The quiet war on startup imagination
There is a subtle, but increasingly clear shift in the early-stage ecosystem across Africa. The global funding slowdown has not only changed the pace of dealmaking, but it has also begun to reshape the conversation entirely. Founders are now expected to show a path to profitability earlier than ever. Decks are now interrogated for business fundamentals. Margins, not markets, are now the focus. Around this shift, a new vocabulary has emerged, one that urges us to think not in terms of unicorns, but donkeys, camels, and gazelles. It is not unreasonable as exits are rare, capital is slow, and survival feels like success. This turn toward capital efficiency is often framed as maturity. But it’s worth asking: what kind of innovation ecosystem are we designing when we make viability the price of entry? And what are we losing when we turn experimentation into a luxury? Not enough unicorns or startups? There’s a growing view that Africa’s unicorn moment was premature, that we chased scale too quickly. We should have been building modest, durable startups with low burn and healthy margins all along. However, that conclusion does not hold up to data or context. If we look at unicorn-to-startup ratios, Africa doesn’t stand out for having too many unicorns, it is producing too few startups. Nigeria’s ratio is nearly identical to India’s, and Brazil’s is even lower. South Africa and Kenya have yet to produce any unicorn startups. If unicorns are rare and rightly so, it’s not because the continent aimed too high; we haven’t made enough ambitious bets. Unicorns were never the point, it was the permission to pursue large, hard, unproven outcomes. What used to be a space for improbable ideas is becoming a proving ground for tidy business plans. Founders are told to act like established companies. But what if the thing they’re building isn’t a business yet—at least not in the traditional sense? Efficiency can be the enemy Late Harvard Professor of Business, Clayton Christensen, extensively argued in his works that disruptive innovation rarely emerges from mature firms because their internal systems reward predictability over exploration. Disruptive ideas, by contrast, tend to emerge from outside, precisely because they don’t make business sense at first. That dilemma is no longer confined to incumbents. It’s now baked into the way early-stage African startups are being evaluated. There’s increasing pressure on founders to present plans that are tidy, legible, and revenue-positive, often too early. But what happens when the problem you’re solving isn’t monetisable? Or when you’re solving for nonconsumption? Spotify, for example, ran losses for years. It was entangled in licensing issues with labels and faced competition from America’s Big Tech. Yet, it disrupted what it means to distribute music because it had time and room to evolve. Under today’s early-stage lens, Spotify might not make it out of seed. If capital is structured to reward only early traction and tidy monetisation, we’ll lose the companies that need time to find their form. The same can be said of Intel, or, more precisely, what became of it. Intel was once an innovation engine, backed by early risk capital and shaped by a culture that tolerated big, technical bets. But in later years, it began prioritising margins and stock buybacks over deep research and development. In the process, it lost the cutting edge in semiconductors to competitors who chose to keep innovating even when the path was less immediately profitable. Intel is now a cautionary tale: not about failure, but about the cost of institutional success without strategic imagination. Innovation needs space to grow It’s useful to remember how Silicon Valley earned its name. Before the internet companies, the Valley was built on semiconductors, a physical technology that took years to commercialise, with no clear playbook. The early giants, Fairchild, Bell Labs, and Intel, weren’t startups in the modern sense. Bell Labs invented the transistor and gave its scientists freedom to explore ideas that didn’t have commercial use yet. Fairchild Semiconductor was born when eight engineers broke away from Shockley Labs to work on integrated circuits, backed by a risk-tolerant investor who trusted the team, not the market data. Intel was seeded in that same tradition: a belief that good engineers, working on the right problems, would eventually figure it out. As History Professor Chris Miller recounts in Chip War, much of the early hardware ecosystem survived not because it was profitable early, but because it was protected by design from the pressures of short-term viability. Government contracts, defence research, and long-term horizons gave it the space to grow into its significance. That protection created surface area. It allowed the improbable to take shape. Africa does not have Bell Labs or Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and that’s precisely why its early-stage capital must take risks others won’t. If even our risk capital becomes risk-averse, we leave no space for the startups we can’t yet explain. Venture capital does not need to be right every time Africa doesn’t need to stop funding businesses that work. It needs to keep making space for businesses that don’t look obvious yet. Founders should care about unit economics. Investors should interrogate assumptions. But early-stage funding exists to subsidise uncertainty. To let people work on things that might not look viable today but could change everything later. We need space for founders solving problems whose solutions don’t yet fit a market map, people trying to build category-defining infrastructure, not just category-compliant products. If early-stage capital begins to behave like growth equity, then who will fund the strange, possibly transformative bets? We often say “Africa is different”, and that is true. But it doesn’t mean we can’t learn from what made other ecosystems work, or shrink our dreams to gazelles and donkeys. In the end, what we choose to fund is what we believe. And right now, we seem to believe in things that are tidy, modest, and legible. That belief is quietly shaping what gets built as startups are increasingly blowing the trumpet
Read MoreScreen readers, audio-described software, and films: Inside Opeoluwa Akinola’s mission to empower people with disabilities
At three years old, Opeoluwa Akinola began to lose his sight. He was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a rare genetic disorder that gradually narrows the field of vision until no sight remains. In a handful of years, his vision was completely gone. Everything changed for Akinola. The world slowed and obstacles appeared at every turn. He grappled with limited access, a loss of independence, and the quiet isolation that often shadows disability. Yet, for all he endured, he was determined not to let his disability define the rest of his life. Nearly a decade has passed, and Akinola is now the co-founder of Accesstech Innovation and Research Centre in Lagos, Nigeria, which he launched to help chart a more meaningful life and career path for those who share similar struggles. Left behind A 2024 working paper presented by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) as part of a research project on inequalities, revealed that “higher unemployment rates, lower earnings and a tendency towards self-employment characterise the world-of-work experience” of many people with disabilities. 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According to World Bank data, only 0.3% of 18 million disabled people of working age in Nigeria are gainfully employed. Limited government support and societal stigma have also left many marginalised, often confined to lives with few economic opportunities. “I started by mastering a talking computer owned by a friend who returned from the UK,” Akinola said. It was 1992, and he was in his early twenties. When his friend traveled again, he kept sending him updates about groundbreaking assistive technology and this only moved Akinola, in 1995, to volunteer at a nonprofit where he got the chance to work with a computer with a screen reader designed to assist the visually impaired. “In 1999, I started working at a school, teaching blind students how to use computers,” Akinola said. “I had to train myself on the job. With the help of my boss and some instructional cassettes, we developed a training curriculum. We were the first to do this in West Africa.” The computer training center at the Niger Wild Production Centre, established by expatriates in Nigeria, was the first of its kind in West Africa. Akinola, its first instructor, was tasked with developing the curriculum which he created with help from a colleague who had experience with the West African Examinations Council. “It was basically a curriculum on teaching computer skills to blind people,” Akinola said. The idea was met with disbelief at first, he recalled. “A lot of them marvelled at the fact that they could use computers,” he said. “When they graduated, it drew attention to the program.” Among the early participants was a young woman with a brain tumor that resulted in blindness and short-term memory loss who struggled to keep up. “Her mother kept bringing her religiously,” Akinola said. “We trained people from Maiduguri, from Gombe—they stayed with relatives or anywhere they could just to attend.” Some of the trainees secured stable employment, including positions with multinational oil and gas company, Shell, and as lecturers. “By the time I left the centre, we had conservatively trained between 20 to 30 people,” he said. “That’s not counting the group trainings we did across the country,
Read MoreHydrogen surpasses HabariPay in Q1 profit growth among bank-owned fintechs
Access Holdings’ fintech subsidiary, Hydrogen, has recorded the highest profit growth among Nigerian bank-owned payment companies in the first quarter of 2025, overtaking long-time leader HabariPay, the fintech arm of Guaranty Trust Holding Company (GTCO) in Nigeria’s increasingly competitive digital payments space. According to the banking group’s latest financial statements published on the Nigerian Exchange Limited (NGX), Hydrogen’s after-tax profit surged by 466% to ₦283 million ($178,344) in Q1 2025, up from ₦50 million ($31,509) in the same period of 2024. GTCO’s HabariPay posted a profit growth of 52%, rising to ₦1.66 billion ($1.1 million) from ₦1.09 billion ($686,910). Stanbic IBTC’s Zest Payments, however, widened its loss to ₦508 million ($320,138) in Q1, compared to ₦436 million ($274,764) a year earlier. Hydrogen’s strong start to the year comes at a time when independent fintechs like Flutterwave are under pressure to turn profits, and Paystack contends with regulatory pressure. By contrast, bank-backed fintechs like Hydrogen and HabariPay are gaining ground, relying on large customer ecosystems, strong compliance channels, and robust capital bases. While Hydrogen and HabariPay’s combined Q1 profits account for just 0.44% of their parent groups’ total profit of ₦440.8 billion ($277.7 million), that margin has more than doubled from the 0.19% recorded in Q1 2024, signaling growing relevance within the banking groups’ revenue mix. “Hydrogen is leveraging Access Holdings’ extensive ecosystem of approximately 65 million customers to drive value creation,” said Roosevelt Ogbonna, CEO of Access Bank, during the group’s investor call on April 23. Ogbonna added that the synergy with the parent company is expected to yield long-term returns. “Projections for 2025 are robust, and the business is already showing strong momentum in H1. While Nigeria is our launchpad, Hydrogen has pan-African ambitions.” Hydrogen’s product play and strategic push An Access Holdings spokesperson told TechCabal that the launch of the Hydrogen Payment Gateway in 2024, alongside enhancements in payment card security, fueled transaction growth across switching, merchant collection, and payment infrastructure services. Hydrogen processed ₦49.1 trillion ($30.6 billion) in payments in 2024, a 313% increase from the previous year, and generated ₦10.3 billion ($6.4 million) in revenue. “This growth underscores the shifting dynamics in Nigeria’s financial services space, where banks and fintechs are evolving from rivals to collaborators,” the spokesperson said. How regulation spurred the bank-fintech pivot The emergence of bank-owned fintech arms like Hydrogen and HabariPay follows the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)’s 2010 directive requiring commercial banks to restructure into holding companies to offer non-banking services like payments. This regulatory move paved the way for traditional banks to spin off licensed fintech subsidiaries and compete more directly with independent players like Flutterwave, Paystack, Opay, and Moniepoint. GTCO was the first Tier-1 bank to respond, launching HabariPay in June 2022. Since then, it has become a profitable fintech focused on SMEs and retailers, offering payment collection through its Squad platform via POS, USSD, virtual accounts, and web gateways. Access Holdings followed with Hydrogen in September 2022, initially positioning it as a backend infrastructure provider serving other fintechs, banks, and telcos, rather than a direct-to-consumer player. When it launched, the firm reported a ₦612 million ($ 386,308) loss in Q1 2023 but swung to profitability by Q4 of that year. Despite Hydrogen’s profit surge, HabariPay remains Nigeria’s most profitable bank-owned fintech. But the race is tightening as both platforms scale rapidly. “Mostly, they just leverage their existing users to adopt their fintechs,” said Babatunde Akin-Moses, CEO of lending startup Sycamore. In 2024, HabariPay processed ₦27.4 trillion ($17.1 billion) in transactions, representing a 124.6% year-on-year increase. During GTCO’s April investor call on April 3, Segun Agbaje, GTCO’s Group CEO, said the company will double down on PoS terminal deployments to expand Squad’s reach in 2025. “Our investment in technology has significantly increased,” Agbaje said. “ While we’ve always acknowledged its importance, we’re now accelerating our efforts—and it’s clearly starting to pay off.” Outlook: Can Hydrogen catch up to HabariPay? Analysts say if Hydrogen maintains its current trajectory, it could emerge as Nigeria’s most profitable bank-owned fintech by the end of 2025, potentially overtaking HabariPay. “Hydrogen is a strong contender in the fintech space, showing impressive growth and surpassing key competitors,” said Abimbola Adewale, a Lagos-based analyst. “Its expanding customer base and transaction volume point to a solid long-term outlook.” As legacy banks transform into digital-first players, Hydrogen’s breakout quarter could mark the beginning of a new phase in Nigeria’s fintech wars—where balance sheet strength and regulatory alignment become critical differentiators. Mark your calendars! Moonshot by TechCabal is back in Lagos on October 15–16! Join Africa’s top founders, creatives & tech leaders for 2 days of keynotes, mixers & future-forward ideas. Early bird tickets now 20% off—don’t snooze! moonshot.techcabal.com.
Read MoreCan Cape Verde challenge Nigeria and Ghana as West Africa’s tech powerhouses?
Cape Verde is placing a bold bet that a small, stable island nation can punch far above its weight in the digital economy. At the heart of this ambition is the $45 million TechPark CV on the outskirts of Praia, which the government hopes will become a launchpad for startups, an investment magnet for global tech firms, and a symbol of how agility can outpace scale. The investment is audacious for a country of just over half a million people, whose total national budget is less than $1 billion. But for Pedro Lopes, Cape Verde’s Secretary of State for the Digital Economy, this is precisely the point. “We don’t aim to follow the tech narrative in West Africa,” he says. “We want to reshape it.” With a new tech park, aggressive investment in digital infrastructure, and a reform-minded digital economy chief, the tiny island nation is betting big on its future as West Africa’s digital testbed. “Tech islands of West Africa” Cape Verde’s pitch rests on its ambition to become a regional hub for digital innovation, remote work, and agile tech policy. The government has earmarked over $100 million for digital infrastructure in the past two years, including state-of-the-art submarine cable and 14,530 km island-wide fibre connectivity. Beyond infrastructure, the state is also investing in people. Through coding academies, English-language tech training, and diaspora engagement, officials hope to create a pipeline of local and global talent that can turn Praia into an innovation hub. Lopes, a former TEDx organiser and Mandela Washington Fellow, is emblematic of the country’s youth-forward approach. Appointed at 31 with no formal party affiliation, he is one of Africa’s youngest digital economy ministers. “It’s time to stop calling Africa the continent of the future,” he says. “For our youth, the future is now.” Cape Verde’s ambitions come when Nigeria and Ghana have solidified their positions as West Africa’s dominant tech markets. Nigeria’s fintech sector alone attracted over $180 million in funding in 2024, while Ghana has emerged as a preferred testing ground for digital health and agritech innovations. By contrast, Cape Verde has received only a fraction of that investment; its startup ecosystem is nascent, with just over 100 registered companies, including Vale.cv, CV Innovation, Muska, and Prisma Videos—mostly early-stage ventures in sectors like software, e-commerce, digital marketing, travel, and edtech—primarily focused on serving the domestic market or the Cape Verdean diaspora. A Cape Verde stand at Websummit in Rio, Brazil, 2024. IMAGE | CAPE VERDE Yet, Cape Verde sees an opportunity in its size. “We can move faster. Our stability and governance make us a safe sandbox for innovation,” Lopes says. The island nation ranks 35th globally in the World Bank’s 2023 Government Effectiveness Index, well ahead of regional peers like Ghana, Nigeria, and the Ivory Coast. Central to Cape Verde’s vision is the TechPark CV, positioned as a free zone for digital firms offering fiscal incentives and streamlined regulation, part of a trend in West Africa, where even smaller nations like Sierra Leone are making bold bets, such as the new SLARI Technology and Innovation Park. One anchor tenant at TechPark CV, Portuguese cybersecurity firm VisionWare, has already hired more than 50 local engineers to monitor global cyber threats. “They are Cape Verdean, internationally certified, and earning globally competitive wages,” Lopes notes. While critics worry the incentives could turn Cape Verde into a tax haven, Lopes pushes back. “These setups come with safeguards: local hiring targets, R&D requirements, and training obligations. We don’t want capital shelters. We want builders.” The return on investment is scrutinised for a country betting 2% of its GDP on a tech park. Lopes believes tangible outcomes will be seen within five to seven years, citing KPIs like export growth, startup formation, and tech sector contributions to GDP. “We’re already seeing early wins,” he says. “Startups are forming. Diaspora are returning. Global partners are calling.” The government is also creating an Economic Technology Zone (ZET), a regulatory sandbox that combines tax incentives with flexible innovation rules—a model inspired by similar zones in Estonia and Rwanda. An aerial view of Cape Verde’s $45 million TechPark CV on the outskirts of Praia. IMAGE | TECHPARK CV Brain drain or brain gain? Cape Verde’s strategy includes reversing the brain drain by building remote work infrastructure and increasing tech-sector incentives for investors. Lopes says that political polarisation and tightening immigration rules in Europe and the US have made returning home more appealing to Cape Verdeans abroad. “Why should our brightest minds stay in places where they don’t feel welcome?” he asks. “We’re telling our diaspora: come build the future with us.” There is also a push to integrate second and third-generation Cape Verdeans raised abroad into its workforce. “They bring a sense of purpose and skills that can help scale our ecosystem faster,” says Lopes. Much of Cape Verde’s long-term play hinges on education. The government is ramping up investments in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education and pushing for stronger private sector involvement in R&D. Companies operating within the tech park are required to contribute to skills transfer and training. “In Africa, we often ignore Research and Development (R&D). That must change,” Lopes argues. “We need companies to reinvest in innovation.” With a median age of 25 and one of the highest literacy rates in sub-Saharan Africa, Cape Verde sees its young population as a competitive advantage. However, challenges remain- high youth unemployment, limited access to risk capital, and a small domestic market. Betting on the continent Startups in Cape Verde get direct access to government officials. IMAGE | CAPE VERDE Cape Verde’s aspirations go beyond national gain. Lopes sees his country as a proving ground for the continent where African innovation can be developed, tested, and exported. “We want to show that Africa can create ideas—not just import them,” he says. While the path to rivalling Nigeria or Ghana remains long, Cape Verde is crafting a distinctive strategy built on agility, inclusion, and long-term vision. “If we get this right,”
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👨🏿🚀TechCabal Daily – Jumia got dumped
In partnership with Lire en Français اقرأ هذا باللغة العربية It’s pre-TGIF! TechCabal is hosting an exciting Mixer on May 30 as we explore the future of tech entrepreneurship in Africa. If you’re a founder, operator, or just curious about building in Africa, this event is for you. Come learn, share, and connect with others shaping the continent’s tech ecosystem. This is an exclusive mixer. Venue and time will be communicated upon registration. Register your interest here. Baillie Gifford, Jumia’s largest institutional investor sold all its shares 9mobile gets green light to piggyback off MTN’s infrastructure ICASA is investigating Starlink World Wide Web 3 Events Companies Baillie Gifford, Jumia’s largest institutional investor sold all its shares in the company Image Source: Jumia Baillie Gifford has left the chat. African e-commerce giant Jumia’s largest institutional investor just dumped all its shares, ending a six-year bet that once backed the “Amazon of Africa” through thick and thin. The British investment firm which once held over 11% of Jumia, stuck around after the initial public offer (IPO), and even topped up during the chaos. But as of this month, it’s holding exactly 0%. It likely sold at a steep loss—possibly 80 to 90%. That’s not just painful, it’s loud. What does that do for investor confidence? When a century-old, long-term player known for backing Tesla and Shopify throws in the towel, smaller investors take note. Jumia’s new CEO, Francis Dufay, has promised to break even by 2026 and hit profitability in 2027. But Baillie Gifford’s exit screams that not everyone is buying the pitch. Jumia’s revenue dropped 26% in Q1 2025, its losses are also rising again. In a bid for profitability, the company also exited some markets—South Africa and Tunisia—to sharpen its focus on key markets. It’s down to nine markets, running lean with $111 million in the bank—enough for maybe two years of runway. All hope is not lost: Jumia orders are up in smaller cities, JumiaPay, its embedded finance app, is gaining traction, and logistics could unlock new revenue streams. But without Baillie Gifford, could Jumia be running out of lifelines? However, it appears the e-commerce company is running without a financial safety net. To survive, Jumia needs to prove that its lean model can actually scale and that its payments and logistics services can grow into something bigger than just a side hustle. The survival game is on. And now, Jumia is playing without the backing of its largest investor. Join Fincra for an Exclusive Side Event at Money20/20 Europe Fincra is co-hosting “Stablecoins & The Future of Payments” at Money20/20 Europe with Utila, Rail, Wirex & more. Join fintech leaders for insightful panels & networking. Limited spots – RSVP here. Telecoms 9mobile gets green light to piggyback off MTN’s infrastructure Image Source: Adaeze Chukwu/TechCabal It has taken five years of regulatory back and forth, but 9mobile has finally secured approval from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to launch national roaming services on MTN Nigeria’s infrastructure in June 2025. Think of it like this: As a 9mobile user, if you find yourself in a place where there is no signal, before you get the chance to point fingers at 9mobile again, your phone will automatically connect to MTN’s stronger signal. A lifeline for 9mobile. In April 2025, 9mobile’s market share plummeted to 1.72%, down from 6.6% in 2020. This move is an opportunity for the operator to regain lost ground, due to chronic service disruptions and coverage gaps, without spending money on building out its national infrastructure. With Glo’s market share falling to 11.9% in April 2025, 9mobile actually has a fighting chance at becoming number three in the telecoms industry—MTN and Airtel are currently the largest telcos, commanding 86% of the market combined. It’s a win-win. This deal is seen as a win-win for both operators. While 9mobile piggybacks off MTN’s infrastructure, MTN, in turn, gets access to 9mobile’s unused spectrum. 9mobile has frequency bands that cover wide areas and improve the capacity in areas where network congestion is a persistent issue. For MTN’s 84 million subscribers, access to this spectrum could reduce network congestion and improve their experience. Zoom out: All eyes turn to 9mobile as they prepare to launch their national roaming. Will they pull this off, increase their market share, and bump Globacom a step down in the telecoms race? Or will they botch it and lose more of their market share? Paga is on the Financial Times List Three Times in a Row! Milestone achieved: 3x in a row! Celebrating 16 years of growth with our third consecutive appearance on the Financial Times’ Africa’s Fastest-Growing Companies list. Read more. Internet ICASA is investigating Starlink: will it find anything in its cupboard? Image Source: Tenor Now, Elon Musk and Starlink have done it. The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA), the country’s telecom regulator, has said it is now investigating SpaceX and Starlink, the satellite internet service provider (ISP), and whether it has been “illegally” operating in the country. Is Starlink guilty? Without a doubt, yes. For months, South Africans have been using Starlink’s service. They simply plug in to the roaming feature that allows them to use the service from neighbouring countries like Botswana, where Starlink legally operates. Some of these South Africans also smuggled Starlink kits from resellers in neighbouring countries. This is not ‘legal’ and Starlink, on one occasion, warned about this. But South Africans paid no mind. Starlink too, could have enforced a blanket ban in the country, but it only skirted around it for a short period. Now, with the much-contested debate in South Africa around whether Starlink should come into the country or not, this puts a new spin on the matter. ICASA will definitely find Starlink at fault for operating illegally. But Starlink will likely not face serious penalties, especially if it plays its cards right. What’s really at stake is its formal entry. On May 23, South Africa proposed an “equity equivalent” policy: foreign tech
Read MoreRethinking African edtech: Why AI alone won’t be enough
Africa is a global leader in fintech, but continues to struggle with education and edtech. Africa has the worst-performing education system globally – in some markets, 90% of children leave primary school without basic reading skills. Fintech captured 60% of all African venture capital last year, driven by a clear value proposition: faster, cheaper, better services. Remittances alone hit $56 billion in 2024. Africans were already sending money; FinTechs just made it easier. Education, by contrast, receives less than 2% of venture capital despite being a $160+ billion annual market, nearly three times larger than remittances. Why? Because too many African edtechs are building flashy technology in search of a customer. The hype fueling artificial intelligence (AI) threatens to amplify edtech failures. Governments are already climbing aboard the AI hype train. Nigeria recently announced plans to train 6,000 teachers in AI. We’ve seen this play before 20 years ago, the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative promised $100 laptops for every child. Countries like Peru, Uruguay, and Rwanda joined in. In Peru, a multi-year evaluation found no learning impact. Maintenance issues, lack of power, and untrained teachers meant 50%+ of laptops stopped working within 2–3 years. The same story unfolded in developed markets like Birmingham and Alabama, where the city scrapped its OLPC-based program after three years. The lesson: great tech, bad implementation—and worse business models. AI is fast becoming the new $100 laptop. Already, initiatives are promising personalised AI tutors for less than $50 a year or ultra-cheap LLM API calls at pennies per query. But a cost-effective product is meaningless if no one uses—or pays for—it. Leapfrogging a poor business model is impossible Take one Kenyan startup offering AI-powered teacher support via WhatsApp; a smart delivery channel given its 200M users in Africa. But flawed model: they plan to charge teachers $10–$20/year, despite most teachers being underpaid and stretched thin. A better strategy? Sell to governments. Kenya employs over 330,000 teachers. Just $20 per teacher could yield $6.6 million annually. Expand across the continent, and this could become a $50M+ business—more than 4x the turnover of one of Africa’s largest textbook publishers. Governments, not households, account for 70% of education spending in Africa. While some African edtechs have achieved notable scale, many struggle to grow beyond a narrow base, typically elite private schools or middle-class families with internet access. Meanwhile, 82% of learners lack internet at home, and 95% don’t have consistent access to smartphones. It’s not about scaling cool tech. It’s about designing business models that work in the real world. A $100M investment with no business model Between 2014 and 2022, USAID invested as much as $96.2 million in Tusome, Kenya’s flagship early-grade reading program . At its peak, just 18% of Grade 2 students met national English reading benchmarks—up from 12% at baseline . A 6-point gain after eight years and nearly $100M—was that good value for money? Look closer, and it becomes clear: Tusome was never built on a demand-driven model. The Kenyan government’s contributions were mostly in-kind—teachers and infrastructure it was already funding. Real budgetary buy-in—for essentials like books and classroom visits—only came years later, and quickly stalled once donor money dried up. Now that USAID funding has ended, there are already signs that Kenya’s hard-won literacy gains may quickly unravel. Much is made of a co-financing claim: that for every $1 USAID invested, Kenya contributed $0.70. But most of that wasn’t new capital—it was a reclassification of existing spending, with little relation to actual demand. As an edtech investor, this feels more like accounting acrobatics than a sign of traction. Ten years into Tusome, I found myself fielding queries from program staff who were just starting to explore “sustainability”—only after spending nearly $100 million. Education is, by nature, a government-led sector. In developed markets, the largest billion-dollar education businesses earn most of their revenue from public sector clients—federal, state, or district. The private sector’s role is to build engaging, valuable products that governments want to buy. Too often, development actors misread demand, focusing on ‘cost-effectiveness’ projections. But the most critical variable is often overlooked: engagement. TikTok didn’t become the world’s most used app by being cheap—it won by being deeply engaging and culturally intuitive. If edtech doesn’t do the same, it will fail regardless of how smart the AI is. That’s the lesson for AI in education: if no one’s using it, no one’s paying for it. Too many edtech products in Africa are still being pushed onto schools, teachers, and parents. The real question is: where are the products being pulled? AI won’t save edtech, business model innovation might Africa’s education history is littered with $50M and $100M projects—flashy tech pilots and ambitious programs that failed to scale because they lacked one thing: demand. Without a business model, even the most well-intentioned investments end up shelved. To unlock AI’s true potential, we must rethink how edtech is financed, deployed, and scaled. We’ve seen this model work before: Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, helped vaccinate over a billion children by enabling governments to buy and deliver what their people needed. Is it time for Africa’s edtech ecosystem to build its own Gavi? The learning crisis is urgent—and unless we tackle the financing question head-on, we risk failing not just today’s students, but tomorrow’s economies. AI won’t leapfrog these challenges. _______ Karim Mohamed is an African investment professional with nearly 20 years of experience as an engineer, finance expert, and venture investor. Over the past decade, he has led and advised three African edtech funds totaling over $200M in capital, focused on improving learning and expanding employment opportunities across the continent.
Read More9mobile gets NCC approval to launch national roaming on MTN infrastructure in June
After nearly five years of regulatory delays, 9mobile has secured approval from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to launch national roaming services on MTN Nigeria’s infrastructure in June 2025, according to two people with direct knowledge of the deal. This move is a critical lifeline for the struggling operator, whose market share has plummeted to 1.72% in April 2025, down from 6.6% in 2020 when it first sought the approval. The national roaming journey began in August 2020, when the NCC granted MTN and 9mobile a three-month pilot to test roaming capabilities. Although that trial concluded in October 2020, a full commercial rollout was stalled for years, until the recent approval paved the way for a nationwide launch. The move allows 9mobile to extend coverage into regions lacking its infrastructure, significantly improving service reliability for its remaining users. MTN and 9mobile did not respond to requests for comments. At the center of the rollout is a national roaming and spectrum-sharing agreement between 9mobile and MTN made in August 2020. Under the deal, 9mobile users will be able to make calls, send SMS, and access mobile data by connecting to MTN’s expansive infrastructure in areas where 9mobile’s network is weak or absent. The partnership is designed to mitigate the chronic service disruptions and coverage gaps that have plagued 9mobile and contributed to its subscriber losses. For 9mobile, the agreement is a strategic opportunity to regain lost ground without the financial burden of building out its national infrastructure. It also opens the door for a potential comeback in the telecom rankings. With Globacom’s market share falling to an all-time low of 11.9% in April 2025, down to 20.6 million subscribers, analysts say the race for the third-largest operator is wide open. “The number three spot is still very much in play,” said one telecom executive who requested anonymity to speak freely. “Now that 9mobile will have access to MTN’s national footprint, it’s all about how well they can package and market their services. Identity still matters—many of their users are tied to their numbers. If they bundle smartly, they can start to claw back users.” The agreement is also a strategic win for MTN. In return for providing access to its infrastructure, MTN gains the ability to utilise 9mobile’s underused spectrum assets in the 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, and 2100 MHz frequency bands. These bands are vital for expanding coverage and improving data capacity, especially in areas where network congestion is a persistent issue. The 900 MHz spectrum, for instance, is highly effective for wide-area coverage and indoor penetration, making it ideal for rural and semi-urban areas. Meanwhile, the 1800 MHz and 2100 MHz bands provide the high capacity needed in dense urban markets. For MTN, which serves over 84 million subscribers, this spectrum access could significantly enhance performance, reduce congestion, and improve the customer experience. Still, some caution that regulatory oversight could limit how the spectrum is used. “It’s a calculated bet for both operators,” said the same telecom executive. “The NCC will likely impose restrictions to ensure fair use and prevent market distortions.” For the NCC, the deal represents more than just a bilateral business arrangement. It underscores the Commission’s broader strategy to foster infrastructure sharing and promote spectrum efficiency in a high-cost operating environment. National roaming agreements like this are seen as essential to improving service delivery while avoiding the duplication of costly network deployments. The NCC did not respond to requests for comments. As 9mobile prepares for its long-awaited national roaming launch, the telecom industry will be watching closely. If executed well, the deal could serve as a blueprint for how smaller operators can stay competitive in a landscape increasingly dominated by MTN and Airtel. More importantly, it offers hope that millions of Nigerian mobile users, particularly in underserved areas, could soon enjoy better, more consistent connectivity.
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What we know about IBK Akinola, the money-moving woman at PiggyVest
This article was written by Elohozino Blessyn-Okpowo for Zikoko’s HER docu-series. The first episode of Zikoko’s HER docu-series is now out! If you need motivation or just want a quick glimpse of what it’s about before committing yourself to the episode, watch our trailer here. But to whet your appetite, here are a few things we think you’ll find interesting about the woman who’s earned the trust of millions of Nigerians, without taking the front seat. 1. IBK’s people and money management skills are probably generational Both her parents have backgrounds in finance, and she followed in their footsteps by studying Accounting at Covenant University (yes, she’s an Eagle). She topped that off with a Master’s degree in International Business from Coventry University. 2. PiggyTech, the money-moving machine, wasn’t IBK’s first start-up rodeo After completing her Master’s degree in 2013, IBK moved back to Nigeria and started a few businesses with her brother, Ayo Akinola, and their friends, Somto Ifezue, Odunayo Eweniyi, and Joshua Chibueze. These brilliant minds went on to build platforms like PUSH CV and 500 Dishes. With the support of mentors like Olumide Soyombo, they kept pushing till they made it. 3. As PiggyVest’s Payments Director, IBK understands the weight of her responsibility and power She describes herself as the person responsible for collecting your money and giving it back to you. She regularly speaks to about 700 processors to ensure Nigerians don’t take the company to the streets of Twitter. Beyond this, she’s incredibly proud of the milestones PiggyVest helps customers reach, and how it’s shaping Nigeria’s saving and spending culture on a larger scale. 4. Her friends describe her as “scarily intentional and fiercely loyal” IBK says she’s one of the luckiest people alive, thanks to the community she’s built. To her friends and family: if you’re reading this and you haven’t watched the episode yet, know that IBK loves you very much and says she couldn’t do life without you. 5. IBK steadies herself by being on the move Whether it’s tennis, running, or taking long walks, IBK processes life, work, friends, and family through these movements. They also act as moments of solitude for her, where she connects with herself and her faith. So, what’s next? For now, she’s focused on living in the moment and getting it right. What she’s most interested in is finding balance in the sweet middle of life. Whether it’s in her faith, her work, and her friendships. She’s searching for the sweet spot right in the middle, where everything just feels sweet. Click the link below to watch the full episode and tell us something we haven’t already told you. Meet the Woman Shaping Payments at Piggyvest – Ibukun Akinola | Her Docuseries: Episode 1
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My Life in Tech: I’m a blind journalist. Tech has changed my life, but there’s room for more inclusivity
One of my favourite moments as a journalist is when I reveal my disability after an interview. The silence on the other end is priceless. Just minutes earlier, we were having a seamless conversation—me taking notes, asking follow-up questions, everything flowing smoothly. Then, when I offer them a chance to ask me anything, they often say: “Tell us about yourself.” Usually, I struggle with what to tell them to avoid lengthy explanations. So, to keep the conversation short, I drop the bombshell: “I’m blind.” The disbelief is instant. “Wait… what? But how—” I turn on my camera. The shock as they see my white cane is something I never get tired of. Before they can recover, I’m already bidding them goodbye to go write their stories. My name is John Adoyi. I’m a blind journalist, poet, and disability advocate. I can give you a vivid description of Lagos, even though the last time I saw it was 15 years ago. I remember the anger, madness, and chaotic rhythm that make it unique. And technology, though never perfect, has made this rhythm easier to follow. But this seamless integration didn’t happen overnight. It required years of adaptation, starting with the most fundamental tool that shaped my relationship with technology. Braille revolution Life wasn’t always this seamless. When glaucoma took my sight in 2004—a tragedy worsened by counterfeit eye drops and medical negligence—I couldn’t imagine that technology would become my eyes. The years of migraines and double vision that led to my sight going on permanent vacation are a story for another day. As a blind person, Braille was my real introduction to tech. That six-dot system invented by Louis Braille became my lifeline when I had to leave mainstream school due to failing eyesight. By 2006, at Pacelli School for the Blind in Surulere, Braille, which allowed me to decode language through touch, became my window to the world. I consumed everything in Braille: magazines, books like J.P. Clark’s “The Wives’ Revolt”, Gabriel Okara’s “Piano and Drums”, and Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice”, all in massive, bulky volumes that could take up a whole schoolbag. But I didn’t mind. It was my gateway to knowledge. However, Braille had one major limitation: it created a barrier between me and the sighted world. This realisation led to my next technological encounter, which would test my patience in ways I never expected. How Victor Ekwueme is helping the blind see through tech The typewriter that broke my heart Then came the typewriter—supposedly a bridge to the sighted world, since they couldn’t read Braille, and I could no longer write in ink. However, that mechanical beast became my nemesis. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t make it cooperate. Either the A4 paper wasn’t placed correctly, or the ribbon was faint. I’d type for hours, convinced words were appearing, only to be handed back blank pages or jumbled text. My highest typing score was 30 out of 100, while others scored 80 or even 100 per cent. The computer lab incident that changed everything As my feud with the typewriter continued, a ray of sunshine brightened my path. The school reintroduced computer learning, and I was elated—though my first day in the lab ended with me getting kicked out for sending keyboards crashing to the floor when my legs got tangled in cables. Banished from the lab, I thought my computer journey had ended before it began. But a teacher saw potential in me. During break time a week later, she brought me back to the lab. She showed me how to power on the system, then introduced me to Job Access With Speech (JAWS) and Narrator—screen readers that transformed text into speech. This was my turning point. I always looked forward to my days in the computer lab because just playing around with Microsoft Word 2007 and Notepad was fun for me. Still, I wasn’t a pro for many years. There were days I typed for hours only to discover my document was empty because a “Save As” dialogue box had silently intercepted my work. But I improved through constant practice, nearly destroying my father’s Dell laptop in the process. By secondary school in 2011, computers replaced Braille as my primary tool. I took notes, submitted assignments, and even wrote exams using my laptop at Loyola Jesuit College. This breakthrough in computer literacy opened the door to infinite possibilities, including my first steps into the world of mobile communication. Nokia nights and the mobile revolution My first phone wasn’t a touchscreen; it was my mother’s simple Nokia 1600 with a keypad in 2006. Without speech software, I memorised keypress sequences and the alphabetical order of contacts. I called many wrong numbers due to incorrect digit placement. I would press ‘2’ three times to get a ‘C’, or ‘7’ four times to get an ‘S’, hoping it was correct when nobody was available to double-check. I’ll never forget the 12:30 AM to 4:30 AM midnight calls on MTN—fertile ground for gossip and friendship for just ₦100. My first speech-enabled phone came in 2010: the Nokia N76, a Symbian phone where I could install third-party text-to-speech software. It changed everything, making phone communication easier and faster. Nokia N76Image source: Pinterest When smartphones arrived, I slowly transitioned. I now use an Android device with TalkBack, while some friends use VoiceOver on Apple devices. Even though text-to-speech still has quirks—freezing for no reason, requiring screen-reader gymnastics—I’ve become proficient at navigating Android. Google’s Gboard voice typing is a lifesaver, though it still struggles with African names and sometimes spells out punctuation instead of inserting symbols. As my confidence with technology grew, so did my career aspirations. These tools weren’t just helping me communicate—they were opening doors to possibilities I’d never considered. Finding my voice in journalism I never saw myself becoming a journalist. I viewed journalism as a profession requiring sight to be effective. That changed when I met Ayoola, a blind journalist working with Voice of
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Africa’s 500 million person question (Part 1)
What is the role of technology as 500 million African youth reach working age over the next 30 years? The text above represents the vision statement page of the website of a fictional venture capital firm I invented, “Strawman African Venture Capital Fund” (SMAVC Fund). Though entirely made up, its vision statement will likely sound familiar to many readers. SMAVC Fund’s optimistic perspective reflects a widely touted narrative in the African venture community that the ongoing wave of population growth in Africa will only create massive economic opportunities for all. This optimistic future is a viable possibility, and the one we hope to achieve. Still, there are other potential futures in which job and economic opportunities don’t keep up with population growth, leading to a reversion to subsistence economics and survival strategies. For investors (and for decision makers in general), we need to keep our optimism but also be realistic and nuanced to understand the challenges and headwinds if we want any hope of success. So, which future will emerge for Africa? No one can claim to know for sure. To explore these questions, we’ve written a two-part piece that we are posting on our Medium page, where we will examine the economic forces and trends that could push Africa toward one future or the other. Here we give you a flavor of part one and encourage you to read the deeper analysis on our blog. We’ll post the second part and hope you will follow along. Here is a summary of part 1 in broad strokes. The big population boom everyone is talking about. The data shows that Africa faces an urgent challenge: creating good jobs for the 500 million people entering its workforce in the coming decades. Yes, many African countries’ populations are facing a “demographic dividend.” This is the economic term for when large youth populations age into the workforce, get jobs, and see incomes rise, economic surpluses grow, and more women join the economy. Dependency ratio – the ratio of working-age persons (15–65 years) to older or younger non-working dependents from 1963-2100 But this happy scenario assumes those working-age people get jobs. Right now, most don’t. Three-fourths of job market entrants in Sub-Saharan Africa are self-employed or work in informal microenterprises, roughly 20% earn wages in services, and only 4 to 5% secure salaried jobs in industry. Is Africa headed for a “Demographic Dividend” or a “Demographic Markdown”? If we don’t create more jobs, the demographic dividend will fizzle and turn into a “Demographic Markdown”. At DFS Lab, job creation is one of the core tenets of our long-term strategy. We want to invest in sectors and value chains where massive long-run growth is possible, especially ones that can give economic opportunities to hundreds of millions of people and create the conditions for a thriving population. But this isn’t easy. Extractives and mining (a go-to for many African countries) put very few people to work, and manufacturing (a go-to globally for jobs-based growth in Asia and elsewhere) has not taken off. We begin by examining the reasons why the continent has yet to replicate the manufacturing-led growth achieved by the Asian Tigers, and is in fact falling behind. Topping the list are higher-than-expected labour costs, poor infrastructure, slow-moving value chains and port infrastructure, and a sometimes challenging policy environment. We surmise that Africa now faces the task of developing a unique economic model that can keep pace with its rapid population growth and expanding working-age population. Alternatives to manufacturing-led growth would (logically) need to emerge from the agricultural or services sectors. Yet, as we’ve seen, it’s not obvious how to make these options work. Historically, few countries have reached middle-income status through growth driven solely by agriculture or services. A quote from economist Dani Rodrik sums it up: “If African countries do achieve growth rates substantially higher than what I have surmised, they will do so pursuing a growth model that is different from earlier miracles based on industrialisation. Perhaps, it will be agriculture-led growth. Perhaps, it will be services. But it will look quite different than what we have seen before.” Our first piece concludes that there’s no doubt Africa needs to reinvent its growth model. It must find pathways that replicate the productivity-boosting features of export-led manufacturing that powered the Asian Tigers, Latin America, and Eastern Europe, though it may not have the option to rely on manufacturing itself. At DFS Lab, we believe the key lies in leveraging technology to drive bold initiatives that expand exports and cross-border services to reach markets beyond Africa’s borders. If you want to dig deeper into these issues, click here to read our full Medium Post. Then, come back next week for the second part of this series, where we identify four opportunity areas where we believe VCs should focus their efforts over the next decade to capture venture-scale returns and create jobs for Africa’s 500 million people! ________ Jake Kendall is a researcher, investor, and policy expert focused on Africa’s digital economy. He is currently co-founder and managing partner at DFS Lab, a Research Fellow at Cambridge University, and teaches at Sciences Po, with past roles spanning the Gates Foundation, World Bank, academia, and two years as an aquaculture extension agent in rural Zambia.
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