African founders think about the recent funding downturn Share TC Weekender Written by: Ngozi Chukwu & Hannatu Asheolge Edited by: Pamela Tetteh 18, Nnobi Street, Surulere, Lagos, Nigeria Unsubscribe from TC Weekender Kenya says Sama must pay moderators
Read MoreHow an Ecoplexus ponzi scheme scammed Batswana millions
When Tshepang Katso* got the Whatsapp invite from a friend to join an “Ecoplexus investment group”, she was told that it would be like “downloading money from the internet.” It was not until this week, when the Ecoplexus scam collapsed, that the 29-year-old unemployed accounting graduate realised that she had been the victim of a ponzi scheme. According to Interpol’s Online Scams report, Africa loses over $500 million of its GDP per annum to online scams such as email scams, romance fraud, social media scams, malware attacks, and so on. “It looked like such an easy way to make money because initially I joined for free and made easy returns. I then kept going up the different levels trying to get even bigger returns through the daily withdrawals. In the end, I invested over P3,000 (~$223), money I had borrowed, before the whole thing collapsed,” Katso told TechCabal in an interview. The Ecoplexus scam purported to invest victims’ funds in products of Ecoplexus, a real US company which specialises in the development, design, construction, and financing of renewable energy projects in the US and key international markets. The modus operandi was of a typical ponzi scheme, which refers to a scam in which “a con artist offers investments that promise very high returns with little or no risk to their victims. The returns are said to originate from a business or a secret idea run by the con artist.” The Ecoplexus scheme required the victim to enter the initial stage, called PV0, in which no investment was required, but a daily income of P2 (~$0.15) was guaranteed. Withdrawals at that level capped at P150 (~$11). This was said to be a trial stage and the victim had to upgrade to another level within 10 days. In addition to the daily income, victims also earned returns of P2 for each successful registration of the first 20 people they referred. The next stage, known as PV1, required an initial investment of P230 (~$17) with a daily income of P7, capped at 365 days. In theory, victims were looking at profits of over P2,550 (~$190) in one year, a whooping 1,100% return on investment, if they held onto that level for a year. The returns got even wilder as victims moved up the scam’s “levels”. At the highest level, known as PV5, an initial investment of P26,000 (~$1,935) would yield P1,100 (~82) daily, also capped at 365 days. Assuming the victim made daily withdrawals, they were made to believe that they could make P401,500 (~$30,000), a 1,544% return on investment, in just a year. Apart from the daily returns, victims were also promised numerous incentives including referral rewards for recruiting more victims, upgrade rewards for moving up a level, daily commissions for completing tasks, and lucky wheel rewards which promised up to P9,999 (~$744) in raffle-like draws. “For the well informed person, it seems ridiculous that people fell for a scam that promised such unrealistic returns. But you have to understand that the majority of victims are not only limited in their knowledge of internet scams, but they are also desperate for any easy money that they think they can make,” said Richard Harriman, a consumer protection advocate who runs a 204,000-member awareness group called Consumer Watchdog Botswana. Indeed, most victims of the scheme, even those who managed to make some withdrawals early on, seemed to not have any idea of what exactly they were investing in. “All I know is that I had a link where I just had to click “working” every day in order to get my daily withdrawal. I also had to share referral links to other people. I honestly don’t know what product or service the company Ecoplexus is involved in,” said another victim who spoke to TechCabal under condition of anonymity. The links in question led to a dupe of the real Ecoplexus website. While the real address of Ecoplexus is www.ecoplexus.com, the scheme’s referral link was h5.ecoplexus-es.com. As word of this get-rich-quick scheme spread like wildfire on social media platforms such as Facebook and Whatsapp, groups were flooded with referral links asking members to join. As more people joined and boosted about their withdrawals, cracks in the Ecoplexus scheme started to show. In late April, some customers began to experience delays with their withdrawals. Amidst inquiries, the victims were directed to contact “Regional Managers”, the supposed representatives of Ecoplexus in the country. Reasons given by the regional managers for the withdrawal issues were varied but most of them seemed to point the fault at the victims’ bank accounts, held at First National Bank Botswana (FNBB). Some victims contacted the bank to inquire about the status of the funds. As the complaints mounted, the bank put out a statement denying any knowledge of such funds. “It has come to our attention that there are ongoing allegations on social media regarding FNBB’s involvement with a certain entity named ECOPLEXUS. These allegations claim that FNBB is withholding funds for some individuals who are supposedly investors in ECOPLEXUS. FNBB would like to confirm that these allegations are not true and we advise the public to exercise caution when approached to deposit money to any FNBB accounts under the pretext that they are owned by ECOPLEXUS,” the bank’s statement read. According to Harriman, there is strong reason to believe that the total amount scammed from the victims who were unable to withdraw their funds runs into tens of millions of pula. The Ecoplexus scam website, meanwhile, is no longer functional. “There are people who invested tens of thousands of pula into the scheme as they wanted to up their amount of daily withdrawals. Those are the people who have been hit the hardest and it’s sad to see people’s money they work hard for going down the drain over something that could be avoided with the most rudimentary education,” said Harriman. However, some victims are optimistic about getting their money back and have involved law enforcement officials in their quest
Read MoreSouth Africa to start paying individuals and businesses for saving electricity
South Africa government plans to introduce incentives for individuals and businesses to save electricity. According to South Africa’s Electricity minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, the South African government will provide a financial incentive for demand reduction by commercial and residential customers through its Distribution Demand Management programme. Speaking at a press briefing to provide an update on the country’s Energy Action Plan, Ramokgopa stated that the programme will provide a R3 million incentive for every megawatt saved through reduced demand. “Demand-side interventions are going to be a focal point as we enter into December, because the initiatives at household level are cheaper and faster,” Ramokgopa said. “It’s aimed at ensuring that we are able to achieve the demand reduction during specified periods, and this will typically be during periods of peak [demand].” The minister said the programme’s key performance indicator will be revealed once the government has “aggregated the number of households and companies that are participating.” The incentive will be granted based on the relative reduction in usage to a verified baseline. All applicants will be subjected to an independent measurement against the baseline in order to prevent abuse of the incentive system. Additionally, Ramokgopa stated that Eskom plans to bring 3,800MW of additional generation capacity onto the grid in the near future, with 400MW expected by the end of May 2023. The government’s Integrated Resource Plan (IRP), gazetted in 2019, states that 78GW of energy capacity is needed by South Africa by 2030 – but the estimated costs involved, coupled with the underwhelming progress of government projects, suggests a bleak future for the country.
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