Airtel Kenya appoints new managing director as rivalry with Safaricom intensifies
Airtel Kenya has appointed Senegalese telecoms executive Djibril Tobe as managing director, a major leadership change as the country’s second-largest mobile operator seeks to build on recent market share gains. Tobe succeeds Ashish Malhotra, who is leaving after four years to become chief executive of Indus Towers Africa. The move comes at a pivotal moment for Airtel Kenya, which has emerged as the country’s strongest challenger to Safaricom after years of investment in network expansion, mobile money and home broadband. Before his appointment, Tobe served as managing director of Airtel Congo B, a role he has held since May 2023. He previously served as managing director of Airtel Chad and as commercial director at Airtel Burkina Faso. Before joining Airtel, he held leadership positions at Expresso Guinea, Ernst & Young and Coca-Cola. “We welcome Djibril Tobe to his role and are confident that his expertise will steer Airtel Kenya to the next level as we continue delivering innovative and relevant solutions,” the company’s board said in a statement. Tobe inherits a business that has grown rapidly under Malhotra’s leadership. In a Tuesday statement, Airtel said it rolled out more than 2,000 network sites during the period, the largest expansion programme in the company’s history, while introducing 5G services, eSIM technology, fibre connectivity products and its Home and Office Smart Connect broadband platform. The operator also expanded its financial services business, with Airtel Money’s market share rising from about 2% to 11% over the four years, according to company figures. Data from the Communications Authority of Kenya for the quarter ended March 2026 shows Airtel held a 27.6% share of mobile subscriptions, compared with Safaricom’s 68.9%. In mobile broadband, Airtel accounted for 31.8% of subscriptions, compared with Safaricom’s 64.5%. The gap remains widest in mobile money, where Airtel Money held a 10.9% market share compared with M-PESA’s 89.1%, underscoring both the progress Airtel has made and the scale of the challenge that remains in Kenya’s payments market. Airtel Kenya says it doubled revenue during Malhotra’s tenure and expanded its subscriber base from 16 million to more than 24 million customers. The operator does not disclose financial figures for its Kenyan unit. True scale demands moving beyond surface-level integrations to robust execution. We’ve filtered the noise out of Moonshot 2026, optimising the conference strictly for high-calibre connections between startup founders, global financial operators, enterprise leaders and individuals rewiring Africa’s technical frameworks.Get 20% off Early Bird tickets for a limited time.
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South Africa turns to drones, AI, CCTV cameras ahead of anti-migrant protests
South Africa has deployed 33,000 CCTV cameras, drones, helicopters and 13,000 law enforcement officers across Gauteng Province ahead of Tuesday’s anti-migrant protests, in a R600 million ($35.5 million) security operation that highlights the country’s rapid shift toward technology-driven policing. The unprecedented high-tech security deployment comes as fear spreads among migrant communities, with many foreign nationals seeking refuge at embassies and consulates in Johannesburg and Cape Town ahead of demonstrations organised by the anti-illegal immigration movement March and March. Some migrants have fled homes and businesses, fearing attacks similar to previous outbreaks of xenophobic violence. Five years after the July 2021 unrest exposed glaring weaknesses in South Africa’s intelligence gathering, coordination and public-order policing, the South African Police Service (SAPS) is increasingly relying on a vast network of surveillance technologies and private-sector security infrastructure to maintain order. The June 30 operation offers the clearest indication yet that South Africa is quietly constructing a technology-driven surveillance network in which state and private security systems are becoming intertwined. Gauteng Police Commissioner Lieutenant-General Tommy Mthombeni said authorities are fully prepared for the demonstrations and have already identified several hotspots across the province. “We have made arrangements to deploy CCTV cameras, helicopters and drones,” Mthombeni said during a media briefing in Eldorado Park on June 25. “Indeed, we have mobilised extensively, and we will have what is called a downlink so that we can observe activities as they happen in real time.” Mthombeni warned that lawbreakers would be identified through the extensive surveillance network. “The drones and helicopters will be able to identify who is doing what. So, if you get arrested, do not say you were not warned,” he said. “We have more than 33,000 CCTV cameras. We cannot take any warning lightly in the course of our daily duties. Whenever we receive information about a possible protest, we prepare accordingly.” Chad Thomas, director at IRS Forensic Investigations and a 32-year veteran of South Africa’s security and law enforcement industry, said the deployment marks an important technological evolution for South African policing. “It’s necessary, and it’s good to see that the state is finally investing in making use of technology,” Thomas told TechCabal on Monday. “Most other countries are already making use of these technologies, whereas in South Africa everything tends to be labour-intensive.” He believes that the June 30 operation will rely heavily on surveillance infrastructure owned by municipalities, private security firms, and community security networks. “There is so much CCTV in the hands of the private sector that can be utilised and onboarded by the state during operations,” Thomas said. Thomas added that private surveillance networks will play a key role during the operation. “Companies such as Vumacam have massive camera networks throughout Johannesburg, and security companies operating community camera networks could also allow the state access during operations,” he said. The increasing reliance on surveillance technology reflects lessons learnt from the July 2021 unrest, which left more than 300 people dead, crippled supply chains and caused billions of rands in economic losses. “This should be a very good test of this type of equipment for future reference,” Thomas said. “It would have been exceptionally useful during the July 2021 unrest if police had qualified drone operators and greater access to surveillance technology.” The June 30 protests have also prompted unprecedented cooperation between the police and private security companies. On June 26, Acting Police Minister Firoz Cachalia met representatives from the private security industry to strengthen collaboration ahead of the demonstrations. According to the Ministry of Police, the meeting focused on improving information sharing, coordinated planning, and technology resource pooling between the public and private sectors. True scale demands moving beyond surface-level integrations to robust execution. We’ve filtered the noise out of Moonshot 2026, optimising the conference strictly for high-calibre connections between startup founders, global financial operators, enterprise leaders and individuals rewiring Africa’s technical frameworks.Get 20% off Early Bird tickets for a limited time.
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Sub-Saharan Africa still imports over 90% of assistive tech despite policy gains
Africa’s assistive technology ecosystem is becoming more coordinated, but millions of people with disabilities remain vulnerable because many countries have yet to build locally led assistive technology systems, according to a new report by South Africa’s Stellenbosch University. The Assistive Technology Landscape in Africa Scoping Review, commissioned by the Mastercard Foundation, analysed 523 sources, including 185 peer-reviewed scientific studies and 338 policy documents, organisational reports, and other materials spanning all 54 African countries. It found that assistive technology policy activity has accelerated since 2016, with at least 38 countries adopting national strategies aligned with the World Health Organisation and United Nations frameworks. But most policies remain aspirational because they lack adequate financing and monitoring systems to support implementation, leaving Africa “policy-rich but implementation-poor.” The report said East and Southern Africa have built more resilient assistive technology ecosystems by strengthening links between governments, universities, and civil society. By contrast, West and Central Africa remain more reliant on donors and international partners, with weaker institutional integration limiting the development of sustainable systems. The findings come as more than 200 million Africans require at least one assistive product, while only 10% to 25% of that need is being met across most countries. Demand is projected to double to 400 million people by 2050, according to the World Health Organisation, driven by the continent’s youthful population and rising rates of chronic disease and injury. Without stronger domestic financing and coordination, the report warns, many African countries will struggle to meet that growing demand as donor support becomes less certain. The report said that weak financing remains one of the biggest obstacles to building self-sustaining assistive technology systems. It found that government-led programmes account for less than 15% of assistive technology distributed across the continent. At the same time, most countries lack dedicated budget lines or ring-fenced funding for assistive technology. The review also found that more than 90% of assistive technology products used in sub-Saharan Africa are imported, exposing countries to supply chain disruptions and shifts in donor priorities. That dependence extends to local manufacturers. Of the 42 manufacturers and innovators identified across Africa, only four receive stable government subsidies, including the Ethiopian Prosthetic and Orthotic Service (EPOS), which produces artificial limbs and supportive braces for people with physical disabilities and two orthopaedic service providers in Namibia. Most instead rely on grants, donations, and other unstable revenue streams to survive and expand, the report found. Private-sector financing remains limited. The report cites Safaricom in Kenya and I&M Bank in Rwanda as rare examples of companies helping to finance assistive technology, rather than evidence of a broader market. Overall, it characterises Africa’s assistive technology financing landscape as one marked by donor dependence, high production costs, low insurance coverage and fragmented governance, conditions that it says make it difficult for even well-established manufacturers to operate sustainably at scale. The report said the consequences of that instability fall directly on the people who need assistive technology most. “In countries where manufacturers rely on donations or unstable grant funding, users face inconsistent supply, long waiting times and limited device choice, often leaving them dependent on imported or poor-fit products,” it said. Against that backdrop, the report identifies East Africa as home to the continent’s strongest locally coordinated assistive technology ecosystem. It says Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania have developed systems linking governments, academia, the private sector, civil society and international partners. Academic institutions play a central role in generating evidence to inform policy, while the region hosts 19 of the 42 assistive technology manufacturers and innovators identified. Southern Africa follows closely. It says South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe have developed mature ecosystems anchored by social enterprises and long-established academic institutions, together hosting another 11 manufacturers and innovators. West Africa presents a different picture. Despite being home to some of the continent’s largest economies, the region has only five of the 42 manufacturers and innovators identified in the review. Although Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone and Senegal have adopted national assistive technology frameworks, the report says donor organisations continue to play a larger role than locally coordinated systems. According to the review, Central Africa relies even more heavily on regional bodies and faith-based organisations to fill service delivery gaps, with limited evidence of sustained government leadership. Nigeria illustrates the wider challenge. The report notes that Nigeria’s National Assistive Technology Scale-Up Plan, one of the few in West Africa to include formal costing, estimates that ₦12.6 billion ($9.16 million) is needed to implement the strategy, but government funding remains limited. Across West Africa, the share of assistive technology needs being met ranges from as little as 5% in Nigeria to more than 70% in localised pilot projects in Sierra Leone. The review also found that governments across the continent are increasingly using Technical Working Groups to coordinate multi-stakeholder policy development, describing the approach as promising. Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe are among the countries where these groups have been actively engaged in co-producing and validating AT policy. But the report cautions that the groups have not yet delivered their full potential. “While promising, coordination across education, labour, industrial development, and youth systems remains weak,” it said. True scale demands moving beyond surface-level integrations to robust execution. We’ve filtered the noise out of Moonshot 2026, optimising the conference strictly for high-calibre connections between startup founders, global financial operators, enterprise leaders and individuals rewiring Africa’s technical frameworks.Get 20% off Early Bird tickets for a limited time.
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I&M taps departing Absa chief Abdi Mohamed as Kenya CEO
Hours after Absa Bank Kenya announced the departure of chief executive Abdi Mohamed after a 32-year career at the lender, rival I&M Group named him as the next CEO of its Kenyan banking business. The appointment, subject to CBK approval, sees I&M recruit the sitting chief executive of a larger rival, an unusual move in Kenya’s tightly knit banking sector. Mohamed joins I&M from Absa Bank Kenya, where he spent more than three decades rising through the ranks to become chief executive and managing director in 2023. He previously served as managing director and chief executive of Absa Tanzania and held senior leadership roles across Barclays operations in Kenya, Tanzania, and Zambia, including chief operating officer and retail and business banking director. The move was announced only hours after Absa disclosed Mohamed’s resignation, saying he would leave the bank on June 30 to pursue other career opportunities. Absa appointed chief financial officer Yusuf Omari as interim chief executive while it begins the search for a permanent successor. Mohamed will replace Gul Khan, who led I&M’s Kenyan unit from 2023 to 2026, following the promotion of predecessor Kihara Maina to regional chief executive of the wider group. “We are delighted to welcome Abdi to I&M Group at an important time in our journey as we continue to scale our business, deepen customer relationships and strengthen our market position,” Sarit Raja-Shah, Group Executive Director at I&M Group, said in a statement. The appointment comes as competition among Kenya’s listed lenders intensifies, with banks investing heavily in digital channels, transaction banking and regional expansion to capture growth beyond traditional corporate lending. I&M Group, valued at KES 108.76 billion ($844 million), is Kenya’s seventh-largest listed banking stock by market capitalisation. Mohamed joins from Absa Bank Kenya, which has a market value of KES 176.53 billion ($1.37 billion), making it the country’s fourth-largest listed lender behind Equity Group, KCB Group and Co-operative Bank. True scale demands moving beyond surface-level integrations to robust execution. We’ve filtered the noise out of Moonshot 2026, optimising the conference strictly for high-calibre connections between startup founders, global financial operators, enterprise leaders and individuals rewiring Africa’s technical frameworks.Get 20% off Early Bird tickets for a limited time.
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Why Holocene raised a $3 million fund to solve Africa’s climate-tech exits
After raising $3 million to fund African climate tech startups, Josh Romisher thinks he can solve the sector’s biggest problem: the lack of exits. His approach has become popular among African tech investors: they write cheques at deliberately low valuations so as not to price out eventual buyers. Romisher, the general partner at Holocene, a South-African climate tech venture capital firm, said he has raised $3 million from 32 investors, 60% of them based in Southern Africa, and has deployed most of it across 11 investments in cheques of $100,000 to $200,000. Holocene buys a 10% to 20% stake in each startup while its valuation is still low. If Holocene pays little going in and gets a sizeable piece of the company, even a modest sale later can create outsized returns. If a company is acquired for $30 to $50 million, his stake can return 20 to 30 times what he put in. With this math, Holocene is not trying to build the next billion-dollar climate company in Africa but is trying to build several worth $30 to $50 million each and sell them within three to five years. Holocene’s portfolio is roughly 60% Southern Africa, 20% Kenya, and 20% Uganda, weighted toward energy and e-mobility, according to Romisher, with companies including Yongeza Capital, an e-mobility charging infrastructure player; ScootHero, a two-wheeler delivery company; and circular-economy retailer FARO. Romisher argues that the African venture capital industry is exit-starved because the rest of the market has been doing the opposite. Seed and Series A valuations, he says, have been priced too high, leaving funds with paper markups and no buyers. His response is to go earlier and cheaper and to keep equity valuations down by stacking debt, grants, carbon, and asset finance so every dollar of equity does the work of five to ten. His thesis is based on his experience before becoming an investor, as Romisher spent almost a decade as an entrepreneur, including a stint that produced one of the few climate-tech exits the continent has seen, the sale of Fenix International, an off-grid solar company that delivered solar power in East Africa, to ENGIE, a French multinational utility company, for an undisclosed amount in October 2017. In our conversation, Romisher explains why a $3 million fund can still be run with institutional rigour, who he expects to buy these companies, and what threatens the model most. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. You raised $3 million for African climate-tech startups. How much did you raise at final close, and how does it compare to the target you set? The final close was $3 million, which was our target. We were able to hit it, and the fund was always sized in a manner where we believe we can return capital. We started by asking, where do we think we can turn a dollar into three and create climate impact? That is really the focus for us: proving that the climate sector in Africa can return commensurate capital. We have deployed most of the fund already across 11 investments. Those investments are performing well; so far, everything has gone the way we wanted. Capital raising is always harder than one expects, especially given that it did not seem like a lot of money. But it falls into an interesting bucket in Africa, where it is a little too small for institutions and sometimes a little too big for individuals. I am really proud to say we have 32 investors, 60% of them from Southern Africa. I am proud that people with a real passion for climate stepped up and put their money into the fund, including ourselves. Who are your investors, and what did it take to get commercial money into a relatively new asset class in an emerging market like Africa? It takes both trust and passion. When you are raising primarily from high-net-worth individuals and family offices, most of it is about trust and personal relationships and helping people understand our investment thesis. I also want to add that just because it is a small fund does not mean it is not institutional. I have worked on much bigger things in my career, but we wanted to bring the same rigour and institutional process you would have at a $300 million fund to a $3 million fund. We just believe $3 million is where you can return capital, given the state of the ecosystem at this time. The people who invested want to do good and do well. The point of doing good is to create positive climate impact, jobs, income upliftment, and more gender equality. But we also want to do well; if people are putting money with us, our goal is to turn a dollar into three and get them liquidity. It takes trust, it takes professional rigour even for small ticket sizes, and it takes a belief that we can both do good and do well. You mentioned $8 of follow-on capital for every $1 you invest. Is that across the entire portfolio, or just a few standout companies? How does your follow-on policy work? Our goal is to be the first investor, at least the first institutional investor, in most of our companies. That comes from a belief that in order to return capital, we need to get in early, at valuations that make sense, and find that commercial moment. Most of our companies are post-revenue. We feel like there is a fire starting to burn, and our goal is to push that fire into a full-fledged inferno. That is what venture capital is about: finding the moment when you are not buying the future growth; you are buying the opportunity to push something to the next level of scale. Of our 11 portfolio companies, four have now raised follow-on capital. To be clear, in climate tech, you do not need to raise tons of equity. If you are smart about how you build, you can raise off-balance-sheet debt,
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“We had no clear path about how this was going to turn out”: Day 1-1000 of Blaaiz
Two years ago, Ifelade Ayodele began his mornings glued to the app store. He refreshed the dashboard, checking how many people had downloaded Blaaiz, the cross-border payments startup he had launched in 2023, since he last looked. Blaaiz had about 500 users at the time, but Ayodele would tell you that he knew most of them by their first name. Today, Ayodele says he no longer monitors app downloads. The customers he keeps tabs on are banks, fintechs, payment companies, and financial institutions, integrating the payment infrastructure he built. To understand how he switched from building a consumer-facing app to a payment infrastructure, you have to go back further than Blaaiz’s first version, a Telegram bot, and beyond the day he decided to quit his job in 2024. In 2022, Ayodele worked as a management consultant at Accenture’s UK office, advising financial institutions and working on projects that took him across multiple countries. He recalled that while travelling for work, he encountered the familiar challenge of cross-border payments: exchanging currencies was expensive, and transferring money digitally was slow. “What was most apparent to me was the symptoms,” Ayodele told TechCabal in an interview on Thursday. “Why can’t I change money easily? Why is it impossible to get fair rates? I was dealing with the symptoms. For me, it was all about creating an app that had a smooth user experience.” Convinced that the problem was worth fixing himself, Ayodele left the certainty of consulting, teamed up with his co-founder and chief technology officer (CTO), Gbenga Oni, and started building Blaaiz. Blaaiz is building in Nigeria’s cross-border payments market, where personal remittance inflows reached $20.93 billion in 2024, according to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). The size of these flows presents an opportunity for companies building the infrastructure that powers them. Day 1: Too many hats and the Telegram bot On his first day as a founder, Ayodele was stepping into the unknown. Leaving Accenture meant walking away from a stable consulting career into uncertainty. There was no roadmap or assurance that anyone would use what he and Oni were about to build. “It was exciting to try out something that I had not done before,” he said. “But I was also anxious. We had no clear path as to what we were going to do or how this was going to turn out, but we decided to give it a shot.” With just two people building the company, job titles became blurred. Ayodele said that at the beginning, he was the CEO, but he was also the product manager, business analyst, compliance lead, and the person speaking to regulators about licences. “There were no clear KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), no structure,” he said. “Anything that came up, we just got it done.” The first iteration of Blaaiz was a Telegram chatbot. Customers looking to send money would message the bot, choose from a list of options, receive a payment link, and continue the transaction through a series of prompts. To find those first customers, Ayodele told TechCabal that he leaned on his network and posted the Telegram link on his WhatsApp status almost every day, asking friends to try the product and inform him of what was broken. “At that point, it was not about making money; it was about getting people to trust what I was building,” he said. That trust eventually gave Blaaiz enough momentum to launch a standalone mobile app in early 2024. Day 500: The app was not the answer By early 2024, Blaaiz had outgrown the Telegram bot. Ayodele explained that after months of navigating regulatory requirements, Blaaiz launched as a standalone mobile app, focused on retail cross-border payments. Initially, Blaaiz supported the Canada-Nigeria payment corridor before expanding to Europe and the UK through partnerships with Tier 1 banks, whose names Ayodele declined to disclose. However, the launch of the new app only introduced a new obsession for Ayodele. “There was a little bit of obsession with how many downloads we had in a day and where they were from,” he said. “At some point, I knew all our customers by their first names.” That closeness gave him an unfiltered view of what customers genuinely wanted. Ayodele said he observed that customers wanted more payment corridors and more supported currencies. Blaaiz could satisfy some of those requests, but some required infrastructure that the startup did not have access to. Curious to discover if the problem was unique to Blaaiz, Ayodele said he began studying about 10 competing remittance apps, which he did not disclose. He stated that many platforms supported a handful of payment corridors, while promising more countries and services labelled as coming soon. He realised that the bottleneck was the underlying infrastructure. “It became obvious that the rails the customers wanted, we couldn’t provide them in the way they wanted them,” he said. “It began to dawn on us that it was not a Blaaiz-specific problem.” Ayodele concluded that the real opportunity lay in building the infrastructure that would allow remittance apps, fintechs, and payment companies to expand into new markets without doing the heavy lifting themselves. By late 2024, Blaaiz began repositioning itself from an app that helped consumers move money to a payments infrastructure company that integrated with banks and payment rails to enable financial institutions to offer cross-border payments to their customers. “There was a bit of a conflict in our messaging, but we knew what we wanted, and then we just stayed true to our new value proposition,” Ayodele said. In his telling, that transition was facilitated by the heavy investment the team put in while building the consumer app. He added that moving from a consumer-facing app to selling infrastructure came with challenges, including more exhaustive due diligence processes and strengthening its compliance position across jurisdictions to secure banking partnerships and users. Day 1000: Playing the long game By 2025, the challenges that came with Blaaiz’s pivot were beginning to pay off. Blaaiz had become profitable,
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Bango thinks food prices shouldn’t depend on which trader you ask
There are no fixed prices in Nigeria’s commodity markets. Buy a basket of tomatoes from one trader and walk a few stalls down; the next trader might quote a different price, and the basket itself might not contain the same quantity. For consumers who do not regularly visit markets, navigating that uncertainty can be frustrating. It was this kind of uncertainty that caught the attention of Ademuyiwa Taofeek, one of Bango’s co-founders, during the 2024 Sallah festivities. The holiday is a Muslim celebration marked by communal prayers, family gatherings, and cooking bulk meals. While shopping for baskets of tomatoes and peppers in Lagos, he observed that prices were higher than in producing regions like Jos, a city in Plateau State, North-Central Nigeria. When Taofeek questioned the price difference, he received a familiar explanation: it was due to the logistics cost of transporting produce from northern farming communities to Lagos. Curious, Taofeek decided to test the assumption himself. He sourced the same commodities from Jos, paid to transport them to Lagos, and discovered that even after transport costs, he still spent less than he would have buying them locally. The experience made him believe that consumers have little visibility into what food commodities cost outside the markets closest to them, and that was a problem. When he shared the experience with Caleb Adenegan, who recounted the incident to TechCabal and would later become Taofeek’s co-founder, the pair began discussing how technology could help close that information gap. Before Bango, Adenegan had experimented with building products, including Curri AI, an educational tool that helped teachers create lesson plans and classroom materials and Weeb, a social networking product. Together, Taofeek and Adenegan saw an opportunity to create a platform where buyers could share what they paid for food commodities, where they bought them, and who sold them. That idea became Bango, a community-driven platform launched in November 2025. Adenegan told TechCabal in an interview in February that the model mirrors how Nigerians have traditionally shared market information. “Back in the day, the older generation spoke to each other,” Adenegan said on the call. “People would tell their neighbours where they got an item cheaper. Now the information system is fractured, and it leaves room for sellers to say any price and buyers don’t have an option but to buy it.” Bango operates in Nigeria’s food and drink market, which is estimated to reach around $98.97 billion by 2033. A 2019 report by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) revealed that 56.65% of total household expenditure was spent on food. Bango is trying to carve out a place in that market by helping consumers make more informed food purchasing decisions. How Bango turns market intelligence into a product When users open the web app, they see a feed of recent price submissions from other users. A user can search for a specific commodity, such as a basket of tomatoes, and then see results that display a range of prices tied to a market, including its location, the seller’s name and phone number, and the date and quantity of purchase. Bango dashboard. Image source: TechCabal The data is submitted by buyers of the commodity. To submit an entry, a user inputs the commodity name, the price they paid, quantity, market name, state, and location, and attaches a photo. Those submissions become part of the database that future buyers rely on, thereby creating a feedback loop. However, Adenegan explained that as users adopted the platform, the founders discovered that information alone did not solve the problem. A buyer could find a lower price for tomatoes, peppers, or onions on Bango, but that did not necessarily mean they could access those commodities. “We have tried to inform people and tell them that these commodities are cheaper elsewhere with Bango,” Adenegan said. “That helps solve the problem to an extent. But what if we can guarantee you this price directly from the farmers?” That question led to the development of Shopr by Bango, a commerce layer built on top of the startup’s price intelligence infrastructure. Currently operational only in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital city, Adenegan explained that Shopr enables users to purchase commodities directly through Bango. He said the startup sources produce from a network of farmers and suppliers and has processed between 40 and 50 orders since launching in June. The service also includes what Adenegan described as shared delivery. Rather than treating each order as a standalone delivery, the company groups orders from customers in the same locality and distributes the logistics costs across them. To make the model work, Adenegan stated that certain commodities were allocated to specific ordering days. Customers within a particular location are then encouraged to place orders on those days, enabling Bango to aggregate demand and reduce fulfilment costs. The startup currently handles deliveries through its own logistics infrastructure, a decision, Adenegan said, was deliberate. “We cannot outsource understanding that process to a third party,” he said. “ We need to understand the process ourselves before we can say we want to bring in a third party to partner with us on it.” Shopr is not the final piece of Bango’s strategy. According to Adenegan, Bango is preparing to launch Bango Market Day, a waitlist-based system that allows buyers to collectively purchase large volumes of commodities. Under the model, users indicate the quantity of a commodity they want to buy, after which Bango aggregates demand and coordinates supply through its farmer network. “Our major aim as an entity is to make sure that people can get cheap food commodities at a very low price regardless of how far the market might be from the person,” he said. How the model operates Bango currently generates revenue through Shopr, where customers pay both a service fee and a delivery fee on each order. According to Adenegan, the startup has grown largely through word-of-mouth, attracting up to 2,500 users. Bango’s Shopr competes directly with commerce platforms like Chowdeck, Mano, GoLemon, and other quick commerce
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Stabyl emerges from stealth with $2.7 million for Africa’s FX infrastructure
Many remarkable stories can trace their beginnings to the University of Oxford. J.R.R. Tolkien wrote much of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings there. Between 2021 and 2022, a conversation about stablecoins between two Master of Business Administration (MBA) students on the school’s basketball court sparked a story that would eventually become a startup. At the time of the conversation, Prince Nnamdi Ekeh was the co-CEO of Konga Group following the merger with his online marketplace Yudala, giving him a front-row seat to the challenges of payments and foreign exchange. Zachary Schwartzman, the second of the courtside pair, had gotten interested in African tech after covering the initial public offerings (IPOs) of Jumia as a Wall Street analyst. Their conversation circled the use of stablecoins and how they could solve real problems in markets like Nigeria and across Africa. Years later, they would start Stablyl, a fintech startup co-founded by Ekeh, Schwartzman, and Michael Anyi, a software engineer with over a decade of experience building financial infrastructure. Emerging from stealth with a $2.7 million pre-seed investment led by Konga, the startup is a liquidity exchange for financial institutions and payment service providers, built to make foreign exchange liquidity easier to access and settlements nearly instantaneous. Net foreign exchange inflow into Nigeria’s economy was $6.92 billion in February 2026, according to the Central Bank of Nigeria’s monthly economic report. Yet, the infrastructure through which that liquidity moves is fragmented, with payment service providers, banks and large institutions relying on multiple relationships to source foreign exchange. “Our goal is to connect these participants on one platform, creating the deepest and most accessible liquidity pool on the continent,” Schwartzman said. How Stabyl works Stabyl is neither a consumer-facing app nor a cross-border payments platform. The problem it aims to solve lies at the point where financial institutions source foreign exchange before a payment can be made. Ekeh illustrated this with the example of a large institution like Konga. He explained that when the e-commerce company needs foreign exchange, its treasury team typically reaches out to multiple banks, payment service providers, and liquidity providers to compare rates and source liquidity. By the time approvals are received and counterparties respond, market prices may already have shifted, forcing the process to begin again or settle at a less favourable rate. Stabyyl’s solution is to replace those fragmented bilateral negotiations with a central limit order book (CLOB), in which buyers and sellers of foreign exchange can automatically post and match orders. “Everybody on Stabyl can create a transaction, and that transaction gets matched and queued immediately, Anyi told TechCabal in an interview on Friday. “That entire process of having to make calls, hold transactions, figure out rates and do all this manual labour is completely removed.” The startup said its liquidity is aggregated from participating payment service providers (PSPs) and financial institutions, and maintains its own liquidity reserves with unnamed selected partners to ensure liquidity remains available when demand exceeds natural market activity. On Stabyl, settlement occurs across both traditional banking infrastructure and blockchain networks. For fiat transactions, Stabyl noted that it partnered with KongaPay as its official naira settlement partner. On the stablecoin settlement side, wallet infrastructure is provided by DFNS, a multi-party computation (MPC) wallet provider. The company noted that it currently supports USDT (Tether) and USDC (USD Coin) stablecoins. Still, it maintained that its infrastructure is blockchain-agnostic, selecting networks based on cost, speed, settlement finality, and the needs of its institutional clients. “Stabyl is connecting stablecoin rails with fiat banking rails because you can’t separate the two,” Ekeh noted. “Stablecoins are great, but they’re not great on their own. You still need to convert back to local currency.” In practice, when a PSP deposits naira on Stabyl through KongaPay, it can then place an order at its preferred exchange rate or match one already available on the platform. Once the transaction is executed, participants can settle and withdraw in either fiat currency or stablecoins. For institutions that want to integrate the infrastructure directly into their treasury systems, Stabyl also noted that it provides Application Programming Interface (APIs) that offer programmatic access to its liquidity pool. The business of building the infrastructure Many FX businesses in Nigeria make money by capitalising on the exchange rate spread, meaning they buy currencies at a low rate and sell them at a higher rate. Rather than holding inventory and earning a spread, Stabyl said it charges a take rate on each transaction processed through the platform. The company did not disclose the figure but said it intentionally keeps it low to incentivise institutions to push more volume through the platform. “What we want to do is grow the liquidity pot,” Schwartzman said. “That is where we see the opportunity: by growing liquidity for clients. We believe that will allow clients to provide more liquidity, do more trades, and be more successful.” Stabyl’s emergence from stealth comes as Nigeria’s regulatory environment for digital assets has shifted considerably in its favour. The CBN lifted its ban on cryptocurrency transactions in 2023, and the Securities and Exchange Commission followed with its Accelerated Regulatory Incubation Programme, bringing virtual asset service providers into a formal compliance framework. “The regulatory direction is clear,” Schwartzman said. “We would rather build this infrastructure correctly from the start, working hand-in-hand with regulators, than arrive late to a settled market.” In the same space, companies like Onafriq, Yellow Card and Fincra are building payment infrastructure across Africa. Stabyl, however, maintained that these companies are its potential customers, not competitors. “We’re trying to provide liquidity to other liquidity providers, foreign exchange companies, payment service providers and financial institutions,” Schwartzman said. “So, if we look at everything as a pie, we’re not trying to gain market share from this pie. We’re creating more dough to make this a bigger pie for everyone.” The company stated that the pre-seed funding from Konga will be used for regulatory licensing, infrastructure build, and compliance. Beyond capital and being its naira
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Why Africa’s telcos are embracing Starlink instead of fighting it
Until January 2023, when Starlink launched in Nigeria—its first African market—the continent’s telecom industry operated on a simple assumption: connectivity had to be built from the ground up. Mobile operators have spent decades investing billions of dollars in towers, fibre networks, spectrum licences, and, more recently, data centres to connect millions of people across Africa. The farther a community was from existing infrastructure, the more expensive and difficult it became to serve. Starlink’s arrival challenged that logic. By delivering high-speed internet directly from low-Earth orbit satellites, the company introduced a new connectivity model that bypassed many of the infrastructure constraints that have long shaped Africa’s telecom industry. Three years later, as Starlink expands across the continent and attracts a growing subscriber base, mobile operators are being forced to rethink not only how they extend coverage but also how they compete, invest, and grow. Starlink now operates in 27 African countries and delivers faster download speeds than most traditional fixed broadband providers, according to the latest data from Ookla’s Speedtest Intelligence, released on June 15. In response, operators including MTN, Airtel, Orange, and Vodafone are forging partnerships with satellite companies to expand rural coverage, lower network costs, and unlock new revenue opportunities. The result is a fundamental shift in Africa’s telecom playbook. Starlink reaches an “estimated half a million users by the end of 2025 in Africa, out of around 10 million globally, with the Americas and Asia leading,” according to the Ookla report. Subscriber data remains scarce across Africa, as only a handful of telecom regulators publish such figures. In Nigeria, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) reported 91,991 Starlink subscribers in Q4 2025, making it the country’s second-largest internet service provider. Kenya’s Communications Authority reported 19,470 subscribers in September 2025, while Rwanda’s Utilities Regulatory Authority (RURA) recorded 4,489 subscribers in Q2 2025. Starlink’s rise has been driven largely by frustrations with Africa’s broadband infrastructure. Across many African countries, consumers and businesses continue to face unreliable fibre connections, limited broadband availability, slow speeds, and restrictive data allowances. In areas where fibre does not exist, Starlink offers something that traditional providers often cannot: fast internet delivered almost anywhere. Mukesh Chandra, former chief technology officer at Globacom and telecom infrastructure consultant, said the comparison between satellite broadband and terrestrial networks often overlooks the technical limitations that continue to favour fibre and mobile infrastructure. Chandra explained that satellite internet cannot completely avoid delays because signals must travel between Earth and satellites before reaching users. This makes response times slower than on mobile networks. By contrast, 5G was built to reduce these delays, making activities such as video calls, gaming, and real-time applications run more smoothly. While Starlink has shown impressive download speeds across several African markets, Chandra argued that bandwidth delivered through satellites cannot match the scale of fibre-backed mobile networks. “Bandwidth delivered through satellite cannot be compared with bandwidth delivered through fibre. Fibre will always be superior,” he said. “Satellite communications are most effective in areas where fibre or microwave infrastructure cannot be deployed and where operators lack network coverage.” Not a threat, a collaboration When Starlink first entered African markets, many analysts predicted a showdown between satellite broadband and mobile operators. That feared showdown has largely failed to materialise. The economics simply do not support it. While Starlink’s monthly subscription fees are competitive in some markets, including Ghana and Zimbabwe, the service remains out of reach for many Africans because of the high upfront cost of equipment, which ranges from $200 to $700. Even as the company continues to expand its footprint, reaching 27 African countries after securing a licence to operate in Côte d’Ivoire on June 17, the cost of entry remains a significant barrier to mass adoption. The technology also suffers from practical constraints. Users need specialised hardware, indoor coverage remains weak, and Direct-to-Device services still support only limited functionality. These realities have convinced operators that satellite internet is unlikely to replace mobile networks. Instead, it offers an opportunity to solve one of the industry’s most persistent challenges: rural connectivity. Chandra believes this explains why operators increasingly view Starlink as a partner rather than a competitor. “There is significant scope for satellite communications in Nigeria, particularly in offshore and remote areas where terrestrial networks struggle to reach,” he said. “But satellite services and mobile networks are designed for different purposes.” That view is increasingly shared across the industry. “Ultimately, we have to embrace LEO satellites; they are not going away,” MTN Group CEO Ralph Mupita said during the company’s Capital Markets Day on June 11, monitored by TechCabal. “We have already started one or two partnerships, particularly in Zambia with Starlink.” MTN began a proof-of-concept trial of Starlink’s Direct-to-Device technology in Zambia on March 7, while MTN South Africa conducted successful voice and SMS trials with satellite provider Lynk Global during the same period. “We are embracing the technology; we are not running away from it,” Mupita said. “A person connected at home will increasingly be using a combination of these technologies.” MTN did not respond to the request for additional comments for this story. The same shift is playing out across the industry. In December 2025, Airtel Africa partnered with SpaceX to distribute Starlink broadband and support Direct-to-Device services across its 14 African markets. Vodafone followed in March 2026, partnering with Amazon’s Project Kuiper to provide satellite connectivity and backhaul services across Africa. In June 2025, Orange signed a multi-year agreement with Eutelsat OneWeb to support enterprise connectivity, government services, and mobile backhaul. Alastair Jones, Head of Investor Relations at Airtel Africa, noted that terrestrial or earth-bound, physical telecom infrastructure investments remain the company’s primary priority even as they lean into satellite ecosystems. “We see satellite technology as complementary and likely to co-exist to enhance the customer proposition,” Jones told TechCabal in an emailed response. “As you may know, we have partnered with Starlink across our markets, reflecting the complementary nature of satellite technology to our offering.” Why the collaboration is growing Despite decades of telecom investment, large
Read MoreGoogle Pixel 11 vs. Pixel 10: Should you upgrade this year?
Table of contents Pixel 11 vs Pixel 10 at a glance What’s changed Price Release date Pixel 11 Pro vs Pixel 10 Pro Pixel 11 Pro XL vs Pixel 10 Pro XL Pixel 11 Pro Fold vs Pixel 10 Pro Fold Should you upgrade? The Pixel 10 is already on shelves, but information about the Pixel 11 keeps piling up. If you bought a Pixel 10 last year, or you’re still deciding on a new phone, this guide breaks down everything we know so far. Google hasn’t confirmed a single Pixel 11 spec yet. Everything else here is based on speculations, mainly a Telegram post from a leaker called Mystic Leaks that surfaced on May 4, 2026, along with render images shared by OnLeaks. We’ve tagged every Pixel 11 detail as speculation, so you know exactly what to trust and what to treat as a rumour. Here’s how the two phones compare. Pixel 11 vs Pixel 10 at a glance What’s changed Here’s a closer look at what’s different between the two phones. 1. Design and display The Pixel 10’s screen measures 6.3 inches, with a resolution of 1080 by 2424 and a refresh rate ranging from 60 to 120Hz. Peak brightness tops out at 3,000 nits. The Pixel 11 looks set to keep the same screen size and resolution, but leaks suggest a small brightness bump, peaking at around 3,100 nits. Renders shared by OnLeaks, via Android Headlines, show a few changes on the outside. The camera bar switches to an all-glass, single-tone look instead of the two-tone aluminium strip on the Pixel 10. The bezels look thinner, too, and the body is rumoured to be about 0.1mm thinner overall. One thing missing from the back of the Pixel 11: the infrared temperature sensor. Google is reportedly removing it from every model to make room for a new feature called Pixel Glow. 2. Camera The Pixel 10 already has three rear cameras. There’s a 48MP main lens, a 13MP ultrawide, and a 10.8MP telephoto with 5x zoom. The Pixel 11 is rumoured to get a new 50MP main sensor, internally codenamed chemosh, which would mark the first hardware change to the base model’s main camera in a while. Leaks haven’t confirmed details for the ultrawide or telephoto lens, and there’s no sign the base Pixel 11 will get the camera upgrades rumoured for the Pro models. Most of the camera gains this year are expected to come from software, such as an upgraded Cinematic Blur mode and new AI video tools running on the Tensor G6 chip. 3. Performance and chipset The Pixel 10 runs on Google’s Tensor G5 chip, built on a 3nm process, paired with a Samsung Exynos modem. The Pixel 11 is rumoured to switch to the Tensor G6, built on a smaller 2nm process, and swap the Samsung modem for a MediaTek M90. If that holds, it would be the first Pixel phone without a Samsung modem, which could help with the connection issues some Pixel owners have reported over the years. There’s one catch worth watching. Android Authority points out that the Tensor G6’s new GPU appears to be based on older 2021-era graphics architecture, so gaming performance gains might be smaller than expected. Then there’s the RAM question. The Pixel 10 ships with 12GB of RAM across the board. Leaks suggest the Pixel 11 base model could drop to 8GB, with 12GB only available on higher storage tiers. Even the leaker who posted this detail marked it with a question mark, so treat it as a possible downgrade rather than a confirmed one. The timing lines up with a global memory chip shortage that’s pushing manufacturers toward cheaper RAM configurations in 2026. 4. Battery and charging The Pixel 10 has a 4,970mAh battery, and it charges at 29W over a cable or 15W wirelessly with Qi2. Leaks put the Pixel 11’s battery at 4,840mAh, about 130mAh smaller. Charging numbers haven’t leaked yet, so we’re assuming Qi2 wireless charging carries over until Google says otherwise. A smaller battery alongside a possible RAM cut means the Pixel 11 will need the new chip’s efficiency gains to hold onto similar battery life. 5. AI features Google announced Gemini Intelligence at The Android Show on May 12, 2026. To use it, a phone needs a Gemini Nano v3 flagship-level chip, at least 12GB of RAM, and several years of guaranteed software updates. The Pixel 10 meets every one of these, so it already has access to Gemini’s full AI features. This is where the RAM rumour gets interesting. If the base Pixel 11 really does ship with 8GB of RAM, it would fall short of Google’s own 12GB requirement and miss out on Gemini Intelligence entirely. 9to5Google has pointed out that this makes the 8GB leak look shaky, since locking the cheapest Pixel 11 out of Google’s headline AI feature would be an odd move. Treat this as an open question rather than a settled fact, since nothing here has been confirmed by Google. Pixel Glow is the other big addition. It’s an RGB LED light built into the camera bar that replaces the old infrared temperature sensor, and it lights up during AI activity or when your phone is face down to show notifications. Leaks suggest every Pixel 11 model gets it, including the base phone. Since Pixel Glow needs new LED hardware, it’s unlikely to reach the Pixel 10 through a software update. Price The Pixel 10 launched at $799. Pricing for the Pixel 11 hasn’t leaked in any concrete way, but most outlets expect it to start near $799, too, with some predicting a $50 to $100 increase. A few things make a price increase likely this year. Memory chip prices have jumped by close to 70% since early 2025, and the cost of building phones has risen by double digits across the board. Samsung already raised the price of its Galaxy S26 by $100 compared to the S25, while Apple kept iPhone
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