Chowdeck’s new ‘Bills’ feature and Mira migration show its super app ambitions
Chowdeck, the Nigerian on-demand delivery platform, is no longer just delivering meals. With a new feature that lets users pay bills, it’s now delivering financial services too. The new Bills tab allows users to buy airtime and data directly from the app, marking Chowdeck’s first consumer-facing fintech product. It comes one week after the company said it processed a record one million orders. At the same time, Chowdeck has completed the full technical migration of Mira, the point-of-sale (POS) startup it acquired in June 2025. A merchant email sent on Monday, November 10, confirmed the integration of Mira’s businesses and infrastructure onto Chowdeck’s system. With both moves unfolding within the same window, Chowdeck is executing a two-pronged rollout that extends its reach from consumers to merchants, each side of a growing marketplace now tied together by Chowdeck’s rails. This shift represents a clear evolution in strategy. Frequency creates habit, and habit creates the opportunity to layer financial services on top. Adding bill payments shows that Chowdeck is taking the first step to monetise its user base beyond delivery fees, turning transactional behaviour into financial engagement. On the merchant side, the Mira migration anchors the company’s position as a technology provider rather than merely a logistics partner, giving it control over both the consumer’s wallet and the merchant’s till. Chowdeck is building a closed-loop ecosystem where the money spent on food orders and bill payments can circulate within its own infrastructure. This transition moves it away from the thin margins of delivery into the higher-value territory of payments and financial flows. For users, it means a single app that handles everyday needs, from ordering meals to ordering groceries and topping up airtime and data. This will potentially make Chowdeck a daily-use utility rather than an occasional convenience. For merchants, the integration promises a unified tool for delivery, in-store payments, and settlement, reducing the operational complexity of juggling multiple providers. The timing is deliberate. Chowdeck announced a $9 million Series A in August 2025 and has since positioned itself as more than a logistics company. As competition intensifies in Nigeria’s crowded fintech market, where fintechs like OPay and PalmPay dominate consumer payments, Chowdeck’s advantage lies in its existing behaviour loop: thousands of users opening the app several times a week for food orders. Extending that loop to payments allows it to convert attention into financial activity. Still, the road to becoming a super app is fraught with challenges. Integrations add technical complexity and can expose companies to regulatory scrutiny under KYC and anti-money laundering rules. On the merchant side, retention will depend on the reliability of Chowdeck’s POS system: its uptime, settlement speed, and reconciliation accuracy. Each of these details will determine whether Chowdeck can sustain the seamless experience that made its delivery product successful. Nigeria’s platform wars are accelerating, with nearly every major platform fighting to become the country’s default digital lifestyle app. Chowdeck’s bet is that the road to that future runs through food, where daily frequency becomes financial dominance. Whether it can translate delivery efficiency into financial trust will decide if it can truly bridge the gap between the wallet and the till.
Read MoreNigeria unveils strategy to turn creativity and skills into a $10 billion export engine
The Federal Executive Council (FEC), Nigeria’s cabinet of ministers, on November 6, approved three policies that together form a cohesive economic strategy designed to build a multi-billion-dollar export model. The plan is to create a new economic engine projected to inject $10 billion annually into Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2030 and create one million high-paying jobs, according to the FEC. The initiatives, presented by the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Dr Jumoke Oduwole, include the National Intellectual Property Policy and Strategy (NIPPS), the ratification of the AfCFTA Protocol on Digital Trade, and the establishment of a national coordination mechanism for services exports, to be led by the National Talent Export Programme (NATEP). Each policy tackles a different layer of that ambition to protect the products and services originally created by Nigerians, open the channels and markets through which those ideas could be exported, and aid in training and scaling the workforce that produces them. Secure the idea The new National Intellectual Property Policy and Strategy (NIPPS), a unified framework to secure, commercialise, and enforce intellectual property rights, is the first of its kind. Creators, tech founders, researchers, and designers have always been productive, but their original ideas don’t often yield economic returns due to unclear IP ownership and weak enforcement of IP laws. Without strong IP frameworks, ideas are a currency you can’t take to the bank. NIPPS establishes a coordinated IP system that links copyright, patents, trademarks, and creative works under one strategic framework, streamlining the registration process. The process of developing this initiative began in 2020, led by the Ministry of Industry, Trade, and Investment, the Ministry of Justice, and the Ministry of Arts, Culture, Tourism, and the Creative Economy, according to the FEC. Its core aim is to establish a coherent ecosystem that connects innovators, creators, researchers, and financial institutions and turns intellectual assets into tradable and bankable capital. 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 Open the marketplace With ideas secured, the next step is building a marketplace. The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is a free trade area that establishes protocols on trade in goods, services, investment, and competition policy. AfCFTA aims at accelerating intra-African trade and boosting Africa’s trading position in the global market. The AfCFTA Protocol on Digital Trade is a framework tasked with defining the desired digital environment for digital trade within Africa. Ratifying this protocol enables Nigeria to influence the rules governing cross-border data flows, taxation, and digital services trade. The move is designed to lower the barrier for Nigerian fintechs, creative-tech companies, or startups across all sectors to operate seamlessly across all African countries and ensure Nigeria leads the efforts in the continent’s digital transformation. Create an army of talent to export The final piece of the strategy is the National Coordination Mechanism for Services Exports, led by the National Talent Export Programme (NATEP) under the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment. Services already contribute more than half of Nigeria’s GDP, yet, along with other non-oil exports, they represent less than 10% of the country’s export income. Recognising this, the initiative takes direct aim at building, funding, and formalising Nigeria’s growing services workforce. This initiative aims to completely re-engineer Nigeria’s workforce by training 10 million Nigerians specifically for the global services market to create a certified, world-class talent pool ready for export. This trained workforce becomes the new product with an economic target to generate $10 billion in sustainable revenue annually. The framework is also designed to attract over $15 billion in new investments into the digital and creative industries as capital, which will be used to build the tech hubs and creative studios that will employ this new generation of talent. This structure positions Nigeria as a global outsourcing destination and Africa’s hub for service exports that is anchored on talent and technology. These three approvals are an integrated architecture that forms the government’s official blueprint for a new economic model. It is a clear bet that the future of Nigeria’s wealth lies beyond the export of oil, in the skill and creativity of its people.
Read More“Africa doesn’t have a talent problem, it has a discovery problem” – Day 1-1000 of ProDevs
William Nwogbo still remembers the phone call. One of the talents ProDevs had placed with a foreign company, a developer from somewhere outside Lagos, rang him with news. He’d built a house in his village. And he was building another in Lagos. “I was like, wow,” Nwogbo recalls. “Even I myself have not started building, but you’re building.” It’s the kind of impact that might catch some founders off guard because it inverts the typical startup success story where founders cash out and employees get leftovers. Here, the mission—making invisible talent visible and creating pathways to prosperity—is working exactly as intended, even if it means the wealth gets distributed before it concentrates at the top. This is not the story ProDevs tells on its homepage. But it’s the story that defines what the company has become: a bridge between Nigeria’s hidden technical talent and the global companies desperate to hire them, built on a thesis that Africa’s real problem isn’t a talent shortage, it’s a discovery problem. Day 1: The friend who changed everything The spark that became ProDevs came in 2014, but not in the way Nwogbo expected. Fresh out of university, he was doing what thousands of Nigerian graduates do every year: applying to jobs on every platform, sending CVs into the void and hearing nothing back until a friend intervened. “A friend of mine introduced me to a company called Andela,” Nwogbo says. The friend vouched for him, told the company Nwogbo was worth a shot. Nwogbo was given a test to complete in 48hours. He finished it in four, and got the job. “For me, the theme behind it was a friend had to introduce me to that company, telling them that this person is a good engineer and it’s worth giving him a chance at least to see if he’s good enough,” Nwogbo reflects. “And it made me think: there are many people out there that are looking for positions, and they don’t necessarily have someone who is speaking for them.” That insight that talent exists, but access is gatekept, would become the entire foundation of ProDevs. But first, Nwogbo had to spend years working in the industry, watching the problem play out at scale. By 2018, Nwogbo had co-founded a software development consultancy called Fluturetech with his co-founder, Faith Dike. They were building products for clients, doing well enough, but they kept noticing something strange in the market: Nigerian companies weren’t hiring. They were poaching. “Access Bank would poach from GT Bank, this bank would poach from the other bank,” Nwogbo says. “And we’re not talking about senior positions here. We’re talking about mid-level, junior positions.” Nobody was spending time discovering talent. Everyone assumed the best people were already employed somewhere else, so they’d just steal them. Meanwhile, exceptional developers in Jos, Enugu, Imo—outside the Lagos-Abuja axis—were invisible. Cheaper, too. “These guys were not seeing access to those opportunities, and they were not as expensive as developers in major cities like Lagos and Abuja,” Nwogbo notes. By 2020, Fluturetech had pivoted entirely. The consultancy became ProDevs, a talent marketplace designed to solve one problem: help companies discover the people who’ve been there all along. “And it made me think: there are many people out there that are looking for positions, and they don’t necessarily have someone who is speaking for them.” — William Nwogbo, Founder and CEO, ProDevs The grind: Bootstrapped in a boom Launching a recruitment platform in 2020 was either perfect or terrible timing, depending on how you looked at it. The pandemic had just hit. Remote work was suddenly viable. Every other founder with a laptop was promising to connect Nigerian developers to dollar-paying jobs abroad. The space was crowded. “There were a lot of companies promising they would put people in dollar jobs,” Nwogbo says. “The space was saturated.” But Nwogbo and Dike had advantages that others didn’t. They were engineers themselves—Dike was a product manager, so they could spot good talent from bad. They’d spent years in the trenches, so they understood what companies actually needed versus what they said they needed. And most importantly, they understood the economics of recruitment. “We took our time to study the market,” Nwogbo explains. “We learned really early that in recruitment, different clients are different strokes.” But then there was outsourcing, the monthly revenue stream that kept the lights on. “Outsourcing is typically monthly,” Nwogbo says. “You’re generally making money on a monthly basis.” Their first client was INITS. Their first placement was a developer from Imo or Owerri, Nwogbo’s memory is hazy on the exact city, who got relocated to Lagos to work with Interswitch. That developer became proof of concept. If they could find one person and change their life, they could find more. By the end of 2020, ProDevs had generated ₦20 million in revenue, which was not bad for a bootstrapped startup. But the real test wasn’t revenue; it was trust. Day 500: The trust tax Building a recruitment platform in Nigeria, the founders soon found, comes at a cost. “When we started going into the international space, one of the things people would ask is: why should I trust anything coming out of Africa?” Nwogbo says. “The whole Nigerian fraud thing was in the news, and people are like, why should I trust that you would get me talent that will not jeopardize my code or do something dubious in my business?” It’s the invisible barrier African startups pay at the border: every deal starts from a deficit of trust, and you have to earn your way back to zero before you can even begin to sell. ProDevs handled it the only way you can, by being obsessive about quality. They built a multi-stage vetting process that was, by Nwogbo’s own admission, almost painfully thorough. “When a talent comes into our platform and fills out all the information, we have a team that vets,” Nwogbo explains. “We check their CVs, LinkedIn profiles, GitHub profiles. For designers,
Read MoreDigital Nomads: Mark Irozuru left Nigeria to chase stability. Now he’s building it into Bitcoin
Every digital product we use, from mobile banking to newer emerging technologies like blockchain, depends on a quiet layer of work we rarely see. Servers hum, code runs, networks talk to each other, and everything stays alive because someone makes sure it does. In Slough, a town west of London, UK, one of those people is Mark Irozuru, who leads the DevOps team at Botanix Labs, a blockchain research company building a new network on top of Bitcoin. “DevOps is about keeping things stable,” said Irozuru. “You only notice us when something breaks.” Irozuru spends his days making sure the systems that move money and data stay reliable. He and his team maintain the invisible infrastructure that powers Botanix’s Layer 2 blockchain—a network that allows people to send Bitcoin faster and use it for more than storing value. At first, his work sounds abstract; he’s plumbing data and optimising code pipelines, completing blockchain and validator audits, and ensuring uptime. But underneath it is a craft built on discipline, precision, and patience, to build a highly technical product he believes will “change the game” for millions of users. 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 Finding a path in Web3 Irozuru relocated to the UK in 2022 through the study route. Before then, he lived in Nigeria and worked remotely as a DevOps engineer at a crypto startup. Life was predictable: morning workouts, long hours of code, power cuts, and calls across time zones. He liked the rhythm, but over time, a mix of safety worries and a sense that he had reached a ceiling in his career nudged him to look abroad. He chose the UK, where he studied cybersecurity at Bournemouth University. The move gave him a window into how global tech teams operate. “London’s tech community is one of the best in the world,” said Irozuru. “The structure, the network, the speed. It forces you to grow.” His path into blockchain had begun a few years earlier, through mentorship. He reached out to a senior engineer on LinkedIn, asking for guidance. That connection led him to a DevOps-as-a-Service company that supplied engineers to startups across the world. One of those clients was a Web3 company experimenting with smart contracts and decentralised finance (DeFi). “I was one of the first engineers to work directly under the CTO,” he said. “That project opened my eyes to how much the internet was changing.” It was his first taste of blockchain infrastructure, a field that blends finance, cryptography, and engineering, where, as he puts it, the next frontier of tech is to build trust. As a DevOps engineer, his mission-critical task is to ensure Botanix, the layer 2 blockchain network being built by Botanix Labs, never has downtime. If it does, trust evaporates, especially at its early stages of development. Building systems that never sleep At Botanix Labs, Irozuru helps build a Layer 2 blockchain network on Bitcoin, which is designed to make transactions faster and to allow developers to build decentralised financial tools. To understand how it works, imagine Bitcoin as a highway. It’s secure, but slow. Botanix’s Layer 2 is like an express lane built above it, one that moves faster but still connects back to the main road when needed. The network runs on a system of independent computers called validators, said Irozuru. Each validator keeps a copy of the blockchain and checks that every transaction is legitimate. Together, they maintain a shared, unbreakable record of truth. “Validators are like referees,” said Irozuru. “They make sure no one cheats and that every action is verified.” His daily routine, he describes, starts with the gym, then breakfast, and then a stretch of technical work that can last all day. His team is scattered across Europe, Asia, and the United States, so collaboration is constant. “I might be on a call at 3 a.m. with a validator in Singapore,” he said. “You learn to balance your energy because the system never stops. It has to keep running.” In July, he led the Botanix mainnet launch—the live rollout of the blockchain network to users. It took months of testing, security checks, and coordination with 16 global validator partners, including mining operators in China and Europe. “The auditing was intense,” he said. “We had to go through every partner’s security record, make sure their systems had never been compromised. It was weeks of sleepless nights.” The launch was flawless. The network has maintained 100% uptime, and Irozuru calls it his proudest achievement. “It’s beautiful when you see everything running perfectly,” he said. “You realise all the invisible hours mattered.” For him, DevOps is about anticipating them and preventing chaos before it starts. “People think DevOps is about firefighting,” he said. “It’s actually about engineering calmness. You design stability. You make things boring in a good way.” 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 Competing in the global Web3 DevOps market Working in the UK
Read More7 African startups powering sales, sports, support, and settlements
Startups On Our Radar spotlights African startups solving African challenges with innovation. In our previous edition, we featured seven game-changing startups pioneering sustainability, artificial intelligence, health, and marketing. Expect the next dispatch on November 14, 2025. This week, we explore seven Nigerian startups in the sales management, sports, event management, and creative economy sectors and why they should be on your watchlist. Let’s dive into it: Laddar wants to be the all-in-one infrastructure for managing sales in Africa (SaaS, Nigeria) Laddar was created in 2022 to address the challenge of managing sales and sales agents in Africa, regardless of the size or industry of the business. The platform has an interface for managers and another for agents. With these interfaces, businesses can manage sales teams, track performance, collect customer data, and process transactions, both online and offline. Businesses can also create and run campaigns, which could be sales-related for physical or digital products or data-related for tasks such as account opening or retail audits. Each campaign can include product inventory, shipping requirements, agent groups, supervisor oversight, incentives that can be paid in cash, airtime, or data, attendance rules, and reporting dashboards. The platform has built-in Know Your Customer (KYC) validation for Bank Verification Number (BVN), National Identification Number (NIN), and selfie verification that is geo-tagged with the agent’s live location. The platform integrates directly with an organisation’s internal systems through APIs (Application Programming Interface). For sales agents, Laddar allows them to sell products in person or remotely through unique shareable links, QR codes or referral networks. Laddar’s embedded finance feature supports cash payments, which are debited from the agent’s wallet to settle the business, removing the risk of fraud. The platform also works offline in low-connectivity environments. Laddar’s revenue comes from a license-based model where companies pay for the number of agent seats they require. Additional revenue streams include recruitment fees for sourcing sales agents and charges for services, including SMS, email messaging, airtime, and data rewards. Why we’re watching: Laddar is positioning itself as a sales infrastructure. Its ability to handle onboarding, verification, payments, inventory, training, and performance analytics in one system, both online and offline, provides solutions to the realities of African field sales, where offline capability and trust-based selling remain critical. The agent wallet debit model for cash collection reduces fraud exposure. Laddar is building the operational backbone for organisations seeking to scale distributed sales teams across Africa. The company says it has registered over 25,000 sales agents who work for nearly 100 businesses using the platform. Sectors represented so far include banking, insurance, entertainment, FMCG, and e-commerce. Laddar plans to scale its agent network to 100,000 across Africa. 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 Teeketing wants to power event management with its API-first infrastructure (Events, Nigeria) Founded by Madukaife Linus in May 2025, Teeketing is an API-first event management platform that allows event organisers and corporate organisations to plan, manage, host, and analyse insights from an event within a single system. The platform was created to solve a problem that many organisers face, juggling multiple tools for payments, reminders, feedback collection, and post-event certificates. On Teeketing, organisers can list events publicly or privately. They can schedule automated reminders, send event updates, including information like venue or time changes, to registered guests. They can issue certificates of attendance to event attendees, and also collect feedback on the event from attendees and non-attendees for reasons why they didn’t show up after getting a ticket, which can be converted to performance insights that show star ratings. Event pages can feature both flyers and promotional videos to attract attendees. Teeketing has a multifaceted revenue generation model. It charges a commission of up to 10% on paid ticket sales. For events that are free to attend, organisers discuss listing terms directly with the team. Additional revenue avenues include premium consulting services for large corporate or government events, paid advertising to promote events on the platform, and paid issuance of certificates of attendance. The startup also intends to implement a tokenisation system where organisers buy tokens to use the platform’s features. Why we’re watching: Teeketing’s primary differentiator is its “API-first” strategy. Unlike competitors like Tix Africa, this strategy allows organisers to embed ticket registration directly on their own websites, thereby keeping web traffic and audience engagement within their ecosystem rather than redirecting to external platforms. The platform is also setting up a marketplace feature that allows users to find and book verified event vendors, like photographers, caterers, or event decorators. These artisans will be rated based on past performance. The platform is also considering a buy now, pay later option for attendees to take loans for tickets. Teeketing has issued more than 20,000 tickets and claims to have processed over ₦1.4 million ($9,732) in ticket sales. Martha AI says customer support can be African and empathetic (AI, Nigeria) Moore Dagogo Hart, also the founder of Zap, founded Martha AI as a support agent designed to help companies automate their customer support departments. The idea originated from Hart’s own challenges at Zap, where a surge in users overwhelmed the human support team, especially at night. After searching for automation tools in early 2024, Hart found that existing solutions felt neither African nor truly automated. For it to work, businesses integrate Martha AI, which is currently in private testing, into their existing customer touchpoints, like their websites or apps, through APIs or plug-and-play widgets. The system is built on top of GPT-5 but features
Read MoreWhat the National Fintech Regulatory Commission Bill means for innovation
Like many in Nigeria’s fintech ecosystem, I’ve been following the discussions around the proposed National Fintech Regulatory Commission Bill with great interest. The idea of a unified body overseeing all fintech activity in Nigeria is ambitious and could be transformative. Yet, as with any major policy change, the outcome will depend on careful design and implementation and on how well it builds on the systems that already work today. Nigeria already has strong regulatory institutions in place. The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has played a central role in nurturing fintech growth while overseeing critical areas like payments, open banking, and foreign exchange, while the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has contributed through oversight of crowdfunding, digital assets, and other emerging fintech activities. Given this strong foundation, my view is that the proposed National Fintech Regulatory Commission could be highly beneficial if designed as a single, harmonised authority consolidating existing oversight functions. A unified structure, similar to the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority, could simplify licencing, improve coordination, and enhance transparency. However, if the commission simply adds another layer on top of these existing bodies without clear integration, it risks creating complexity and slowing market entry. In that case, reform efforts might be better focused on empowering the current institutions, clarifying their mandates, and strengthening collaboration, while ensuring fintechs can navigate compliance efficiently. This brings us to why compliance is so central to this discussion. When well-designed, it supports growth while protecting consumers, enhancing transparency, and building confidence among global partners and investors who value predictability and stability in emerging markets. The challenge lies in striking a balance: overly burdensome compliance risks slowing innovation, while adaptive regulation that evolves alongside technology can support growth and maintain Nigeria’s status as a leading fintech hub in Africa. One of the biggest opportunities a unified commission could unlock lies beyond Nigeria’s borders. Interoperability remains a major challenge across Africa, both between banks and between fintech platforms. Only around 16–20% of trade on the continent is intra-African, and cross-border payments remain expensive and slow. By enabling “regulatory passporting,” where a fintech licenced in Nigeria can operate seamlessly across other African markets under mutual recognition agreements, the country could facilitate trade, enhance liquidity, and establish itself as a regional fintech leader. Such a model could create a framework for cross-border collaboration that strengthens both local and regional financial systems. Finally, the success of any new regulatory framework depends on inclusive stakeholder engagement. Fintech founders, payment operators, investors, and other key participants must be involved early in the process through roundtables, workshops, and consultations. These conversations ensure that new regulations reflect operational realities, support both local and foreign investment, and identify potential challenges before legislation is enacted. Collaborative engagement will also foster trust between the government and the industry, ultimately resulting in a framework that strengthens oversight, promotes compliance, protects consumers, and encourages sustainable innovation. The path ahead for Nigeria’s fintech sector is promising, but it requires careful navigation. Done right, a unified regulator can streamline oversight, enhance compliance, and unlock new opportunities for innovation, trade, and investment, ensuring that Nigeria continues to lead the way as Africa’s fintech powerhouse. ________ Dr. Austin is a leader in the field of payment and FinTech services, boasting over a decade of industry experience. Currently serving as the Country Director for Verto in Nigeria, Austin is instrumental in driving strategic growth and ensuring operational excellence for the company.
Read More
Top data plans in Nigeria you should try this November
Table of contents Daily data plans Weekly data plans Monthly data plans Unlimited data plans Data prices in Nigeria rose in 2025 after the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) approved new tariff adjustments. Telecom operators had long pushed for the change, citing rising costs of power, equipment, repairs, and foreign exchange. Since then, many networks have reduced the mobile data volume in their bundles, making it more important than ever to choose plans that last, load fast, and stay stable. This guide breaks down the best daily, weekly, monthly, and unlimited data plans in Nigeria right now. Daily data plans Daily data plans are helpful when your monthly bundle finishes early or when you only need data for a short period. The primary consideration is the amount of data you receive for the amount you pay. Some daily plans may seem affordable at first, but the data usage is often depleted almost immediately. Airtel currently has one of the best daily options with its Binge Plan. The ₦400 Binge package provides 1.5GB of data for 24 hours, making it ideal for those who need to stream or download content quickly. The cost per GB is fair, and Airtel often performs well for video and social media use. “I use the Airtel Binge plan when I need to watch lectures online quickly. It saves me when my monthly data finishes,” says Ada, a nursing student at Unilag. Glo has lower entry prices, but the data is small compared to what heavy users need. For example, the ₦100 daily plan provides 125MB, which is sufficient only for browsing and messaging. It does not support streaming for most people. If you are in a major city, Smile can be stable. You can get 1GB for around ₦450, and the speed is usually steady for work and video calls in areas where Smile coverage is strong. Daily plans work best when you only need to top up quickly. If you use mobile data heavily every day, a weekly or monthly bundle will give you better value. Best daily data plans Weekly data plans Weekly data plans are a good option if you need steady internet for school, work, or social use, but you do not want to commit to a full monthly plan. With a seven-day validity, they usually offer better value than daily bundles. One of the most affordable weekly data plans in Nigeria right now is from 9mobile. The 7GB weekly plan for ₦1,500 offers substantial value if you live in an area with stable 9mobile coverage. It works well for social media and light streaming, although coverage strength varies by location. “In my area, the 9mobile weekly plan is the best price I can get. As long as I stay around home, it works fine,” says Oyin, a tailoring apprentice in Ibadan. If you prefer something more reliable, Airtel’s 7GB weekly plan for ₦2,000 is a better fit. It costs a bit more, but Airtel performs well in many cities. The connection is steady, and the data lasts longer when the network speed is consistent. Chima, a remote support agent in Abuja, puts it simply: “I pay the extra for Airtel because I cannot afford network issues during work calls.” Glo also offers weekly plans, but the data value is lower in most cases. These plans can work well if you live in an area with strong Glo coverage, although they do not offer the same balance of price and performance as 9mobile or Airtel. Weekly plans are helpful when you want to manage your spending while staying connected through schooling, short work cycles, or travel. Best weekly data plans Monthly data plans Monthly data plans typically offer the best value for money. Most people use this bundler for work, streaming, browsing, and calls over apps. The key is balancing price, speed, and the stability of the network in your area. Glo offers some of the cheapest monthly plans. For example, the 30GB plan for ₦5,000 looks attractive if you want a large amount of data at a low price. The challenge is speed. Many users report that downloads and streaming can be slow in areas with high traffic. Glo works best if your location has strong Glo coverage and you use the data for simple browsing or background downloads. “Glo is affordable, but I only enjoy it when I am at home. Once I move across town, the speed changes,” says Fisayo, a pharmacy student in Akure. MTN costs more, but the network is usually more stable. A popular option is the 45GB plan for ₦9,000. It gives consistent speeds for video calls, work, and streaming. If your job depends on internet uptime, MTN tends to be the safer choice. You pay more, but you avoid frustration. “I use MTN for work because I cannot risk call drops during support sessions,” said Kemi, a customer care rep. “ The stability is worth the extra cost.” Structured monthly plans are becoming common. These are plans that spread your data across the month, so you do not finish everything at once. Airtel’s Everyday ON plan does this by giving a fixed amount of mobile data each day. This is useful if you want a predictable routine and want to avoid running out halfway through the month. For heavy users who frequently move around, Smile offers large bundles with consistent speeds in areas where Smile is available. If you rely on mobile data instead of home Wi-Fi, this can be a strong option. When choosing a monthly plan, think about your location first, then your budget. A cheaper plan is only valid if the network is steady where you live and work. Best monthly data plans Unlimited data plans Unlimited mobile data plans matter when you need steady internet without worrying about running out. The key thing to understand is that not all unlimited plans are actually unlimited. Some providers allow heavy usage, but slow your speed after you pass a certain amount.
Read More
How Accrue is building a human network for stablecoin payments across Africa
Clinton Mbah, co-founder and CEO of Accrue, recalls when the problem became impossible to ignore. In 2022, a friend in Ghana tried to send money to her aunt in Nigeria. She spent the entire day moving between banks in Accra, filling out forms, waiting in queues, and trying every transfer option available. Yet, the transaction wouldn’t go through. This experience is a snapshot of Africa’s fragmented cross-border payment problem. As the Accrue team explains, the challenge is that every country has a different way of paying. “In Ghana, mobile money is king; in Nigeria, it’s bank transfers. In South Africa, it’s banks and card payments. All of these disparate payment methods mean that there’s no single, unified way to pay across Africa, and that is effectively what Accrue intends to solve,” said Mbah. Accrue co-founders: Clinton Mbah, Adesuwa Omoruyi, and Zino Asamaige The accidental pivot Accrue did not begin as a payments company. When the co-founders Zino Asamaige, Adesuwa Omoruyi, and Mbah started building in 2022, the focus was on helping beginners invest in crypto and stocks without getting overwhelmed. The trio left Helicarrier, the Nigerian crypto infrastructure platform that housed BuyCoins, to solve this unaddressed problem of payments fragmentation. Their first product was a dollar-cost averaging investment tool designed to help beginners invest. The first version of Accrue’s app allowed users to buy crypto with as little as $5 daily, easing the pressure on retail investors who struggled to time the market. While they were promoting their investment tool, a small in-app feature quietly began to take off: a stablecoin on- and off-ramp, that allowed users to convert cash to stablecoins and back. This product grew from accounting for just 4% of Accrue’s revenue to around 60% in seven months. Mbah’s friend, who was often stranded relying on Ghanaian banks, deposited her Ghanaian cedis with an Accrue agent, received stablecoins, and then sent the payment through another agent in Nigeria. It worked. That was the moment the team realised that the real problem was moving value across African borders instantly in a reliable manner. In late 2022, the startup pivoted to focus on the agent network feature to help people make payments across borders. “In Ghana, mobile money is king; in Nigeria, it’s bank transfers. In South Africa, it’s banks and card payments.” — Clinton Mbah, co-founder and CEO, Accrue “Like M-PESA on stablecoin rails” The solution that emerged from their pivot is Cashramp, Accrue’s flagship product today. CashRamp is a stablecoin agent network spread across 11 African countries. It works much like traditional mobile money (MoMo): in Ghana, users walk up to these stablecoin agents, who serve as physical touchpoints for digital currencies, hand over their stablecoins, and receive cash in their wallets. When that money needs to cross a border, say between Ghana and Nigeria, a Ghanaian user sends money to an agent in local currency and receives the stablecoin equivalent at the prevailing market rate. Another agent in the recipient’s country (Nigeria) converts it to naira and deposits it into their bank account. The user never sees the complexity of cryptocurrency. “What we did was train these agents and give them the ability to convert cash to stablecoins. Once people have stablecoins, they have borderless money,” said Mbah. Cashramp’s rise coincides with the growing recognition of stablecoins as a faster and more cost-effective alternative to existing cross-border money transfer systems. Recently, Flutterwave, a Nigerian traditional fintech company, partnered with Polygon Labs, a blockchain software company, to pilot stablecoin settlement for its clients. The head-first dive into stablecoins by financial players is a signal that they expect stablecoins to play a core role in how merchants move money across Africa. At the same time, Visa and Western Union have begun testing stablecoin processing in cross-border corridors outside the continent. Accrue is building the human-powered ramps that connect this new global system to everyday Africans through local agents. Navigating the broken landscape The first challenge the team faced in building Cashramp was understanding. When the team began, stablecoins were not widely recognised outside crypto circles. And even after stablecoins became more visible, the harder work was convincing people that they could be useful in everyday transactions as a way to preserve value and move money across borders without friction. And then there’s the gargantuan challenge of regulation. Until recently, the relationship between African governments and cryptocurrencies remained notoriously tense. Omoruyi described the difficulty of trying to convince governments that they are not trying to devalue their currencies. In expanding across African markets, the team quickly learned that Africa is not one market. Asamaige emphasised that every market is different and learnings from one country are not always transferable. He noted that coming from Nigeria, a country spoiled for choice with fintechs, and moving into underserved markets in Francophone West Africa was a learning experience, as they discovered a huge demand for financial technology that Nigerians might take for granted. Despite these challenges, Accrue said the pivot from a crypto investment app to an agent-led stablecoin platform is paying off. In February, the startup raised $1.58 million in seed funding, which has ignited their expansion push from seven to eleven markets. The funding also supports the company’s push into Francophone West Africa. 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 human-powered differentiator This human-centred approach is what sets Accrue apart from traditional remittance players. “We have built a model that people are familiar with. With traditional stablecoin on/off ramps, it’s
Read MoreHow Gambia’s Farm Fresh is evolving into a tech-enabled food distribution platform
When Modou Njie launched Farm Fresh in 2014, online shopping was a novel concept in The Gambia. Internet penetration was low, digital payments were nascent and most people preferred to buy food in open markets. Njie, who had worked in technology and consulting for years, decided to take a risk on something new. A decade later, Farm Fresh has grown from a simple grocery website into what Njie calls a “tech-enabled food distribution platform.” The company now uses AI for analytics, integrates with mobile and card payment systems, and is building cold-chain storage that will extend the shelf life of its produce. The platform attracts between 3,000 and 5,000 daily visitors, according to Njie, with the majority coming from Gambians living overseas. This positions Farm Fresh within The Gambia’s growing e-commerce market which is projected to reach around US$72.44 million in 2025. From a $5,000 boost to a thousand-farmer network A year after launch, Farm Fresh got a $5,000 boost from the 2015 Tony Elumelu Foundation, which helped it strengthen operations and branding. At the time, Njie handled orders manually, stored accounting records on paper, and used his personal car for deliveries. “It wasn’t easy,” he said. “But I had a passion for innovation and wanted to start something new.” Over time, Farm Fresh’s impact grew. Njie said Farm Fresh introduced thousands of Gambians to online shopping and inspired a wave of small Information Technology (IT) firms to explore e-commerce. “The Tony Elumelu Foundation funding played a huge role here because it helped us carry out branding and a lot of marketing which created the awareness for something like shopping online,” he said. Farm Fresh also tapped into a powerful cultural dynamic: food remittances. “Many Gambians abroad were sending money to their families every month,” Njie explained. “We said, why not send food instead? Just spend a small portion of your remittance to feed your family directly.” That simple idea now sustains the company. Sixty to seventy percent of Farm Fresh’s online orders come from the diaspora, especially in Europe and North America. The company also ships dried products like cereals, honey, and herbal teas internationally, though fresh produce remains a challenge due to spoilage. Customers often rely on informal courier services, travellers who bring packages for a fee, to avoid expensive shipping through companies like DHL. “Gambians are always travelling and some of these people have turned moving things from the Gambia to other parts of the world a business. People always patronise them due to their low cost,” he explained. From a handful of smallholder farmers, Farm Fresh now works with between 1,000 and 1,500 producers during peak season. The platform features over 80 locally made products, from vegetables and dairy to cereals, and herbal teas. “Strawberries are one of our bestsellers,” Njie said proudly. “They’re grown locally and the demand is always high from January to May.” The company operates on a 10% to 15% markup model, buying at wholesale prices from farmers and adding costs for packaging, branding, and logistics. Farm Fresh is also preparing to start its own farming operations on newly acquired land, with plans to grow its own vegetables and strawberries by early next year. 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 Technology as a game-changer When Farm Fresh launched, the platform was a basic website listing prices and products. Payments were handled in cash. But today, the platform is fully automated, with integrations through TablePay, a Gambian fintech that processes global payments via Visa and MasterCard, and Wave, one of West Africa’s fastest-growing mobile money firms. The startup also uses AI-driven hybrid live-chat systems that combine bots with human agents for customer support and reporting. “Our reporting process is now fast and data-driven,” Njie said. “We’ve come a long way from doing everything manually.” Farm Fresh’s shift into automation has allowed it to expand without significantly increasing its headcount, critical in a country where reliable staffing remains a challenge. “You can’t copy and paste passion,” Njie said, referring to the struggle of finding committed employees who share the company’s vision. Njie’s pivot reflects a broader trend in The Gambia, where digitalisation has accelerated in the last five years. Internet penetration now stands at roughly 1.28 million users, about 45.9% of the population, while mobile subscriptions exceed the population, creating a foundation for digital commerce. Solving the logistics problem In The Gambia, logistics has long been a major bottleneck for e-commerce. Njie remembers making deliveries himself in the early days. As demand grew, Farm Fresh acquired its own delivery bikes to handle the workload. But maintaining the bikes proved expensive, and the company eventually shifted to partnering with third-party delivery services. “Over the past five years, there’s been an upsurge of delivery companies,” he said. “Many now offer tracking codes and hourly delivery. Prices are more competitive, and that is a win for everyone.” Still, Farm Fresh’s biggest breakthrough is underway. Through the World Bank’s Tourism Diversification and Resilience Project, the company was selected as part of 62 businesses after a rigorous training process. The project is now funding the installation of Farm Fresh’s first cold-storage facility and processing machines for oils and related products. “It’s a game-changer,” Njie said. “Once our cold room is ready, we can buy in bulk, extend shelf life, and control prices better. We won’t need to rush to farms for every order.” Before this, Farm Fresh operated on a just-in-time model, sourcing produce from farms only when
Read MoreMy Life in Tech: The developer DJ evangelical about fundamentals
David Olubaji’s tech career began in a cybercafé where he sold internet tickets after school. Today, he’s a senior software engineer who’s worked on some of the biggest apps in the world. But most people know him as Blak Dave, the DJ and music producer. What connects both lives? An obsession with getting every single detail right. A typical weekend might swing from playing at Sunday Service, a Sunday midnight rave, to a 9.00 a.m. standup call with his US-based engineering team. “My friends always ask me like, ‘Are you sure you rest? Are you sure you are good?’” He says, laughing. “I don’t even feel it because it’s like a regular life for me.” But there’s nothing regular about how Olubaji approaches his work, whether he’s writing code or producing music. His secret? An almost painful attention to detail that he learned the hard way. The cybercafe kid Olubaji’s tech journey started in 2009 in Surulere, Lagos. He was a secondary school student living in a compound that housed a cybercafé. At first, the owner chased him and the other kids away. Then one day, he asked Olubaji to help sell internet tickets. “I used to just like, you know, play around with the computer back then,” Olubaji remembers. “It was just, like, Facebook.” But because he was always on the computer, he became incredibly fast at typing. The cybercafe owner started giving him typing jobs, and he began earning “small small money.” When Olubaji finished secondary school the following year, he missed his JAMB registration because he was too caught up with the cybercafé. “I missed that year,” he says. “So I was just there for one whole year doing nothing.” His father noticed. One day, while riding public transport, his dad saw a flyer for NIIT (National Institute of Information Technology) offering web design classes using Dreamweaver and Adobe Flash. There was a scholarship exam. If Olubaji could pass it, he’d get a huge discount. “The catch was obviously it was a very expensive course,” he explains. Even with the scholarship discount, the money was still a lot to pay. But his father borrowed the money anyway. “This was a luxury to us at the time, you know,” Olubaji says. “It had no potential. It didn’t just make any sense to spend that much money on it at that time.” But his father was convinced. And Olubaji loved it. 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 40k website that changed everything After his NIIT classes, Olubaji continued practicing at the cybercafé and eventually got a part-time job building WordPress sites while studying Computer Science at Yabatech. He was earning ₦40,000 per month. Then one day, he created an Instagram ad: “Build websites for 40k.” “I was really good with designs at that time,” he says. “So I would just create random designs myself, put on IG, and do adverts.” One client saw his ads. She wanted a website. Olubaji agreed to meet. But when he arrived at the office, it wasn’t the woman who met him; it was her husband. The man pulled out a drawing board and started sketching an elaborate website. Olubaji tried to explain: “Excuse me, sir, this is what I discussed with Madam. I have the way I build these things ready to go, you know, and 40k.” The man said no. He wanted something complex. “I like challenges, doing hard things,” Olubaji recalls. “I like the way the guy was arranging it. It looked interesting. It was just too much work for that 40k.” But Olubaji did it anyway. When he returned for the review session, the man asked: “How did you do this?” “I was like, ‘Ah, this is what I do,’” Olubaji remembers. Then came the question that would change his life: “Where do you work?” When Olubaji mentioned his part-time job, the man said, “Why don’t you come work for me?” David hesitated. He already had a job paying 40k. But when the man asked how much he was earning, David lied. “I said 75k.” “The guy was like, ‘I’ll pay you 75k. On top of that, I’ll give you lunch and breakfast.’” David accepted immediately. The man’s name was Udoka Uzoka, and his company was Intellia. “That’s when I started seeing that there’s actual money in tech,” David says. “I was earning 75k, and someone there was earning 1 million per month.” Meeting Mr. Perfect At Intellia, Olubaji met Richard Ekwonye, a front-end engineer who would become his mentor. Ekwonye’s standards were brutal. If Olubaji’s code was off by even a single pixel, he would catch it. “He was very strict, and I feel blessed that the guy trained me because I became like that. I became obsessed with perfection.” This wasn’t just about aesthetics. Ekwonye taught him that as a front-end engineer, “obsessed with perfection” meant “your work would just be clean and perfect.” “I learned how to write front-end code the right way under that guy,” Olubaji says. Ekwonye is now at Stripe, and Olubaji calls him “one of the best front-end engineers in Nigeria.” At Intellia, they didn’t use shortcuts. “We didn’t use libraries, you know. We built everything ourselves – animations, everything from scratch,” Olubaji explains. “I had a component folder that I just started transferring to new projects because buttons, inputs, I had written down with their styling.” This approach might sound slow, but it had the opposite effect. “I learned the
Read More