Digital Nomads: A Ghanaian serial tech entrepreneur who’s finding his place in the UK pet-tech industry
At 30, Freeman Faithful, a Ghanaian serial tech entrepreneur, has lived multiple lives. Faithful has been a student, a tech gadget connoisseur, a student (again), a founder, a tech consulting maven, a student (again), a cybersecurity engineer, a founder (again), a builder, and overall, somebody who’s always eager to find the next thing once he’s thrived in a place. During one of the slow peaks of December, we had a hearty conversation about his life, travels, and the series of businesses that have taken him across Ghana and, eventually, into the UK. “I’ve always been intrigued by travelling,” he told me. “Not in the tourism sense. I just don’t like feeling boxed in. Once I feel like I’ve seen the edges of a place or a system, my instinct is to ask what else exists beyond it.” Life in Ghana Faithful grew up in Ghana, a country and culture which shaped his earliest views, exposure, and instincts. Like many young men raised in West Africa with an aptitude for numbers and logic, Faithful was nudged toward a respectable path early. In secondary school, he gravitated naturally toward the sciences, partly out of expectation and partly because he was good at it. Engineering seemed like the obvious destination. In 2013, he enrolled at KAAF University in Accra, Ghana, to study Mechanical Engineering, believing that fulfillment would eventually catch up with discipline. It never did. “I’m a failed mechanical engineering student,” he said, laughing. “I was going through hell. I wasn’t feeling fulfilled at all. Every day felt like a different movie. And I just knew that wasn’t it.” The problem was not intelligence or a lack of effort, Faithful said, describing his time in college. It was misalignment. Mechanical Engineering demanded repetition, patience with rigid systems, and comfort with long feedback loops. Faithful wanted immediacy. He wanted to see cause and effect. He wanted to build something and watch it work or fail in real time, and this nudged his interests toward entrepreneurship. Even while unhappy in school, he began tinkering. In Accra, the equivalent of Lagos’ Computer Village is Circle, a sprawling, chaotic marketplace where phones and laptops are repaired, and deals are made with equal parts trust and suspicion. Faithful knew Circle intimately. He knew which vendors were honest, which ones cut corners, and how to spot quality hardware without getting burned. His classmates noticed. “People trusted me to help them go and swap phones or buy phones because they didn’t want to get scammed,” he recalled. “I would always add my markup on it.” It started informally. A favour here. A phone there. Then Faithful decided to make it visible. “I printed a flyer at the school entrance gate with my phone number on it,” he said, smiling at the memory. “I called [the tech repair business] ‘Doctor Android Services’. And business took off. Like mad.” Students called him for everything. Broken screens. Software issues. Battery replacements. Faithful was not just fixing devices; he was learning how trust converts into demand. That experience became his real education. He eventually left Mechanical Engineering behind and enrolled at Venkateshwara Open University, an Indian university with ties in Ghana, to study Information Technology in 2017. Faithful noted that studying how the plumbing of technology works felt like a path that appealed to him strongly. “I liked it because it was a practical course where you weren’t just learning theory,” he said. “You were expected to build things, fix things, and understand how systems actually work.” He completed the three-year degree in 2019. Along the way, he picked up skills in design, front-end development, and systems infrastructure. More importantly, technology gave him something mechanical engineering never did: room. After graduating, he joined Melcom, Ghana’s largest retail chain, as an IT lead. There, he encountered scale for the first time. “I saw what happens when technology touches real businesses with real volume,” he said. “You don’t get to hide behind theory. If something breaks, it breaks publicly.” Yet, even that environment began to feel limiting. Faithful had tasted independence too early to be fully satisfied with maintenance. His successful ‘Doctor Android Services’ business showed him he already had the entrepreneurial knack; coupled with his design and technical coding skills, he soon craved the “excitement” of building his own thing from scratch. It led Faithful to tech consulting, a business that would soon pull him far beyond Ghana’s borders. Act 1: Tech consulting business Faithful launched Peges as a small tech and IT consulting business in Lapaz, Accra, in 2018, while he was still in school. He continued building the business even after completing his IT degree and joining Melcom. Soon after quitting his job at Melcom, he turned his focus full-time to Peges. Freeman Faithful started Peges as a Venkateshwara College student in 2018; this picture was taken from its early days, with the development and design team working on a project for Ghana’s Junction Mall. Image Source: Freeman Faithful At Peges, he was helping companies design, build, and maintain digital systems at a time when many Ghanaian enterprises were still finding their footing online. Faithful was hands-on; he coded, designed, and helped manage some of the biggest digital transformation projects for Ghanaian enterprises. Faithful was part of the core team that built Melcom Online, the e-commerce platform of the country’s largest retail chain—and his former employer. His firm also worked with Allianz Insurance, Junction Mall, and Shelter Mart, a Ghanaian property listing platform. At its peak, Peges was invoicing over GH₵ 3 million ($286,000) across clients in a single year. Freeman Faithful (centre) with an employee (left) and Amar Deep Singh Hari (right), CEO of IPMC Group, one of Africa’s biggest ICT training institutes. Image Source: Freeman Faithful Over time, Peges evolved into a full-fledged tech boutique agency, working with startups at different stages, from founders building their first minimum viable products (MVPs) to companies that had already raised significant capital. Some paid in cash; others offered equity. “Peges has been
Read More“The crypto ban that made us stronger”: Day 1-1000 of Yellow Card
When Chris Maurice landed in Lagos, Nigeria, in 2018, he had only been on a plane four times in his entire life. And then he was on a different continent with two options: make Yellow Card work, or live in Nigeria permanently. Day 1 It started with $90. In Alabama – “the capital of innovation,” Maurice says with obvious irony – he met a Nigerian man at Wells Fargo trying to send $200 to his family. The bank wanted $90 to process it. “I thought, you know, well, that’s insane, right?” Maurice recalls. “How could it possibly cost that much?” He did what any crypto enthusiast would do: told the guy about Bitcoin. Free transfers! Instant! Revolutionary! Then he went home, and reality hit. “I just started thinking, you know, what on earth is this guy’s mom gonna do with $200 in Bitcoin?” Maurice says. “You can’t buy food with that. You can’t pay rent with that. What problem is this actually solving?” That question led Maurice down a research rabbit hole about Nigeria, its currency, its banking system, and its economy. And somewhere in that research, he realised something critical: if he wanted to understand Nigeria, he needed to speak to someone from there. So, he did what any reasonable person would do. He put out an ad online. “Looking to speak to Nigerian men,” Maurice says, then pauses. “Which, you know, in hindsight, probably could have been worded better.” The phrasing attracted exactly the wrong kind of responses. But eventually, he connected with the right Nigerian man. And that’s when Maurice learned his first lesson about Nigeria. Nigerians are the most convincing people in the world. “Within about a month and a half of meeting this Nigerian man on the internet, he convinced me to get a passport and take the first international flight of my life,” Maurice says. He’d never left the United States. He knew almost nothing about Nigeria beyond what he’d researched online, maybe a YouTube video or two. None of that mattered. “The options, very literally, were build something that works or live in Lagos for the rest of my life,” Maurice says. It’s the kind of founder commitment story that sounds insane until you realise: it worked. The pivot nobody expected Maurice and his co-founder, Justin Poiroux, had gone to Nigeria with a remittance app in mind. Make it easier for people to send money home. Simple, obvious, needed. Except it wasn’t. “The truth is that there are 500 remittance apps, right?” Maurice says. “By the time I finished the sentence, you can download 700 different apps to help you send money. The world doesn’t need another remittance app.” What Nigeria needed, what the continent needed, was something more fundamental: a better way to facilitate international payments and enable money to interact with local economies. “Stablecoins are the first and only technology that actually enables that,” Maurice explains. “There’s a huge opportunity to do something here with international payments, with access to dollars, and other fundamental issues that exist across the continent.” The realisation shifted everything. Instead of building another remittance app competing with a host of others, Yellow Card would build infrastructure – the rails that would make it easier for every company to operate on the continent. “How do we make it easier for all of these remittance companies, rather than build a remittance app ourselves?” Maurice says. Yellow Card launched in Nigeria in 2019. And for a while, everything worked. Maurice found that Nigerians had something most other markets lacked: a genuine openness to new technology. “From the beginning, everybody just really understood crypto,” he says. “People have such an openness and willingness to try new technology and implement new technology that solves their problems. That’s one of the biggest benefits of doing business in Nigeria—the culture of innovation.” Maurice compares it to his experiences in Europe, where innovation moves more slowly, vacation days pile up, and risk-taking is discouraged. In Nigeria, as in the US, people hustle. “There’s no such thing as work and life separation, like it’s all just one,” he says. “Nigeria, man, people hustle. There are certain countries around the world where people just hustle, right? And those countries, from a business perspective, get along much better.” By 2021, Nigeria accounted for over 90% of Yellow Card’s volume and revenue. The company had built meaningful infrastructure in seven other African countries, but Nigeria was the engine. Then, in February 2021, everything changed. Day 500: The ban that separated winners from losers The Central Bank of Nigeria issued a directive prohibiting banks from processing transactions from cryptocurrency companies or users. It wasn’t technically a crypto ban—Nigeria never actually banned cryptocurrency—but it might as well have been. “Look, it was a major hindrance to the industry and to being able to grow in Nigeria,” Maurice says. For most crypto companies operating in Nigeria, the directive was devastating. Companies that had raised seed funding around the same time as Yellow Card started firing staff. Growth stalled. Some shut down entirely. Yellow Card didn’t fire anyone. “We were the only company that came out of that without having to fire anybody,” Maurice says. “We were the only company that came out of that able to raise a Series A.” The difference? Those seven other countries. While competitors had gone all-in on Nigeria, Yellow Card had actually opened entities, secured bank accounts, obtained licencing approvals, and built infrastructure across the continent. When Nigeria went offline, it could shift resources immediately. “We were the only Pan-African crypto player that had actually built meaningful infrastructure outside of Nigeria,” Maurice explains. “When that happened, we were the only company actually able to shift resources to other countries, to other markets, to be able to grow.” The ban lasted about two months before things largely returned to normal. Yellow Card worked with payment service providers to maintain operations, even if it was ‘a little bit uglier from an operational standpoint.’ But the damage to
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3 African startups reshaping mobility, management, and markets
Startups On Our Radar spotlights African startups solving African challenges with innovation. In our previous edition, we featured five game-changing startups pioneering agritech, fintech, HRTech, and cleantech. Expect the next dispatch on January 9, 2026. This week, we explore three African startups in the ecommerce, HRTech, and mobility sectors and why they should be on your watchlist. Let’s dive into it: Vinlogs wants to end vehicle fraud with its blockchain-powered verification platform (Mobility, Kenya) Morris Wairimu founded Vinlogs in 2025 to combat the vehicle fraud crisis in emerging markets, where tampered histories, odometer fraud, and the resale of stolen vehicles from North America result in significant financial losses and contribute to higher accident rates, as unsafe vehicles remain in circulation. Vehicle fraud in the used-car market is a global issue, as data shows that roughly 2.45 million vehicles are suspected of having odometer tampering, with buyers losing an average of $3,300 to $4,000 per vehicle due to misrepresented mileage. For consumers, insurers, and financiers in these regions, the lack of reliable verification tools often makes buying used cars a risky gamble. Vinlogs’ solution is a blockchain-secured vehicle history verification platform that aggregates automotive data from multiple sources, including government registries, inspection bodies, insurance claims, and service centres. The data is then aggregated to create tamper-proof vehicle histories, which users can access through a web dashboard, and businesses can integrate verification directly into their workflows using APIs. Vinlogs collects data from verified sources, including the UK Ministry of Transport, Quality Inspection Services Japan (QISJ), and the National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) in Kenya. It then cross-checks records for consistency and stores them on blockchain infrastructure to prevent tampering. On top of this data layer, Vinlogs applies AI-powered analysis to detect fraud patterns, flag mileage discrepancies, and generate risk scores that support decision-making for buyers, dealerships, banks, and insurers. Its business model combines pay-per-report pricing for retail buyers, subscription plans and API access for enterprise clients, and a marketplace layer for vendors. Vinlogs reports over 100 committed users, including car sellers and brokers, ready to onboard before its MVP launch. The startup says it is in active discussions with regulators in Uganda, South Africa, Ghana, Ethiopia, and Tanzania to expand its presence. Why we’re watching: The Kenyan used-car market size is expected to reach $1.50 billion (KES 193.5 billion) by 2030. Vinlogs is positioning itself at this intersection. Unlike competitors such as Autocheck, Carfax, CarChek, and CarVertical, Vinlogs emphasises blockchain storage, AI-driven fraud detection tailored for emerging markets, and multi-country regulatory alignment. Its advantage also lies in its integration with Japanese vehicle exports and African import markets. The startup plans to expand into five key African countries within the next 12 months and aims to reach operational break-even by the end of its first year. Cedisaver wants to unite Ghana’s informal clothing sellers on one platform (E-commerce, Ghana) Founded in 2015 by Moriah Adika, Cedisaver aims to address a fragmented fashion market that Adika noticed, where shopping for affordable clothing is plagued by stress, online fraud, inconsistent quality, and overpriced products, while local artisans and informal clothing retailers struggle to scale beyond scattered social media pages. Cedisaver is a centralised e-commerce platform that aggregates trusted informal clothing sellers and artisans into one digital marketplace. Rather than holding bulk inventory, it operates a hybrid direct-to-consumer model that sources products directly from vendors. When a customer places an order, Cedisaver picks up items from retailers and delivers them through local depots, a system that allows users to bundle purchases from multiple sellers into a single delivery. By avoiding bulk inventory and focusing on logistics, vendor partnerships, and digital marketing, Cedisaver reduces overhead costs and maintains healthier margins. Cedisaver reports an accumulated revenue of GHS64,115 ($6,000) as of April 2025, with over 500 products sold to over 218 customers. Why we’re watching: The size of Ghana’s fashion market is projected to reach $1.30 billion (GHS 13.6 billion) by 2030. Cedisaver is attempting to modernise the region’s fashion e-commerce market by organising the informal sector rather than competing directly against it. By integrating informal sellers into a single platform, Cedisaver differentiates itself from traditional retailers with high overhead costs and from social media sellers with limited reach and trust gaps. The startup plans to adopt a data-driven approach to trend forecasting and near-shoring-inspired production. WorkFlowsHR wants to streamline workforce management for Nigerian SMEs (HRTech, Nigeria) Founded in 2024 by Funsho Oke, WorkFlowsHR was developed to address the fragmented HR systems Nigerian businesses face, which often lead to data inconsistencies, compliance risks, and lost productivity. WorkFlowsHR addresses these pain points with a unified cloud-based platform that handles the entire employee lifecycle. It is an integrated human resources and CRM software built to help employers manage the operational complexity of running a workforce, from payroll and onboarding to time tracking and performance management. The startup began its journey as a recruitment agency, where its team encountered recurring challenges in employee retention, engagement, and payroll as both its own operations and those of its clients grew. WorkFlowsHR automates core HR functions, including payroll management, employee onboarding, attendance, leave management, and compliance with local labour laws. Its onboarding module offers self-service workflows with real-time status tracking, automated employee invitations, and categorisation of employment types. It also includes performance management tools that align individual goals with organisational objectives, an Employer of Record (EOR) service for companies hiring across jurisdictions, and the management of complex tasks such as terminating employees, conducting background checks, and handling workers’ compensation for companies expanding into new markets. The startup targets African startups and growth-stage SMEs, particularly companies with about 10 to 200 employees. The startup operates on a subscription-based revenue model with tiered pricing ranging from ₦500 ($0.35) to ₦4,200 ($2.91) every six months. Additional revenue streams include advertising on social media and newsletters, and partnership revenue sharing. Since its launch in 2024, WorkFlowsHR says it has onboarded over 200 companies, and claims to have delivered 22.2% cost savings for its users, an 18.5%
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Founders, business leaders, and scientists Africa lost in 2025
A fintech executive, a mobile-gaming pioneer, a nuclear scientist, the first African engineer to work at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and a first-generation banker who helped build the rails for modern African finance were among the notable figures Africa’s technology, banking, and science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) ecosystems lost in 2025. This is a partial list, focusing on people whose impact was felt across startups, finance, academia and the broader technology ecosystem. Senamile Masango, South African, 37 Senamile Masango, South African nuclear scientist. Image Source: Photo shared on LinkedIn by Colleen Larsen/American Nuclear Society South Africa’s first Black female nuclear scientist, Masango’s career symbolised what was possible when more women gained access to advanced STEM training. She died on February 9, 2025, after an illness, leaving a legacy that stretched beyond research into representation and role‑modelling. Her work in nuclear physics, including research at the European Council for Nuclear Research (CERN), the world’s largest particle physics laboratory based in Meyrin, a western suburb of Geneva, Switzerland, and leadership roles at South Africa’s nuclear energy corporation. Her visibility as a young Black scientist inspired students across the continent. Adetunji “Teejay” Opayele, Nigerian, 32 Adetunji “Teejay” Opayele. Image Source: Bumpa. Adetunji “Teejay” Opayele, who died in a car crash in Lagos on March 4, 2025, was co-founder of Bumpa, a Nigerian startup helping small businesses digitise sales, inventory, and customer engagement. A self-taught mobile developer and former e-settlement engineer, he built much of Bumpa’s technical stack, helping the e-commerce startup close a $4 million seed round in 2022 and grow to tens of thousands of merchants using its tools to run informal and micro-retail businesses. His colleagues and co-founder Kelvin Umechukwu described him as a builder at heart, always full of ideas. Pascal Gabriel Dozie, Nigerian, 85 Pascal Gabriel Dozie, founder of defunct Diamond Bank and co-founder of African Capital Alliance. Image Source: The ICIR Founder of Diamond Bank, the Nigerian tier-2 bank acquired by Access Bank in 2019, and pioneering chairman of MTN Nigeria, Dozie helped lay two of the core rails that today’s African tech ecosystem runs on: modern retail banking and mass‑market mobile connectivity. As Diamond Bank’s founder, he backed consumer and SME banking decades before “fintech” became a buzzword, and as MTN Nigeria’s first chairman, he helped steer the telecom firm’s entry and expansion in what became one of its most important markets. He died on April 8, 2025; many of today’s fintechs, neobanks, and mobile‑first startups are effectively building on the infrastructure he helped put in place. He was father to Uzoma Dozie, former group managing director of the now-defunct Diamond Bank and CEO of digital bank Sparkle, and Ngozi and Chijioke Dozie, both cofounders of digital lending and microfinance bank Carbon. An influential figure, the Dozie patriarch was mourned by Nigerian President Bola Tinubu after his passing. Abiola Olaniran, Nigerian, 36 Abiola Olaniran speaking on a panel at a Standard Chartered–supported tech event held at Eko Hotels and Suites, Lagos, in June 2016. Image Source: Disrupt Africa Founder of Gamsole, one of the continent’s most downloaded mobile game studios, Olaniran was a pioneer of African mobile gaming, an early backer of the ecosystem, and the first angel investor in Techpoint Africa, the Nigeria-based tech publication. He died on July 16, 2025, aged 36. His titles, such as Gidi Run, Monster Ninja, and a styled version of the popular game Temple Run, collectively surpassed 10 million downloads worldwide, proving that African‑made games could compete on global platforms. He left behind a catalogue of games and a generation of younger developers he quietly mentored. Susan Kamengere Njoki, Kenyan, 48 Susan Kamengere Njoki. Image Source: Discover JKUAT A registered nurse, lactation specialist, and certified infant massage instructor, Njoki founded Toto Touch Kenya to support children and parents with mental health and nurturing care, blending clinical practice with digital community building. Her death on July 16, 2025, shortly after a forced admission to a Nairobi mental‑health facility, and a post‑mortem finding of death from manual strangulation, sparked public outcry and renewed scrutiny of how Kenya’s mental‑health and patient‑rights laws are applied in practice. Leon Kiptum Kidombo, Kenyan, 44 Former Flutterwave East Africa VP Leon Kiptum. Image Source: Flutterwave on X A respected fintech executive and mentor, Kidombo served as Senior Vice President for East Africa at Flutterwave, the Nigerian payments unicorn operating in more than 30 countries, where he played a critical role in expanding the company’s presence across the region. He rebuilt relationships with regulators and forged partnerships with banks and enterprise clients. He died on August 3, 2025, aged 44, after a battle with cancer, just weeks after stepping back from work to focus on his health. Beyond his day job, he served on the board of the Association of Fintechs in Kenya, where he pushed for more collaboration and standards across payment startups. Frank Marangu Ireri, Kenyan, 63 Frank Ireri speaking at a 2017 interview with Trading Bell, a capital market-focused analysis programme by Kenya’s Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE). Image Source: NSE Kenya/YouTube As managing director of Housing Finance (later HF Group) for over a decade, Ireri was one of the executives who sought to drag East Africa’s oldest mortgage lender into a digital, more competitive era. He died on October 26, 2025, after a long battle with cancer, leaving behind a generation of Kenyan bankers and operators he had mentored. His greatest impact at HF was diversifying the firm’s product offerings beyond traditional home loans and driving early digitisation of its lending services. Before his death, he held governance roles at Centum Real Estate, Habitat for Humanity Kenya, and the HR‑tech firm SeamlessHR, where he served on the startup’s Kenya advisory board. Madiassa Maguiraga, Malian, 82 Madiassa Maguiraga speaking at the Conférence Annuelle sur la Haute Technologie (CAHT) in November 2019, an annual tech conference held at Université Mapon in Kindu, Democratic Republic of Congo. Image Source: Université Mapon Madiassa Maguiraga, who died on November 5, 2025, was a towering figure
Read MoreFive African founders who staged major comebacks in 2025
In 2025, Africa’s technology ecosystem stopped running on untested optimism. After years of speculation, the ecosystem has matured into something leaner and more calculating. The hopeful belief of outsiders no longer governs the market, but by a collective memory of what happens when the hype runs out. After a bruising two-year contraction, venture funding into African startups has climbed back across the $3 billion threshold, a 36% jump from last year’s $2.2 billion, according to data from Africa The Big Deal. However, while the headline figure suggests a return to the boom times of 2022, the market’s internal structure has undergone a fundamental shift. The days of sprinkling capital across a hundred early-stage experiments are over. Now, the money is moving in heavy, deliberate tranches, focusing on fewer bets, with rounds often exceeding $50 million. At the centre of this recalibration is an emerging class of “survivor” founders. They are a distinct minority because numbers show that while 68% of African founders walk away for good after a startup fails. In 2025, the stigma of failure no longer defines this group, nor are they celebrated with the uncritical “fail fast” worship of Silicon Valley’s past. For the modern African investor, a previous collapse is now a stress test. They are demanding a forensic accounting of why a company failed, separating unavoidable macroeconomic shocks, such as the regulatory shifts and funding droughts of 2023, from the self-inflicted wounds of unchecked cash burn and weak governance. They look for operational scars like missed hires, misjudged purchasing power in low-income markets, and flawed assumptions that can only be corrected by an expensive failure. In a landscape where trust is the most expensive currency, founders who returned unused capital to their backers, a practice recently documented in high-profile closures, are finding a much warmer reception than those who left a trail of unpaid creditors. These second-time founders are returning to the arena with a newfound sense of restraint, raising less capital upfront and treating every dollar as something to be earned through proven demand rather than assumed by right. 1. Meshack Alloys, from Sendy to TABB – Kenya Meshack Alloys built Sendy into one of East Africa’s most visible logistics startups, raising over $24 million before the company collapsed in 2023, according to Crunchbase. The promise of asset-light logistics across multiple markets collided with thin margins and operational complexity, producing scale without durability. Alloys’ return with TABB, a trade credit network that allows banks to extend revolving credit to small businesses using transaction data, reflects a rejection of that model rather than an attempt to refine it. The idea grew directly out of Sendy’s failure, where liquidity constraints repeatedly limited customer growth. Credit infrastructure offers higher margins and clearer regulatory pathways than physical logistics, provided relationships with banks and regulators are built early. TABB positions itself as a partner to existing financial institutions rather than a challenger, signalling a more conservative approach. 2. Tesh Mbaabu, from MarketForce and Chpter to Cloud9 – Kenya Tesh Mbaabu has become one of the most closely watched repeat founders of the cycle. Mbaabu’s B2B marketplace RejaReja, under MarketForce, shut down in 2024 after operational costs and FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) margins eroded sustainability, a diagnosis Mbaabu made publicly. His interim pivot, Chpter, an AI-driven conversational commerce platform, grew rapidly, onboarding about 1,500 merchants in four months, according to company statements. By late 2025, Mbaabu and his co-founder stepped aside to launch Cloud9, a digital bank aimed at younger users. Kenya’s fintech market is projected to reach $14.5 billion (KES 1.9 trillion) by 2028, making the sector attractive but crowded. Cloud9’s appeal to investors lies in its insistence on early usage data and unit economics, a response to lessons learned in earlier ventures. Mbaabu’s repeated reinvention invites debate about focus, yet his willingness to abandon models that fail quickly rather than defend them indefinitely aligns with the market’s current preference for evidence over narrative. 3. Abasi Ene-Obong, from 54gene to Syndicate Bio – Nigeria Abasi Ene-Obong co-founded 54gene and helped raise more than $54 million to build genomic datasets focused on African populations. Obong’s departure in 2023 and the company’s shutdown in September 2023 followed governance disputes that played out publicly. Ene-Obong returned with Syndicate Bio, launched in 2023, but moved into full operational mode in 2025 with the opening of its first sequencing laboratory. The company wants to provide genomic infrastructure for global medicine, positioning Africa as a foundational contributor rather than a peripheral sample source. Early backers include Nubia Capital, Techstars, African Union Development Agency-NEPAD, and StoryHouse Ventures, according to PitchBook. The decision to remain in biotech signals confidence that domain expertise accumulated over the years can outweigh reputational risk when paired with revised governance and operational discipline. Syndicate Bio is capital-intensive and slow by design, qualities that now attract investors seeking infrastructure-level businesses. 4. William McCarren, from Zumi to quieter second acts – Kenya William McCarren scaled Zumi, a B2B e-commerce platform, to $20 million in sales and roughly 5,000 customers before the company shut down in March 2023, a closure attributed less to demand failure than to the inability to secure follow-on capital amid heightened risk aversion toward African e-commerce. McCarren’s return has been deliberately low profile. He now works in South Africa as a co-founder of FARO, a re-commerce startup founded in 2023 but only gaining traction after a $6 million raise in 2024 led by Bloomberg President JP Zammitt. FARO runs physical stores that resell reconditioned fashion inventory, pairing software-led pricing with in-house garment refurbishment. Unlike the purely digital Zumi, FARO is built around tight control of stock and cash flow. In 2025, the model moved into execution, with physical retail openings and scaled reconditioning operations validating unit economics through repeat demand and disciplined inventory turnover. FARO’s model has helped retailers recover value from unsold goods while reducing environmental waste and offering shoppers high-quality products at lower prices. 5. Alexandria Procter, from builder to funder – South Africa In 2018, Alexandria Procter
Read MoreHow Bari Keenam made job rejections a competitive sport to secure global tech roles
Bari Keenam has been a photographer, videographer, magazine publisher, cybersecurity intern, network engineer, graphic designer, and motion designer. At 25, he’s now a product designer at Lyft in Canada. He wishes he’d specialised earlier. But he also knows that if he had, he wouldn’t be here at all. This is the paradox of the serial learner, and how a group of audacious University of Lagos (UNILAG) friends turned job rejections into a competitive sport. Bari Keenam keeps his entire life in two boxes. “I live very light,” he tells me from Canada, where he’s been since joining Lyft earlier this year. “I know I move a lot. I just have one box of clothes and shoes. Everything fits. If I need to move tomorrow for a new job, I know what to carry.” It’s a fitting metaphor for someone who’s spent his early 20s refusing to stay in one place, geographically or professionally. At 25, Keenam has worked across three continents, four industries, and more job titles than most people try in a lifetime. His LinkedIn could give someone whiplash. But there’s a method to the movement. The magazine that started everything Keenam graduated secondary school at 15 in 2015. Too young for university, he spent three years in limbo, taking an internship at a marketing firm and teaching himself everything he could find on Coursera, Domestika, and Udemy. “I called it serial learning,” he says. “I was just taking anything I could learn, digital marketing, front-end design, WordPress development, graphic design. Whatever I could find.” During that time, he and a friend started an online magazine called Gumbars. “Very weird name,” Keenam admits, laughing. But it was serious work. They had a team of around 20 people; writers, photographers, designers, all between 16 and 17 years old. “We were interviewing cool people. We met Odunsi, we met Korty, we met Slawn. A lot of them are way bigger now than they were then. ” When the magazine stopped, Keenam took the skills he’d learned and started freelancing, first WordPress development, then design, charging whatever he thought he could get away with. “I would say a price today and then five times the price tomorrow, and they kept saying yes,” he remembers. “I had nothing to lose. I didn’t have to worry about getting fired by just calling random quotes.” Get The Best African Tech Newsletters In Your Inbox Select your country Nigeria Ghana Kenya South Africa Egypt Morocco Tunisia Algeria Libya Sudan Ethiopia Somalia Djibouti Eritrea Uganda Tanzania Rwanda Burundi Democratic Republic of the Congo Republic of the Congo Central African Republic Chad Cameroon Gabon Equatorial Guinea São Tomé and Príncipe Angola Zambia Zimbabwe Botswana Namibia Lesotho Eswatini Mozambique Madagascar Mauritius Seychelles Comoros Cape Verde Guinea-Bissau Senegal The Gambia Guinea Sierra Leone Liberia Côte d’Ivoire Burkina Faso Mali Niger Benin Togo Other Select your gender Male Female Others TC Daily TC Events TC Scoop Subscribe The UNILAG audacity Everything changed when Keenam got into UNILAG to study Systems Engineering. “UNILAG could be referred to as Nigeria’s Silicon Valley,” he says without hesitation. “And it’s because of audacity. Students at UNILAG were very audacious in what they wanted to try.” He describes friends casually applying to Google and Facebook, companies he thought were ‘out of reach.’ “Then you see them get it and you’re like, ‘Oh, I can get that thing too.’ That led me to a lot of other audacious attempts in my career.” This thinking became a guiding career-building tool. . Keenam and his friends began what he calls ‘glorifying rejections.’ “We didn’t take no as ‘oh my gosh, sad.’ We took ‘no’ as – ‘How many nos can you get before you get a yes?’” he explains. The strategy was simple but brutal; apply to 10 jobs a day. Every single day. As students, Keenam and his friends “applied to about 200 jobs a month,” about ten per day with the goal to “keep applying until you get a yes.” Most applications led nowhere. But that was the point, learning how international companies interview, what they want, how to present yourself. “I was really young. It was good to know that earlier on.” The Toptal breakthrough Those scores of applications eventually paid off. Keenam got into Toptal, a network of top freelance talent that only accepts about 3% of applicants. “When I got in, I was in a very small group of Nigerians that got in,” he says. “I think that was like one of my big break moments. Everyone started noticing, ‘Oh, this guy got into Toptal.’” That visibility led him to a role at Grey Finance (now Grey), a Nigerian fintech where Keenam worked on their rebrand. “For a brand designer, that is like the biggest thing, being involved in a rebrand.” But while working at Grey, something unexpected happened: Snapchat got back to him. Get The Best African Tech Newsletters In Your Inbox Select your country Nigeria Ghana Kenya South Africa Egypt Morocco Tunisia Algeria Libya Sudan Ethiopia Somalia Djibouti Eritrea Uganda Tanzania Rwanda Burundi Democratic Republic of the Congo Republic of the Congo Central African Republic Chad Cameroon Gabon Equatorial Guinea São Tomé and Príncipe Angola Zambia Zimbabwe Botswana Namibia Lesotho Eswatini Mozambique Madagascar Mauritius Seychelles Comoros Cape Verde Guinea-Bissau Senegal The Gambia Guinea Sierra Leone Liberia Côte d’Ivoire Burkina Faso Mali Niger Benin Togo Other Select your gender Male Female Others TC Daily TC Events TC Scoop Subscribe The year-long pause Keenam had applied to Snapchat a year earlier through LinkedIn networking. “I was very heavy on LinkedIn networking. I messaged a lot of people in companies I wanted to work at. This one person at Snapchat replied.” He’d made it through the interview process and got a yes. Then Snapchat paused all hiring. “They were like, ‘We can’t hire anyone unfortunately. But we’ll get back to you when we can hire again.’” A year later, while at Grey, they did. “The second invite was to apply from scratch. They’re like,
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Why 66,000 Starlink users in Nigeria must complete biometric update before 2026
Over 66,000 Starlink subscribers in Nigeria risk having their internet access restricted after December 31, 2025, if they fail to complete a mandatory biometric update. The requirement, first issued by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) in August 2025, extends the regulator’s subscriber-verification framework beyond mobile networks to satellite internet providers to strengthen identity verification and security across the telecoms ecosystem. According to an NCC spokesperson, the commission issued the directive via a letter dated August 19, 2025 and set the deadline for “3 months from date of directive (i.e. November 19, 2025).” An extension was granted on November 17, 2025, pushing the final deadline to December 31, 2025. Starlink confirmed the requirement in an email sent to customers on Monday, December 29, 2025, noting that the verification process takes “less than two minutes.” The company warned that subscribers who fail to submit their details by the December 31 deadline will have their service suspended. Reactivation, it added, will depend on network capacity in the subscriber’s location, meaning some users may not be able to restore service if their area is already at capacity. Starlink’s email to subscribers notifying them to complete their KYC registration by December 31, 2025. A Starlink employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorised to comment publicly, said the process is straightforward. Subscribers are required to upload a headshot photograph, provide their National Identification Number (NIN), and give consent for the information to be linked to their Starlink account. Capacity constraints could complicate reactivation for affected users. In Lagos, neighbourhoods such as Victoria Island, Ikoyi, Lagos Island, Ikeja, Surulere, Lekki, and surrounding estates frequently appear as “sold out” or “at capacity” on Starlink’s availability checker, prompting prospective users to join a waitlist that requires a deposit. A similar situation exists in Abuja, where several districts have reached capacity and now accept only waitlist deposits rather than new residential activations. Starlink did not respond to a request for comments. The policy closely mirrors the NCC’s December 15, 2023, directive to mobile network operators under the NIN–SIM linkage programme, which required subscribers’ NINs to be matched with existing SIM registration records, including facial images and fingerprints, in collaboration with the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC). The move aimed to improve national security, curb identity-related fraud, and create a more reliable national subscriber database. The mobile sector rollout followed a phased timeline, with September 14, 2024, set as the final compliance deadline. Operators were instructed to fully bar any unverified lines after that date. By the end of the exercise, the NCC reported a 96% compliance rate, with over 153 million SIMs successfully linked to verified NINs. In August 2025, the Commission announced that all improperly registered SIMs had been removed from Nigeria’s networks, setting a regulatory precedent now being applied to satellite internet services like Starlink. One Starlink subscriber in Lagos, Tochukwu Nwankwu, said he completed the biometric update after receiving an in-app notification from the company in October 2025. “Just a panel on the app. Just like a poor signal notification, when you’re far from the router, or when there’s a software update,” he said.
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iPhone 17 Series breakdown: Full specs, price and best value picks
The iPhone 17 Series is Apple’s latest flagship device in 2025, succeeding the iPhone 16 launched last year. With the series, Apple discontinued the Plus model and introduced the iPhone 17 Air, marketed as the thinnest iPhone. Users get a 6.3-inch display on the base iPhone 17 and Pro, a 6.5-inch display on the Air, a 6.9-inch display on the Pro Max, and a 120Hz refresh rate across all devices. Each device in the series features a 48 MP rear camera that captures clear, well-detailed images. The iPhone lineup was announced on September 9, 2025, and made available for purchase on September 19, 2025, ten days later. iPhone 17 price in Nigeria Buying iPhones in Nigeria is tricky because Apple doesn’t ship directly to Nigeria, so there’s no uniformprice in the country. There’s also a massive markup on the iPhone 17 in Nigeria, often due to outrageous customs duties and import levies. The base iPhone 17, 256 GB, sells between ₦1,650,000.00 ($ 1,137.23) and ₦1,869,660.00 ($ 1,288.51). The 512 GB version price falls between ₦2,100,000.00 ($1447.26) and ₦2,337,660.00 ($1611.05). A price difference of over ₦500,000 ($344.59) reflects the additional cost of storage space. The iPhone 17 Air model introduces a 1TB option. Current market rates are: 256 GB: ₦2,200,000.00 ($1516.17) – ₦2,337,600 ($1611) 512 GB: ₦2,500,000.00 ($1722.93) – ₦2,805,000.00 ($1933.12) 1TB: ₦2,900,000.00 ($1998.59) – ₦3,273,660.00 ($2256.11). The iPhone 17 Pro shares the same storage tiers as the Air model. Users looking to buy the model would spend between: 256GB: ₦2,350,000.00 ($1619.55) – ₦2,700,000.00 ($1860.76) 512 GB: ₦2,800,000.00 ($1929.68) – ₦3,350,000.00 ($2308.72) 1TB: ₦3,300,000.00 ($2274.26) – ₦3,750,000.00 ($2584.39). To get the 1TB option, users would be paying an additional fee of over ₦700,000.00 ($482.42). Unlike other devices in the series, the iPhone 17 Pro Max added a 2 TB option. The iPhone 17 Pro Max in Nigeria costs between ₦2,600,000.00 ($1791.84) – ₦4,500,000.00 ($3101.27) and ₦3,150,000.00 ($2170.89) – ₦4,950,000.00 ($3411.39). The prices stated above are not standard or static; changes in the Nigerian Naira/US Dollar exchange rate also affect prices. Be sure to confirm prices with your local vendor before making a purchase. iPhone 17 full specifications The iPhone 17 series is a high-end smartphone designed to rival other smartphones in camera performance, battery life, and everyday performance. This is how the iPhone 17 models compare. Design and build The base iPhone 17 measures 149.6 mm in height and 8 mm in thickness. It weighs 177 grams, making it comfortable to hold. The screen uses Ceramic Shield 2 for protection, and the body mixes an aluminium frame with a glass back. It has an IP68 rating, meaning it is dustproof and waterproof, with a 6-meter water immersion rating. You can pick it up in Black, White, Mist Blue, Sage, or Lavender. For the iPhone 17 Air, the focus is on achieving exceptional thinness and lightness. It is just 5.6 mm thick and weighs only 165 grams. It features a premium Grade 5 titanium frame and a glass back. Like the base model, it is IP68 water-resistant. This model is available in colours such as Space Black, Cloud White, Light Gold, and Sky Blue. The iPhone 17 Pro is heavier and sturdier, weighing 206 grams and measuring 8.8 mm in thickness. It features an aluminium-alloy frame and offers an aluminium or glass back. It keeps the same Ceramic Shield 2 front and IP68 rating. Colour options for this model include Silver, Cosmic Orange, and Deep Blue. The iPhone 17 Pro Max is the largest of the series, measuring 163.4 mm in height and weighing 233 grams. It shares the solid aluminium alloy build, Ceramic Shield 2 protection, and IP68 rating found on the Pro. It is available in Silver, Cosmic Orange, and Deep Blue. Display On the iPhone 17, you get a 6.3-inch LTPO OLED screen with a resolution of 1206 x 2622. The 120 Hz refresh rate makes animations look very smooth. Brightness reaches 1000 nits for everyday use, peaking at 3000 nits. The iPhone 17 Air features a 6.5-inch display with a 1260 x 2736 resolution. The screen-to-body ratio is about 89.9%, with the same high brightness capabilities as the standard model. The iPhone 17 Pro matches the base model’s 6.3-inch display and 1206 x 2622 resolution. However, it maintains the Pro standard with LTPO Super Retina XDR OLED technology. It supports Dolby Vision and HDR10, ensuring movies and photos look vibrant and sharp. The iPhone 17 Pro Max features a 6.9-inch screen, the biggest in the lineup. It has a resolution of 1320 x 2868, a pixel density of 460 ppi, and features a LTPO Super Retina OLED similar to the Pro. Performance and software The iPhone 17 is powered by the Apple A19 chipset, built on a 3 nm process. It features a 6-core CPU and a 5-core GPU that handle games and daily tasks smoothly. It ships with iOS 26 and supports new features and updates. The iPhone 17 Air features the Apple A19 Pro chipset. While it also uses a 5-core GPU, the Pro chip is designed for speed. It runs iOS 26. The same Apple A19 Pro chipset powers the iPhone 17 Pro, but it gets a boost in graphics with a 6-core GPU. This extra power makes it better for heavy gaming or editing videos. It is designed to handle demanding tasks quickly while running the latest iOS 26 software. The iPhone 17 Pro Max also uses the A19 Pro chip with the powerful 6-core GPU. This setup gives you the maximum performance available in the series. Memory and storage For the iPhone 17, you get 8 GB of RAM. Storage options are 256 GB or 512 GB. It uses fast NVMe storage, so apps load quickly. The iPhone 17 Air increases its RAM to 12 GB. You can choose from 256 GB, 512 GB, or 1 TB of storage. This extra RAM helps keep more apps open in the background, making the phone feel snappier. The iPhone 17 Pro also comes with
Read MoreIn 2025, cyber breaches in Africa became harder to hide
Cybersecurity breaches remained a persistent thorn in the side of African companies in 2025, but the major highlights from the year weren’t the headline attacks. Institutions lost the luxury of keeping breaches quiet as cyberattacks became harder to hide. Several African countries tightened the breach-reporting guidelines for operators. Chief among them is Algeria, which mandated a 5-day window for companies to report breaches or pay heavy fines. Kenya and South Africa also made significant strides in forcing organisations to treat breaches as public events rather than private IT problems. In Kenya, operators that discover a potential breach are now expected to alert data controllers within 48 hours, and controllers are pushed to file a preliminary report to the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner (ODPC) within 72 hours—even if the full facts are not yet in. Late notifications must be justified, and new guidance from the regulator ties weak security and poor reporting directly to fines, sanctions, and even the risk of losing the right to process data. For Kenyan firms, that means the old instinct to “wait until we know more” now carries regulatory risk of its own. South Africa also overhauled its breach‑reporting process. While the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) had long required organisations to notify both the regulator and affected people after a “security compromise,” in 2025, the Information Regulator tightened how that duty works in practice. In April, it mandated companies to log breaches through an online reporting portal using a form, forcing operators to spell out what happened, what data was involved, what they are doing to contain it, and what individuals should do to protect themselves. According to South Africa’s Information Regulator, there were 2,374 reported breaches in the 2024/25 financial year, with 82% of them occurring after April 2025. The number pointed to an acceleration, but also hinted that disclosure was becoming unavoidable. Elsewhere, Zambia chose to treat cybersecurity as a critical‑infrastructure issue rather than a back‑office concern. In April 2025, the country split its cyber law into two: a Cyber Security Act governing security service providers and critical information infrastructure, and a Cyber Crimes Act dealing with offences and penalties. Operators in sectors such as energy, banking and finance, health, transport, pensions and insurance, ICT, education, mining, and other designated public‑sector services can now be classified as controllers of “critical information” or “critical information infrastructure,” bringing them under a tighter supervisory net. That designation comes with hard obligations: controllers must register with the new Zambia Cyber Security Agency, keep designated critical information hosted in Zambia unless expressly authorised to store it elsewhere, and promptly notify the agency of any perceived or actual cybersecurity incident affecting those systems or connected networks. They are also required to undergo annual audits, file cybersecurity situational-awareness reports, and participate in national cyber-exercises, with non-compliance punishable by fines of up to ZMW 1.2 million ($48,000) and, in serious cases, prison terms that can extend up to 10 years. These regulatory shifts forced the disclosure of some of the most consequential breaches in 2025. At a new scale, they made visible how intrusions disrupt everyday customer services in very public ways. Get The Best African Tech Newsletters In Your Inbox Select your country Nigeria Ghana Kenya South Africa Egypt Morocco Tunisia Algeria Libya Sudan Ethiopia Somalia Djibouti Eritrea Uganda Tanzania Rwanda Burundi Democratic Republic of the Congo Republic of the Congo Central African Republic Chad Cameroon Gabon Equatorial Guinea São Tomé and Príncipe Angola Zambia Zimbabwe Botswana Namibia Lesotho Eswatini Mozambique Madagascar Mauritius Seychelles Comoros Cape Verde Guinea-Bissau Senegal The Gambia Guinea Sierra Leone Liberia Côte d’Ivoire Burkina Faso Mali Niger Benin Togo Other Select your gender Male Female Others TC Daily TC Events TC Scoop Subscribe Exposure as a strategy If 2024 gave us the unfortunate breach at South Africa’s National Health Laboratory Service (NHLS), the biggest healthcare incident in 2025 was Kenya’s M-TIBA breach in October. Like a trophy showcase, hackers published the siphoned data on public Telegram channels, a pattern used to force organisations to comply with ransom demands. Organisations that hold sensitive customer data remained heavily targeted businesses in 2025. Telecom firms, once assumed to be resilient by virtue of scale, became some of the most lucrative targets. Telecom Namibia, a state-owned provider, was quietly crippled by a ransomware attack in December 2024, with a public fallout that continued in January 2025. When the company refused to pay, attackers leaked sensitive billing data belonging to senior government officials in an attempt to force compliance. On January 8, hackers hit mobile operator Cell C with a cybersecurity breach, with reports stating that perpetrators, RansomHouse, had “unlawfully disclosed the incident” and published stolen customer data on the dark web, exposing them to fraud and extortion. In April, MTN Group disclosed a data breach affecting its South African subscribers. In Ghana, at least 5,700 MTN customers were directly affected in a breach reported on April 28. In South Africa, the breach escalated into a criminal investigation. The message to the industry was unmistakable: Telecoms had become identity vaults, and those vaults were being tested. Hackers maintained their exhibitionist posture, and several other sensitive data organisations were hit. In January 2025, a cyberattack on the South African Weather Service (SAWS) knocked key systems offline, disrupting the delivery of aviation and marine forecasts and limiting access to critical weather information at home and across the region. In July, the municipal systems of Otjiwarongo, a quiet town in central Namibia, were knocked offline. Residents were blocked from accessing basic services as officials struggled to explain what had happened. The year’s most consequential infrastructure breach involved South Africa’s Eskom, the state-owned power company, and it became a crowning moment of the exposure era—one that attached a clear financial cost to a cyber incident. In December 2024, the power utility detailed how its Online Vending System (OVS)—the platform used to generate prepaid electricity tokens—had been breached the previous year, after a forensic investigation linked large “non-technical” losses to fraud on
Read MoreFollow the Money (Wrapped): Tax laws, ATMs’ return, and where money went in 2025
In 2025, TechCabal published about 21 editions of Follow the Money, tracking how Nigerians earned, spent, saved, and lost money in a year shaped by policy shifts, fintech power plays, and tightening government oversight. We followed what banks spent on, how tax laws evolved, how Jumia adjusted its revenue strategy, and how individuals and companies adapted to a rapidly changing financial system. At its core, the column asked a simple question: What does spending reveal about individual and institutional priorities? In a capitalist world, money is the single most important indicator of what a company’s or a person’s interests are. Follow its movement, and you can predict the health of a company, the direction of a policy, or the future of the economy. In 2025, we tracked how Nigerians interacted with their money amid new rules, faster payments, and shifting incentives. Each story in the column has pointed to where and how money will flow in 2026, and these are some of them to keep in mind as we enter the new year: Remote workers will now pay taxes Nigeria signed sweeping tax reforms in 2025, and from January 2026, remote workers and freelancers will officially fall within the tax net. Under the new law, personal income tax will apply to Nigerians earning income locally or abroad, regardless of where the money is paid. Salaries will be taxed at a maximum rate of 25%, lower than in South Africa (45%), Kenya (35%), Egypt (27.5%), and Algeria (35%). The law, signed in June 2025, aims to raise Nigeria’s tax-to-GDP ratio to 18% by 2027 from under 10%. It also clarifies that income earned abroad by Nigerian residents is taxable in Nigeria, even if the income is not remitted. Also, a Nigerian’s salary is taxable when they work abroad in a country that exempts their salary from tax under an agreement or diplomatic arrangement to which Nigeria is a party. Freelancers must now register with tax authorities. Failure to do so attracts a ₦50,000 ($34.64) fine in the first month and ₦25,000 ($17.32) for every additional month. Failure to file returns attracts a ₦100,000 ($69.28) fine in the first month and ₦50,000 ($34.64) for each month after. False declarations could result in fines of up to ₦1 million ($692.82) or three years in prison, or both. Come 2026, Nigerians working for foreign companies will no longer fly under the radar. Crypto earnings are no longer tax-free Crypto profits will also face taxation from 2026. “The new law that will take effect in January 2026 will tax you if you make gains on crypto and totally ignore you when you make losses,” Taiwo Oyedele, chairman of the Presidential Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms Committee, told TechCabal in October. “It is not a crime to invest in crypto. If your net gain is small, below the threshold (₦800,000), your tax is 0%.” Between July 2024 and June 2025, Nigerians transacted $92.1 billion (₦132.94 trillion) in crypto, making the country one of the world’s most active crypto markets. The new rules aim to bring structure to an economy the government has long struggled to regulate. Although a 10% tax on digital asset profits was introduced under the 2022 Finance Act, it was never enforced. This time, enforcement is coming as crypto traders must self-report their profits. To boost compliance, crypto exchanges will now be required to monitor and report transactions. Non-compliant platforms face ₦10 million ($6,928.18) in fines in the first month and ₦1 million ($692.82) for every subsequent month, alongside possible licence suspension or revocation by the SEC. ATMs are making a comeback After years of decline, ATMs are returning to the centre of Nigeria’s cash economy. In Q1 2025 alone, Nigerians withdrew ₦15.98 trillion ($11.07 billion), a 192.7% increase year-on-year. The rebound follows new Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) guidelines tightening oversight of PoS agents and mandating wider ATM deployment. Under a draft regulation, banks must deploy one ATM for every 5,000 active cards issued—30% compliance by 2026, 60% by 2027, and full compliance by 2028. The shift signals a return to ATM-first access after years of PoS dominance. By 2026, Nigerians should expect more ATMs and tighter controls on PoS operations. Transfers will cost more from 2026 From January 2026, sending ₦50,000 ($34.64) will cost ₦100, not because banks changed their pricing, but because the government changed who pays. Five years after replacing stamp duty with the Electronic Money Transfer Levy (EMTL), Nigeria is bringing stamp duty back under the Nigeria Tax Act 2025. Previously, EMTL charged a flat ₦50 on transfers of ₦10,000 ($6.93) and above, paid by the receiver. From 2026, the sender pays, and the charge stacks on top of existing transfer fees. Currently, bank customers pay: ₦10 for transfers below ₦5,000; ₦25 for transfers between ₦5,001 and ₦50,000; ₦50 for transfers above ₦50,000. With stamp duty added, transfers above ₦10,000 ($6.93) will now cost between ₦75 and ₦100 per transaction. For businesses and PoS agents, this removes the burden of deducting ₦50 from incoming payments. For individuals, it makes every transfer slightly more expensive. The biggest winners of 2025: OPay and PalmPay OPay and PalmPay tightened their grip on Nigeria’s microtransaction economy in 2025. In Q1 alone, mobile money transactions hit ₦20.71 trillion ($14.35 billion), up 1,518.64% from ₦1.28 trillion ($886.81 million) in Q1 2021. Much of that volume flowed through the two platforms. Their rise was driven by timing, reliability, and trust, especially during periods when banks faltered, from the 2022 naira redesign to recurring outages in 2024. By 2025, OPay had crossed 20 million daily active users, while PalmPay processed over 15 million daily transactions. Both are now betting on cards to reach semi-digital and offline users in 2026. Generally, in 2025, we learnt that apps are now becoming the most preferred means of moving cash in the country, and banks are paying attention. Mobile app payments jumped 33.65% year-on-year to ₦104.07 trillion ($72.10 billion) in Q1 2025, driven by smartphone adoption and renewed bank
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