What is Antigravity and why does it matter?
AI coding tools have become good at generating code, fixing errors and explaining what is happening inside a codebase. But Google wants its AI to take on a larger role in the development process. That is where Antigravity comes in. Antigravity is Google’s agentic development platform, designed to allow AI agents handle multi-step coding and knowledge-work tasks. The agents can use tools, work with files, search the web, delegate parts of a task to other agents, and continue working without needing constant instructions from a developer. Google introduced Antigravity in November 2025 as an AI-powered development environment. Since then, the company has expanded it into a broader platform that includes Antigravity 2.0, the Antigravity IDE, CLI and SDK. The idea is simple: instead of using AI only to help with individual pieces of code, developers can give agents larger tasks and then supervise the work they produce. This article explains what Antigravity is, how it works, and why it matters as software development becomes increasingly agentic What is Google Antigravity? Google Antigravity is an agentic development platform that allows users to work with AI agents on coding and other knowledge-work tasks. The easiest way to understand the difference is to compare Antigravity with a traditional coding assistant. A coding assistant might suggest code, explain an error or generate a function when you ask for one. An agentic platform works at a higher level. You can give an agent a broader objective and allow it to plan, use tools, execute commands and work through multiple steps. Google describes Antigravity as a platform built for the agent-first era. Its agents can perform tasks such as reading and writing files, executing system commands, conducting web searches, interacting with Chrome and creating artifacts and implementation plans. The platform now has several different surfaces: Antigravity 2.0: A standalone desktop command centre for launching, monitoring and orchestrating agents. Antigravity CLI: A terminal-based interface for working with Antigravity agents. Antigravity SDK: A Python framework for building custom agentic applications on top of Google’s Antigravity runtime. Antigravity IDE: A full agentic development environment designed for working directly with code. How does Google Antigravity work? 1. You give an agent a goal The biggest difference with Antigravity is the level at which you interact with the AI. Instead of asking an agent to write one function, you can give it a broader task and allow it to determine the steps required to complete it. Antigravity agents can use tools to execute commands, read and write files, search the web, interact with Chrome and work with external services through skills and MCP servers. This changes the relationship between the developer and the AI. The developer does not necessarily have to specify every individual step. They can describe the desired outcome and let the agent work through the task. 2. Agents can delegate work to other agents Antigravity 2.0 supports dynamic subagents, which allow a main agent to create specialised agents for particular parts of a task. These subagents can work in parallel, with workspace isolation helping keep their work separate. Google says this can allow larger tasks to be divided into smaller pieces while preventing multiple workstreams from unnecessarily filling the main agent’s context. In practical terms, instead of one agent doing everything sequentially, it can delegate focused pieces of work to other agents. 3. Agents can work asynchronously Antigravity also supports asynchronous task management. Long-running operations can be moved into background processes so they do not block the agent’s active work. Subagents can also run as background tasks while their progress is streamed back to the main agent. 4. You can schedule agents to work automatically Antigravity 2.0 also includes Scheduled Tasks. Users can set recurring schedules that automatically invoke agents to perform predefined tasks. Google gives examples including daily pull-request digests, hourly checks on live deployments and monthly reports on system architecture changes. This takes Antigravity beyond an AI tool that you manually prompt every time. Once a schedule has been configured, the agent can be triggered automatically according to that schedule. What are Antigravity Artifacts? One of the more important parts of Antigravity is Artifacts. Artifacts are outputs that agents create to communicate their work and progress to the user. They can include things such as implementation plans, rich documents, diagrams, images, browser recordings, and other forms of evidence about what the agent has done. This matters because handing more work to an AI agent creates another problem: how do you know what it actually did? Artifacts give users something to inspect rather than forcing them to rely solely on a final answer. Google has built Antigravity around this idea of communicating progress and results through artifacts, with users able to review the work and provide feedback directly. What models power Antigravity? Antigravity is closely integrated with Google’s Gemini models. Google’s current Antigravity platform highlights Gemini 3.7 Flash, introduced in August 2026 as the platform’s workhorse model for coding and agentic tasks. Google says the model shows notable gains over its predecessor, Gemini 3.6 Flash, on coding benchmarks, along with introductory pricing at roughly half the cost per token. Antigravity is not simply a model, though. The model provides the underlying intelligence, while the Antigravity agent harness provides the environment, tools, permissions, and other capabilities that allow an agent to carry out multi-step work. That distinction is important. Antigravity is a platform for deploying and managing agents, rather than simply another chatbot powered by Gemini. Why does Antigravity matter? The bigger change is the move from AI that helps developers write code to AI agents that can take on larger pieces of work. Traditional software development requires developers to decide what needs to be done, write or modify code, run tests, investigate problems, and repeat the process. Agentic development changes that balance. A developer can increasingly describe an outcome and allow an agent to handle more of the execution. The developer then becomes responsible for directing the work, reviewing the results and making the decisions that
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Nigeria’s SEC admits Yellow Card, Blockchain Africa into crypto sandbox
Nigeria’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has admitted three additional virtual asset service providers and digital investment platforms into its Accelerated Regulatory Incubation Programme (ARIP), expanding the regulatory sandbox to 12 firms since July. On Thursday, the SEC said it had admitted Pisi Payment Solutions, the parent company of Nigerian fintech YDPay, BC Access (Nigeria) Limited, the legal entity of Blockchain Africa—a subsidiary of global cryptocurrency exchange Blockchain—and Yellow Card, the stablecoin infrastructure startup, into the programme. The approvals grant the firms Approval-in-Principle (AIP) status, allowing them to operate within the sandbox’s defined scope while remaining subject to ongoing regulatory and supervisory conditions. In July, the regulator admitted nine firms into the sandbox, including investment platform GetEquity and cryptocurrency exchanges KuCoin Nigeria and Luno. “This development means that these entities would receive the Commission’s Approval-in-Principle (AIP), permitting them to operate within the defined scope of the Programme and subject to conditions stipulated by the Commission,” the regulator said in a statement. “An Approval-in-Principle confirms that an entity has satisfied the Commission’s requirements for admission into the Programme.” The move underscores the SEC’s renewed push to bring crypto-related businesses under a formal regulatory framework following a slowdown in new admissions in 2025. The capital markets regulator is now accelerating the onboarding of digital asset startups into its sandbox as it seeks to balance innovation with investor protection. Launched in June 2024, ARIP is a controlled testing sandbox for virtual asset providers, tokenised product platforms, and other digital investment businesses. The SEC uses the programme to evaluate new technologies and business models before they are allowed to offer products to the wider investing public. The SEC first granted admissions and approvals-in-principle to Nigerian cryptocurrency startups Busha and Quidax in August 2024. Those approvals were expected to lead to full licences after a one-year incubation period. However, the regulator has yet to confirm whether either firm has completed that transition, leaving no clear precedent for how sandbox participants become fully regulated crypto operators in Nigeria. The expansion comes as Nigeria continues to rank among Africa’s largest cryptocurrency markets by adoption, despite years of regulatory uncertainty and periodic restrictions on parts of the sector. Regulators are increasingly shifting from outright caution toward a framework centered on licensing, supervision, and consumer safeguards. “Nigeria is one of Africa’s most important digital asset markets, and participating in the SEC’s ARIP is an important step forward in our long-term commitment to the country,” Owen Odia, general manager for Africa at Blockchain, told TechCabal. “The programme [allows] us to work directly with the SEC in a controlled environment, bring our global experience to the Nigerian market, and help support a framework that protects consumers while enabling responsible innovation.” The SEC noted that ARIP admission does not constitute a final operating licence. The regulator has also imposed minimum capital and corporate governance requirements on digital asset companies, with exchanges and custodians required to maintain capital of up to ₦2 billion ($1.5 million). The latest admissions underscore that Nigeria is moving more decisively toward a supervised digital asset regime, now built around the country’s Virtual Asset Council—along with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Nigeria Revenue Service (NRS) as vice chairs—potentially providing greater clarity for startups, investors, and foreign cryptocurrency firms seeking access to one of Africa’s largest digital asset markets. True scale demands moving beyond surface-level integrations to robust execution. We’ve filtered the noise out of Moonshot 2026, optimising the conference strictly for high-calibre connections between startup founders, global financial operators, enterprise leaders and individuals rewiring Africa’s technical frameworks. Get 20% off Early Bird tickets for a limited time.
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Germany offered Adekoyejo Kuye a future. He chose Nigeria.
Adekoyejo Kuye has the unhurried air of a man with nowhere else to be. He is the sort of person you can listen to for hours without noticing you have been sitting at the same table. We meet on July 28 at Somerset Westview in Kilimani, Nairobi. Kuye is in town for Halcyon’s Africa Food & Climate Resilience programme, where his company is part of the 2026 cohort. He sits easily, speaks without hurry, and rarely seems to search for a thought. Kuye is the founder of KAMIM Technologies, a Nigerian climate-tech company that builds solar-powered cold storage infrastructure and connects farmers to markets. It is not the company Kuye imagined himself building. In fact, he never imagined building a company at all. The son of a chemical engineering professor and a nurse, Kuye grew up taking toys apart to understand how they worked and expected to become a mechanical engineer working on cars. During his national youth service, he was posted to a rural community in Enugu State, Southeastern Nigeria, where he also worked unpaid for a solar company, carrying panels and batteries into communities, and began to understand the everyday problems farmers faced. He later left for Germany for a master’s in renewable energy, financing his studies with factory jobs and night shifts at Amazon. When he finished, staying offered the safer, more obvious path. Friends and family urged him to take it. Instead, Kuye bought a one-way ticket to Nigeria without telling anyone. “Are they using juju to pull you home?” he recalls someone asking. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Nigeria loses enormous amounts of food before it ever reaches consumers. Was there a single moment when you realised the country’s biggest agricultural problem wasn’t production, but preservation? I have an engineering background and started my career at a solar company. We built mini-grids in rural communities, mainly powering healthcare centres, schools and other infrastructure. It was going into those communities that I began to see the problem. A lot of the people were farmers. We would install mini-grids there, but over time, we noticed that many could not afford to pay for solar home systems because what we were providing did not necessarily have productive value for their livelihoods. That got me thinking: how can we build something that actually improves what these farmers are already doing? I started asking them questions. They told me, “This is what we’re facing. Once we harvest, we have to quickly take everything to the market and sell it because there is no infrastructure to preserve it.” I wasn’t fully aware of the scale of the problem initially. But after those conversations, I started doing my own research. Cold storage at the farm gate was almost non-existent. You see cold rooms in urban areas, supermarkets, and large farms, but they weren’t common near smallholder farmers. Yet we produce a lot of perishables in Nigeria—vegetables, tomatoes, and other produce that are very sensitive to heat. There is something called pre-cooling. Once you harvest, rapidly removing the heat from the produce can significantly extend its shelf life. That basic infrastructure simply wasn’t there. That was when I realised there was a major gap. Kuye speaking at a past Halcyon function. Image source: KAMIM You trained as an engineer. At what point did engineering stop being a profession and become a way of thinking about society? I love being on the field. We go into a community, deploy a system, and leave. I just love the process of building stuff. I had no plan to run a business. I’m not a natural businessman who always knew, “Ah, I’m going to become an entrepreneur.” Everything I know about business, I learned on the job out of necessity. But when we started working on cold storage, I knew we had stumbled on something big. We were solving a real problem affecting people’s lives. Farmers would tell us, “This is the business I use to feed my family. This is what my wife does.” It became more than building cold rooms. Then we discovered another problem: affordability. Smallholder farmers cannot afford to buy cold rooms. So you start asking, “How do you finance them?” How do you create a business model that makes the infrastructure sustainable? Many people avoid this space because it is difficult. Traditional financing institutions ask: How will the farmer pay? Can they pay back? But we said, “We’re already in this thing. We need to find a way to make it work.” I’ve been working on agricultural cold-chain infrastructure full-time since 2019, collaborating with farmers, impact investors, and people in the climate space to develop various models. One experience I’ll never forget was deploying our first solution. When we initially visited the community, farmers told us that after harvesting tomatoes, they put them under a tree or found somewhere cool. That was their storage system. They only knew cold rooms for fish and meat. The idea of storing tomatoes in one place was completely new. So we did an experiment. We kept some tomatoes outside and put others inside the cold room. After 21 days, we showed them the difference. You needed to see their faces. That was when I knew: okay, we are doing something important. Growing up, what was the dinner table like? Were conversations about politics, business, faith, or simply getting through the week? I grew up in an engineering home. My father is a professor of chemical engineering. My mother was a nurse. My sister also studied engineering. It was a very academic home: do your work, do what you’re supposed to do. Like most African homes, ours was religious. You went for Bible study during the week, and church on Sunday. That was always part of our lives. But academics were a big thing. From a young age, I knew I wanted to do engineering. I had toys, and the first thing I would do was scatter them. I wanted to open
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Cascador partners Nigeria’s youth ministry to back young founders
Cascador, a Nigeria-focused platform for growth-stage founders, has partnered with the Federal Ministry of Youth Development (FMYD) through the Nigerian Youth Academy (NiYA), a federal digital empowerment platform, to launch a programme to help youth entrepreneurs build stronger businesses. The NiYA × Cascador Founders Program will begin with a pilot cohort of 20 early-stage Nigerian founders, eight of whom will receive up to ₦5 million ($3,600) each in non-dilutive funding at the end of the programme. Applications for the program will open on August 19, and interested participants can apply on the NiYA website. The programme adds to the Nigerian government’s efforts in supporting young entrepreneurs and early-stage businesses. In November 2025, the government’s Investment in Digital and Creative Enterprises (iDICE) programme invested in Ventures Platform’s $64 million first close of its Pan-African fund II. “For NiYA, training is only one part of the journey. The real value is in helping young people move from learning to enterprise, from ideas to investable businesses, and from potential to sustainable economic participation,” said Ayodele Olawande, Minister of Youth Development. “The partnership with Cascador strengthens that pathway by combining business preparation with access to capital, particularly for young founders who may not yet have the formal structures or financial history that traditional funding often requires.” The program will run for four weeks and cover business fundamentals, investment readiness and pitch preparation, according to the company. It will be delivered in person in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital city, and include virtual touchpoints and one-on-one mentorship. After completion, the eight top-performing founders will receive an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution designed to help them organise and manage their businesses in addition to the funding at a NiYA/FMYD-organised Pitch Day. The funding is non-dilutive, meaning the founders will not have to give up equity in their businesses in exchange for the capital. “NiYA and FMYD have already shown what real commitment to Nigeria’s youth looks like — the platforms, the reach, the ambition to train millions,” said Trish Thomas, CEO of Cascador. “What we’re building together now is the missing piece, a practical bridge from the ideation stage to real capital-readiness. When a Ministry so dedicated to its young people asked Cascador to help build that bridge, it was an easy decision.” Over the course of the program, NiYA and FMYD will handle founder sourcing, training and the day-to-day delivery of the programme, while Cascador will help define eligibility criteria, support investment-readiness training, judge the founders’ pitches and provide the funding for the top performers. The pilot is part of NiYA’s ambition to train and empower seven million Nigerian youth within two years. All 20 founders who complete the program retain NiYA alumni status and receive priority consideration for future opportunities, according to the academy. The program builds on Cascador’s existing work supporting Nigerian founders, including through the Cascador ScaleUp, a program for growth-stage entrepreneurs focused on leadership and strategy. Its ScaleUp alumni gain access to the Cascador Catalytic Fund, which the company said deploys up to $5 million annually through a combination of debt and equity investments. Since 2019, Cascador said it has supported 70 companies that have collectively raised more than $125 million. True scale demands moving beyond surface-level integrations to robust execution. We’ve filtered the noise out of Moonshot 2026, optimising the conference strictly for high-calibre connections between startup founders, global financial operators, enterprise leaders and individuals rewiring Africa’s technical frameworks. Get 20% off Early Bird tickets for a limited time.
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The Selar row shows how Nigeria plans to tax its creator economy
On July 15, Douglas Kendyson, the founder and chief executive of creator economy startup Selar, accused the Lagos State Internal Revenue Service (LIRS) of “hounding” his company over a backdated 5% royalty fee on all sales processed through the platform. In an emailed statement to TechCabal, LIRS said its position rests on how those transactions are structured: when someone buys an ebook or a course on Selar, they are paying to access a creator’s copyrighted work. Payment “may constitute consideration for the use of, or the right to use, the creator’s intellectual property,” the agency said in the statement signed by Monsurat Amasa-Oyelude, its head of corporate communications. LIRS is testing whether payments for digital content are royalties rather than sales, a distinction that could require creator platforms to withhold 5% before paying creators. “Where royalty is paid to an individual, resident or non-resident, the applicable withholding tax rate under the WHT Regulations is 5%,” the statement read. The agency sees the transaction as a licence to use the work, not an outright sale. “The relevant right is the creator’s intellectual property right, which is licenced by the creator to the purchaser, enabling the purchaser to access or use the digital content,” the statement read. If a withholding obligation exists, someone has to do the withholding. The law places that duty on whoever makes or facilitates the payment. Creator economy startups like Selar, Mainstack, and Nestuge handle the money, so LIRS wants them to deduct the 5% at payout and remit it. The reason is that 400,000 creators are hard to reach, but one platform is not. On July 17, two days after his viral tweet, Kendyson disclosed that he had met informally with LIRS officials. He said some lines “could’ve gotten crossed,” and a formal meeting has been scheduled where both sides will work through how Nigeria’s new tax laws apply to creators. LIRS confirmed the July 17 meeting but characterised it differently. The agency said the engagement was part of an ongoing exercise to reconcile outstanding records and clarify the statutory basis of its position, rather than to work through how the law applies to creators. “The matter remains an open verification and reconciliation exercise,” the agency’s statement read. “Should the exercise ultimately establish a withholding tax liability, LIRS will issue a formal assessment through the statutory process with the attendant rights of objection and appeal before any liability becomes final and enforceable.” That sequencing raises an obvious question: if a formal assessment comes only after the meetings, why were the platforms not approached before any liability had been established? LIRS said this order is correct because the duty to withhold is “self-executing and does not depend on a prior notice, reminder, directive, or appointment by LIRS.” The agency also confirmed that Selar is not alone and it is conducting compliance verifications “across digital economy platforms that process payment distributions to individual content creators,” adding that it is taking statutory action against Mainstack, another creator economy startup. “With respect to Mainstack, the Service exercised its statutory powers under Section 67 of the NTAA, 2025, following the company’s failure to respond to official communications,” LIRS’ statement read. “However, upon receipt of Mainstack’s formal objection on Monday, 27 July 2026, the Service will invite the company to a statutory reconciliation meeting per the provisions of the Act.” Mainstack declined to comment on any part of this article. What 5% means for creators Withholding tax is not an extra tax but an early instalment of income tax the creator already owes to LIRS, collected by whoever pays it. “This is a deduction-at-source obligation on the payer, not a charge on Selar’s own income, and not a demand that Selar personally discharge tax liabilities properly belonging to individual creators from its own funds,” LIRS said, citing section 51 of the NTAA and Regulation 4(1)(f) of the Deduction of Tax at Source (Withholding) Regulations 2024. “The withholding tax is not for the creator economy startups,” said a tax consultant at a Lagos advisory firm, who asked not to be named because he was not authorised to speak to the press. “Under the law, before they pay the creator, they’re supposed to withhold 5%.” If a platform owes a Lagos-based creator ₦1 million ($735) in royalties, it must withhold 5%, which is ₦50,000 ($37); then the creator receives ₦950,000 ($698) in cash and a credit note for the remaining ₦50,000 ($37), which they can set against their own tax bill. A credit note is the official receipt showing that tax has already been deducted and paid to the state on behalf of the creators. The creators have to present it when filing their return so the amount is deducted from what they owe in taxes. “They file their taxes. If their rate is 20%, they owe ₦200,000 ($147). They can say to the state, ‘I have a credit note for ₦50,000 ($37), so I only have a balance of ₦150,000 ($110) to pay,’” the consultant said. “That’s why we don’t usually see withholding tax as a special category of tax itself,” he added. “It’s just an advance of income taxes. The government wants to get their taxes early, because nobody wants to wait until the next year.” A creator who files a tax return in Lagos would not lose 5% of her earnings. She would pay part of her tax bill earlier than expected and feel it in her cash flow. The contract that decides it Whether any of this applies depends on one question: is a creator licencing their work to the buyer or selling it to them? The answer sits in the contract between the platform and the creator. Selar’s terms of service do not settle the question. Lawyers who spoke to TechCabal came away thinking the arrangement looks like a licence. Creators grant Selar the right to “use, modify, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce, and distribute” their content on and through the platform, and that permission extends to letting other
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What Jumia’s $50 million raise says about its path to profitability
Jumia has spent the past three years making its business leaner and cheaper to run, while chasing profitability. Now it has an additional $50 million that can help it reach that goal faster. But the capital alone will not make Jumia profitable. The e-commerce company has increasingly been building around cheaper and more relevant supply, higher monetisation, lower fulfilment costs, and tighter fixed costs in recent years. Jumia, founded in 2012, was burning about $200 million a year by late 2022, triggering a leadership overhaul and a renewed focus on profitability. It has aggressively cut costs while clarifying its identity, exited unprofitable verticals, stopped stocking categories such as groceries, pulled out of several countries, and reduced staff count. “A meaningfully stronger balance sheet will de-risk our path to profitability and reduce our financing risk in a volatile macro environment,” Francis Dufay, Jumia’s chief executive officer, said of the raise on the company’s earnings call on Wednesday. Jumia announced the $50 million raise, alongside its second-quarter results on Wednesday. It is anchored by a $25 million investment from the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank Group’s private-sector investment arm, with existing leading shareholders and selected new investors participating. The investors have agreed to buy 9.1 million Jumia American Depositary Shares (ADSs) at $5.52 each, with the transaction expected to close in the second half of August. The $50 million equity raise gives Jumia room to gradually increase working capital, capture attractive supply opportunities, invest in fulfilment to lower unit costs, and drive platform usage as it continues to improve its economics. $50million as part runway, part growth capital Jumia ended June with $48.3 million in liquidity, down $14.3 million during the second quarter. It used $11.8 million in cash for operations, compared with $12.7 million a year earlier. Cash burn was $14.3 million in Q2, Dufay said on the company’s earnings call. The company says the Q2 cash outflow included a $3 million increase in working capital, and it plans to increase working capital gradually in Q3 to capture attractive supply opportunities. With an extra $50 million in the bank, Jumia says it will increase working capital during the third quarter to capture what it describes as attractive supply opportunities. Jumia can put more capital into the right parts of its business to reduce how much funding it needs later. One of Jumia’s biggest changes over the past two years has been its realisation that the African customer it needs to serve cannot be built around expensive international brands. “Our customers are the lower middle class of Africa… people making $150 to $400, $500 a month,” Dufay told investors in November 2025. “The fantasised middle class making $2,000 and driving to work does not exist.” Since then, the company has moved towards lower-priced, higher-volume merchandise, increasingly sourced from China. By September 2025, Jumia had about 24,000 China-based sellers and roughly 2.2 million China-sourced items in warehouses across Africa. Gross items sold from international sellers grew 96% year-over-year in Q2 2026, reflecting the continued scaling of its Chinese seller base and growing volumes from its supply base for affordable fashion in Turkey. Chinese suppliers provide Jumia with cheaper products, a wider assortment, and faster product iteration. They also tend to operate in categories such as fashion, accessories, and home & living, which Jumia says carry higher gross profit ratios and generate additional revenue from advertising and storage services. In Q2, supply disruption caused by memory chip and CPU price increases hurt phones and electronics, pushing customers towards lower-value categories such as fashion and beauty that the company is already betting on. While Jumia’s average physical-goods order value fell to about $34.6 from $36.3 in the previous year, gross profit per order increased to about $4.9 from $4.8. The company sold more goods within the cheaper basket; it didn’t make less money from each order. Deploying more capital towards securing more supply like this ultimately benefits the company’s bottom line. The Economics of a Jumia Order What happens to a $34.60 order when Jumia owns the product versus when a marketplace seller does? Who owns the inventory? Jumia (First-Party) Marketplace Seller (Third-Party) How is it delivered? Door Delivery Pickup Station Order value (GMV) $34.60 − Seller’s share (3P illustration) -$27.66 Illustrative Jumia revenue $34.60 Jumia records the merchandise sale. − Merchandise cost (1P illustration) -$28.00 − Fulfilment -$4.50 = Illustrative gross contribution $2.10 The takeaway: Third-party sellers let Jumia earn from a transaction without buying and holding the merchandise itself. That reduces the amount of capital tied up in inventory. Lower fulfilment costs then leave more of Jumia’s marketplace revenue after each order. *This is an illustration, not Jumia’s reported per-order profitability. Gross contribution = illustrative Jumia revenue minus merchandise/fulfilment costs shown above. The 3P scenario assumes a 20% take rate. Jumia reported average fulfilment costs of $2.04 in Q2. Why the $50m matters: The fresh capital gives Jumia more room to invest in supply, working capital and fulfilment as it tries to improve these economics at scale. More money from the same GMV In Q2, Jumia’s gross merchandise value (GMV), the total value of goods that the platform sold, increased 23%, and gross profit grew 28%. Gross profit reached $30.7 million, and gross profit as a percentage of GMV jumped to 14.2% over the year. “This improvement reflects a shift in the mix toward higher take rate revenue streams, and our disciplined strategy of prioritising attractive category economics and take rates rather than pursuing discount-driven volume growth,” the company said. Jumia is focusing on improving marketplace monetisation and is now earning more across its value chain. The company has been doing this through higher take rates, a shift towards better-margin categories and the expansion of marketplace-related revenue. Marketplace transactions are fundamentally different from first-party sales. When Jumia sells inventory itself, it records the full selling price as revenue and carries the economics of the merchandise. When a third-party seller makes the sale, Jumia earns a commission and can layer on
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👨🏿🚀TechCabal Daily – Too much spill ruins the goods
In partnership with Lire en Français اقرأ هذا باللغة العربية TGIFTWBCBWST. Several companies in African tech are hiring this week: Moniepoint, Paystack, Stears, Wave, HoneyCoin, Duplo, Quidax, Tembo, Roofteller, and Impact Hub Lagos all have open roles. Visit our job board to apply. Become smarter about tech and commerce in Francophone Africa, and the policies shaping them. Read our newsletter here first or subscribe below. Subscribe Kenya goes easy on cyber cafes E-Finance eyes Egyptian expansion South Africa’s rocket-launch plans Who secured the bag? World Wide Web 3 Events policy Kenya’s regulator says cyber cafes don’t need to share customers’ browser history Image Source: Tenor Local cyber cafe operators in Kenya can breathe a small sigh of relief. After mandating them to collect and record customer data and usage sessions, the country’s communications regulator has clarified that those details do not include browser history. The rules, previously expected to take effect on August 14, could have put cyber cafe operators in a weird position, where they have to record how and when customers use Internet services; that would have caused a trust deficit, possibly leading operators to lose customers. What happened? On Thursday, the Communications Authority of Kenya (CAK) issued a clarification stating that the new rules for Public Communications Access Centres (PCACs), including cyber cafes, do not include tracking users’ browsing histories. Instead, operators only need to keep basic session logs—names, identity numbers, and terminal times—for at least three years. The updated rules will now take effect on September 7, in the latest regulatory effort to tackle cybercrime in the country without making business economics risky for cyber cafes. Between the lines: The CAK is walking a tightrope between national security and the constitutional right to privacy. By explicitly excluding browsing history, the regulator is likely trying to avoid a repeat of thelegal drama surrounding Huduma Namba, a controversial biometric ID scheme that the courts halted because it lacked a clear data protection framework. It is also dodging the shadow of arecent KES 900,000 ($6,900) privacy fine slapped on Safaricom after the High Court ruled that data controllers have a non-delegable duty to prevent third parties from accessing sensitive subscriber data. The message from the bench is clear: if you collect it, you are liable for it. It suggests the government has realised that while tracking who was in the chair is necessary for fraud audits, tracking what they were reading is a legal minefield it isn’t ready to cross. The maths of the mandate: The penalty for ignoring the new rule is steep. Non-compliant cafes face fines of at leastKES 500,000 ($3,864) or 0.2% of their annual turnover. In a market where many cafes are already pivoting to printing and scanning just to stay afloat, a single fine could be a death sentence. Zoom out: Kenya’s decision to dial back the surveillance aspect of the rules is a rare win for digital rights in the region. Until the identity gap in public Internet access is fully closed, the CAK has decided that a paper trail is enough of a deterrent. For now, local cyber cafes remain a place to get online—without the government looking over your shoulder every time you open a tab. Getting paid in cedis just got easier for African businesses operating in Ghana. Fincra now issues dedicated GHS virtual accounts to enable businesses to collect payments. See how Fincra GHS virtual accounts work. companies E-finance makes a $96 million bet on Egypt’s micro-lenders Image Source: Tenor Egyptian fintech giant E-finance is no longer content with just building the pipes for digital payments; it now wants to own the water flowing through them. The Egyptian-listed heavyweight isacquiring 100% of Tamweely Financial Services in a deal valued at up to EGP 4.8 billion ($96 million). What is Tamweely? Launched in 2017, Tamweely is a powerhouse in Egypt’s non-banking financial services (NBFS) sector. It specialises inmicrofinance and microinsurance for small, medium, and micro enterprises (SMEs). With over230 branches and 183,000 active borrowers, it has built a massive footprint in a country where millions of entrepreneurs still lack access to traditional bank loans. Between the lines: The acquisition is a strategic vertical integration. E-finance already powers much of Egypt’s digital government and payment infrastructure; buying Tamweely means it can now offer credit directly to the thousands of small businesses already using its platforms. It’s a move to capture the full value chain, from the moment a business pays its taxes to the moment it needs a loan to expand its shop. The maths of the move: With 183,000 borrowers, e-finance is paying about $522 per active customer, betting on the premium to deepen banking relationships in Egypt’s MSME economy. Zoom out: E-finance’s swoop for Tamweely highlights a broader trend in North Africa: the rise of the super-infrastructure player. As digital payments become commoditised, the real money is moving into credit and insurance. Until Egypt’s MSME sector is fully digitised, acquisitions like this will remain the fastest way for fintech giants to secure their dominance. E-finance didn’t just buy a lender; it bought a massive, ready-made customer base that is seeking working capital. Naira Life 2026 is here! The Naira Life Conference 2026 is bringing together Nigeria’s top finance minds, industry leaders, creators, and business strategists for a full-day of specialised sessions and masterclasses designed for ambitious Nigerians who want to make, keep, grow, and pass on real wealth. Happening on August 22 at the Jewel Aeida, Lekki, Lagos. Secure a seat in the room. countries South Africa wants to stop exporting its satellites for launch Image Source: Tenor South Africa has built satellites, supplied components for spacecraft, and developed a surprisingly capable space-technology ecosystem around Stellenbosch and the Western Cape. What it has never done is launch a satellite into orbit on a rocket built and launched from South African soil. That is, until it made a consequential decision on Thursday. What’s happening? The University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Aerospace Systems Research Institute (ASRI) is targeting 2028 for a suborbital
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Mr Eazi’s Choplife is the latest startup to move to digital free zone Itana
Choplife, the entertainment, media, technology, gaming and intellectual property company founded by Nigerian musician Mr Eazi, has moved its operations into Itana, the country’s first digital special economic zone. The move primarily changes Choplife’s corporate and regulatory base, with the company citing Itana’s regulatory environment and its promise of simpler cross-border operations as key reasons for the decision. Choplife is the latest company to move into Itana, which now hosts roughly 50 companies since becoming operational in September 2023. The growing interest reflects Itana’s pitch to businesses looking to operate globally from Africa, offering multicurrency accounts, access to international markets and a regulatory framework designed to reduce the friction of running cross-border operations from Nigeria. “We’re excited to welcome Mr Eazi and the team at Choplife. Their expansion reflects a growing wave of innovative companies choosing to build from Itana for a global audience,” said Chinyere Inya, Itana’s chief executive officer. “At Itana, we’re creating the infrastructure that allows companies like Choplife to scale seamlessly. This milestone reinforces our vision of making it easier than ever to start and grow a business serving Africa from anywhere in the world.” Mr Eazi, whose real name is Oluwatosin Ajibade, described Itana as the logical step for Choplife, which generates the majority of its content on the continent, even as it is consumed globally. Choplife joins companies such as Reliance Infosystems, Circular Energy, and AI platforms MasteryHive, Udu Technologies and Yamify in Itana. “When I look at what Itana is building, the founders that are part of Itana and the spirit behind it is, it is an opportunity for us to leverage and centralise our operations,” Ajibade told TechCabal in an interview on Wednesday. “It is very important to us that it is on the continent.” Navigating a fragmented system Ajibade traced Choplife’s origins to emPawa Africa, the music company he founded in 2019, and then expanded into events intellectual property (IP) with ‘Detty Rave’ and sports with 1v1 Africa. In 2020, Choplife itself launched as a brand, bringing those ventures together. The company now describes itself as operating at the intersection of entertainment, media, technology, gaming and intellectual property, with a portfolio spanning music, film, sports and gaming IP. Choplife operates across Ghana, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, Nigeria, Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Gambia, Botswana, Sierra Leone, Mali and Liberia. Like the fragmentation in cross-border payments, Ajibade pointed to the fragmentation of running a pan-African business as a problem Itana helps to solve. “In setting up businesses across the world, one of the things that always attracts you to a jurisdiction is like the amount of administrative friction it takes to even start your business,” he said. He explained that scaling a business across countries meant collecting payment from customers across markets while navigating different licencing, banking, foreign exchange and corporate rules. That fragmentation comes with a cost. Africa’s cross-border payments market is projected to reach $1 trillion by 2035, but businesses moving money across the continent still pay an average of 7.4% to 8.3% per transaction. Incorporating a business can also take weeks: a Norebase report found that timelines vary widely across African markets, reaching up to 20 weeks in countries such as Angola. For Ajibade, that administrative and financial friction can become a bottleneck to growth. “I can count how many times with some of the businesses I’m involved in, that we had to go through the same process from scratch every time,” he said. “If I want to do my tech business in both countries, it’s an entirely different process, and I have to do it every time. Sometimes you’re not able to take advantage of an opportunity because by that time, maybe it takes two years, the opportunity you saw is gone.” This made Choplife’s decision to anchor itself in an African digital jurisdiction more consequential. Ajibade noted the Itana move is part of Choplife’s focus on staying close to what he calls its founding ethos. “The ethos is to build an African company, just like those who have gone before me have done, or to build a pan-African company that, in its operation, in its registration, in its composition, is truly African from top to bottom, but is world-class,” he said. What Choplife gets from Itana According to Ajibade, in response to that fragmentation, Choplife sought a jurisdiction that could reduce know-your-customer (KYC) and know-your-business (KYB) frictions, banking, foreign exchange, and corporate rules. Itana’s digital-first structure offered a way to handle these requirements through a single regulatory hub rather than navigating different systems in each market. Companies operating in the zone can operate multicurrency accounts, receive and hold revenue in foreign currencies, and move capital across borders. Itana also offers tax incentives and exemptions designed to lower the cost of operating from the zone, including waivers on the standard 30% Companies Income Tax (CIT), the 7.5% Value Added Tax (VAT) on goods and services, withholding tax (WHT) of about 2.5–10% on payments such as services, rent, interest, and dividends, and the 10% Capital Gains Tax (CGT) on asset disposals and federal stamp duties. Inya noted that Itana works with other jurisdictions and organisations on cross-border capital movement, including discussions with the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). Companies can incorporate remotely and, according to Itana, complete the process in as little as two weeks. Itana is also building a physical district around the digital zone in Alaro City within Lagos State’s Lekki Free Zone corridor. The idea is to create a concentration of companies and talent that can work alongside the digital regulatory infrastructure. “We want to be able to show proof that this is possible,” Inya said. “That companies that belong to that creative sector can actually build, grow, and scale even from Nigeria.” Choplife has begun putting that proposition into practice. Ajibade noted that operations within the zone have begun, with local engineers working out of Nigeria. He also floated plans for a shared physical campus at Itana where Choplife’s team could work alongside other tenants, adding
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Kenya says cyber cafés won’t need to monitor users’ browsing history
Kenya’s Communications Authority (CA) has clarified new licencing rules for cyber cafés, saying operators will be required to keep basic customer and session records but will not have to track users’ browsing histories. The clarification, issued by the agency on Thursday, follows public discussion and media reports about the new requirements for Public Communications Access Centres (PCACs), which provide internet access to people who may not have personal computers, reliable connectivity, or other digital resources. It comes amid longstanding concerns in Kenya about how personal data is collected, stored, and accessed. The Huduma Namba case, which involved legal challenges to the government’s National Integrated Identity Management System (NIIMS) between 2019 and 2021, raised questions about the protection of sensitive identity data and the risk of personal information being used beyond its original purpose. The new licence conditions were published in the Kenya Gazette Notice Vol. CXXVIII No. 135 on August 7 and will take effect on September 7, after the statutory 30-day period. Under the rules, cyber café operators must verify customers before granting access, record the terminal used and the start and end times of each session, display applicable charges, and issue receipts for paid services. Customer registration and session records must also be securely retained for at least three years. The CA said the records are intended to provide an audit trail when a public internet facility is linked to unlawful activity, including cyber-enabled fraud, identity theft, online scams, and other offences. “The requirement for PCACs to maintain basic user logs does not extend to a customer’s browsing history,” the Authority said. The rules also do not mandate a specific customer identification system or CCTV solution. Operators can introduce additional Know Your Customer (KYC) measures where necessary, provided they comply with applicable laws. Cyber cafés will, however, be expected to implement approved network filtering and security measures to block illegal or harmful content. They must also source internet capacity from licensed providers and comply with the CA’s requirements for regulatory inspections and data protection. Recent scrutiny by regulators, courts, and civil rights groups over access to telecom records has kept data privacy in the spotlight. In a landmark May 13 ruling, the High Court of Kenya, presided over by Justice Bahati Mwamuye, awarded general damages to petitioners who sued Safaricom and M-Pesa and held that Article 31, which guarantees the right to privacy, imposes a non-delegable duty on data controllers. The CA’s decision to explicitly exclude browsing history from the required records is significant. Cyber cafés can now be required to establish who used a computer and when, without having to record which websites that person visited. Non-compliance with the new requirements could attract regulatory sanctions, including fines of at least KSh500,000 ($3,863.99) or 0.2% of annual turnover, whichever is higher, as well as suspension or closure. True scale demands moving beyond surface-level integrations to robust execution. We’ve filtered the noise out of Moonshot 2026, optimising the conference strictly for high-calibre connections between startup founders, global financial operators, enterprise leaders and individuals rewiring Africa’s technical frameworks. Get 20% off Early Bird tickets for a limited time.
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SASSA September 2026 payment dates: Full schedule
Table of contents The confirmed September 2026 payment dates Why SASSA pays on these dates SASSA grant amounts for September 2026 What about Grant-in-Aid? When does the SRD R370 grant pay in September? What is the fourth payment day for? A few reminders before payday Switch your Postbank Gold Card before September SASSA’s review crackdown continues South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) has confirmed its September 2026 payment dates, following its usual three-day staggered schedule, with an additional date for beneficiaries flagged for review. The confirmed September 2026 payment dates Older Persons Grant: Wednesday, September 2 Disability Grant and War Veterans Grant: Thursday, September 3 Children’s Grants (Child Support, Foster Child, and Care Dependency): Friday, September 4 Review and eLife Certification payments: Monday, September 7 These dates come from the Department of Social Development’s 2026/27 payment schedule, approved by the National Treasury. Why SASSA pays on these dates SASSA sticks to a few simple rules when setting payment dates. Grants go out as early in the month as possible. Payments are staggered over three days to ease pressure on the National Payment System and pay points. SASSA also avoids paying on the first of the month, on a Monday, over a weekend, or the day right after a public holiday. September fits neatly into this pattern. There is no need to shift any dates around a weekend or holiday this month, so the schedule falls exactly on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. SASSA grant amounts for September 2026 Grant amounts for September stay the same as the rates that took effect in April 2026: Older Persons, Disability, and Care Dependency Grant: R2,400 War Veterans Grant: R2,420 Child Support Grant and Grant-in-Aid: R580 Foster Child Grant: R1,290 (this rises to R1,300 in October) SRD Grant: R370, unchanged, and extended through March 31, 2027 What about Grant-in-Aid? Grant-in-Aid rides along with the main grant it is attached to, so it lands in your account on the same day as your Older Persons, Disability, War Veterans, or Care Dependency payment. You do not need to look out for a separate date. When does the SRD R370 grant pay in September? The R370 SRD grant follows its own schedule, separate from the three-day system above. SASSA pays SRD grants in batches later in the month, usually from around the 24th through month-end, after checking your details against SARS, UIF, Home Affairs, and your bank. SASSA has not published an exact September window yet, so check your own status through these channels: SASSA’s SRD website: srd.sassa.gov.za WhatsApp: 082 046 8553 USSD: *134*7737# Toll-free line: 0800 60 10 11 What is the fourth payment day for? If SASSA flags your grant for a review or eLife Certification, you may get paid on Monday, September 7 instead of the usual dates. SASSA sends a bulk SMS to let you know if this applies to you. If you get flagged, here is what to do: Visit your nearest SASSA office with your ID and any documents listed in the SMS Complete your review or eLife Certification Keep your personal, banking, and contact details updated Respond quickly if SASSA calls or texts you asking for more information If you ignore the review request, SASSA can suspend your grant in the next cycle and cancel it if the issue stays unresolved. A few reminders before payday Your money stays in your account once it is paid. You do not have to withdraw it on the exact date. Use ATMs or retail stores like Shoprite, Checkers, Pick n Pay, Boxer, and Usave to avoid long queues at SASSA pay points. Keep your banking and contact details current so your payment does not get delayed. Contact SASSA directly if your payment does not arrive when you expect it. Switch your Postbank Gold Card before September If you still use a Postbank Gold Card, switch to the new Black Card before August 31, 2026. Postbank has said this deadline is final. The switch is free and only needs your South African ID or temporary ID. You do not need any forms. You can make the switch at Postbank points inside Shoprite, Checkers, Usave, Pick n Pay, Boxer, and Spar. Dial *120*355# to find a site near you. As of early August, about 250,000 to 280,000 beneficiaries still needed to switch. Social Development Minister Dina Pule has assured beneficiaries that the card transition will not affect their grant payments. SASSA’s review crackdown continues SASSA is still tightening its checks on who qualifies for a grant. By the end of 2025, SASSA had flagged 291,581 beneficiaries for review and cancelled 34,661 grants, saving over R170 million ($10,539,320). The agency cross-checks applicants against South African Revenue Service(SARS), Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF), National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS), correctional services, and banking and credit bureau records. If you’re applying for the Older Persons Grant, you’ll also need to meet SASSA’s income and asset thresholds. Your monthly income must be below R9,350 if you’re single or R18,700 if you’re married. Your assets must also be worth less than R1,584,000 if you’re single or R3,168,000 if you’re married. Bookmark this page as your go-to guide for SASSA payment dates and grant updates every month. True scale demands moving beyond surface-level integrations to robust execution. We’ve filtered the noise out of Moonshot 2026, optimising the conference strictly for high-calibre connections between startup founders, global financial operators, enterprise leaders and individuals rewiring Africa’s technical frameworks. Get 20% off Early Bird tickets for a limited time.
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