Ngozi Chukwu chose journalism, then blockchain, and found her function
Ngozi Chukwu’s earliest childhood memory is of writing a song on her balcony. She was in her first year of secondary school, maybe 11 or 12 years old. She had moved to a new secondary school and was having a terrible time. So she went home and wrote. The song had a Hannah Montana beat. It is still in her head. Years later, she would win multiple writing prizes at a petroleum company’s summer camp. But she never imagined that media was something she would do. “It seemed to me a thing that was natural to me, to be able to write things, poems, compositions, essays,” she says. “So I thought that the harder thing was science, engineering.” She studied electronic engineering at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Enugu State, one of Nigeria’s premier federal universities. When engineering killed the joy Chukwu had started university excited. Then came her first laboratory class, and it was terrible for her. “It was obvious to me that this lab was not for 2013,” she says. “There was no space for us to breathe. I can’t explain to you how deeply my heart sank. I gave up on school.” That is where she says she lost her spirit. Not the joy of learning—the joy of classes, of school, of the structure she thought would guide her. She started spending time at the art faculty instead and became interested in social impact. She volunteered as a grant writer for a non-governmental organisation (NGO). She participated in the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), a mandatory one-year program for Nigerian university graduates, as a teacher in Ilorin, the capital city of Kwara State in the North Central region, teaching English, geography, and history. It felt meaningful to her. When she returned to Lagos after her service year in 2020, she wanted to continue to teach. She got a job at a private school with ten kids in her class. But she realised quickly that she did not know how to do the job well. “I felt like the kids were smart, they were learning things faster, and they were already good,” Chukwu says. “ The teachers had to do extra. I felt like I wasn’t doing enough extra. So I had to try to sit down and learn how to teach and come back, or just find something else to do.” Around that time, NFTs and Web3 started trending, and she got curious. After research, she thought blockchain could change the world. She started unpaid writing for projects that would later pause for different reasons. But it made her interested in reporting about tech. Then she saw an opening at TechCabal, a media publication reporting on Africa’s tech ecosystem. With no previous experience in journalism, Chukwu was reluctant to apply, but the publication’s reputation convinced her. “I hadn’t done many interviews then; quite frankly, I hate interviews,” she says. “Being in a formal setting to be assessed causes my brain to freeze.” She said she had gotten the job by being honest, maybe too honest. In her interview, when she was asked what the best thing she had written was, she said, “A joke.” She explained that one of her biggest ambitions was to be a funny person, to make people laugh. “It felt like the most obvious thing to say when I was asked,” Chukwu recalls. “ I talked about the blockchain projects I had written for obvious reasons, but I tried to let my personality shine through in the blogs and poems I mentioned. I was nervous about it, but they said they were good. I guess they were, because I got the job.” The painting and the panic On Chukwu’s first day at TechCabal as a junior newsletter writer, she was sweating because she had jumped buses. She wore tiny braids to look professional. She was nervous. On that first day, she was sitting in one of the offices with other employees and was trying not to panic. Then she looked to her right and saw a painting by Shutabug, a digital artist. A big parachute carrying a danfo, the yellow buses that served as public transportation, plying the roads of Lagos. “I can’t explain to you how that made me feel,” she says. She has written about that painting seven times since. “There’s a function to these things,” she says. “Art does something in the moment, even aesthetically.” In her first three weeks, she said she cried a lot and fell sick. She did not understand newsletters or how to rehash news. Her friends asked if she was sure she could do it. “I don’t believe in myself,” she recalled telling them. “I’m quitting.” But she did not quit. “I’m not a quitter,” she clarifies. “I’m a complainer. But I’m not a quitter.” She had a good manager, Timi Odueso, whom she calls the best manager ever. He taught her how to make rehashing news interesting. The more she wrote, the more interested she became in what was happening in the world. She started to understand the function of the work. People needed stories. People used stories. It felt good to be necessary. What she learned about breaking news Over time, Chukwu discovered what kind of stories she liked. Business and product stories. Breaking news. She covered Chowdeck as a product, the ecosystem’s network with the Paystack Mafia, and an analysis on the impact of failed startups on the ecosystem. She loved being the first to report something. “I loved covering those because people’s idea of what fintech is in Africa is very different,” she says. But she also learned something frustrating: to get the best of these stories, you need sources inside companies. And Chukwu insists that in Africa, this is slightly more difficult. “People don’t really care about their jobs that much,” she says as an observation. “And I think maybe that’s the thing that’s different about our ecosystem versus Silicon Valley. People there love to defend their work. People
Read MoreNigeria moves to mandate organisations to disclose cyber attacks amid rising threats
Nigeria is moving to end the culture of silence around cyberattacks, pushing banks, fintechs, and other organisations to disclose breaches or at least share intelligence in the wake of rising threats. Kashifu Abdullahi, director-general of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Nigeria’s tech regulator, said organisations must begin disclosing breaches, or at the very least, share intelligence, because attacks are becoming more frequent and increasingly interconnected. “The landscape is elevated because of AI and other dynamics, and we are all connected,” Abdullahi told TechCabal on the sidelines of GITEX Africa in Morocco on April 9. “If one organisation is compromised, it can become a launch pad for others.” His comments come as cyber incidents continue to hit both financial institutions and government agencies, more recently, the Corporate Affairs Commission. Despite this, reporting remains weak. In its latest publicly available fraud report, the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) said only 60 out of 163 institutions reported fraud incidents in 2023, a compliance rate of just 37%. “Non-reporting of fraud incidents is a breach of the CBN circular on the Establishment of Industry Fraud Desks,” it said. Data from the Financial Institutions Training Centre (FITC) showed that the amount involved in fraud cases reached ₦5.26 billion ($3.81 million) across 14,697 incidents in the third quarter of 2025. For Abdullahi, the reluctance to disclose incidents is rooted in reputational concerns that no longer hold in a connected digital ecosystem. “If you look at what happened recently, they exploited a bank, from the bank they got access to Remita, and so on,” he said. “That notion that if I am attacked and I make it public, it will damage my image has to change.” Instead of silence, regulators want structured information sharing across institutions and agencies to prevent attacks from spreading across the system. NITDA said it is working with the Office of the National Security Adviser and the Ministry of Communications, Innovation, and Digital Economy to improve coordination among agencies and private sector players. On April 1, Minister Bosun Tijani said the government would partner with industry players to establish a cybersecurity coordination council. Three weeks later, he said the council will focus on building a coordinated national cyber resilience framework anchored on accountability, intelligence sharing, and policy alignment. The Central Bank of Nigeria has also stepped in. On March 30, it introduced a cybersecurity self-assessment tool (CSAT), requiring financial institutions to evaluate their preparedness for threats, while formally recognising AI as a tool in combating financial crime. “We are always trying to be ahead of the game,” Abdullahi said. If Nigeria follows through, it would align with a growing global shift toward mandatory breach disclosure and coordinated cyber defence. In Europe, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requires organisations to notify users when a data breach poses a high risk. In Africa, Algeria mandates breach reporting within five days, while Kenya requires initial disclosures within 48 hours. Under South Africa’s Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA), organisations must notify both regulators and affected individuals after a breach. In April, 2025, regulators tightened enforcement by requiring companies to log incidents through a central portal, detailing what happened, the data involved, and mitigation steps. According to the International Monetary Fund, stronger reporting and information sharing among financial institutions can significantly improve collective resilience against cyber threats. For Nigeria, regulators are now betting that forcing more openness, whether through disclosure or intelligence sharing, will make the system harder to exploit.
Read More
OPPO Find X9 Ultra vs Find X8 Ultra: Which should you buy?
Table of contents The biggest upgrades on the Find X9 Ultra OPPO Find X9 Ultra: Full specs and features OPPO Find X8 Ultra: Full specs and features Side-by-side comparison When OPPO launched the Find X9 Ultra at its headquarters in Chengdu, China, on April 21, 2026, the biggest story was the geography. For the first time since OPPO introduced the Ultra-tier label in 2024, an Ultra-range Find X phone is available outside China. The Find X8 Ultra, which launched a year earlier in April 2025, was never officially released outside China. That global shift changes everything for you as a Nigerian buyer. Both phones are imports for now since there is no official OPPO Nigeria channel for either. However, the X9 Ultra, with confirmed launches in the UK, Europe, and India, will be far easier to source through grey-market vendors than its predecessor ever was. Here is how the two phones compare across every meaningful spec. The biggest upgrades on the Find X9 Ultra OPPO’s tagline for the X9 Ultra is Your Next Camera, and the phone mostly lives up to it. The most significant change over the X8 Ultra is the camera system. Where the X8 Ultra used a 50 MP 1.0-inch Sony LYT-900 main sensor alongside three 50 MP companions, the X9 Ultra moves to a five-camera rear setup led by two 200 MP sensors. These are a Sony LYT-901 main camera and an OmniVision OV52A 3x telephoto. On top of that, OPPO added an industry-first 50 MP 10x optical periscope built around what the company calls a Quintuple Prism Reflection design. Engadget, which tested the phone ahead of launch, called the 1/1.12-inch main sensor the largest 200 MP sensor in a phone yet. Beyond cameras, the X9 Ultra brings several other upgrades: A newer Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip, replacing the X8 Ultra’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Battery capacity jumps from 6,100 mAh to 7,050 mAh with a silicon-carbon build OPPO calls the Glacier Battery Display peak brightness rises from 2,500 nits to 3,600 nits, and the refresh rate hits 144 Hz in supported games Android 16 and ColorOS 16 out of the box IP66 added on top of the IP68 and IP69 ratings that the X8 Ultra already had Bluetooth 6.0, 8K video, an O-Log2 log profile with ACES support, a 50 MP autofocus selfie camera, and AirDrop-compatible Quick Share for transfers between your phone and iPhones or Macs OPPO Find X9 Ultra: Full specs and features Image source: The Tech Chap on YouTube 1. Display The X9 Ultra has a 6.82-inch LTPO 2.0 AMOLED panel at a resolution of 3168 x 1440, which works out to 510 pixels per inch. It runs at an adaptive 1-120 Hz refresh rate, with 144 Hz unlocked in select games. Touch sampling sits at 300 Hz. Brightness is rated at 800 nits typical, 1,800 nits in high-brightness mode, and 3,600 nits peak HDR. The panel supports Dolby Vision, HDR Vivid, and HDR10+ with 10-bit colour. PWM dimming runs at 2,160 Hz, the minimum brightness drops to 1 nit, and the top glass is Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2. OPPO uses what it calls an X3 luminescent material with pixel-level gamma correction. 2. Processor, RAM, and storage The X9 Ultra runs on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, a 3 nm chip (model SM8850-AC) with two Oryon V3 Phoenix L cores at 4.6 GHz and six Oryon V3 Phoenix M cores at 3.62 GHz. The GPU is an Adreno 840 clocked at 1,200 MHz. RAM is LPDDR5X, available in 12 GB or 16 GB. Storage uses UFS 4.1 in 256 GB, 512 GB, or 1 TB options inside China. For global buyers, OPPO is selling only the 512 GB and 1 TB variants. 3. Battery and charging The Glacier Battery is a 7,050 mAh silicon-carbon cell. It supports 100 W SUPERVOOC wired charging, 50 W AIRVOOC wireless charging, and 10 W reverse wireless charging. The charger also works with 80 W SUPERVOOC, 18 W PD, 18 W QC, and 55 W PPS profiles. OPPO claims up to 31 hours of YouTube playback per charge, though that figure is based on manufacturer lab conditions. 4. Camera system OPPO’s partnership with Hasselblad, the Swedish camera brand whose cameras went to the moon, has been in place since 2022. The X9 Ultra marks the fourth generation of that collaboration, now branded the New-Generation Hasselblad Master Camera System. Hasselblad co-branded the launch event in Chengdu. Video: 8K at 30 fps on both 200 MP sensors; 4K at 30, 60, or 120 fps; 4K Dolby Vision up to 120 fps; 1080p slow motion to 240 fps; 720p slow motion to 480 fps. The O-Log2 log profile supports real-time LUT preview, LUT burn-in, ACES colour management, and custom 3D LUT imports. OPPO also introduced a feature called LUMO, an internal optical zoom processing system that quadruples the pixel count at the 2x and 6x focal lengths. Optional accessories include the Hasselblad Earth Explorer Kit (a grip-case with a 300 mm teleconverter for roughly 13x optical) and the TILTA KHRONOS Kit, which includes ND filters, manual focus handles, and an internal HDMI output. 5. Design and durability The X9 Ultra measures 163.16 x 76.97 mm. Thickness is 8.65 mm for the Canyon Orange version and 9.10 mm for Tundra Umber, with weights of 235 g and 236 g, respectively. The frame is aluminium alloy. The Canyon Orange back is glass; Tundra Umber uses an eco-friendly vegan leather inspired by the Hasselblad X2D 100C Earth Explorer Edition camera. Globally, the phone ships in Tundra Umber and Canyon Orange. Polar Glacier is China-exclusive. The phone carries IP66, IP68, and IP69 ratings, plus Swiss SGS five-star drop and shock certification. There are two physical buttons besides the power and volume keys: a customisable Shortcut Button on the left and a pressure-sensitive Quick Button on the right that doubles as a camera shutter and zoom slider. 6. Software and AI The X9 Ultra ships with Android 16 and ColorOS
Read More
This AI doctor answers the hardest questions women ask
28 avril 2026 Hello , Welcome back to Francophone Weekly by TechCabal, your weekly deep dive into the tech ecosystem across French-speaking Africa. For readers who want to understand Francophone Africa beyond headlines—through markets, startups, and systems. New editions of the newsletter will land directly in your inbox every Tuesday at 12 PM WAT. By default, this newsletter is in French. If you’re reading this in your email inbox, click the “Read in English” button below to switch to the English version. If you’re reading on our website, you can either click the button below or toggle the language selector at the top right-hand side of the page to view the English edition. Read in English A minuit, quand les cliniques sont fermées et les salles d’attente vides, une femme à Abidjan tape une question sur son téléphone. Elle veut savoir pourquoi ses règles sont en retard, ce que signifie une douleur qu’elle ne sait pas nommer, une inquiétude qu’elle porte en silence depuis des semaines. Elle n’écrit pas à une amie. Elle ne fait pas défiler un groupe Facebook en espérant une réponse. Elle parle à Kiko — l’assistant de santé basé sur l’intelligence artificielle de La Ruche Health, disponible sur WhatsApp, vingt-quatre heures sur vingt-quatre, gratuitement. Ce n’est pas un cas extrême. C’est le cas d’usage central. Depuis son lancement en 2022, La Ruche Health, une start-up spécialisée dans les technologies de la santé basée à Abidjan, affirme que a répondu à plus de 500 000 questions de santé via Kiko, facilité plus de 5 000 téléconsultations payées avec des spécialistes vérifiés, et constitué une base de patients dans dix pays — sans un seul cabinet, une seule salle d’attente, ni un seul carnet d’ordonnances. Quatre-vingt-dix-huit pourcent de ces interactions se font sur WhatsApp. L’entreprise a été fondée par Rory Assandey, PDG, et Benjamin Sasu, directeur technique — deux cofondateurs qui ont bâti leur MVP ensemble pendant plus d’un an avant de se rencontrer en personne pour la première fois dans un couloir d’aéroport. Ce qu’ils ont construit depuis est l’un des produits de santé grand public les plus discrètement importants d’Afrique de l’Ouest francophone. 1. Un système bâti sur un vide Source de l’image : Getty Images via iStockphoto Le problème que résout La Ruche Health n’est pas subtil. En 2023, la Côte d’Ivoire comptait environ 0,2 médecin pour 1 000 habitants—bien en deçà du ratio recommandé par l’OMS—et près de 80 % de ces médecins sont concentrés à Abidjan. Pour le reste du pays, les soins spécialisés ne sont pas lents ni coûteux. Ils sont, en pratique, absents. Le tableau de la santé maternelle rend cela concret. Le ratio de mortalité maternelle de la Côte d’Ivoire s’élève à environ 480 décès pour 100 000 naissances vivantes — plus de trois fois la moyenne mondiale de 197. L’Afrique de l’Ouest et l’Afrique centrale représentent collectivement plus de la moitié de tous les décès maternels à l’échelle mondiale, selon le rapport régional 2025 de l’UNICEF. Dans l’ensemble de l’Afrique de l’Ouest francophone, le taux de prévalence contraceptive moderne reste compris entre 13 % et 27 %, avec un besoin non satisfait moyen en contraception de 27 % — encore plus élevé chez les femmes non mariées, selon une recherche publiée dans Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters. En Afrique de l’Ouest, environ quatre femmes enceintes sur dix n’effectuent toujours pas les quatre consultations prénatales recommandées, selon une analyse multipays des enquêtes démographiques et de santé menées entre 2015 et 2022. La situation de l’assurance maladie aggrave le tableau. La Côte d’Ivoire a introduit la Couverture Maladie Universelle (CMU) en 2014, mais son adoption est restée limitée. Les données de La Ruche sont sans appel : 96 % de leurs patients payants ne bénéficient d’aucune couverture d’assurance et règlent leurs factures entièrement de leur poche. Chaque consultation représente ainsi une dépense discrétionnaire dans un pays où, selon les estimations de la Banque mondiale, 36 % de la population vivait en dessous du seuil de pauvreté correspondant au revenu intermédiaire inférieur (4,2 dollars par jour) en 2025. C’est dans ce vide que Rory Assandey a construit la plateforme à laquelle il pensait depuis 2015 — forgée, dès le début, par ce qu’il a vu en grandissant. « Mon père conduisait lui-même les femmes à la maternité — parce que pour beaucoup de familles vivant à dix kilomètres de là, sans transport fiable ni route pour accéder aux soins, son camion faisait la différence entre un accouchement sûr et une tragédie. » — Rory Assandey, PDG Sa mère dirigeait une équipe de sages-femmes. Son père créait la prise de conscience et construisait le chemin pour l’atteindre. « Ensemble, ils formaient un système complet, » a dit Assandey. « Ma mère et son équipe sont le réseau de spécialistes de santé vérifiés — désormais disponibles en ligne. Mon père, c’est Kiko et notre plateforme de télémédecine — qui créent la prise de conscience, établissent la confiance et orientent les patients vers les professionnels qui peuvent les aider. On a juste construit l’infrastructure pour le faire à grande échelle. » Ce que les femmes demandent quand personne ne regarde L’intuition produit au cœur de La Ruche Health est d’une simplicité trompeuse : les gens parlent de leur corps d’une manière radicalement différente quand ils ne se sentent pas jugés. Les données de Kiko pour 2025 le montrent concrètement. Sur un échantillon de trois mois, 31 % des questions concernaient le cycle menstruel, 23 % la grossesse, 21 % la contraception et 21 % le soutien émotionnel — les moments de santé fondamentaux de la vie reproductive d’une femme, systématiquement mal desservis par les soins en présentiel dans des contextes marqués par la stigmatisation, le genre des soignants, le coût et la géographie. La première raison de consultation payée reflète cette réalité : 34 % concernent la grossesse et le post-partum, la gynécologie et la dermatologie représentant chacune 20 % de plus. La base d’utilisateurs est composée à 82,4 % de femmes, dont 45 % ont entre 25 et 34 ans. Pour que cela fonctionne, Sasu a dû faire un choix technique délibéré : Kiko ne pouvait pas
Read MoreEthiopia-based Dodai raises $13 million to expand battery-swapping EV network
Dodai, an Ethiopia-based electric mobility company that focuses on electric two-wheelers, has closed its $13 million Series A funding round to expand its electric motorbike and battery-swapping network across Addis Ababa. The round includes $8 million in equity and $5 million in debt, with participation from Value Chain Innovation Fund, UTokyo Innovation Platform Co., Nagase, Persistent Energy, For Seasons, CBC Co., Ltd, Inclusion Japan (ICJ), and debt financing from British International Investment (BII). The funding comes as Ethiopia positions itself as one of Africa’s most aggressive electric vehicle markets. In 2024, the government banned the import of private internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles and expanded that ban to include gasoline and diesel trucks in 2025. That policy has accelerated adoption, with the country now recording around 100,000 electric vehicles on its roads, according to its Ministry of Transport and Logistics. “Ethiopia is emerging as one of Africa’s most compelling frontier markets for the clean mobility transition, where the right capital can unlock outsized impact and long-term value,” said Leslie Maasdorp, CEO of British International Investment (BII). “BII’s investment will support Dodai to scale critical e-mobility and battery-swapping infrastructure, and accelerate the development of a commercial market for electric motorbikes.” Founded in 2023 by Sasaki, Dodai locally assembles electric motorbikes and batteries, and operates a battery-swapping infrastructure that allows drivers to replace depleted batteries. The company, which raised $7 million in 2024, is building a model in a market attracting competition from local and Chinese manufacturers like the Belayneh Kinde Group (BKG) and Yadea. Dodai is betting on its integrated model of combining local assembly with battery-swapping infrastructure to reduce charging friction for riders. Since its launch, the company said it has locally assembled and deployed over 2,000 electric motorbikes. Dodai’s new funding will be used to scale its battery-swapping and e-bike network, as the company aims to set up 30 battery-swapping stations across Addis Ababa and reach 3,000 users over the next 12 months. “This funding will help take us from early traction to real scale,” said Yuma Sasaki, CEO and Founder of Dodai. “We’ve proven the model in Addis Ababa—now we’re building the network and infrastructure needed to make electric mobility the default.” Over the next three years, the company plans to scale to 30,000 users and 1,000 battery-swapping stations across Addis Ababa, before expanding into cities like Abidjan, Kinshasa, Accra, Dar es Salaam, and Cairo from 2028, exporting its model to other high-growth urban markets across the continent. “We chose Ethiopia because that’s where the opportunity to build from first principles really exists,” said Sasaki. “This raise allows us to double down on that bet—and show what the future of mobility in African cities can look like.”
Read MoreKenya’s Central Bank is hiring for crypto compliance roles as landmark regulation nears
The Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) is hiring for senior and managerial roles to oversee licencing and compliance for virtual asset service providers (VASPs), even as the regulations governing the sector are still being finalised. On Monday, the regulator posted four positions within its Digital Payment Services Division on its careers portal, all closing May 18. The roles span licencing, product approval, and compliance oversight of virtual asset service providers. It is the first time the regulator has advertised roles specifically dedicated to VASPs, a sign that it is assembling capacity ahead of what could be an imminent regulatory rollout. A manager-level hire would lead the licencing function, reviewing applications, recommending approvals or rejections, and developing standard operating procedures for the new VASP regime. Two deputy manager positions would respectively handle licencing and product approval, and oversight and compliance, the latter focused on risk-based supervision of licenced VASPs, including anti-money laundering (AML) checks, cybersecurity assessments, and enforcement of licencing conditions. A senior business analyst role rounds out the team, focused on application review and regulatory guidance for incoming VASP applicants. The hiring comes seven months after Kenya’s parliament passed the Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASP) Act in October 2025, which for the first time created a legal framework for the country’s crypto sector. Under that law, the CBK will oversee virtual assets used for payments, carving out a market where crypto-linked remittances and mobile money integrations have grown steadily. Yet, the subordinate regulations needed to actually operationalise that law are still not in place. The National Treasury drafted the VASP Regulations in March and opened them for public comment until April 10. They have yet to be gazetted. The regulations, as drafted, propose a 13-member inter-agency Coordination Committee on which the CBK sits alongside other state agencies—including the Capital Markets Authority (CMA), the Financial Reporting Centre (FRC), and the National Computer and Cybercrimes Coordination Committee (NC4)—a structure meant to manage oversight across the various use cases of virtual assets. With the comment period closed and the regulations still pending, the hiring suggests the CBK is building internal capacity ahead of implementation. All four roles require backgrounds spanning payments, banking operations, financial services, or law, with the more senior positions demanding familiarity with anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorism financing frameworks and international VASP standards. Kenya joins a growing list of African countries, including Rwanda and Ghana, moving to bring crypto under formal oversight, but the gap between legislating and regulating remains a challenge across the continent. For now, the CBK is hiring, with or without the rulebook fully written.
Read MoreRack Centre to train engineers as Nigeria’s data centre talent shortage grows
Rack Centre, a Lagos-based Tier III carrier and cloud-neutral data centre facility, is launching a structured training programme for university students and engineering graduates to expand Nigeria’s technical workforce. The programme will kick off on Wednesday. The move comes as demand for data infrastructure grows alongside cloud adoption and AI workloads. While new facilities are being built—bringing the number of operational data centres in Africa to 249 as of February 2026—operators say the supply of engineers needed to manage critical systems, particularly power and cooling, has not kept pace. “There’s a lot of recycling of the same people across companies,” Adebola Adefarati, Rack Centre’s head of marketing and communications, told TechCabal on Monday. “People move from one data centre or telco to another, and it becomes a closed loop. The industry has to start creating new talent.” A survey by the Africa Data Centre Association suggests that 67% of data centre operators in Nigeria identify talent retention as a major challenge. In comparison, more than 60% rely on informal, in-house training to keep operations running. Globally, the workforce deficit is even more pronounced, with projections from Uptime Institute intelligence pointing to a need for 2.5 million additional data centre professionals by 2025. In Africa, the issue is compounded by a mix of limited specialised training, aggressive local hiring, and international poaching. Engineers trained to operate in high-stress environments like Lagos—where unreliable grid power and high ambient temperatures are the norm—are particularly attractive to global employers. “Once people gain experience running reliable systems in Nigeria, they become prime targets,” Adefarati said. “We’ve seen a number of our own people leave for opportunities abroad.” Rack Centre’s response is to build a broader pipeline rather than compete for the same limited pool. Data centres require relatively small teams, but with highly specialised expertise. Much of the infrastructure is automated, so staffing needs are low—typically 30 to 100+ people for a 100MW facility. For a 13.5MW site like Rack Centre’s, the workforce is even smaller at about 65 full-time staff, including technicians, engineers, and management, meaning the company cannot absorb all the talent it trains and expects graduates to be distributed across the industry. The programme will train between 15 and 20 engineers in its first cohort, with only a fraction expected to be absorbed internally. The rest will be absorbed by other operators within the data centre ecosystem and telecom operators. Participants will undergo two certification tracks, including one delivered in partnership with Schneider Electric’s training platform, followed by an advanced course and a one-month internship inside a live facility. The full programme runs for four to five months. Training costs, estimated at $2,500 per participant, are fully subsidised, reflecting a broader industry consensus that individuals cannot shoulder the financial burden of specialised certification, according to Adefarati. “The issue is not that people aren’t studying engineering,” he said. “It’s that they’re not trained to work on systems that must run 100% of the time. Data centres are different. You’re dealing with redundant power, precision cooling, and real-time fault detection in a highly sensitive environment.” That complexity is especially pronounced in Nigeria, where maintaining uptime requires adapting global standards to local realities, like hot environments. Cooling systems, for instance, must operate efficiently in temperatures that can exceed 40°C, while power infrastructure must compensate for an inconsistent grid supply. Rack Centre’s programme is being developed in collaboration with the Africa Data Centres Association, which is working toward a broader goal of training up to 1,000 data centre professionals over the next two years. The effort aligns with a wider industry push toward a “source-train-place” model, designed to create a continuous pipeline of talent rather than episodic hiring. The programme also targets structural imbalances within the workforce. Women remain significantly underrepresented in core operational roles, accounting for as little as 5% of technical staff in some facilities. Rack Centre says it aims to ensure that at least one-third of participants in each cohort are female. “Data centres are often seen as hardware,” Adefarati said. “But their success is fundamentally about people.”
Read MoreBotswana Tech Fund sees opportunity where African venture capital rarely flows
For the seventh consecutive year, the Big Four (Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa) pulled in over 80% of all venture capital deployed across Africa in 2025, a share that has barely moved since 2019. But last year, South Africa alone took 19% of the total, and 29% of all African equity funding, making it the largest equity market on the continent. Beyond Johannesburg and Cape Town, the rest of Southern Africa, like Gaborone, Lusaka, Windhoek, Maputo, Luanda and Harare, captured almost nothing. For exits, the gap is even wider, as nearly half of the 138 venture-backed exits tracked by the African Private Capital Association across Africa between 2019 and 2024 were in South Africa. The country’s deep and more liquid capital markets, established secondary structures, and concentration of strategic acquirers have made it the default exit jurisdiction for the continent. As a result, founders building elsewhere in Southern Africa often look to South Africa when seeking capital or planning an exit. Botswana Tech Fund, a new fund anchored out of Guernsey, a self-governing British Crown dependency in the English Channel, is trying to change that. Backed by Stephen Lansdown, the British billionaire who co-founded Hargreaves Lansdown, the FTSE 100 financial services firm, and who has invested in Botswana since 2007 through his Tuli Conservation Trust, the fund has £10 million ($13.5 million) in committed capital, with a first close of £5 million ($6.7 million). It is operationally based in Botswana and run in partnership with Launch Africa, the pan-African seed-stage VC firm with over 130 portfolio startups. Martin Davis, the fund’s co-founder, is a UK technology investor and entrepreneur who also chairs Bethnal Green Ventures, a London-based social impact accelerator that has run programmes for 15 years. His co-lead, Florence Bavanandan, is head of platform and operations at Launch Africa, where she helped build the fund’s portfolio support infrastructure. Together, they have designed a multi-stage strategy with three legs: a pre-seed accelerator that will deploy £100,000 ($135,000) cheques to roughly 100 Southern African-based companies over five years; primary growth-stage investments of £500,000 ($670,000) to £2 million ($2.7 million); and secondaries that buy out early-stage VCs from already-developed companies in the bigger African markets. The geographic focus is what makes the fund unusual. Most African VCs follow the well-known capital concentration map in Lagos, Nairobi, Cairo, and Cape Town. Botswana Tech Fund is built around what Davis and Bavanandan call the “digital gap”: the Southern African markets that get less than a fifth of the continent’s funding despite collectively housing tens of millions of consumers and a younger, increasingly digital population. Their bet is that closing the gap requires capital deployed at the source, not routed through Johannesburg or filtered through Big Four ecosystems where most of the deal flow already lives. In this week’s Ask an Investor, Davis and Bavanandan explain why the fund is anchored in Botswana rather than Lagos or Nairobi, what they look for in founders at the pre-seed stage, why they expect haircuts on every secondary they touch, and why they believe the next decade of African private equity will be dominated by international PE money looking for roll-ups. This interview has been edited lightly for clarity and length. What’s the fund’s thesis, and what type of founder are you looking for? The thesis is pretty simple. I don’t need to tell you about the attractiveness of the African market for developing technology and digitisation—high-growth population, rising urbanisation, digital leapfrogging—all of that is happening within African markets. Right now is ripe for the digitisation of Africa. Some nations are further forward than others, and there’s definitely an increasing gap. What we’re looking to do with our fund is help accelerate the areas where digitisation has been slow and inevitably close that gap. We’re focusing on the critical core markets where this is the case. We’re centred in Botswana but also looking at other Southern African countries like Zambia, Namibia, Mozambique, Angola, and Zimbabwe. The countries are where we feel that over the next decade, there’s going to be a significant move forward in technology being applied to advance digitisation across the entire economy. This is important for a couple of reasons. One is that only by digitising the economy will the economy speed up its development and build economic growth. With a rising younger population, that’s particularly important in this part of Africa. The other side is that economic growth creates opportunities for people to stay in the countries where they were brought up, rather than facing the dilemma of becoming economic migrants to other parts of the continent or the world. We are providing the capital to allow talented entrepreneurs and engineers in those markets to build digital capabilities at home, with principally international capital, to help digitise the economy and close that digital gap. We’re talking about software technology applied at whatever stage capital is required, because it’s not always early stage or late stage. The other thing is that the beauty of software is that it flattens the world. We believe the next Mark Zuckerberg could come from Africa, and there’s no reason why it can’t come from one of the SADC countries. With the technological infrastructure and the governmental support to build digital capabilities, there’s no reason why the next entrepreneur to build a multi-billion-dollar company can’t come from this environment. The only reason it won’t is if they haven’t got the capital to start. That’s what we’re trying to do. What’s the geographical focus, and why Botswana? Southern Africa countries—particularly those centred around Botswana, but also Namibia, Zambia, Mozambique, Angola, and Zimbabwe—are the principal focus, because that’s where we see the greatest digital gap. That’s the geographic focus, and that’s where we want to provide the capital to help build economic growth. The fund is based in Botswana because that’s where the most progress has been made and where the greatest infrastructure exists. Maybe Botswana and Zambia, but particularly Botswana. We will do early-stage startup investments from all of those
Read MoreWhy bank transfers above ₦10,000 will cost ₦60 under CBN’s new guide
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) says it wants to eliminate fees on transactions below ₦5,000 ($3.68) and reduce charges on mid-tier payments to drop the cost of cashless payments. Under a draft guide to charges by banks and other financial institutions dated April 21, 2026, inter-bank transfers between ₦5,000 ($3.68) and ₦50,000 ($36.81) will now cost ₦10 ($0.007). Fees for transfers above ₦50,000 ($36.81) remain capped at ₦50 ($0.037). The changes mark one of the most significant pricing shifts in Nigeria’s payments space in six years, effectively lowering the cost of sending money for millions of users who rely on small, frequent transactions. By removing fees on small transfers and compressing charges on mid-range transactions, the regulator hopes to incentivise the further adoption of electronic payment options by small businesses. Current Bank Transfer Fees What customers already pay across different transfer tiers. NGN (₦) USD ($) ₦50 ₦25 ₦10 ₦0 Fee: ₦10 ₦10 Below ₦5k Fee: ₦25 ₦25 ₦5k – ₦50k Fee: ₦50 ₦50 Above ₦50k In 2024, e-payments crossed the ₦1 quadrillion ($736.14 billion) mark. According to Moniepoint’s 2025 Informal Economy Report, only one in four informal businesses reported that digital payments accounted for at least 10% of their total revenue in 2025. How the policy affects transfers Today, bank customers already pay transfer fees: The Stamp Duty Shift Who pays the hidden transfer fees? Toggle to see the change. 2025 (Old Rules) 2026 (New Rules) ₦ $ Sender Pays Receiver Pays Transfers of ₦10,000+ Sender Total: ₦60 Receiver Deducted: ₦0 ₦10 ₦50 Bank Fee Stamp Duty Transfers of ₦50,000+ Sender Total: ₦100 Receiver Deducted: ₦0 ₦50 ₦50 Bank Fee Stamp Duty The 2026 Reality The burden has fully shifted. Senders now absorb the bank transfer fee AND the government’s Stamp Duty, making mid-to-high value transactions noticeably more expensive to initiate. Although the new pricing regime seeks to reduce the overall cost of transactions, transfers above ₦10,000 ($7.36) will still be priced at least ₦60 ($0.044). Five years after replacing stamp duty with the Electronic Money Transfer Levy (EMTL), Nigeria reintroduced stamp duties in 2026. Introduced in 2020, EMTL imposed a flat, one-off ₦50 charge on electronic transfers of ₦10,000 ($7.36) and above, paid by the receiver. From 2026, the ₦50 ($0.037) levy is no longer deducted from the receiver but from the sender, increasing transfer costs. The Stamp Duty Shift How total sender costs changed from 2025 to 2026. Hover over any bar to see why. 2025 Total (Sender) 2026 Bank Fee 2026 Stamp Duty Transfers of ₦10,000+ 2025 ₦25 2026 ₦10 + ₦50 Stamp Duty = ₦60 Transfers of ₦50,000+ 2025 ₦50 2026 ₦50 + ₦50 Stamp Duty = ₦100 Interact with the data Hover or tap on the grey (2025) or colored (2026) bars to see exactly how the rules shifted and who is paying for it. PoS fees get structure The new guide also introduces a more structured fee regime for Point of Sale (PoS) withdrawals. On-us withdrawals, using your bank or fintech’s own agent to get cash, will now cost ₦100 ($0.074) per ₦20,000 ($14.72). For not-on-us withdrawals, using another bank or fintech’s own agent to get cash, customers will pay ₦100 ($0.074) per ₦20,000 ($14.72), in addition to a fee determined by the agent. This represents a shift from the current informal pricing structure, where PoS withdrawals can cost as much as ₦100 ($0.074) per ₦5,000 ($3.68). PoS terminals are increasingly becoming the primary means of cash for many. In the first quarter of 2025, PoS terminals moved ₦116.79 billion ($85.97 million) per day. Nigeria 2026 Fee Checker See exactly what leaves your account. Bank Transfer PoS Withdrawal Transaction Amount (₦) ₦ Using my bank’s agent (On-Us) Agent’s extra charge (₦) Principal Amount: ₦15,000 Bank Fee: + ₦10 Stamp Duty Levy: + ₦50 Agent Markup: + ₦0 Total Deducted ₦15,060 At this tier, the ₦50 Stamp Duty (now paid by the sender) makes up the bulk of your transaction cost. For banks and fintechs, the CBN’s new transfer fee policy could reshape revenue expectations. In the first nine months of 2025, eight of Nigeria’s largest banks earned ₦514.82 billion ($378.98 million) from electronic payments. For the government, however, little changes. Stamp duty, like the EMTL before it, remains a small but growing source of revenue, with collections rising to ₦392.78 billion ($289.14 million) in the first 11 months of 2025. For users, sending small amounts is now cheaper, or free, but transfers above ₦10,000 may feel more expensive once the levy is applied, even as PoS withdrawal fees become more predictable. Exchange rate used: ₦1,358.44/$
Read More
👨🏿🚀TechCabal Daily – South Africa fails its AI test
In partnership with Lire en Français اقرأ هذا باللغة العربية Happy salary week. Nigeria’s elections have a retention problem. A new Zikoko Citizen report predicts what participation in the 2027 election might look like, drawing on trends from previous cycles, and explores what could bring about a massive turnaround. Read the full report here. South Africa’s AI policy row Mastercard’s 10-year agreement with Nedbank Kenya establishes gambling monitoring unit Nigeria’s plan to upgrade Internet connection World Wide Web 3 Job Openings Policy Critics are calling out South African regulator for fake citations in its AI policy Solly Malatsi, South Africa’s Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies. Image Source: ITWeb On April 2, South Africa’s Department of Communications and Digital Technologies (DCDT) published a draft version of its AI policy for public comment. South Africa’s proposal decentralises AI oversight by assigning different agencies to monitor its development. The regulator designated AI technologies as “unacceptable,” “high,” “limited,” and “minimal” risk, marking its risk tolerance and what technologies can be comfortably applied to finance and other critical systems that affect the public. Failing its own AI test: Yet, in a somewhat dramatic twist, critics of the proposed AI policy have found at least six of the citations in the draft to be fabricated. According to local publication News24, the policy includes referenced articles that were either never published, could not be linked to existing academic journals, or were simply fabricated by AI hallucinations. It’s a bit of a head-scratcher and an embarrassing situation for a country’s policy against AI risk and ethical use of the technology to be written by AI. Political critics of Solly Malatsi, the country’s Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies, including Khusela Diko, Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Communications, have asked South African regulators to withdraw the policy. Malatsi responded on Saturday, saying he asked the DCDT Director General to “investigate and take action against anyone found to be responsible for any wrongdoing,” suggesting that regulators are now looking inward to find where the lapses occurred. In another post on Sunday, Malatsi confirmed the claims to be true and withdrew the draft policy. “The most plausible explanation is that AI-generated citations were included without proper verification. This should not have happened,” he wrote on X, adding that there will be consequences for those “responsible for drafting and quality assurance.” Zoomout: South Africa’s cabinet will be scrambling over the next few days to save face in what could potentially be a major public embarrassment resulting from a lack of detail. Whether somebody at the DCDT office used AI or not, the draft policy provided a framework to tackle AI risks as the technology gains more prominence in public systems. In Nigeria, the Central Bank is urging banks to use AI in money-laundering systems to combat fraud. South Africa’s policy showed that awareness, where most other countries’ frameworks, including Nigeria and Kenya, focused on centralising AI oversight. The intention is good, but the method of delivery may be less than perfect. Right now, South Africa’s cabinet is scrambling, and it is peak theatre. 20+ Markets. One API. Fincra connects your business to Africa’s payment rails without building market by market. For collection, payout, FX, and settlement through a single integration. See what this means for your business. Companies Mastercard deepens Africa push with Nedbank deal and crypto play Image Source: MyBroadBand Mastercard is tightening its grip on Africa’s payment rails, and it is doing so from both ends: traditional banking and digital currency. The payments giant has signed a 10-year agreement with Nedbank, South Africa’s fourth-largest commercial lender by assets, to migrate the bank’s card portfolio onto its network across South Africa, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Eswatini, Lesotho, and Mozambique. The deal will see Nedbank tap into Mastercard’s fraud detection systems and faster transaction processing as it pushes deeper into digital banking. This is a long game. Card networks rarely switch, and when they do, it signals a deeper alignment on technology, pricing, and future products. For Mastercard, locking in a major bank across multiple markets strengthens its position in a region where digital payments are growing, especially in e-commerce. At the same time, it is looking ahead. Mastercard has since announced plans to acquire BVNK, a stablecoin infrastructure company, in a $1.8 billion deal, signalling a future in which card payments and crypto wallets are more intertwined. Between the lines: Mastercard is not choosing between fiat and crypto. It wants both. By adding stablecoin capabilities to its network, it is positioning itself as the bridge between traditional banking systems and digital currencies. Why this matters: Payments are becoming a stack rather than a single system. Cards, mobile money, and crypto are increasingly expected to work together, and companies like Mastercard want to sit at the centre of that flow. For banks like Nedbank, the partnership offers a way to modernise without rebuilding from scratch, plugging into global infrastructure while focusing on customers. The Safe and Reliable Banking App With over 35 million users and a 99.9% transaction success rate, PalmPay is making digital banking safer, simpler, and more reliable for everyday Nigerians. Download the app to learn more. Government Kenya sets up unit to tackle rising gambling addiction Image Source: Tenor When it comes to gambling and the risk-reward nature of online betting platforms, Kenyan regulators have noticed a trend: the house is always winning, and too many people are paying the price. The country’s Betting Control and Licencing Board (BCLB), its gaming sector regulator, has set up a dedicated unit to address rising addiction tied to online betting, as concerns grow over how deeply gambling has embedded itself in everyday life. The new unit will focus on consumer protection, awareness, and intervention as cases of problem gambling increase. This is not happening in isolation. Across Africa, regulators are starting to respond to the surge in online betting. South Africa has moved to tighten oversight around advertising and consumer protection, while Nigeria and Ghana have also faced mounting pressure to
Read More