👨🏿🚀TechCabal Daily – Paystack cuts the Allawee
In partnership with Lire en Français اقرأ هذا باللغة العربية Happy new month. Quick heads-up: If TC Daily still lands in your spam folder, move it to your Primary inbox so you don’t miss future editions. Let’s dive in. Become smarter about tech and commerce in Francophone Africa, and the policies shaping them. Read previous editions here first and subscribe below. Subscribe CBK approves Nedbank-NCBA deal Nigerian fintech Allawee folds into Paystack Yele Bademosi transitions to chairman at Onboard Namibia launches DigiNam World Wide Web 3 Opportunities M&A South Africa’s Nedbank gets CBK’s approval to acquire 66% of Kenyan lender NCBA Image Source: Tenor Remember the proposed acquisition of Kenyan digital-first bank NCBA by South African tier-1 lender Nedbank that has hogged headlines since the start of the year? We’ve got a big development in that saga. On Monday, the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) said it had approved Nedbank’s acquisition of up to 66% of NCBA on August 28, clearing a major regulatory hurdle for the South African lender. The approval follows months of regulatory reviews and a shareholder offer that saw NCBA investors accept Nedbank’s proposal in exchange for cash and Nedbank shares. State of play: The deal isn’t fully closed yet, but once completed, Nedbank will take control of NCBA, giving the South African lender a major foothold in East Africa. Nedbank will become NCBA’s majority owner, while the remaining 34% will stay in public hands. The Kenyan digital-first bank will also retain its brand, local management, and Nairobi headquarters. Explain like I’m new here: In January, Nedbank announced that it wanted to acquire about two-thirds of NCBA through a tender offer, asking existing NCBA shareholders to offer up their shares for sale. Under the proposed deal, shareholders would receive 20% cash and 80% newly issued Nedbank shares. The offer opened in May and closed on July 10, with NCBA shareholders offering 1.32 billion shares, equivalent to 79.9% of NCBA. However, shareholders offered more shares than Nedbank’s 66% target, so the bank had to scale back the allocation to 1.09 billion shares, leaving some shareholders unable to sell their shares to Nedbank. Why does Nedbank want NCBA? NCBA gives Nedbank an established presence across East Africa. It has banking subsidiaries in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda, plus a joint venture in Côte d’Ivoire. NCBA reported KES 12.4 billion ($95.7 million) in profit after tax in H1 2026, while its total assets reached KES 739 billion ($5.7 billion). Nedbank also sees the acquisition as a way to get closer to other East African and nearby markets it is eyeing, including the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ethiopia. Is this the end of the road? Not yet. CBK’s approval clears a major hurdle, but the deal still has a few other regulatory, banking, and market conduct conditions to meet before it can be completed. Nedbank previously said it expects the deal to finalise by the fourth quarter of 2026. Every business owner needs to watch this. The business questions you Google, answered by experts. Watch for free. Fintech Nigerian fintech Allawee folds into Paystack after 2025 acquisition Image Source: Tenor Customers of Nigerian card-issuing fintech Allawee have until November 30 to move their money, replace their cards, and tell anyone who pays them that their account details are changing, the startup wrote in an email. Allawee has since been folded into Paystack’s operations. What happened? Paystack, the Stripe-backed payments company, acquired Allawee in a 2025 deal that was not publicly announced. Allawee will close its personal and business account services on December 1, 2026; its cards will stop working, and payments sent to its virtual account numbers issued on its platform will fail. Customers will need to withdraw their balances, update their bank details with senders, and replace saved card details on subscriptions before the deadline. Businesses are being directed to Paystack MFB, its parent company’s microfinance bank, while individuals are being directed to Zap, Paystack’s consumer transfer app. Balances, account numbers, transaction history, and verification records will not move across automatically, so customers opening new accounts will start again. Explain like I’m new here: Allawee launched in 2022 as a credit-card lender; it later pivoted to credit-risk software before settling on card infrastructure, enabling other fintechs to issue and manage cards. By May 2025, it was providing services to Nigerian fintechs such as PiggyVest, Nomba, and Carbon, letting them launch cards in weeks instead of months. That infrastructure is likely more valuable to Paystack than Allawee’s consumer accounts. Once Paystack had its own microfinance bank, Allawee’s Providus Bank-backed accounts were competing with products Paystack could offer itself. Acquiring Allawee lets Paystack take the useful infrastructure while moving customers onto the banking products it now controls. Zoom out: Allawee is the second fintech brand Paystack has folded into its operations this year, after absorbing Nigerian business-banking startup Brass in June. Nigeria’s fintech market seems to be moving from “build everything” to “buy the missing pieces.” For customers, that can mean better-connected products, but also the inconvenience of being moved between companies, setups, and platforms whenever these changes happen. A survey for Nigeria’s health logistics buyers. If you’re a Health Logistics Buyer in Nigeria, participate in our report by filling out the survey by 4 September. It takes less than 10 minutes. Fintech Yele Bademosi transitions to Chairman at Nigerian fintech Onboard Global Yele Bademosi, chief executive officer and co-founder of Nestcoin, now chairman at portfolio company Onboard Global. Image Source: Alter Global Yele Bademosi is transitioning from chief executive officer to the chairman’s seat at Onboard Global, the Nigerian stablecoin-based fintech startup that launched in 2022. Onboard lets users spend stablecoins like everyday money, using cards and stablecoin-to-fiat payment accounts. The fintech spun out of Nestcoin, a Web3 banking platform Bademosi co-founded in 2021. Between the lines: On Monday, Bademosi announced that he was stepping down as Onboard’s chief executive officer and taking up a new role as chairman. Paul Oladimeji, who has worked on Onboard’s products and
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South African VC Mamor Capital raises $18.8 million first fund
For South African startups, getting customers is only half the battle. Even after people start paying for their products, raising enough money to grow can remain difficult. That is the funding gap Mamor Capital Ventures wants to target with its first venture capital fund. The black women-owned and managed firm has raised R300 million ($18.8 million) in the first close of its inaugural fund, with the Public Investment Corporation (PIC), South Africa’s largest asset manager, as its anchor investor. Mamor is still raising towards its R550 million ($34.375 million) target and says it will invest in South African technology companies that already have paying customers. Mamor’s fund points to a bigger problem in South Africa’s startup market, where companies can have paying customers and a working business yet still struggle to find investors willing to fund their next stage of growth. Mamokete Ramathe, founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Mamor Capital, revealed that the firm spent more than three years raising the fund and found that many traditional investors, including pension funds and banks, remain cautious about venture capital. Some investors, she said, have mandates or risk limits that make it difficult to invest in early-stage companies. Others still associate venture capital with backing businesses that have not yet proved that their products work. “The fundraising journey reinforced that institutional appetite for venture capital in South Africa is still developing,” Ramathe told TechCabal in an interview on Monday. Mamor is trying to reduce some of that risk by investing in companies that have already shown that customers will pay for their products or services. Ramathe said the firm does not require companies to be profitable before investing. Instead, it looks at whether they have paying customers, can retain them, have a market they can grow into, and have a realistic path to becoming profitable. Southern Africa’s VC market recorded R13.35 billion ($834.4 million) in active investments across 1,325 deals in 2024, but limited exits and follow-on funding remain barriers. That puts Mamor in a market where capital is growing, while some founders still struggle to secure the next round. She explained that a company may have moved beyond an idea and built a business, but still be too small or risky for a bank loan. At the same time, the market still has gaps in follow-on funding, with limited exits and funding for later-stage companies remaining a challenge “There is a significant funding gap for early-stage, post-revenue businesses in South Africa,” Ramathe said. Fuzlin Levy-Hassen, Mamor’s co-founder and chief financial officer (CFO), said the fund will focus on businesses with evidence of genuine demand rather than simply promising future growth. “We are looking for businesses that have moved beyond proving an idea and can show real commercial demand,” Levy-Hassen said. The fund will focus on areas including financial access, digital infrastructure and technology that Mamor believes can expand economic participation by helping more people and businesses access financial services and markets. The PIC’s investment is significant because institutional investors have traditionally been cautious about putting money into venture capital, where returns can take years, and some investments can fail. Leon Smit, the PIC’s acting chief investment officer, said the backing gives the organisation exposure to South Africa’s growing venture capital market while supporting transformation. “Mamor Capital brings together an experienced investment team, a clear strategy, and a strong transformation proposition,” Smit said. The PIC also believes institutional investors can play a bigger role in providing the long-term capital needed to develop South Africa’s venture capital market. There are signs that interest is growing. Ramathe said some institutions that are not yet investing are researching venture capital and looking at ways to participate in parts of the market where the risks are lower. Ketso Gordhan, CEO of the South African Small and Medium Enterprise Fund, which invested through its High Impact Seed Fund of Funds, an early-stage venture capital investment vehicle, said increasing the number of local fund managers able to back technology businesses is important. “Our investment is intended to strengthen the pool of local fund managers with the capability to identify and support promising technology businesses,” noted Gordhan. 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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Card-issuing fintech Allawee folds into Paystack after quiet acquisition
Allawee, a Nigerian card-issuing fintech, will close its business and personal account services on December 1, 2026, after Paystack acquired the company in 2025 in a deal that was not publicly announced, according to emails sent to Allawee customers. In two emails seen by TechCabal, Allawee said its technology now operates within Paystack and told customers that “any payment sent to your Allawee account number from December 1 will fail,” adding that its cards will stop working regardless of the expiry date printed on them. Allawee is the second fintech brand Paystack has acquired and folded into its operations this year, after it folded business banking startup Brass into its microfinance bank in June. Since January, Paystack has also acquired Ladder Microfinance Bank, giving it a banking licence, and restructured under a new holding company. The deals show Paystack, Nigeria’s largest payments processor, assembling the pieces of a financial-services business through acquisitions rather than building each one from scratch. Allawee and Paystack declined to comment on any part of this article. Customers have until November 30 to withdraw their balances, share new bank details with anyone who pays them, and replace saved Allawee card details on subscriptions. “Your money will remain yours,” Allawee said in the email. “It won’t expire or be forfeited, and any remaining balance will stay safely recorded. However, you’ll need to email support@paystackmfb.com to request a manual payout. Because this process may take longer, we strongly recommend withdrawing your balance before the deadline.” Founded in 2022 by Ikenna Enenwali and Oreofe Olurin, Allawee has changed direction twice. It launched as a credit card lender, then became a credit-risk software that other companies could plug into to check whether a borrower was likely to repay, before settling on card infrastructure—the systems banks and fintechs use to issue and run their own cards. By May 2025, it was issuing cards for Piggyvest, Nomba, and Carbon through a dashboard that cut card launches from months to weeks. Enenwali, its co-founder and CEO, told TechCabal at the time that the company wanted to restore fintechs’ confidence in cards after years of Nigerian firms dropping Visa and Mastercard to cut costs. Allawee also offered business accounts through a partnership with Providus Bank, a Nigerian commercial bank, and issued a Mastercard credit card aimed at federal civil servants and members of the National Youth Service Corps, Nigeria’s mandatory one-year service scheme for university graduates. Now, those products are being split between two Paystack businesses. Businesses using Allawee accounts are being directed to Paystack MFB, the microfinance bank created after Paystack acquired Ladder Microfinance Bank in January. Individuals are being directed to Zap, Paystack’s consumer transfer app, according to the emails. Balances, account numbers, transaction history, and verification records will not carry over, so customers have to open new accounts from scratch. The value of Allawee for Paystack likely lies less in its customer accounts than in the card infrastructure it had already built. Enenwali told TechCabal that building a card programme from scratch could take one to two years. For Paystack, once it held its own banking licence, the Providus-backed Allawee accounts were in direct competition with Paystack’s microfinance bank. The same logic ended Brass, the business banking startup a Paystack-led consortium rescued in 2024 and folded into Paystack MFB before July 31 this year. Outside of Paystack, this pattern runs across Nigeria’s fintech sector. The 2020 to 2022 funding boom left Nigerian fintechs building overlapping products, and tighter capital and closer regulatory scrutiny have since pushed the market toward consolidation. Buying a rival is now often cheaper and faster than building the same thing. In January, Flutterwave acquired open banking startup Mono to own the financial data layer beneath the payments it processes, giving it direct account-to-account rails that settle instantly and bypass the fees and failure rates of card networks, plus the identity and bank-verification data it needs to move beyond processing into credit and other financial services. 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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What 10 years and $100M taught TLcom about scaling in Africa
Much of the conversation about African venture capital in the last three years has been about what it lacks. Funding is down from its 2021-2022 peak. Exits are scarce. Small cheques that grow companies have thinned out, and startups with strong teams and revenue have shut down. But Eloho Omame, a partner at TLcom Capital, an Africa-focused venture capital (VC) firm managing over $250 million, has been making a different argument. In a recent essay, she wrote that African venture is compounding, arguing that the building blocks needed to build and scale companies on the continent are more solidly in place today than they were a decade ago and that this changes what investors can reasonably underwrite. Her claim is not that the market is easy but that the market now has a decade of accumulated evidence about what works and that this evidence is itself an asset. Omame’s argument is well-founded. Across its two funds, TLcom has deployed around $100 million, led 80% of its deals, and has invested actively at the early stage. Its portfolio includes Pula, the agricultural insurance business in its first fund, and FairMoney, one of the largest companies in its second. Omame also co-founded FirstCheck Africa and sits on the boards of HUB2, Illa, Talstack, and Zone. Before venture capital, she spent years in banking and as a founder herself. In this conversation, Eloho Omame explains what a decade of “school fees” bought the ecosystem, how TLcom assesses AI in a business model when every founder claims to be using it, and why her firm will not approve an investment without first naming who is likely to buy the company. Daisy Liech, TLcom’s director of portfolio and strategy, also adds how the firm supports companies outside of capital. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Your essay argues that African venture is compounding. What did the original underwriting assume, and what has changed since? Eloho Omame: Venture is a very particular asset class. The way the venture world functions today, whether in Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, or the United States, is that you raise a blind pool of capital on a particular timeline, and you need to return that capital to your LPs, hopefully in multiples, within that timeline. That has not changed. When you say the timeline is different, that is not quite what I intended to convey. What we have found at TLcom is that the starting point on that timeline matters. Think of it as a venture inflection point. There are pieces that need to be in place for the timeline to work—the company-building elements around access to capital and access to talent. Those things need to be in place for an ecosystem to underwrite scaling and exiting large companies, the kinds that justify the pools of capital being raised for African venture funds. Take company-building talent. Not just smart people, but engineers—an abundance of engineering talent, so you can find them and afford them; and an abundance of operating talent, so that, as a chief executive, I can hire a head of operations who has run not a $500,000 revenue business but a $5 million or $50 million one. The experience of taking a business from $500,000 to $10 million in revenue has massive value in terms of its compounding effect and its ability to help a business scale. Those things are more true today than they were a decade ago, when there were fewer companies, fewer founders, smaller ecosystems, and certainly less experience of having taken companies from zero to one and one to ten. The essay was not saying the timeline you underwrite as a venture investor is different. It was saying the pieces of the puzzle needed to underwrite a venture timeline are much more in place today. What does that actually change for you when you are evaluating a company? Eloho Omame: The implications run in two directions. In both scenarios, you have to make certain assumptions as an investor, and frankly as a founder, about what exists, what you can rely on, and what you need to build. Two things happened differently a decade ago. You can call them two failure modes. One is that you assume certain things are in place and discover along the way that they are not. The other is that you recognise they are not in place and understand you need to build them, but then find the task takes much longer than you anticipated and costs much more. Today, because of the experience the ecosystem has accumulated over the last ten years—which is school fees you simply have to pay—it is much clearer which of those assumptions are true. I like to use distribution and marketing as an example. Five years ago there was a lot of conversation about the value of partnerships for distribution: small companies partnering with large telcos as channels to reach and market to customers. Then it was a theory. What is true today is that those partnerships have mostly been actualised. Companies have attempted it, and now we know what it takes to execute on a partnership like that in order to actually sell the product. We now know which things get done by one partner versus the other and what the costs are on each side. We know how the load gets shared. We know how the customer behaves when the marketing hits their phone in a way we did not before. It is not a good or bad judgment. It is that we now have the facts. The implication is that when you underwrite investments today, there is much more clarity about what works, what does not, and what remains an assumption because the ecosystem has not yet had a chance to test it. That will come over time as more companies get built and more founders try different things, and we build the roadmap around what works for distribution in Nigeria versus what does not work in Kenya versus
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Spiro appoints automotive veteran to lead West and Central African operations
Spiro, one of Africa’s largest electric motorcycle and battery-swapping companies, has appointed Auroasish Choudhuri as its Managing Director for West and Central Africa. Choudhuri, who has more than two decades of experience leading automotive businesses across Africa, Asia and the Americas, will oversee Spiro’s mobility business in the two regions and report to Kaushik Burman, its chief executive officer of Mobility, the company said in a Monday statement. The hiring is the latest wave of appointments at Spiro as the company reshapes its leadership following a $270 million fundraising haul in June. The company appointed former Indofast Energy CEO Anant Badjatya as Group CEO and moved former CEO Burman to lead its mobility services business, separating its rider-facing operations from its ambitions in battery swapping, energy infrastructure, logistics and vehicle manufacturing. “Auroasish brings extensive experience in growing and transforming automotive businesses across some of the world’s most dynamic markets,” said Anant Badjatya, chief executive officer of Spiro. “His deep understanding of the sector, combined with his track record in market expansion and operational leadership, will be a strong asset as we continue to scale Spiro across Africa.” Choudhuri joins Spiro from DAG Industries, an automotive and industrial company, where he has served as CEO, overseeing its operations in Nigeria and Benin. Before that, he spent more than a decade at Indian two-wheeler manufacturer TVS Motor Company, serving as Regional Business Head for Asia and, later, Latin America. Earlier in his career, he led international sales and business development at Escorts Limited across the US, Latin America, West Asia, and Sri Lanka. His experience spans sales, business development, and market expansion. At Spiro, that experience will be deployed alongside the company’s push to expand its mobility business and launch in new markets. “Africa is entering an exciting new phase in the transformation of mobility,” Choudhuri said. “I am excited to join Spiro and bring together my automotive expertise and experience of West African markets to support the company’s next phase of growth and expand access to affordable, sustainable mobility across the continent.” The appointment comes as Spiro expands its ambitions beyond selling electric motorcycles. The company has been building an integrated electric mobility ecosystem around its motorcycles through the battery-swapping infrastructure that allows riders to replace depleted batteries with charged ones. Spiro assembles vehicles in Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda and operates a battery recycling facility in Nigeria. It also operates in Benin, Togo, and Cameroon and has previously identified Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo as markets for expansion. Spiro has also moved to strengthen control over its supply chain by acquiring UK-based two-wheeler engineering specialist Coexlion in May as it moves into vehicle development and manufacturing. The task for the company’s growing leadership team is to build the local infrastructure and supply chains needed to make its battery-swapping model work at scale. With Choudhuri leading West and Central Africa, the company is adding someone whose career has centred on expanding automotive businesses across 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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👨🏿🚀TechCabal Daily – New wine, old wineskins
In partnership with Lire en Français اقرأ هذا باللغة العربية Happy last day of August. It sure feels like we sped through August. Now, September is almost here. What has been your favourite African tech story so far this year? With one month left in Q3, what are you still looking forward to? Click “Reply” and write back to us. Let’s dive in. Become smarter about tech and commerce in Francophone Africa, and the policies shaping them. Read previous editions here first and subscribe below. Subscribe New wine, old wineskins Terra Industries appoints ex-Palantir exec Mozambique creates AI forum JSE suspends tech firm Labat Africa World Wide Web 3 Job Openings Features New wine, old wineskins? Image Source: Reuters Finally, Nigeria is investing in assistive technology for people with disabilities, something the disability community has been clamouring for. At its fourth Hackathon Live Show in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, the telecom regulator, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), challenged 20 innovators to build solutions under the theme “Technology Without Barriers.” Their ideas included AI-powered speech-to-text, real-time sign language translation, voice-enabled complaint systems, accessible customer care services, image-to-voice navigation, and inclusive employment platforms. Between the lines: It is a welcome development. But there is a problem: many of the digital platforms these technologies are meant to help people access remain inaccessible. Nigeria already has standards for building accessible government websites. The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA)’s guidelines require government institutions to provide equal access to information and functionality and to adopt the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). Yet repeated audits have found accessibility problems across government websites; in June 2025, TechCabal published an investigation documenting similar barriers on banking, fintech, e-commerce, and other digital platforms. This raises a bigger question about Nigeria’s approach to digital inclusion. Assistive technologies can solve barriers that require specialised solutions, but they cannot replace accessibility built into the original product. A screen reader, for instance, can only interpret what a website makes available to it. Zoom out: As Nigeria builds new tools to help people navigate the digital world, perhaps it also needs to fix the world those tools are being built to navigate. Our reporter John Adoyi wrote a deep dive on this; read it here. Every business owner needs to watch this. The business questions you Google, answered by experts. Watch for free. Startups Nigerian defence-tech startup Terra Industries taps ex-Palantir executive Image Source: Tenor Terra Industries, the Nigerian defence-tech startup that recently closed a $52 million seed round, announced last Friday, splitting Twitter users between fierce criticism and enthusiastic praise for a company that doesn’t seem to be short on surprise announcements. On Friday, August 28, its chief executive officer and cofounder Nathan Nwachuku said on the social media platform that former Palantir director Todd Stiefler was joining the defence-tech startup as Director of Commercial. Explain like I’m new here: Terra builds autonomous security systems for critical infrastructure, including power plants, mines, and other assets that governments and companies need to keep running. Stiefler’s job will be to help turn that technology into a bigger commercial business, particularly among companies operating critical infrastructure across the Global South. His background makes the appointment interesting. Before Terra, Stiefler was a Vice President of Enterprise at WHOOP, a US-based fitness and wearable tech company, and worked in business development at Palantir, where he helped build go-to-market teams around its Apollo and FedStart platforms for defence and dual-use technology companies. Why now? Terra has just raised one of the biggest seed rounds in African tech this year, opened a London office, and is expanding manufacturing in Ghana. The company says its systems have already been used to protect about $11 billion worth of nationally critical assets across several African countries. That is a lot of momentum for a company still at the seed stage, and it helps explain why its moves are drawing strong reactions online. Zoom out: Stiefler’s appointment suggests Terra is entering its next phase. The question is not whether African-built defence technology can work; Terra seems to be proving it with domain expertise and an experienced board. But the company seems to be aggressively building and expanding its commercial flywheel, targeting institutions and likely governments. A survey for Nigeria’s health logistics buyers. If you’re a Health Logistics Buyer in Nigeria, participate in our report by filling out the survey by 4 September. It takes less than 10 minutes. Emerging Tech Mozambique is building the institutions it needs to have a say in its AI future Image Source: Tenor It’s easy to think of an AI ecosystem as startups building chatbots and researchers training models. But before any of that scales, countries need institutions figuring out how the technology should be built, funded, regulated, and used. Mozambique has taken a step in that direction with the launch of the Mozambican Association of Artificial Intelligence (AMIA) in Maputo, its capital city. Explain like I’m new here: AMIA will assemble government institutions, companies, universities, researchers, entrepreneurs, and civil society working on AI. Its goal is to encourage research, skills development, collaboration, and the adoption of AI solutions that fit Mozambique’s needs. A local association could also provide policymakers with a forum to hear from people building the technology before rules are written. Catch up: Mozambique’s push to build an artificial intelligence ecosystem did not start with the AMIA. In 2025, the government began work on a national artificial intelligence strategy with support from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). In March 2026, it created a National Artificial Intelligence Commission to guide the technology’s development and regulation, while also working with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a UN body, on an artificial intelligence regulatory sandbox, a controlled environment for testing AI systems and regulatory approaches. AMIA is another piece of that broader effort. Zoom out: Mozambique is not alone in figuring out how to regulate AI—at least in Africa—ethically and beneficially. Kenya has a new framework that demands
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Nigeria wants more assistive tech. Who is fixing its inaccessible digital platforms?
The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) recently challenged young innovators to build technology for people with disabilities. At its fourth Hackathon Live Show, held in Abuja on August 26 and 27, 2026, contestants developed solutions under the theme “Technology Without Barriers.” The solutions included AI-powered speech-to-text, real-time sign language translation, voice-enabled complaint systems, accessible customer care services, image-to-voice navigation and inclusive employment platforms. Some of the barriers faced by people with disabilities require specialised technology to overcome. But the hackathon comes against a problem Nigeria has been documenting for years: many of the digital platforms people are expected to use remain inaccessible. The scale of that problem matters. The National Commission for Persons with Disabilities (NCPWD) estimates that about 35 million Nigerians are persons with disabilities. For this population, an inaccessible digital platform can become a barrier to applying for jobs, accessing financial services, registering for education, obtaining identification or using government services that are increasingly delivered online. The inaccessible accessibility benchmark Nigeria is not without standards. The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA)’s Standards and Guidelines for Government Websites say government websites “shall provide equal access to information and functionality to all users.” The guidelines require government institutions to adopt the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and state that accessibility-related applications and downloads should be tested to ensure they work with assistive technologies. NITDA’s regulatory framework describes its published standards and guidelines as minimum benchmarks for the development and implementation of information technology in Nigeria, and says the agency monitors compliance with them. In July 2024, Communications Minister Bosun Tijani announced a plan to create a national web design system for ministries, departments, and agencies, including guidance and code to help government institutions build accessible websites. The project later became the Nigeria Web Design Standards initiative, developed with NITDA and the Aig-Imoukhuede Foundation. When the project was launched in July 2025, Tijani said a Web Design Standards Toolkit would be available within 8 to 10 weeks for public feedback before moving through NITDA’s rule-making process and Federal Executive Council approval. But in August 2026, FIJ reported that the promised toolkit could not be found publicly, and that it found no publicly available evidence that a final standards document had received FEC approval or that the standards had begun to be implemented across government agencies. I checked NITDA’s current public resources, the Federal Ministry of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy’s published materials, and publicly available information on the Nigeria Web Design Standards project. I also could not find the promised toolkit or evidence of its rollout. At the same time, the ministry’s 2025 Year in Review still lists the launch of the Nigeria Web Design Standards as an achievement and states that the project established shared principles for accessibility, clarity, and consistency across Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs). The recurring, well-documented problem In July 2024, FIJ assessed the websites of all 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory against NITDA’s government website guidelines. It found that 26 states had not complied with the guidelines, and 14 websites were deemed unusable for people with disabilities. FIJ found, among other problems, websites without text alternatives for images, making information inaccessible to some screen reader users. The problem is not confined to government websites. In June 2025, TechCabal’s investigation into digital accessibility found barriers across government portals, banks, fintechs, e-commerce platforms, telecoms, and other digital services. Users reported problems including unlabelled buttons, missing alternative text, inaccessible forms and poor screen reader compatibility. And the problem has not simply disappeared with time. A May 2026 TechCabal partner investigation of eight Nigerian public websites examined sites including the University of Lagos (UNILAG), the Lagos State University (LASU), the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Nigeria’s National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), now known as the Nigeria Revenue Service (NRS), the Lagos State Government and the National Commission for Persons with Disabilities. It reported that none of the websites it audited had implemented what it described as baseline accessibility features. Assistive technology and its limits in solving accessibility This distinction matters because assistive technology and accessibility are not the same thing. I use screen readers such as JAWS and TalkBack to interact with digital platforms. They are not simply tools I prefer to use; they are what allow me to access much of the digital environment independently. They read the text, links, buttons and other elements that a website makes available to me, allowing me to navigate pages, fill out forms and complete tasks without seeing the screen. But a screen reader can only work with the information a website exposes to it. If an image has no useful alternative text, a button has no accessible name, or a form is badly structured, I may know that something is on the page without knowing what it does or how to use it. That is why accessibility needs to be considered at the level of the original product, not only through tools designed to work around it. Nigeria increasingly relies on biometric systems to access essential services, but they do not work equally well for everyone. In 2024, The PUNCH reported on the experiences of people with disabilities who struggled to obtain their National Identification Numbers (NINs) because fingerprint scanners could not capture their fingerprints. One man who had lost both hands said he could not obtain a NIN despite repeated attempts. Without one, he could not open a bank account or apply for a loan, so he resorted to using his son’s account for transactions. These experiences show that accessibility is not only about whether someone can navigate a website or application. It also affects the systems used to establish identity and authorise access to services. A service cannot be fully accessible if the authentication system required to use it excludes the people it is supposed to serve. The distinction is important for the NCC’s hackathon. Some of the solutions being developed by its contestants address problems that genuinely require specialised
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A Lagos car crash almost killed him. A €900 visa saved his dream of seeing the world.
In March 2023, Adewale Adekomaiya lay trapped in a mangled car in Lagos while passersby filmed and a bystander tried to rob him. That near-death experience shattered his assumption that travel could wait for “later.” Within months, the Senior QA Architect and his wife packed their lives into a €900 ($1,048) digital nomad visa to Malta, spending two years working remotely across seven European countries. Now back in Nigeria with a newborn son, Adekomaiya tells JOHN ADOYI about the true costs of constant mobility, navigating racism abroad, and why his family’s next journey is taking them across Africa. Passers-by stood around the wreckage and filmed. Adewale Adekomaiya was trapped in a car in Yaba, a neighbourhood in Lagos, Nigeria, in March 2023, just months after getting married. No one came to help. The only person who approached, Adekomaiya said, was trying to rob him. As he waited for help that didn’t seem to come, his thoughts wandered somewhere else: to his new wife, and to all the things they had planned to do together. Adekomaiya’s car was involved in an accident in Lagos, Nigeria, in March 2023. Image Source: Adewale Adekomaiya. “I just got married,” he told TechCabal. “If I had died, I would have just gone without experiencing the world with my wife.” Until then, Adekomaiya had treated life as something to be enjoyed later. He would work and save, thinking he would eventually have the time and money to see the world. The fateful accident made “later” feel less certain. Within months, he and his wife had left Nigeria for Malta, where they built a life around remote work and travel. Two years later, after returning home for the birth of their son, Adekomaiya is preparing to leave again. This time, he wants his child to see the world with him. From IT support to remote work Adekomaiya’s career in tech started with helping other people use computers. He worked in IT support at Great Nigeria Insurance, an insurance underwriting and financial advisory firm, where he helped his colleagues resolve computer problems, according to him. Soon after, he returned to school to get a degree. In 2018, someone introduced him to quality assurance (QA), a field in tech that allowed him to combine his IT experience with the programming knowledge he had picked up as a support tech specialist. “I was able to merge that with my little knowledge of programming,” he said. Adekomaiya has worked in QA ever since, eventually becoming a senior engineer in the field. Today, he works as a QA architect. By the time he and his wife decided to leave Nigeria, he was working for a US company, which meant he could take his job with him. That flexibility would become important when the couple began figuring out how to turn their idea of travelling into an actual life outside Nigeria. Why Malta? Adekomaiya did not simply choose Malta because it had always been on his bucket list of places to travel to. Rather, the country offered an easy route for him and his wife to begin their nomadic life as far back as 2023. Portugal was also on his mind, but its embassy in Lagos was closed when they were making their plans, he said. Meanwhile, Malta had a digital nomad visa that Adekomaiya could apply for from home. He needed to show that he met the minimum income requirement and worked for a company outside the European Union (EU). Since he was working remotely for a United States-based company, he already had the documents to support his application. The process suited him because it did not require the kind of repeated embassy visits he wanted to avoid. “I hate stress when it comes to all this application of trying to apply for visas and the like,” he said. “But for this one, I saw that we could do the whole application from the comfort of the house.” Adekomaiya said the Malta application cost him about €300 ($350) per person—for himself and his wife—in 2023. A dependent attracted an additional €300 ($350), putting the couple’s application costs at €600 ($700); additional costs, including primary health insurance, which was a mandatory requirement for applicants, took the total package to €900 ($1,048), according to Adekomaiya. Malta visa applicants also had to meet a minimum income requirement, which he said was about an additional €2,000 ($2,330) at the time. Insurance was another requirement. Applicants had to provide an insurance contract covering a year and renew it annually. Adekomaiya and his wife opted for coverage that included outpatient treatment, which does not require hospital admission, and inpatient treatment, which covers care requiring a hospital stay. The plan also included Schengen coverage in case they needed medical attention while travelling to another country, according to Adekomaiya. Adekomaiya found a step-by-step guide online that made the application easier and helped him put the required documents together. In 2023, the application worked out, and Adekomaiya and his wife moved to Malta. Adekomaiya and his wife visited a small island near Malta, Gozo. Image Source: Adewale Adekomaiya. The couple spent about $2,400 on their flights from Nigeria to Malta, partly because they booked late, Adekomaiya said. When they arrived in Malta, they initially rented an Airbnb, a short-let apartment, for about two weeks, paying between €100 ($116.50) and €120 ($140) a night before moving into a three-bedroom apartment. The apartment cost between €900 ($1,048) and €1,200 ($1,400) a month, with one of the rooms serving as his workspace, he noted. Two years on the move Malta became Adekomaiya and his wife’s home base, but they did not spend all two years between 2023 and 2025 there. The couple used the island as a base for exploring Europe. They travelled to Hungary, Portugal, Spain, Italy, France and the UK, visiting cities including Milan, Barcelona, and Madrid, according to Adekomaiya. They also went to Tenerife, the most populous island in Spain’s Canary Islands region. For the newly married couple, the appeal
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Lessons from Copenhagen for Africa’s founders and investors
Walk around TechBBQ in Copenhagen, Denmark, and it does not take long to notice that the definition of a tech startup has become broad. There are the software companies one expects at a gathering of over 10,000 startups and investors. But there are also founders working on quantum computing, biotechnology, medical diagnostics, robotics, security systems, new food technologies, and ideas that have spent years inside university laboratories. For African founders and investors, this was perhaps the most interesting lesson about TechBBQ 2026, held at Copenhagen’s Bella Centre on August 26 and 27. The technology industry is broadening its scope. The African ecosystem has produced some extraordinary companies, but the ideas that attract serious VC backing can sometimes feel concentrated in certain areas. Payments, lending, digital banking, logistics, e-commerce, and increasingly AI have been the main focus areas. TechBBQ revealed that some of the money, attention, and entrepreneurial ambition that flowed into apps, marketplaces, and software-as-a-service companies over the past decade is moving towards harder problems like health, energy, defence, biology, and the physical economy. The event had a dedicated Life Science x Deep Tech stage. It brought together scientists, founders, investors, and researchers working across quantum technologies, life sciences, and artificial intelligence. Even the venue for TechBBQ’s Investor Day mentioned the change. VCs, corporate investors, and angels gathered at the University of Copenhagen’s Maersk Tower, in a district that TechBBQ says has 40,000 researchers, students, and staff, and has produced about 500 research-based startups. This is venture capital moving closer to building sustainable solutions across healthcare, agriculture, and manufacturing. Lesson one: Look beyond apps Deep tech challenges many traditional VC assumptions. A biotechnology company may spend years before earning meaningful revenue. Quantum computing requires specialised researchers and expensive equipment. Medical devices face clinical and regulatory hurdles. Defence startups must navigate governments and procurement systems. Climate technologies may require factories and physical infrastructure. These are not businesses that can always demonstrate product-market fit within six months and with a few thousand dollars in cloud computing credits. Yet they are moving towards the centre of the European technology conversation. TechBBQ described the gap between technologies that might arrive “someday” and those actually reaching the market as narrowing. Its Deep Tech Day focused on technologies including quantum computing, biotechnology, diagnostics, precision medicine, and sustainable food systems. The important part is not simply that these technologies exist. Universities have produced ambitious science for decades. Investors are increasingly trying to work out how to turn more of that science into companies. TechBBQ’s deep-tech pitch competition, for example, was open to companies with less than €2 million in funding that had a validated concept, prototype, or early scientific proof of concept. Eight companies were selected to pitch technologies addressing human and planetary health. That is a rather different starting point from another payments app. It also says something about where venture capital thinks the next valuable companies might emerge. TechBBQ event in Copenhagen, Denmark. Image Source: TechBBQ Lesson two: Difficult industries are becoming investable VC has traditionally asked whether a company can capture a large market. Increasingly, European investors are also asking whether the technology is strategically important to a country. That brings governments, universities, and large industrial companies much closer to the startup ecosystem. It also makes the boundary between technology policy, industrial policy, and national security increasingly difficult to see. There is an African lesson here. Some of the continent’s biggest problems sit in sectors investors have historically found difficult: energy, agriculture, healthcare, manufacturing, water, and transport infrastructure. They are difficult partly because software alone cannot solve them. But difficult does not necessarily mean uninvestable. Lesson three: Hard technology needs different money The change in ideas requires a change in money. Building a consumer app and developing a new biotechnology platform cannot be financed in quite the same way. The latter can require more capital, longer development periods, and investors willing to tolerate technical risk before there is much evidence of commercial demand. Some businesses will also need grants, government procurement, university partnerships, and corporate capital alongside conventional venture funding. That was another noticeable feature of TechBBQ. The ecosystem was not organised simply around founders meeting venture capitalists. Researchers, foundations, policymakers, universities, corporations, and public investment institutions were part of the conversation. This is partly because deep tech makes them necessary. A scientist trying to commercialise a university discovery needs something quite different from what a founder building another enterprise software product needs. Intellectual property must leave the university. Laboratories and equipment may be required. Regulatory approvals can take years. Specialist talent is scarce. Europe still struggles with this. One TechBBQ session asked about “Europe’s biotech spinout challenge”. Another examined how the Nordics could translate research into companies. The underlying problem is that Europe produces excellent science but has struggled to build enormous technology companies from it. The response appears to be an attempt to build a bridge between science and capital. It is worth watching because Africa also faces the problem. TechBBQ event in Copenhagen, Denmark. Image Source: TechBBQ Lesson four: Diversity of capital produces diversity of ideas African venture capital has become remarkably good at funding a relatively narrow range of ideas. Fintech is the obvious example. Payments, digital banking, lending, and financial infrastructure have attracted some of the continent’s largest venture rounds and produced many of its most valuable technology companies. There are good reasons for this. Financial infrastructure remains inadequate in many markets, mobile money has created unusual opportunities, and the potential customer base is enormous. But success can create its own gravity. Once investors understand a business model, more founders build versions of it, and more investors become comfortable funding them. The result can be an ecosystem with plenty of entrepreneurial activity but relatively little variation in what receives serious capital. TechBBQ provided an interesting contrast. A founder developing biotechnology could be followed on stage by someone working on quantum computing, food systems, defence, healthcare or climate technology. The ideas often seemed to start with a scientific or
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Nigeria picks French, Israeli firms to build new communications satellites
French aerospace company Thales Alenia Space and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) have been selected to build Nigeria’s next communications satellites, as the government moves to expand broadband capacity and replace its ageing NIGCOMSAT-1R. The selection follows Federal Executive Council (FEC) approval on August 22 for the acquisition and deployment of NIGCOMSAT-2A and NIGCOMSAT-2B, allowing Nigeria Communications Satellite Limited (NIGCOMSAT) to move its long-running satellite replacement programme into the next phase. The two satellites are expected to provide additional capacity for broadband, broadcasting, enterprise connectivity and government services, particularly in areas where fibre and other terrestrial networks are too costly or difficult to deploy. The timing is critical. NIGCOMSAT-1R, Nigeria’s current communications satellite, was launched on December 19, 2011, with a 15-year design life and is reaching the end of that period in 2026. NIGCOMSAT says careful management of its onboard fuel will allow the satellite to remain operational until 2028, giving the government a limited window to finance, build and launch its replacement. Although the FEC has approved the contract, the project’s final cost has not yet been disclosed because financing is still being finalised. Jane Nkechi Egerton-Idehen, managing director and CEO of NIGCOMSAT, told TechCabal in a statement that the final amount will be made public once the financing is closed. “The amount will be official once the financing is closed,” Egerton-Idehen said. “That’s the stage that is ongoing now after the contract FEC approved. The funding is vendor-financed and backed by the Export-Import Banks.” The financing structure means the satellite vendors will provide financing backed by export-import banks. This is significant because satellite projects require substantial upfront investment, not just for the spacecraft but also for launch, insurance, ground stations, control centres, testing, and training. The selection of Thales Alenia Space and IAI comes after a competitive procurement process that began more than two years ago. NIGCOMSAT started defining the technical requirements in early 2024 and issued an Expression of Interest in June that year. The procurement process advanced in 2025, with major international aerospace companies, including Thales Alenia Space, Airbus, IAI, China Great Wall Industry Corporation, and Turkish Aerospace Industries, participating. The final selection assigns responsibility to the French and Israeli companies for delivering the two satellites and associated infrastructure. The contract goes beyond manufacturing the spacecraft. It includes launch and in-orbit testing, satellite control centres, tracking and telemetry stations, simulators, operational software, documentation, insurance and technology transfer. NIGCOMSAT-2A is planned for deployment at 42.5°E, and the project also includes backup ground infrastructure to improve the satellite system’s resilience. The satellites are designed to do more than replace NIGCOMSAT-1R. They will add capacity for broadband, broadcasting, enterprise connectivity and government applications, with the potential to extend services to communities that terrestrial networks struggle to reach. That matters because Nigeria’s broadband expansion— at 56.7% in June—increasingly depends on reaching areas where building fibre and other terrestrial infrastructure is commercially difficult. Fibre remains the preferred option for high-capacity broadband, particularly in urban areas, but deploying cables across sparsely populated or difficult terrain can be expensive. Satellites can cover large areas without requiring the same physical infrastructure to be built on the ground. The new satellites should therefore complement rather than replace Nigeria’s fibre and mobile networks. Their biggest value could come from filling coverage gaps where terrestrial infrastructure cannot be deployed economically. NIGCOMSAT’s additional capacity could be used by internet service providers, mobile operators, broadcasters, businesses and government agencies. These organisations could use satellite links to extend services without having to build their own long-distance networks. But more satellite capacity does not automatically mean cheaper or better internet for consumers. NIGCOMSAT and its partners will still have to turn the additional capacity into services that households and businesses can afford. The cost of satellite terminals, equipment, data plans and last-mile connections will determine how much of the new capacity reaches end users. That makes affordability as important as capacity. Nigeria could add significant satellite bandwidth without substantially closing its digital divide if the resulting services remain too expensive for the communities that need them most. The project is also intended to strengthen Nigeria’s wider space and digital technology ecosystem. NIGCOMSAT expects opportunities in areas such as satellite terminals, ground infrastructure, systems integration, technical support, telecommunications and broadcasting. Technology transfer and training could also help develop local expertise in satellite engineering, network operations and other specialised areas. The contract includes provisions for knowledge transfer, including training in space and ground-segment operations. The objective for Egerton-Idehen is ultimately to turn the satellite investment into practical value for Nigeria. “NIGCOMSAT-2A and NIGCOMSAT-2B will strengthen our national satellite capacity, expand connectivity and support critical communications across the country,” she said. “Our priority is to translate this investment into measurable value for Nigerians and position NIGCOMSAT for stronger impact within the global satellite and digital economy.” That commercial question could prove as important as the technical one. NIGCOMSAT is responsible for managing and commercialising Nigeria’s communications satellite assets. For the new satellites to deliver value, the additional capacity will need to attract sustained demand from telecom operators, ISPs, broadcasters, businesses and government agencies. The satellites could also strengthen Nigeria’s communications resilience. They can provide an alternative when terrestrial networks are damaged or unavailable, reducing reliance on foreign satellite infrastructure for some critical services. That has implications beyond broadband, including defence, emergency communications and other government operations. The FEC approval and selection of the two contractors mark important milestones, but the project is not yet complete. Financing still needs to be closed, followed by manufacturing, technical preparations, launch and in-orbit testing. The 2028 target gives NIGCOMSAT some breathing room because the company expects NIGCOMSAT-1R to remain operational until then. But it also sets a deadline to deliver the replacement before the existing satellite reaches the end of its extended operating life. The strategic case for the new satellites is straightforward: fibre and mobile networks cannot economically reach every community, and satellites can help fill some of those gaps. The harder question is whether Nigeria
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