Simple tricks to make your MTN, Airtel, Glo and 9mobile data last longer
Table of contents How to save mobile data on MTN Nigeria How to save mobile data on Airtel How to save mobile data on Glo Nigeria How to save mobile data on 9mobile (now T2) Saving mobile data became serious for me the day my bundle disappeared before noon. I had bought a fresh plan the night before and felt safe. By the next morning, my apps weren’t working. I rechecked my data balance, hoping it was a mistake. It was not. My data had quietly slipped away. That moment made me realise what was eating my bundle. I checked my settings, reviewed my apps, and even searched online groups where people shared hidden USSD codes and tricks. That was when it clicked. Data does not just vanish. Your phone, your habits, and the network you use all play a part. This article shows you how to make your bundle last longer and how to get better value on MTN, Airtel, Glo, and 9mobile. How to stop your phone from wasting data Saving data starts with your phone settings. These controls work on MTN, Airtel, Glo, and 9mobile, and they give you the quickest results. 1. Use your phone’s built-in data saver Your phone already has tools that help you cut down on background data. On Android, you can turn on Data Saver in Settings > Network and internet > Data Saver. On iPhone, the option is called Low Data Mode. Once it is on, your apps stop using data quietly in the background. This is typically found under Settings > Mobile Data/Cellular/Service > Mobile Data Options > Data Mode Some apps still need steady access, so you can allow a few important ones, like WhatsApp or your bank app, to bypass Data Saver. This is found inside the same menu under Unrestricted data. Battery Saver also helps because it forces many apps to slow down their background activity. So you save data and keep your phone on for longer. 2. Control how your apps behave Many times, the apps on your phone use more data than you expect. You can check this in your Data Usage settings. Once you see the apps consuming the most data, turn off their background access if they are not important. You can also reduce notifications from apps that constantly refresh. This small change helps your data last longer. Another key step is making sure updates only happen on Wi-Fi. Set your Play Store or App Store to update apps on Wi-Fi only. Do the same for WhatsApp, Telegram, and similar apps so they do not auto-download large photos and videos on mobile data. 3. Reduce how much your browsing and streaming consume Streaming uses plenty of data. Download content on Wi-Fi and watch it later. If you must stream, lower the quality inside each app. You can also use browsers that compress data. Opera Mini is popular because it reduces the size of pages and images. Chrome has a data-saving mode too. For maps, download offline maps so you can navigate without using your bundle. These simple fixes give you stronger control over your data and help your bundles last much longer. How to save mobile data on MTN Nigeria Saving data on MTN works best when you combine the right phone settings with the cheaper, personalised bundles MTN hides inside its menus and promotions. 1. Use MTN’s official tools and codes MTN gives you different ways to monitor your data. You can check your usage through the myMTN NG app, the USSD code, or Zigi on WhatsApp and Telegram. The official code for buying data is *312#, and you can check your balance with *323#. MTN also advises you to use Lite versions of apps and turn off Background App Refresh to reduce how much your phone consumes in the background. 2. Take advantage of personalised and hidden bundles MTN users save the most when they stop depending on the standard plans in the *312# menu. According to the YouTube channel, Kidkes, they point out that MTN reserves its best Naira to Gigabyte offers for personalised sections like Data4Me and Pulse. This is why many users visit social media groups and forums to exchange USSD codes that unlock cheaper bundles. MTN sets the segments, but the community spreads the codes that help people find the highest value plans. Vetted promotional codes Some of the widely shared MTN offers include: 4GB for N1000 (Monthly): Access via specialized codes, such as *312*65*3# 2GB for N200 (Weekly): Access via specialized codes, such as *312*65*2# These codes depend on eligibility, region, and availability, but I have used them repeatedly. Your best strategy is to keep checking “offers” inside the MTN app and test the popular codes circulating online until you find the ones your line accepts. 3. Pick targeted bundles that match your usage If most of your data goes into social media, MTN has small, focused plans like the Ayoba Weekly Plan (40MB for N50) and the All Social Daily Plan (200MB for N100). These plans help you reduce how much of your main bundle gets consumed. You can also choose MTN monthly plans that come with a large All Night Streaming allowance, such as 2GB of night data. Using this night window for heavy tasks like big downloads, system updates, and long streaming sessions lets you stretch your main data during the day and get more value from what you paid for. How to save mobile data on Airtel You can save a lot of data on Airtel by choosing bundles that match what you actually use and by looking for non-standard promotional codes shared online. 1. Use Airtel’s standard plans the right way The main code for buying Airtel data is *312#. Through this menu, you will see daily, weekly, and monthly plans. Airtel’s biggest savings feature sits inside its Smart Data Plans. These plans split your data into different parts so your heavy activities do not drain your main balance. For
Read MoreCapitec VRP lets South Africans make recurring payments directly from bank
Stitch, one of South Africa’s largest payments fintech startups, has partnered with Capitec Bank, the country’s largest retail bank by customer base, to allow customers to automate recurring payments for services like Netflix, deliveries, and bills, using Variable Recurring Payments (VRP), a smarter form of direct debit. “With Capitec Pay variable and recurring payments now available across our partner network and live with Stitch, clients gain more control and visibility over their ongoing payment commitments,” said Chris Zietsman, Executive Head of Capitec Business Payments. “We’re expanding Capitec Pay’s everyday uses, like grocery checkout and delivery – while keeping rates affordable for merchants.” Capitac Pay VRP is one of South Africa’s first large‑scale, API‑driven recurring payment options, letting banked consumers pay for digital services directly from their accounts and reducing reliance on risky cash‑on‑delivery models. Instead of manually approving a payment every time a bill is due or an order is placed, customers only need to set up Capitec Pay once. Users authorise a specific merchant, such as a delivery app, and define a maximum spending limit. Once established, future payments within that limit occur automatically in the background without requiring further action. Commercial banks like FNB, Absa, and Standard Bank use the traditional DebiCheck system for recurring payments. While that system works similarly, Capitec is the first to use this specific new technology. VRPs are expected to spread as open banking matures in South Africa, with PayShap, Capitec Pay, and fintechs like Stitch highlighted as early building blocks. For now, Capitec is the notable bank with a public VRP‑style API product, while other banks are more focused on DebiCheck improvements and broader open‑banking roadmaps rather than named “VRP” offerings. “We’re excited to work with the Capitec team to bring this important solution to the South African market,” said Junaid Dadan, President and Co-founder at Stitch. “VRP gives Capitec customers more control over the way they make recurring payments, and helps businesses to streamline collections – especially where there are complex requirements. This will have a major impact on the market, and we’re excited to offer this to all our enterprise clients in South Africa.” Read: South Africans ditch cash and cards for digital payments, new report shows
Read MoreChowdeck hits nearly $1 million in Black Friday food delivery sales
Until Jumia introduced its first nationwide sales campaign after it launched in 2012, Black Friday was not a retail tradition in Nigeria. Since then, the once-foreign concept has grown into one of the country’s most anticipated online commerce moments. Black Friday deals have now extended to online food delivery platforms like Chowdeck, which drove ₦1.4 billion ($975,909) in sales during its Black Friday event that ran from Friday, November 28, to Monday, December 1, according to data tracked on its live dashboard. The company rolled out discounted meals, free delivery vouchers, and city-specific flash drops in prices across Lagos, Abuja, Ibadan, and other cities. This year’s four-day event blew past its internal target to double orders from 2024 when it hosted its first Black Friday event. By 9:08 pm West African Time (WAT) on Friday, November 28, it had already fulfilled 51,000 orders, more than double its 2024 sales volume. At the end of the event on Monday, December 1, it recorded 182,74 orders generating ₦1.4 billion ($975,909) in revenue and covering over 727,000 kilometres, the highest the company has logged during a promotional window. The performance reinforces the company’s recent momentum. In October, Chowdeck crossed over 1 million monthly orders across Nigeria. “Our daily order volumes in Nigeria has grown from an average of approximately 30,000 daily orders a few weeks ago to over 40,000 daily orders presently and still increasing day on day,” Femi Aluko, Chowdeck Co-founder and CEO posted on X in November 3 after the company reached the milestone. “This milestone reminds us of what is possible when people believe in what we’re building.” Get The Best African Tech Newsletters In Your Inbox Select your country Nigeria Ghana Kenya South Africa Egypt Morocco Tunisia Algeria Libya Sudan Ethiopia Somalia Djibouti Eritrea Uganda Tanzania Rwanda Burundi Democratic Republic of the Congo Republic of the Congo Central African Republic Chad Cameroon Gabon Equatorial Guinea São Tomé and Príncipe Angola Zambia Zimbabwe Botswana Namibia Lesotho Eswatini Mozambique Madagascar Mauritius Seychelles Comoros Cape Verde Guinea-Bissau Senegal The Gambia Guinea Sierra Leone Liberia Côte d’Ivoire Burkina Faso Mali Niger Benin Togo Other Select your gender Male Female Others TC Daily TC Events TC Scoop Subscribe Nigeria’s online food-delivery market was valued at $1.04 billion in 2024, with projections to reach $2.49 billion by 2033 at a CAGR of 10.3%, according to IMARC Group. Chowdeck launched in October 2021, entering a market where food delivery was widely seen as unprofitable and difficult to scale. By 2023, regional competitors, like Bolt Food, Jumia Food, and OFood, either exited or downsized operations. But the company built a logistics-first model around geolocation, demand batching and rider incentives, allowing it to grow quickly in dense cities. Two forces explain the acceleration. First, Nigeria’s digital access has reached critical mass. The country had about 107 million internet users at the beginning of 2025, nearly 45% of its population. This gives delivery apps enough scale to push user-acquisition, including campaigns during Black Friday. The second is continuous investment, which strengthened the platform infrastructure. In 2025, Chowdeck acquired point-of-sale startup Mira to integrate payments and merchant tools. In August, it raised $9 million Series A funding led by Novastar Ventures to expand quick-commerce offerings like groceries and essentials. Chowdeck’s closest competitor, Glovo, also ran Black Friday deals from November 28 to 30, offering discounts and free delivery, though it did not disclose order volumes or revenue for the period. Discounts appeal to residents in urban centres because it reduces the cost and effort of preparing meals or buying household essentials, providing a convenient alternative to grocery shopping and cooking. Delivery companies have also invested heavily in logistics, in-app navigation, and restaurant partnerships, enabling them to manage high order volumes efficiently. Together, these factors allow platforms like Chowdeck to turn temporary promotions into record-breaking sales. Why food delivery is winning in Nigeria When Jumia Food was the major player in the sector, Nigeria’s food-delivery sector had limited reach and inconsistent reliability. The COVID-19 lockdown exposed these gaps and created new demand, opening the door for a new wave of players that emerged from 2021, including Glovo and Chowdeck. Chowdeck’s founding story underscores the moment. “I tested positive for COVID on the 31st of December, 2020,” Aluko shared on the company’s website. “I spent the entire January 1 looking for food vendors to deliver food to me but the available food delivery providers didn’t deliver during public holidays. I eventually found one after many hours and ended up paying 4x the regular amount.” His experience mirrored the frustrations of many urban Nigerians and signalled an opening for more reliable on-demand delivery services. Online delivery has continued to thrive even as Nigerians lose more of their income to rising food, fuel, and living costs. However, urban realities: work, long traffic, unreliable power, and limited time are making cooking more inconvenient as city dwellers now see delivery as a time-saving option. The current strides in the food delivery sector is evidence of this demand. Foodpod, citing Paystack data, notes that food delivery grew significantly at 187% CAGR between 2021 and 2024. New entrants that launched at the height of this boom quickly found traction by serving kitchens and restaurants. Alongside peers such as FoodCourt, Chowcentral, Heyfood, and MANO, they broadened consumer awareness and deepened demand for fast delivery. From just 319 users at launch in October 2021, Chowdeck grew to 17,900 users in 2022, 250,000 in 2023, and over 1 million by 2024. Additionally, while Jumia Food once operated in three cities with roughly 80 couriers, Chowdeck alone now deploys more than 20,000 riders completing over 40,000 daily orders. Recommended Reading: Nigeria’s ride-hailing graveyard and the network effect
Read MoreWhy Nigeria’s startup ecosystem needs more corporate buyers
With startup funding slowing globally and foreign investors becoming more cautious, industry leaders are calling for a fundamental shift in how innovation is financed, scaled, and absorbed in Africa. The message, repeated across panels, keynote speeches, and informal conversations at the MTN Cloud Accelerator Demo Day in Lagos on November 28, 2025, was that Nigeria needs more corporate buyers like commercial banks, mobile network operators (MNOs), etc., fewer silos, and a more collaborative innovation culture. While startups have long been praised for their agility and ingenuity, their path to scale remains steep. Infrastructure costs are high, regulations are complex, and access to markets, especially enterprise markets, is often gated. Corporations in telecom, fast-moving consumer goods (FMCGs), and pharmaceuticals, on the other hand, sit on large customer bases, distribution networks, and infrastructure. Yet they have historically remained risk-averse, operating in silos and depending heavily on internal Research and Development (R&D) rather than open collaboration. At the demo day, which marked the graduation of 20 early-stage startups from MTN’s 12-week Cloud Accelerator program, speakers argued that Nigeria can no longer afford this divide. For Africa to build globally competitive companies, corporates must begin acting not just as mentors or sponsors, but as buyers, partners, and acquirers of startup innovations. The era of transactional corporate–startup relationships is ending The clearest articulation of this shift came from Babalola Oyeleye, Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer at MTN Nigeria. Speaking during a panel, he described the traditional corporate–startup dynamic as “highly transactional,” with corporates simply consuming solutions rather than co-creating them. “But now, co-creation is what we need,” Oyeleye said. “Corporates have assets, infrastructure, customer access, and distribution. Startups have agility. If we collaborate deeply, engage customers together, conduct research together, and develop products together, we shorten our time to market.” This breakdown of silos, he argued, transforms startups from mere vendors into partners that can execute rapid, experimental innovation on behalf of corporates, effectively becoming outsourced R&D engines. Victor Asemota, an African tech ecosystem expert and founder of SwiftaCorp, an African software and technology services group, offered a global comparison to highlight what is missing in Nigeria. “In Silicon Valley, 98% of all mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity comes from corporations,” he explained. “Google alone accounts for more than half of that. African corporations have not played that role. Many try to build everything internally instead of acquiring solutions proven by startups.” Asemota’s observation points to a structural weakness in Nigeria’s innovation economy: startups build great products but rarely find local corporate acquirers or large-scale buyers. This forces many to rely on foreign markets, foreign investors, or, in some cases, relocation. The consequence? Local ecosystems lose talent, Intellectual Property (IP), and long-term value. For Lynda Saint-Nwafor, MTN Nigeria’s Chief Enterprise Business Officer, the goal was to build the kind of environment where startups do not merely learn, they plug directly into corporate infrastructure that can help them scale. “Acceleration is more than technology,” she said in her keynote. “It requires exposure, structure, and clarity. Startups integrated into MoMo, enabling payments without complexity. They plugged into Chenosis, shortening development cycles. And through structured workshops, they gained investor readiness, product design, customer experience, founder wellness, and go-to-market frameworks.” Still, the panelists acknowledged that this shift will not be easy. Corporate risk aversion remains a major barrier. Oyeleye explained that most corporates are hesitant to invest in early-stage innovation because they must choose between funding proven businesses or uncertain bets. “Corporates already have functioning businesses. When you have limited capital, you ask yourself: do I invest in something uncertain or double down on what already works?” he said. But with Nigeria’s demographic boom, infrastructure challenges, and evolving consumer behaviors, corporates must rethink this posture. The companies that participate in innovation today, he argued, will be the ones that dominate tomorrow’s markets. Speakers at the event warned that the ecosystem pays a high price for fragmentation. Startups struggle to access critical assets. Corporates reinvent the wheel. Regulators move slowly because stakeholders fail to present unified positions. And innovation becomes slower and more expensive than it needs to be. Asemota pointed out that corporates can offer startups something more valuable than money: regulatory leverage. “When corporates collaborate with startups, they bring regulatory support that founders cannot afford alone,” he said. “This is one of the biggest values of corporate–startup partnerships.”
Read MoreSamuel Frank on entering the VC industry and investing in climate tech
In November, Samuel Frank, an investment associate at Sahara Impact Ventures, an Africa-focused VC firm with a climate and gender lens, sat before a room of students eager to break into Africa’s venture capital industry or improve their understanding of the sector. In a few minutes, he would judge their final presentations and offer pointed feedback on how to improve. For Frank, it was a full-circle moment. Just months earlier, in April, he had been on the other side of the table, presenting his own final project in the same course. There’s rarely been a more compelling time to pursue a VC career in Africa. Local firms are raising larger funds, specialised VC training programmes are multiplying, and a growing cohort of young professionals now sees venture capital as an appealing gateway into tech and finance. But while interest has surged, job openings have not. Most African VC firms manage relatively small funds, often under $20 million, and, due to fund economics, only around 20% of that capital can be used for operations. After salaries, rent, travel, and events are covered, very few firms have room to hire large teams. The result is a brutally competitive job market where many find it difficult to break in, especially those without industry relationships or direct access to the tight-knit networks that shape hiring in African VC. For this week’s Ask an Investor, I spoke with Frank, who is one year into his role at Sahara Impact Ventures. After recently breaking into the VC industry himself, he shares advice for people hoping to follow a similar path, the misconceptions he held before entering the sector, the skills required to land a role, and how his firm invests in and supports startups. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. What drew you to venture capital, and why not traditional finance, operating, or a startup role? My first role in finance was at an investment advisory firm, and I was supporting the finance and operations teams of startups. Besides doing all of that, I was also involved with helping them set up their data room, communicate with investors, prepare board meeting memos and board packs, and even help them with preparing their pitch decks and investment memos. Every single time, I was really curious to find out: who are the people giving these guys money? As that question just kept ringing in my head, it led me to find out about a particular book called Venture Deals. I took the course based on the book first. It was a very short course, and then I read the book. That opened me up to the industry of venture capital, and after reading the book, I understood more of what’s happening in the VC space, and that piqued my interest in wanting to work there. How did you get your current job, and what were the things that you think you did that made you stand out? I think working with startups helped. However, I already had the skill set to work in VC, from deal sourcing to analysis to what goes on around portfolio support and things like that. I had those skills, and so it was to find the opportunity because roles in venture capital are so limited. Some people think they need basic financial skill sets or technical skills in finance, but how you’re able to tailor them to the industry you want to work in is really important. Whether it is to know how to do powerful presentations or Excel spreadsheets, or work around a model, it’s how you tailor those skill sets to fit the industry you want to work in. Has your view of VC changed since you started working in VC? Was there any misconception you had before joining? Get The Best African Tech Newsletters In Your Inbox Select your country Nigeria Ghana Kenya South Africa Egypt Morocco Tunisia Algeria Libya Sudan Ethiopia Somalia Djibouti Eritrea Uganda Tanzania Rwanda Burundi Democratic Republic of the Congo Republic of the Congo Central African Republic Chad Cameroon Gabon Equatorial Guinea São Tomé and Príncipe Angola Zambia Zimbabwe Botswana Namibia Lesotho Eswatini Mozambique Madagascar Mauritius Seychelles Comoros Cape Verde Guinea-Bissau Senegal The Gambia Guinea Sierra Leone Liberia Côte d’Ivoire Burkina Faso Mali Niger Benin Togo Other Select your gender Male Female Others TC Daily TC Events TC Scoop Subscribe There are some views that have changed. I thought VCs, especially in Africa, were looking to do 20–25 deals every year, but I’ve realised that everybody’s doing three, four, five, six, or seven deals a whole year. Another thing that has changed is the fact that when I think about exits for VCs, it was always just about IPOs. But now, working in the space, I understand a lot more about secondaries and self-liquidating instruments. Now, I see a lot of VCs who are just finding ways to ensure that they’re able to return the fund. Everyone is concerned about being able to raise more money after you’re done with your first or second fund, because being able to raise more is about whether you’re able to return the money you have raised previously. I thought that due diligence is extremely critical in the VC industry, especially at the early stage, but I have noticed since coming in that quite a number of these investors are not so eager about due diligence for pre- and seed investments, keeping all the due diligence for Series A. It has caused a wide gap between companies that raise pre-seed and companies that raise Series A. Because of that long timeline of no due diligence, companies are suffering now. By the time they want to raise a Series A, all of the things that they could have set up by the time they were raising pre-seed and seed are not set up, and then they have to start afresh for Series A, and it becomes a tougher problem. Another misconception is that a lot of people
Read More100 million cards later, Verve looks towards contactless payment and tokenisation
Verve, a payment card scheme operated by Nigerian fintech company Interswitch, is expanding its contactless payment products and introducing tokenisation as it hits 100 million cards issued across Africa, 16 years after it launched. Verve will now deepen its focus on next-generation payment technologies, especially contactless payments, which it believes will enable faster tap-and-go transactions at terminals. The implementation of tokenisation is expected to provide added security for online and digital payments by reducing the risk of fraud and data compromise, the company said in a statement. “This milestone is more than a number; it represents millions of people across the African continent who have become empowered to participate in the digital economy,” said Vincent Ogbunude, managing director of Verve International. “It belongs to every customer who believed in an African home-grown card scheme and every institution that partnered with us to make it scalable.” The move reflects a broader trend of Nigerian fintechs increasingly turning to contactless technology as consumers demand faster and more secure transactions. Fintech platforms like PalmPay and Moniepoint have made similar moves, partnering with AfriGO, Nigeria’s domestic card scheme, to roll out a contactless payment scheme. Verve hit 100 million cards off the back of partnerships with banks and fintech companies that have helped the scheme extend access to individuals, small businesses, students, and corporate customers. The company said it saw growth across ATM withdrawals, point-of-sale transactions, online purchases, and mobile payments. The company said these partnerships make it easier for African consumers to access global digital services without relying on foreign-currency cards, while supporting financial inclusion among previously underbanked communities. Verve said it will continue to invest in infrastructure and security, including chip-and-PIN technology and advanced fraud-prevention systems, as it scales transaction volumes across both physical and digital channels. The company said it will also continue strengthening partnerships with banks, fintech platforms, and merchants to expand acceptance online and offline.
Read MoreDay 1-1000: Storipod wants to make reading as addictive as scrolling
For African writers, sharing your work to get paid on global platforms has always been a herculean task. African startups are building to solve this problem, but Storipod has a different approach, serialising the stories in the format of social media stories. It’s a bold approach that seeks to take advantage of increasingly short attention spans. This is the Day 1-1000 of Storipod. Day 1: When blog posts die James Nelson has always written. In 2019, while working at Interswitch, he’d publish blog posts one week and spend the next week spamming the link everywhere. “Come read my blog. Come click. Come to my blog.” After a while, he felt like he was just annoying people. Then he started writing on his WhatsApp Status instead. Same content, different format. By slide five, people were already responding. “Oh, I don’t think that should have happened.” “I actually think this makes sense.” The engagement was instant. “People consume things in tiny bits,” Nelson explains. “That’s how we read now, WhatsApp Status, IG Stories, tweets. So why not use the same approach for actual storytelling?” The insight was simple but powerful—music has Spotify and Apple Music. You can record a song in your living room and make streaming money. Movies have YouTube and Netflix. Put up a great film, people watch it, you get paid. But what happened to writing? Nothing. Medium doesn’t pay. Substack doesn’t pay Africans. Twitter’s monetisation requires subscriptions. “There’s no platform that enables people who write incredible stories to actually make influencer money,” Nelson says. Writers deserved better. In 2022, while still head of product at Shuttlers, a startup digitising shared commutes, Nelson registered the Storipod.com domain. The name came from ‘peas in a pod’, writers sharing stories together. ‘Storypod’ with a y was already taken, so Nelson went with ‘Storipod’. “We’ll out-market them,” he figured. By December 2022, he’d left Shuttlers, bought a Mac and an iPhone. “If I have these two, I will not be jobless,” he told himself. “I realised the difference between most Nigerian founders and me is that they’ve raised money and I haven’t. That’s it.” After a brief stint at Edukoya in 2023, he made the call: “We’re going to do Storipod, or we’ll die trying.” Get The Best African Tech Newsletters In Your Inbox Select your country Nigeria Ghana Kenya South Africa Egypt Morocco Tunisia Algeria Libya Sudan Ethiopia Somalia Djibouti Eritrea Uganda Tanzania Rwanda Burundi Democratic Republic of the Congo Republic of the Congo Central African Republic Chad Cameroon Gabon Equatorial Guinea São Tomé and Príncipe Angola Zambia Zimbabwe Botswana Namibia Lesotho Eswatini Mozambique Madagascar Mauritius Seychelles Comoros Cape Verde Guinea-Bissau Senegal The Gambia Guinea Sierra Leone Liberia Côte d’Ivoire Burkina Faso Mali Niger Benin Togo Other Select your gender Male Female Others TC Daily TC Events TC Scoop Subscribe Day 500: 15 developers and a prayer Building a social media app is one of the hardest things you can do as a startup. The bar is brutally high. Users expect Instagram’s polish from 2-3 people. They don’t want lag. They don’t want it to ‘feel like a Nigerian app.’ They want the international version. Nigerian developers “know how to fix things and work in a company,” Nelson says. “They don’t know how to build from scratch to scale.” Storipod burned through 15 mobile developers. Nelson used his last savings to hire an Indian developer who left bugs everywhere, but in December 2023, they got into the Android store. Then came the iOS dance. Twenty-two builds rejected. Nelson kept pushing. On February 6, 2024, the email arrived: “Welcome to the App Store.” “I read it twice,” Nelson says. “That’s the most powerful email I’ve ever received.” But money was gone. The Indian developer left. The team was down to Nelson and his co-founders, Caleb Chinga and Prince Ita. No mobile engineer. No way forward. “At some point, I thought this was the end,” Nelson admits. Then he went on LinkedIn and began cold-messaging Flutter developers. “We have bugs. Can you help us? We don’t have money, but this thing can blow.” Most ignored him. One developer, Daniel, asked to see the documentation. “This is what I do for a living,” Nelson replied, sending over everything. Daniel looked at the code, fixed a few bugs, then said he’d keep helping when he was free. He was between jobs. That’s how Storipod survived the first crash. But in those early months, he kept the app alive for free. Then Nelson found Taiwo Farinu. Brilliant, coding from a beer parlour with a broken laptop. When Farinu needed ₦20,000 ($13) for an emergency, Nelson sent it immediately, even when he was broke himself. Farinu solved the most complex problems, like making stories remember where you stopped reading, just like WhatsApp Status. “Working with Taiwo can be really hard,” Nelson says. “But once he gets it, he can solve anything.” Getting free Microsoft Azure 150,000 credits from Microsoft saved them. So did relationships. Nelson called in favours everywhere; former interns built the web app, a pharmacy encounter led to a designer who sketched the entire web interface during her NHS night shifts at 3 a.m. “She finished it in two days,” Nelson says, still amazed. “If there’s a will, there’s a way.” But the team still wasn’t getting paid. Nelson was burning out. His co-founders were juggling day jobs and night shifts on Storipod. “I see what they’re going through,” Nelson says. “I’m like, ‘Guys, how far? We need to fix this one. Let’s push.’” Every night he’d pray the same thing: “God, let this succeed, not for me, for these guys.” Get The Best African Tech Newsletters In Your Inbox Select your country Nigeria Ghana Kenya South Africa Egypt Morocco Tunisia Algeria Libya Sudan Ethiopia Somalia Djibouti Eritrea Uganda Tanzania Rwanda Burundi Democratic Republic of the Congo Republic of the Congo Central African Republic Chad Cameroon Gabon Equatorial Guinea São Tomé and Príncipe Angola Zambia Zimbabwe Botswana Namibia Lesotho Eswatini Mozambique Madagascar Mauritius Seychelles Comoros Cape
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Digital Nomads: How Amaka Amaku travelled to 27 countries with a Nigerian passport
Since 2021, Amaka Amaku, a social media-loving travel influencer, has not spent more than three consecutive months at her apartment in Lagos, Nigeria, where she’s based. On a call on November 17, 2025, she was in Berlin, Germany, taking a break between work meetings and executive MBA classes while scrolling through flight options for her next trip. “Lagos is my base, my home, but I barely spend up to three months at a stretch there,” said Amaku. “And if you don’t spend more than three months in a place, you can’t really say you live there. I’ve realised that my lifestyle is practically nomadic.” The bus trip to Accra All it took to set her off on this path was one impromptu bus trip to Accra, Ghana. In 2019, Amaku worked at a publishing house in Lagos. Some authors she was promoting planned a book chat and panel in Accra; the company was paying for their hotel, so she volunteered, paid for a bus ticket and joined the trip. The journey took more than 24 hours by road, and by the time she arrived in Ghana—tired, frazzled, and already checking flight prices back to Lagos—something had shifted. “When I went to Ghana, I knew that the life I knew before was never going to remain the same,” said Amaku. “That one stressful trip opened my mind in a way it never would have if I’d stayed home; I knew I would chase this and travel a lot more.” From that first trip, she began setting herself quiet challenges: one more country, then another, each destination proof that travel was not reserved for richer, more powerful passports. She has now visited 28 countries in total, though she insists the count is 27 because she only passed through Dubai’s airport on a long layover and refuses to claim a place she has not properly explored. Her passport tells the real story: stamps from West African road trips, Schengen hops that string ten countries into a single itinerary, and journeys to places like Lebanon, Qatar, Singapore and Turkey, where she says she learned as much about community as she did about herself. Amaku at the Phoenician wall, Batroun, Lebanon “I’ve learned about sharing and community from Asian countries like Lebanon and Singapore,” said Amaku. “People there have this sense of togetherness; you feel how much they believe in people, and it changes how you see the world.” How Amaku travels on a Nigerian passport For many Nigerians, the first question about travel is not where to go, but how to get there when your passport is one of the weakest in the world. Amaku does not soften that reality; she leans into it, treating access as a problem to be solved repeatedly rather than a wall to turn back from. She still travels on a Nigerian passport, but layers it with every advantage she can find: residency, visa strategy, obsessive research and a work life built around flexibility. “Every year, I spend thousands and thousands of dollars on visa applications,” said Amaku. “I get some, I get denied for some, but the world is mine for exploration, so a visa denial will not stop me.” Her first structural hack was a residency in Benin Republic, a status she picked up after overhearing a casual conversation and deciding on the spot to pursue it. Amaku at Ouidah, Benin Republic in 2023 That residency makes it easier to apply for visas to some francophone African countries, giving her more straightforward access to parts of West Africa and beyond. On top of that, she has learned to maximise every visa she secures. A UK visa, for example, has taken her not just to England but also to Scotland, Montenegro, Albania, Jersey and even as far as Mexico, Turks and Caicos Islands, and the Bahamas, destinations many Nigerians do not realise are accessible with that single sticker in their passports. “People don’t know the access is that broad,” said Amaku. “That’s why I still apply even after denials; I hate the documentation, but I love what the access lets me do.” Building this life required money, earned slowly, then all at once. Before social media became her full-time lane, she worked in publishing and then in corporate communications, running a small hair business on the side and quietly gaining a reputation for being good at social media. When the COVID-19 lockdown hit in 2020, the demand for online creators exploded, and so did her workload. At the time, she was the head of corporate communications at a home automation company, but referrals continued to pour in for her to handle social media and content for small brands. By mid-lockdown, she was working three roles from her bedroom in Lagos: attending corporate communications, contracting as a social media manager and content creator for a fintech, and managing social media for a fashion business, all while running her hair brand. “At some point in 2020, I was earning three salaries and living at home,” said Amaku. “I wasn’t paying rent or spending on food, so after the grind and the exhaustion, I looked up and realised I had this financial buffer—and that’s when I started travelling.” Those months built more than savings; they built credibility. Every campaign, every brand recommendation, every successful experiment with social content made it easier for future employers and clients to trust her, which, in turn, made it easier to insist on remote or flexible work. Today, she leads social media and marketing efforts for a Nigerian fintech unicorn in a largely remote role, with occasional in-person time in Lagos during event-heavy seasons. “Marketing is mostly online now,” said Amaku. “I can press go on a campaign here in Germany, and it starts converting in Lagos; I don’t have to be there except during event season.” That flexibility is what lets her line up flights with classes, work calls, and group trips for the travel business she co-founded in 2022 after a trip to
Read MoreBlack Friday spending soars in South Africa as one shopper drops $66,000
Black Friday spending in South Africa has surged to striking levels, with payment processor, Peach Payments’ live dashboard showing nearly R1.1 million ($66,000) in travel and tourism transactions. By 9 am Southern African time (SAT), the payments processor reported that about R380,000 ($22,800) in transactions were made in travel and R336,000 ($20,160) in retail, in single transactions. Discovery Bank, the country’s eighth-largest bank by total assets, also reported that a single shopper made a card purchase worth R500,000 (approximately $30,000). The figure, displayed on the bank’s SpendTrend dashboard at 11 am SAT, highlights the scale of consumer demand driving this year’s retail activity. This surge in activity reflects a wider structural shift in South African commerce. The country’s e-commerce revenue is projected to surpass R130 billion ($8 billion) by the end of 2025, approaching a 10% share of the national retail market. This projection is highlighted in the Online Retail in South Africa 2025 report, compiled by World Wide Worx in partnership with Mastercard, Peach Payments and Ask Afrika. The report indicates that online retail expanded by 35% in 2024 to reach R96 billion ($5.76 billion), accounting for 8% of overall retail sales. That momentum has continued through 2025, with the sector growing at an annualised rate of 38%, outpacing traditional retail, which recorded growth of only 2.5% in 2024 and 1.6% by mid-2025. Read: South Africans ditch cash and cards for digital payments, new report shows Both Discovery Bank and Peach Payments indicate that online transaction volumes are well above 2024 levels, highlighting a shift in consumer behaviour toward digital purchasing channels. “We are closely monitoring all our transactions and already seeing impressive growth this Black Friday,” said Peach Payments CEO Rahul Jain. “Our early morning transaction counts from midnight to 9 am are already double compared to 2024.” Leading retailers and payment trends Discovery Bank data shows that by 15:44, Woolworths was the leading in-store card transactions, while Takealot held the highest total online Rand value. Checkers Sixty60, meanwhile, dominates the number of individual online transactions, driven largely by frequent, lower-value purchases for essential items. Card payments remain the dominant payment method on Peach Payments’ platform, with Visa, Mastercard, and American Express leading, followed by Pay by Bank options. Regional spending patterns also reveal strong participation from major economic hubs. The Western Cape accounts for approximately 65% of Peach Payments’ transaction value, while Gauteng contributes 34%. Discovery Bank data indicates that in-store spending is highest in Johannesburg. This preliminary data suggests that Black Friday is becoming a critical indicator of South Africa’s evolving retail landscape. The surge in high-value online transactions reflects growing consumer trust in digital payments and the strengthening capacity of online retail infrastructure. As retailers expand their digital presence and payment providers scale to support higher transaction loads, South Africa’s shift toward a digitally driven retail economy appears increasingly entrenched. Read: South Africa’s online retail boom exceeds $7bn as Amazon, Shein, Temu shake up the market This is a developing story. A comprehensive analysis will follow after Black Friday trading concludes. Editor’s note: This article was updated at 5:43 pm WAT on Friday, Nov. 28, to clarify that the travel and retail transactions on Peach Payments were single transactions.
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7 African startups redefining research, regulation, retail, and recreation
Startups On Our Radar spotlights African startups solving African challenges with innovation. In our previous edition, we featured seven game-changing startups pioneering media, real estate, health, social networking and artificial intelligence. Expect the next dispatch on December 5, 2025. This week, we explore seven African startups in the health, research, e-commerce and logistics sectors and why they should be on your watchlist. Let’s dive into it: Swaddle wants to become Lagos’ motherhood command centre (FemTech, Nigeria) Founder, Feyikemi Bello, described the invisible load of motherhood, such as tracking meals, vaccines, schedules, childcare logistics, and emotional overwhelm, as the real pain point no one is building for. Bello identified a gap in the market where existing technology caters to pregnancy and labour but vanishes when the actual work of parenting begins, leaving mothers to juggle personal schedules and household planning manually. Swaddle’s MVP (minimum viable product), launching January 13, introduces a location-aware AI assistant that helps mothers navigate their environment by recommending nearby pharmacies, schools, activities, and child-friendly venues. It will also have a motherhood-focused planner that organises children’s schedules, automates reminders, and separates childcare tasks from the chaos of everyday life. To be integrated is a Memories feature, which is a daily log for photos and notes. The app is manually fed with Lagos-specific data to avoid inaccurate AI suggestions. Swaddle is launching with a freemium business model. Core productivity tools will be offered for free. Premium users will eventually gain access to features like an anonymous community where mothers can seek advice without fear of judgment. The startup also plans to generate revenue through B2B partnerships by connecting brands to its targeted user base. Long-term, Bello intends to monetise aggregated data insights, such as a high volume of requests for parks in a specific neighbourhood, to guide real estate and infrastructure developments. Why we’re watching: Swaddle is entering a market with virtually no direct competitors. While apps like Peanut exist internationally, they focus on social connection, not productivity, planning, or support. Swaddle’s key differentiator is its purpose-built AI, grounded in manually verified local data, ensuring accurate, Lagos-specific recommendations that generic AI tools might be unable to provide. MegaQuest wants to replace rigid text surveys with voice-first data collection (Research, Ghana) Co-founded by Ahorlu Delali, Emmanuel Enya, Francis Val-Neboh, and Magath Nael, MegaQuest is a research platform designed for Africa’s multilingual reality. The idea came when they noticed how difficult it was to conduct research across African markets without a common language. Researchers told them they struggled to collect feedback from respondents who preferred speaking over typing, especially older users or rural communities, and that voice responses often gave more honest insights than typed answers. Existing tools required researchers to use different platforms for audio collection, transcription, translation, and analysis. MegaQuest brings all of this into one place and lets researchers create audio surveys called quests. With this platform, respondents hear questions in a selected voice and answer using speech. Users can choose default synthetic voices or upgrade to custom options that use the researcher’s own recorded voice. MeqaQuest supports six Ghanaian languages, as well as Yoruba, Igbo, English, and French. The platform automatically transcribes responses into English even when the original answer is in a local language, and gives researchers both the audio and text versions. The platform’s backend captures responses even if a user abandons the survey halfway through, ensuring partial data is not lost. The system also provides deep analytics and the ability to request specific insights like gender breakdowns. Why we’re watching: MegaQuest is tackling the challenges of language fragmentation and the difficulty of collecting rich feedback across African cultures. Global players like Voiceform and GeoPoll cover parts of this stack, but they don’t provide local-language support. MegaQuest is positioning itself as the continent’s first voice-native research platform. The startup generates revenue from subscription packages of $10 or $50. Recommended reading: How this tech startup helps humanitarian organisations understand Somali OMENAI wants to connect African artists to global collectors (Art & Culture, Nigeria) Founded by Gbenro Adeyemo, OMENAI is a specialised marketplace designed to bridge the gap between African contemporary artists and the international art market. Adeyemo, a creative who frequently travelled between Nigeria and the US, noticed that talent is immense in cities like Ibadan. Still, artists lacked the visibility and trusted infrastructure to sell internationally. So, he designed an ecosystem to give African visual artists the global visibility, fair compensation, and logistical support that they struggle to access. OMENAI offers a web and mobile application where vetted artists and galleries can create profiles and upload their work for a collector to see. When a collector purchases an item, the funds are instantly credited to the artist’s in-app wallet for withdrawal, and OMENAI’s integrated logistics partners handle the pickup and shipping of the physical artwork. In addition to the built-in wallets, creators get an analytics dashboard and sales tracking. Collectors are also able to track the flow of their purchases and orders. OMENAI generates revenue by charging galleries subscription fees and commissions on every artwork sold by artists. Additionally, OMENAI generates revenue through brand advertising, merchandise sales, and long-term data and insights licensing. Despite being in the pre-launch phase with a full rollout scheduled for January, the startup claims to have processed $60,000 in art sales from social media and is raising pre-seed funding at a $1 million valuation. Why we’re watching: A report by ArtTactic shows that African artworks now account for auction sales that exceed $72 million annually. OMENAI is positioning itself as a technology company that is catering to this market segment. Its differentiator is a combination of authenticity and cultural relevance, in contrast to global platforms that spotlight African art seasonally. The platform is assembling a multi-layered ecosystem that could give emerging African artists consistent global visibility. Infinity Health Africa wants to automate regulatory compliance for the continent’s healthcare (HealthTech, Nigeria) Infinity Health Africa is a regulatory technology company tackling the fragmentation and opacity of African healthcare markets. Regulatory pathways
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