👨🏿🚀TechCabal Daily – Spiro acquires Coexlion
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Subscribe Spiro acquires Coexlion Wasoko co-founder launches new fund Absa taps former Standard Bank exec CAK proposed fines for Kenyan telcos World Wide Web 3 Events companies E-mobility startup Spiro acquires Coexlion, to build R&D centre in Kenya Image Source: Spiro Spiro, the Nairobi-based e-mobility startup that raised $100 million in October 2025, has acquired Coexlion, a specialist engineering consultancy focused exclusively on two-wheelers and electric vehicles (EVs), with offices in the United Kingdom and Bangalore, India. Spiro announced the acquisition on X (formerly Twitter). Coexlion is not a household name, but its credentials are specific and relevant. The firm has worked with clients ranging from Triumph to Hero, and has direct experience building vehicles for EV-only manufacturers including Ather Energy, Ola, and Arc. Its work spans the entire product development cycle, from battery sizing and concept design all the way through to supplier selection, production validation, and getting a finished vehicle off an assembly line. It also holds patents on a modular drive system designed for electric two-wheelers. For Spiro, this is not a prestige acquisition. It is an engineering one. The timing makes sense. Spiro now has 95,000 electric motorcycles deployed across Africa, with over 2,500 battery-swapping stations and more than 30 million battery swaps completed. In Kenya alone, the company captured 52% of new electric motorbike sales in 2025. At that scale, the question is no longer whether Spiro can sell motorcycles. It is whether the motorcycles it sells are built for the roads they will actually ride on. Most EVs deployed across Africa are designed elsewhere and adapted minimally, if at all, for local conditions. Rough terrain, inconsistent road surfaces, heat, dust, and the specific weight demands of motorcycle taxi work are not factors that a product engineered for European or Asian markets naturally accounts for. Spiro said it will also build a dedicated research and development (R&D) centre in Kenya, staffed by engineers who now own the full design and validation capability in-house, to fix that adaptability problem. The continent’s largest e-mobility operator is now trying to become its most purpose-built one. We Have Secured the Bank of Ghana EPSP Licence. Fincra has officially secured its Enhanced Payment Service Provider licence. This regulatory milestone authorizes Fincra to directly collect, process, and settle payments in Ghanaian Cedis, offering a highly streamlined financial pipeline for businesses operating within the region. Start here. companies Wasoko’s co-founder intends to invest $100 million into companies that create jobs Image Source: Africa Jobs Fund African startup founders have spent the past few years raising money to help people move money faster or receive their deliveries on time. Daniel Yu, co-founder of Wasoko, a Kenyan B2B e-commerce company, appears to be taking a different route. Here’s what happened: Yu has launched the Africa Jobs Fund (AJF), a new philanthropic investment fund that wants to raise up to $100 million over the next five years to support companies creating jobs across Africa. The fund includes heavyweight advisors like Iyinoluwa Aboyeji and former USAID administrator Samantha Power. Africa’s labour math is not math-ing: Roughly 10–12 million young Africans enter the workforce every year, but only about three million formal jobs are created annually. At the same time, around 439 million Africans were living below the extreme poverty line of $2.15 a day in 2025, while unemployment across the continent averaged 8.91%. What AJF brings to the table: AJF says it wants to focus on two areas it believes can bring people out of poverty. The first is export manufacturing. In simple terms: helping African factories and manufacturers grow enough to sell products globally. The second is international labour mobility, which is a fancy way of saying that it would back businesses helping Africans access overseas work opportunities without getting trapped by exploitative recruitment agents. What AJF is betting on is that Africa’s next big economic breakthrough may not come from another super app or a startup that promises faster transfers. Instead, it could come from helping more people access stable, higher-paying work both at home and abroad. Payments for import, export, and commodity trade in emerging markets. For African fintechs, banks, and trade operators, high-value supplier and commodity payments are still an execution problem. Stable OS 2.0 standardises these flows across 100+ markets and 75+ currencies through one unified RTGS-ready instruction/ through one unified instruction, with local RTGS reach. Learn more. banking Absa hires ex-Standard Bank executive to lead its business banking unit Image Source: Absa Bank At this point, Absa Group is beginning to look like a Standard Bank alumni association. Absa, South Africa’s third-largest bank with R2.24 trillion (115 billion) in assets, has tapped Leon Barnard, who previously led Standard Bank Group’s East Africa operations, to lead its business banking operations. In the new role, Barnardwilloversee the division responsible for entrepreneurs, SMEs, commercial clients, and business-banking growth, spanning the African continent. The bank noted that its Business Banking unit, which made headline earnings of R3.9 billion ($238 million) in 2025, is a core engine of growth for the group. Compared to its total revenue of R115.7 billion ($7 billion) in 2025, business banking contributed 3.4%. Barnard left Standard Bank in 2024. During his Standard Bank days, the former executive held several senior leadership roles, including leading personal and business banking operations. At Absa, he’ll have a familiar responsibility to grow Absa’s business banking division, which now forms an important aspect of its Africa operations. Absa has a history: In 2025, Absa hired Kenny Fihla, who previously served as deputy CEO and head of Corporate and Investment Banking (CIB) division at Standard Bank, as its Group CEO. It also hired
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Why Glovo thinks Africa could become the world’s biggest quick commerce market
In cities like Lagos, Nigeria, and Nairobi, Kenya, delivery is not just moving food or products from one point to another. It is also navigating traffic snarl-ups that can take hours, some streets that digital maps still struggle to recognise, and consumers who demand convenience while living inside deeply informal economies. Dima Rasnovsky, who oversees operations for global on-demand delivery platform Glovo across six African markets, told TechCabal in an interview in early May that those frictions are not obstacles, but the foundation of a distinctly African model for online commerce. In his view, the continent’s delivery economy is unlikely to mirror the warehouse-heavy systems of Europe or America. Instead, it may be shaped by dense neighbourhood stores, mobile money infrastructure, and merchants who already sit close to where customers live. That shift is central to Glovo’s growing focus on quick commerce—the business of delivering groceries, pharmacy products, electronics, cosmetics, and other household items within minutes. The company believes the category could eventually become larger than restaurant delivery in several African cities, even as the economics remain difficult. Fuel prices are volatile, margins are thin, and platforms must keep delivery affordable while convincing riders and merchants to stay on the network. Africa already has dense cities, millions of informal merchants, and rapidly growing smartphone adoption. What it lacks, Rasnovsky says, is a mature e-commerce infrastructure. He believes that the gap may allow African consumers to move directly into fast local delivery rather than traditional warehouse-heavy online retail. “Africa skipped desktop and moved straight to mobile,” Rasnovsky said. “Quick commerce can become the same leap for e-commerce.” Glovo’s bet comes as delivery platforms across Africa chase profitability after years of expansion driven by discounts and venture funding amid rising fuel costs and food inflation in major markets like Kenya and Nigeria. As margins tighten and competitors like Jumia Food exit the market, platforms are expanding into groceries, pharmacy deliveries, and courier services to drive steadier order volumes. Density is the whole business Quick commerce sounds simple: a customer places an order through an app, a rider collects the item from a nearby merchant, and the order arrives within minutes. However, the economics are far more complex. Platforms mainly make money from merchant commissions and customer delivery fees. But African consumers remain highly price-sensitive, limiting how much companies can charge for delivery. Restaurants and retailers remain under pressure from high import, logistics, and fuel costs, despite recent currency stability in key Glovo markets such as Kenya and Nigeria. “Margins are very challenging in Africa,” Rasnovsky said. That leaves one major lever: density. Riders’ safety training in Cote d’Ivoire, April 2026 Delivery platforms become more efficient when many merchants and customers are within proximity to each other. A rider delivering within Nairobi’s central business district costs far less than one crossing the city during rush hour. The same applies in Lagos, where congestion and road closures can delay deliveries and eat into margins “Profitability is a side effect of volume,” Rasnovsky said. “Volume is a side effect of having the right amount of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) on the platform.” That explains why Glovo continues to aggressively onboard small merchants across African cities. He said many businesses already operate through Instagram pages, WhatsApp storefronts, and informal retail channels, but still lack logistics infrastructure, digital payments, and delivery systems. Glovo sees itself as the logistics layer connecting nearby merchants to nearby customers. In early May 2026, the company announced plans to invest KES 10 billion ($77.6 million) in Kenya by 2030 amid growing competition in the country’s delivery sector. The investment will fund technology, logistics infrastructure, talent expansion, and growth into more towns beyond Nairobi, which now serves as part of Glovo’s African operations hub. In Kenya, Glovo competes with Uber Eats, Bolt Food, and in-house delivery platforms like KFC. According to a 2024 report by Kenya’s Competition Authority, Glovo currently leads the country’s online food delivery market with roughly 33% consumer preference, ahead of Uber Eats at 21% and Bolt Food at 16%. The regulator also found that Glovo controlled about 46% of grocery delivery preferences among Kenyan consumers. Groceries are growing, but restaurants still pay better Restaurants still dominate Glovo’s business because food remains the highest-frequency category. But the company wants customers ordering groceries, pharmacy products, electronics, and beauty items alongside takeaway meals. Glovo said its quick commerce business now generates more than €1 billion ($1.17 billion) in annual turnover globally, with grocery and retail categories growing by about 50% in 2024. The strategy mirrors a wider industry push beyond restaurant delivery. In August 2025, Delivery Hero, Glovo’s parent company, noted in a statement that customers using both food delivery and quick commerce services spend more than five times as much as food-only users. However, that ambition creates another problem: groceries remain far less profitable than restaurants. Restaurant chains usually have healthier margins, giving platforms more room to take commissions. According to Rasnovsky, grocery retailers operate on much lower margins than restaurant chains, often between 1% and 3%, leaving limited room for delivery platforms to earn commissions. “The least profitable category is groceries,” Rasnovsky said. “The most profitable is restaurants.” Glovo Partner Academy, Kenya, March 2026 Glovo is also working with dark kitchen partners in markets like Nigeria. Dark kitchens are delivery-only cooking hubs built for online orders rather than dine-in customers. Rasnovsky said operating large kitchen networks directly may not always make sense for Glovo because the model is capital-intensive and falls outside the company’s core expertise. Part of the appeal is that dark kitchens can help fill gaps in restaurant coverage across large cities where organised chains remain limited. In South Africa, KFC operates more than 1,000 stores. Nigeria’s Chicken Republic has fewer than 400 outlets, despite Nigeria’s much larger population. The result is a fragmented food retail market that still relies heavily on independent restaurants and informal operators. Riders, cash and the infrastructure problem The shortage of organised restaurant chains is only one part of the challenge.
Read MoreThe next fintech race is infrastructure. Paga wants in
African fintech players raced to acquire merchants, onboard users, issue wallets, and become the app consumers reached for whenever they needed to move money. But as digital payments mature, more fintechs are increasingly discovering that selling the infrastructure underneath financial transactions may be another business with steadier economics. This is a bet that Paga Group is now making. Through Paga Engine, its payments infrastructure business, the Nigerian fintech is packaging nearly two decades of internal payments technology into services other companies can plug into instead of building their own systems. Across the sector, infrastructure is becoming increasingly attractive. Stripe evolved from online checkout into a broader financial infrastructure and embedded finance tool. Instead of depending on millions of consumer transactions or expensive customer acquisition, infrastructure businesses sit underneath multiple money flows simultaneously. This model is especially attractive in markets where digital payment volumes are expanding rapidly. Nigeria’s digital payments reached ₦1.07 quadrillion ($774.9 billion) in 2024, according to the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS), and hit ₦284.99 trillion ($206.4 billion) in the first quarter of 2025 alone. The continued rise in the country’s digital payment numbers shows that more marketplaces need payout systems. Logistics companies need payment acceptance and driver disbursements. Digital platforms want embedded wallets. Enterprises need transfers, collections, reconciliation, and payment orchestration. With many of these companies needing financial capabilities embedded inside their businesses without spending years building a regulated payment operation, Paga wants its engine to be their solution. The fintech wants companies to outsource the complexity of building a payment stack from scratch and focus on their core competencies. Monetising infrastructure Operating payment rails is not cheap. Companies must navigate licensing, compliance, fraud monitoring, settlement operations, security architecture, transaction monitoring, engineering maintenance, and regulatory oversight. Depending on the licence category, payment licences can cost ₦100 million ($72,422) or more at the initial stage in Nigeria. According to Stripe, developing even a minimum viable payment gateway can cost between $150,000 and $250,000, excluding maintenance, operational support, and ongoing compliance investments. For businesses whose core competency is logistics, commerce, retail, or software, not financial services, building that stack internally can be expensive. “That money can be better invested in the businesses’ core services,” Ramon Bello, general manager of Paga Engine, told TechCabal in an interview. Paga Engine processed roughly $12 billion in transaction value in 2025 across about 100 million transactions, according to Bello. At estimated take rates of 0.1% to 0.3%, that could translate into $12 million to $36 million in annual revenue potential from the infrastructure business alone. The Central Bank of Nigeria caps some payment charges at 1.25%. “When you look at payments, money will move back and forth. That is where the Paga Engine makes money,” Bello said. “Within that flow of money, we charge a very small fee that allows us to keep the service running.” Paga says onboarding costs and pricing of its engine vary depending on use cases, but fees are deliberately kept low enough to make outsourcing attractive. A crowded market Banks and fintechs already offer application programming interface (API) integrations. Flutterwave, Africa’s largest payments startup, is a major payment processor that offers API-driven payment collections and disbursements. It has processed $40 billion since 2016. Stripe-owned Paystack allows businesses to accept online payments via cards and bank transfers. Cross-border infrastructure companies like Onafriq are building regional payment connectivity for businesses. Paga argues its edge is not just technology but operational support layered on top of infrastructure. Paga Engine currently supports more than 200 businesses, including Meta and Amazon, according to the company. Most of its clients are primarily high-volume businesses, with a strong focus on business-to-business clients. The platform supports payment gateways, wallet infrastructure, transfers, embedded payment experiences, and agent distribution. In practical terms, a logistics company could accept delivery payments, issue customer wallets, or pay drivers without building a dedicated payments stack. Paga says its differentiation comes from operational tooling around compliance, fraud monitoring, transaction visibility, and enterprise support, functions businesses might otherwise have to build internally. “We put proper support behind our engine for businesses leveraging the infrastructure,” Bello said. That support matters because building payment gateways often involves more than integrating software. It requires navigating local payment behaviour, settlement complexity, compliance obligations, especially with fraud cases on the rise, and operational risk. Paga Engine’s immediate focus remains on Nigeria, but the company sees longer-term expansion opportunities across Africa, particularly around cross-border commerce and helping international businesses connect to African payment systems. For Paga Group, the infrastructure push is ultimately a bet on where fintech value is moving. Consumer payments are becoming more crowded, and businesses across sectors increasingly want financial capabilities without becoming financial institutions themselves. In that environment, the future of fintech may not belong only to the companies consumers transact with directly, but also to the firms sitting underneath thousands of money flows.
Read MoreWasoko cofounder Daniel Yu launches $100 million Africa Jobs Fund
Daniel Yu, co-founder of Wasoko, the Kenyan B2B e-commerce company that merged with Egypt’s MaxAB, has launched the Africa Jobs Fund (AJF), a new philanthropic investment fund which aims to mobilise $100 million over the next five years. The fund intends to support companies that create high-productivity jobs across Africa. According to the fund, AFJ will focus on export manufacturing and international labour mobility, two sectors it considers among the continent’s strongest pathways to economic mobility and poverty reduction. This launch comes as Africa faces deepening poverty and unemployment pressures. Despite years of startup growth and the rise of investment in African innovation, formal job creation has struggled to keep pace with population growth and labour market demand. In 2025, around 439 million people on the continent were living below the extreme poverty line of $2.15 a day, while Africa’s average unemployment rate stood at 8.91%. At the same time, only about three million formal jobs are created on the continent annually. AJF argues that the widening gap between labour force growth and access to stable, income-generating employment has become one of Africa’s most urgent development challenges. “Persistent poverty is, at its core, a jobs problem. Africa has hundreds of millions of working-age people reliant on subsistence agriculture or informal work that pays a few dollars a day,” says Daniel Yu, Founding Partner of the Africa Jobs Fund, in a statement. “Those same people, in the right job at home or abroad, could earn significant multiples of their income. “AJF exists to back the companies that create those jobs and opportunities. Nothing else in development comes close to the impact of getting this right, and that is why I am building AJF.” The fund estimates that its investments could increase African workers’ earnings by more than $50 billion over time and help at least 250,000 low-income people double their lifetime income. To achieve this, AJF intends to invest across two core areas. In export manufacturing, the fund plans to support businesses tackling the high setup costs that often prevent African manufacturers from scaling globally. These barriers include worker training, supply chain development, buyer acquisition, and establishing operational systems capable of meeting international demand. AJF notes that it believes helping companies overcome these constraints could unlock larger pools of commercial capital and integrate African manufacturers into global supply chains. The second focus area is international labour mobility, where AFJ notes that it intends to support companies helping African workers access overseas employment opportunities. According to the fund, many African workers remain excluded from these opportunities because of exploitative recruitment systems, expensive placement fees, opaque migration pathways, and inadequate training infrastructure. AJF says it wants to support businesses that are building and formalising high-return migration corridors. The fund is led by Yu, alongside Ben Hyman, founder of Talent Safari, who joins as Operating Partner. Senior advisors to AFJ include Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, co-founder of Flutterwave and Samantha Power, former Head of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and former US Ambassador to the United Nations. “African founders have shown they can build category-defining companies. The next decade is about building the ones that put millions of people to work,” Aboyeji said. “AJF deserves the attention of every founder and funder serious about jobs and growth on the continent.” The launch of AJF comes eight months after Yu stepped down from his full-time role at Wasoko, where he helped raise more than $145 million and scale operations across multiple African markets, according to the company. AFJ will operate as a fund under Renaissance Philanthropy, the nonprofit founded by former White House science advisors Tom Kalil and Kumar Garg for philanthropic funds. “The Africa Jobs Fund is exactly the kind of thesis-driven, operator-led philanthropic fund that Renaissance Philanthropy was built to support,” Garg said. “Daniel and his team have done the analytical work to identify the highest-return interventions in poverty alleviation in developing economies, and they have the venture-building experience to bet early and activate the founders who can act on that thesis.”
Read MoreSouth Africa-listed 4Sight Holdings eyes Africa AI push after strong growth
South Africa-headquartered 4Sight Holdings is positioning itself as a key player in Africa’s AI economy, leveraging a “Cape to Cairo” strategy built around cloud, industrial technology and intelligent automation Buoyed by strong FY26 results announced on Wednesday, 4Sight Holdings chief executive officer Tertius Zitzke outlined an ambitious vision to position the company at the centre of Africa’s enterprise AI adoption. The Johannesburg Stock Exchange-listed tech firm, which operates through more than 1000 channel partners across Africa, the Middle East and Europe, says demand for cloud, industrial automation and AI-powered business systems is accelerating beyond South Africa into East, West and North Africa. Zitzke told TechCabal in an interview on Wednesday that Africa is no longer a future AI opportunity, but a present one, despite uneven regulation, internet access and fragmented infrastructure. “Africa is the next tech growth engine. The continent’s young population presents an opportunity for AI adoption and innovation,” he said. The company says countries like Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Zambia and Ethiopia are already emerging as growth hubs, as businesses move from experimenting with AI to embedding it into day-to-day operations. The 4Sight CEO emphasised that South Africa remained central to the strategy, serving as a launchpad for broader continental expansion. “Across smart mining, smart industry and smart manufacturing, we are enabling clients to transition from traditional operations to AI-led, cloud-first enterprises designed for resilience, efficiency and sustainable growth,” he said. The company’s confidence comes on the back of robust financial results and the declaration of an ordinary cash dividend announced on Wednesday morning. For the year ended February 28, 2026, 4Sight reported a 16.3% increase in revenue to R1.16 billion ($64 million), while operating profit surged 45.8% to R71.7 million ($4 million). Headline earnings per share climbed 46.1% to 10.732 cents, and the company declared a final dividend of 3 cents per share. According to Group chief financial officer Eric van der Merwe, stronger margins were driven by improved revenue mix, lower operational costs and productivity gains linked to AI adoption internally. “We embraced AI to boost output and make our existing resources more effective, and our headcount increased by just 50 employees during the period,” he said. Performance was supported by gains across all four business verticals. Its Business Environment (BE) cluster, which focuses on data and enterprise systems, delivered standout performance with a 15.5% rise in revenue and an 89% increase in profit before tax, fuelled by rising demand for structured data needed for AI implementation. Operational Technology (OT), which services sectors such as mining and industrial operations, grew revenue by 7.1% despite softer mining conditions, while the Channel Partner (CP) division expanded strongly across the EMEA region, recording more than 20% revenue growth in dollar terms. Nick Botha, 4Sight’s Chief Partner Officer, highlighted that the strongest African growth came from countries often overlooked in continental tech conversations. “We have had triple-digit growth in markets such as Ethiopia, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Namibia, Uganda, Ghana, Kenya and Zambia. The spread is quite wide. Africa is not one market,” he stated. Kenya remains a strategic anchor for East Africa, he added, while Ghana and Nigeria lead in West Africa and Algeria and Egypt are focus areas in North Africa.
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4 easy steps to move your ChatGPT memory to Claude
Switching between different Artificial Intelligence (AI) chatbots or agents can feel like moving into a new house. Many users are eager to try Anthropic’s AI assistant, Claude, because it proves helpful in assisting with tasks. However, the biggest hurdle for users might be the thought of starting from scratch. The hesitation to switch often boils down to the mental exhaustion of re-introducing yourself. Over months of use, AI chatbot ChatGPT learns your profession, your writing tone, your past projects, and your specific preferences through its memory feature. Teaching a new AI tool those exact details all over again feels like a tedious chore. Fortunately, you don’t have to lose that tailored experience. You can seamlessly migrate your digital history into Claude by exporting your ChatGPT data. This allows you to leverage multiple AI tools simultaneously without wasting time rebuilding your profile from the ground up. This article breaks down the process in 4 easy steps. 4 steps to transfer your ChatGPT memory to Claude 1. Request your ChatGPT data export The migration process begins by retrieving your accumulated data from OpenAI, the parent company of ChatGPT. Instead of copy-pasting individual chat histories, you can request a comprehensive archive of your account’s interactions. How to do it: Open ChatGPT > navigate to your profile icon in the bottom-left corner > click on “Settings”. From the menu, select “data controls” > locate the “export data” option. Then confirm the request to initiate the export. Screenshot of ChatGPT taken on the web, showing the “settings” option. Image source: TechCabal Screenshot of ChatGPT taken on the web, showing “data controls” and “export data” options. Image source: TechCabal Screenshot of ChatGPT taken on the web, showing the “confirm export” button. Image source: TechCabal 2. Download your data package from your email OpenAI will compile your entire conversation history into a downloadable ZIP file. This archive contains files like your chat history, message feedback, and basic account information. Note that ChatGPT’s memory — the stored preferences and habits it has learned about you — is separate from your conversation history and is not included as a clean, transferable file in this export. How to do it: Check the email address associated with your OpenAI account. You will receive a download link once the file is ready. Note that this delivery can take up to seven days, depending on the size of your data history and your network speed. Download the ZIP file to your computer once it arrives. A screenshot of an email from OpenAI, acknowledging the data export request from ChatGPT. Image source: TechCabal A screenshot of an email from OpenAI, showing the downloadable data from ChatGPT. Image source: TechCabal 3. Extract your memory summary from ChatGPT Anthropic provides a dedicated import tool that transfers your stored preferences, habits, and context from ChatGPT directly into Claude’s memory system. The process starts with a special extraction prompt you paste into ChatGPT. Screenshot of Claude’s website taken on web, showing the prompt to copy. Image source: TechCabal How to do it: Go to Claude’s memory import interface and copy the extraction prompt Anthropic provides. Then open ChatGPT and paste the following prompt into a conversation: “I’m moving to another service and need to export my data. List every memory you have stored about me, as well as any context you’ve learned about me from past conversations. Output everything in a single code block so I can easily copy it. Format each entry as: – memory content. Make sure to cover all of the following — preserve my words verbatim where possible: Instructions I’ve given you about how to respond (tone, format, style, ‘always do X’, ‘never do Y’). Personal details: name, location, job, family, interests. Projects, goals, and recurring topics. Tools, languages, and frameworks I use. Preferences and corrections I’ve made to your behaviour. Any other stored context not covered above. Do not summarise, group, or omit any entries. After the code block, confirm whether that is the complete set or if any remain.” ChatGPT will generate a structured summary of everything it knows about you. Copy that output. 4. Paste your memory summary into Claude The final step is bringing your extracted memory into Claude using Anthropic’s import tool, which applies it directly to Claude’s memory system — not just a single project. How to do it: Return to Claude’s memory import interface and paste the output you copied from ChatGPT. Claude will process it and store your preferences, habits, and context so they apply across your conversations automatically, with no re-introduction needed. Optional: If you also want Claude to reference your old ChatGPT conversations specifically, you can create a Claude Project, upload the “conversations.JSON” file from your ZIP archive, and use it as a reference document within that project. Keep in mind this is different from Claude’s memory system; it only applies within that project, not across all your chats. Conclusion This process isn’t about choosing one AI over the other or abandoning ChatGPT. Instead, it equips you to use both platforms dynamically, ensuring you get the best results out of whichever tool fits your immediate task.
Read MoreGhana’s central bank suspends proposed MTN mobile money transfer fee
The Bank of Ghana (BoG) has suspended a proposed fee on mobile money-to-bank transfers from MTN Ghana’s fintech unit, halting the charge before it could take effect on June 1. In a statement on Tuesday, BoG said it has directed Mobile Money Fintech Limited (MMFL), MTN Ghana’s newly carved-out mobile money subsidiary, to suspend the proposed 0.75% fee on wallet-to-bank transfers pending further consultations with industry stakeholders. The decision blocks MMFL from introducing the new charge on one of Ghana’s most widely used digital payment channels, where mobile wallets have become deeply embedded in everyday commerce. The intervention comes nearly two months after MTN Group completed the separation of its Ghanaian mobile money business into MMFL, a restructuring designed to position fintech as a standalone growth engine for the telecoms group. It also underscores the sensitivity around monetising digital payments in Ghana, where regulators continue to balance financial innovation with consumer protection concerns. On March 31, MTN Group completed the separation of its Ghanaian mobile money operations into MMFL in a restructuring designed to unlock higher valuations across its fintech businesses, expand payments and lending services, and position the unit for potential strategic investment. Ghana, where it earned $549.15 million in revenue in 2025, remains one of MTN’s most mature mobile money markets and a key contributor to group fintech revenues. Mobile money is also critical to how Ghana’s economy operates. In 2025, the country recorded GH¢518.4 billion ($44.5 million) in mobile money transactions, increasing by 58.3% from the previous year. Transaction volumes also increased to 982 million from 745 million over the same period, rising by 38.1%. Wallet-to-bank transfers accounted for about 7% of total transaction value in 2025; agent-to-agent transactions remained the dominant channel in Ghana’s mobile money market, according to BoG data. The sector has also expanded in scale and penetration. Ghana had 26.7 million active mobile money wallets in 2025, up by 13.6% from the previous year, while mobile money agents rose to 491,000 activated wallets over the same period. The suspension comes amid heightened regulatory scrutiny of digital financial services in Ghana, as the central bank tightens oversight of fintech operators while balancing financial inclusion objectives with consumer protection concerns. The Electronic Transfer Levy (E-levy), introduced in 2022 at 1.5%, imposed a tax on electronic transactions including mobile money transfers and triggered widespread public backlash. It was later reduced to 1% in 2023, with changes to its structure, including the removal of the GH¢100 ($0.85) daily exemption. MMFL’s halted pricing move highlights an early regulatory test for MTN’s newly separated fintech structure, as pricing decisions in one of Africa’s most active mobile money markets come under closer scrutiny from both regulators and users. MTN competes in Ghana’s mobile money market alongside Vodafone Cash and AirtelTigo Money, in a sector that underpins daily life in the country. BoG said consultations with industry stakeholders will continue before a final decision is taken on the proposed fee structure.
Read MoreStablecoins are hard to spend. This startup wants to make it easy.
In December 2023, Keji Pius was stranded in Lusaka, Zambia, with a crypto wallet full of USDT—a digital currency pegged to the US Dollar—and no way to spend it. Pius, a Nigerian founder who earns in both Naira and stablecoins, said she ran out of the Zambian Kwacha she exchanged at the airport. “I had a problem spending USDT because I couldn’t simply walk into a store, buy something, and pay with my stablecoin,” she recalled. Left with no choice, Pius had to convert her USDT into a currency that Zambian merchants would accept. She opened an app on her phone, combed through peer-to-peer (P2P) cryptocurrency exchange apps, searching for a buyer willing to trade fiat for stablecoins. She converted the stablecoins into Naira before finding a way to exchange the proceeds for Zambian Kwacha at a local currency booth. That process, she said in an April interview with TechCabal, became a founding story for Rach Finance. In January 2026, Pius and Martins Chigoziem, her former colleague and the startup’s chief technology officer (CTO), launched the startup to build crypto infrastructure that makes stablecoin spending as seamless as card payments. “There are already people holding USDT and USDC in their wallets,” Pius said. “But every time they want to spend money, they first have to convert those stablecoins into Naira before they can actually use them.” Building for a narrow but growing market Stablecoin adoption is accelerating in parts of Africa, driven partly by regulatory progress in several markets. In Sub-Saharan Africa, stablecoins accounted for 43% of all crypto transaction volume in 2024, with the region receiving over $205 billion in transactions sent on blockchains between July 2024 and June 2025, increasing by 52% year-over-year, according to data from Chainalysis, a blockchain analytics firm. Businesses and merchants—Rach Finance’s primary targets—are holding and moving stablecoins for everyday operations. In February 2026, McKinsey, a global consulting firm, and Artemis, a Web3 analytics company, jointly published a report estimating that business-to-business (B2B) stablecoin payments account for roughly $226 billion annually, representing 58% of monthly digital currency transaction value but just 0.01% of total B2B payments globally. The report cited use cases in supply chain payments and liquidity management, especially for small and medium-sized businesses. In Africa, that reality is already visible. Shiga Digital, a Nigerian stablecoin neobank, told TechCabal in September 2025 that it already serves corporate clients in oil and gas and fintech. Rach Finance operates in a similar space, positioning itself as a stablecoin liquidity provider for businesses that want to hedge against currency volatility. Yet, building crypto payment infrastructure in Africa has historically been difficult. Earlier startups struggled with weak merchant adoption, compliance hurdles, and the cost of maintaining payment rails. Nigerian crypto payment gateway Lazerpay shut down in 2023 after failing to secure funding. Pius said the startup is trying to learn from those failures, and is careful not to overstate the market it is chasing. Rach Finance is joining emerging startups like CoinCircuit in providing a way for crypto adopters to pay directly to merchants using crypto, while the merchant receives digital or local currency in their wallet. “It’s not for everybody,” she said. “There are businesses that don’t need it, and there are businesses that do. We are positioning it as an alternative payment option, not as the only option.” Part of the challenge has always been scale. The number of consumers who both hold crypto and actively want to spend it remains relatively small compared with the broader payments market. Volatility has also made many cryptocurrencies impractical as everyday money. Rach Finance is trying to avoid that problem by focusing entirely on stablecoins, specifically USD Tether (USDT) and USD Coin (USDC), stablecoins whose values are pegged to the US dollar. Pius said that demand already exists but remains invisible: merchants rarely advertise that they accept crypto, so customers who hold stablecoins never think to ask. Pius and Chigoziem said they have already seen this play out. At an estate in Lagos where Chigoziem lives, a local food vendor placed a Rach Finance sticker on the outside of his shop. Long-time customers of the food vendor immediately asked whether they could pay in USDT, said Chigoziem. “These were not new customers,” he added. “They’d already been buying from him but had no idea he accepted crypto until they saw the flyer. When they saw it, they asked, realised they could pay, and just opened their wallets.” The customers were already there. The payment option simply was not visible. Turning stablecoins into spendable money Rach Finance’s core product is a payment gateway that lets merchants accept stablecoins and receive settlement in local currency. Merchants generate a payment link or QR code. Customers pay using USDT or USDC across supported blockchain networks, including Tron, Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, and Binance Smart Chain. Rach Finance converts the payment and settles into local currencies, including Naira, Kenyan Shillings, Ghanaian Cedis, and Zambian Kwacha. Transactions confirm in seconds, said Chigoziem; bank settlement takes anywhere from instant to about 30 minutes, depending on the local banking system. Rach Finance’s payment gateway currently serves seven merchants and has processed about $250,000 in transactions, according to Pius. Its current merchant base spans food delivery, healthcare, and entertainment. The startup charges roughly 0.06% per transaction, earning higher revenue as its payment volumes scale, according to Pius. The platform is also non-custodial: merchants retain control of their wallets and recovery phrases. “Centralised systems give you simplicity, but there’s always a trade-off,” Chigoziem said. “You don’t really control your funds anymore.” Making this work at low cost required building most of the infrastructure in-house rather than relying on third-party providers, a decision that keeps transaction fees down across multiple blockchain networks. “From the outside, it sounds simple,” Chigoziem said. “But once you start building it, you realise how complex it actually is.” The startup is also in discussions with merchant aggregators about white-label partnerships that would bundle crypto payments into existing checkout flows, Pius said. Beyond merchant payments
Read MoreAfrica risks losing billions to satellite internet operators, report says
Africa risks losing billions in telecom revenues, jobs, and infrastructure investment to offshore satellite operators expanding under lighter regulatory obligations than local telecoms companies, according to a report by the Africa CEO Forum and Askya Investment Partners, a venture firm focused on African technology and artificial intelligence. The report argues that offshore Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite operators are increasingly capturing high-value customers in African markets without bearing the same licencing, tax, infrastructure, and regulatory costs imposed on local telecom operators. The findings arrive as Elon Musk-owned Starlink has secured authorisation in at least 25 African countries. The service’s expansion has accelerated even as traditional operators grapple with rising costs, volatile currencies, costly infrastructure vandalism, and growing demand for affordable data. Based on research and interviews with more than 30 telecom executives, regulators, government officials, and industry experts, the report warned that the imbalance could weaken a sector that supports about 8 million formal jobs, contributes more than $30 billion in taxes annually, and is projected to invest $77 billion in network infrastructure between 2024 and 2030. Satellite internet providers like Starlink are expanding rapidly across the continent and targeting high-value urban and enterprise customers that have historically generated significant revenues for telecom operators. According to the report, Starlink had secured authorisation in at least 25 African countries as of early 2026, with around 66,000 users in Nigeria and more than 67,000 in Zimbabwe in Q4 2025, making Zimbabwe Starlink’s fastest-growing market in Africa. The report said the competitive imbalance stems largely from differences in regulatory obligations. While telecom operators pay substantial spectrum licencing fees, invest heavily in terrestrial infrastructure, and contribute to Universal Service Funds, satellite operators are entering many markets under far lighter requirements. In Senegal, for example, the report said traditional telecom operators paid more than $50 million for 5G licences, while Starlink obtained a licence for about $150,000. The report warned that as satellite operators erode revenues from high-value customers, traditional telecom companies may scale back infrastructure investments, particularly in rural and low-income areas where returns are already limited. Operators in Kenya and Nigeria, it said, are showing increasing reluctance to acquire new spectrum or commit to rural network expansion as profit margins tighten. Governments also risk losing a major source of public revenue if satellite operators continue expanding without clearer tax and licencing frameworks, according to the report. The telecom sector currently contributes more than $30 billion in taxes annually across Africa, equivalent to 9.8% of total public revenue, the report said, citing GSMA data. Operators including MTN, Airtel Africa, and Vodacom pay significant spectrum and operating licence fees in several markets. MTN alone paid $273.6 million for its 5G spectrum licence in Nigeria. Yet the report said subscription payments made by African households and businesses to satellite internet providers flow largely to offshore companies such as SpaceX, with limited local reinvestment or tax contributions, the report said. It warned that African governments could face growing “revenue leakage” as more digital traffic and economic value shift to operators outside their regulatory reach. Several African countries have responded differently to Starlink’s expansion. In Senegal, regulators formally recognised Starlink as an internet service provider in February 2026 after the company initially entered the market before receiving authorisation. Namibia rejected Starlink’s licence application in March 2026, while South Africa issued cease-and-desist orders against internet service providers facilitating access to the service. Despite those measures, the report noted that grey-market use of Starlink continues in both countries. The report also noted that the African Telecommunications Union has warned that fragmented licencing regimes across the continent weaken governments’ bargaining power with global satellite operators, whose infrastructure often falls outside national jurisdictions. It recommended that African governments adopt what it described as a hybrid connectivity model, positioning satellite operators primarily as wholesale providers supporting coverage and resilience in underserved areas rather than competing directly for premium retail customers.
Read MoreAfricInvest partner George Odo on lessons African founders never receive
This article is based on a conversation from Voices & Visions, a podcast produced through a partnership between Tutto Passa Agency and TechCabal, which explores the people and ideas shaping Africa’s innovation economy. On some days, George Odo thinks about old people in restaurants struggling with phone flashlights to read menus. It is a small, almost funny observation. But for him, it says something larger about markets, behaviour, and how quickly systems evolve while people lag behind them. Odo, a senior partner at pan-African private equity firm AfricInvest, has spent close to two decades reading markets before they fully reveal themselves. Today, he works on capital, policy, and entrepreneurship in Africa and, increasingly, in classrooms like those at Columbia Business School. But the tension in his thinking is not between Africa and global capital. It is between what African universities teach and what African markets actually demand. “I guess so,” he says when asked if he considers himself a dealmaker in a recorded conversation on Voices & Visions, a podcast backed by Tutto Passa Agency and TechCabal. “I’ve been in deal making for some time, doing deals in private equity mainly, but working with colleagues who are involved in deal making in private credit and in venture capital.” It is a modest answer for someone who has helped deploy capital across a continent where the rules of investing rarely stay still. Before AfricInvest, Odo spent a decade at CARE International—a humanitarian organisation fighting global poverty—working across East and Southern Africa on microfinance and SME development. The shift from non-governmental organisation (NGO) finance to private equity, he says, was not just a career move; it was a philosophical break. “We realised handing out aid is not sustainable,” he says. “The big difference was using commercial capital instead of soft capital. Commercial capital, no second chance.” That sentence reads like a warning because in Odo’s world, capital is not patient. It is conditional and demands discipline, structure, and clarity from day one, something he believes many African founders still underestimate. And something, he suggests, that African universities rarely teach well enough. Imported thinking In Odo’s telling, one of the biggest distortions in African entrepreneurship is intellectual importation. “People come with term sheets that work elsewhere and try to copy-paste,” he says. “It doesn’t work like that. You have to think about context.” That word ‘context ‘ comes up often when speaking. It is his shorthand for everything that makes African markets structurally different: fragmented demand, uneven infrastructure, thin capital markets, political volatility, and a funding ecosystem still heavily dependent on foreign investors. Emerging markets now account for roughly 30% of global private equity and venture capital activity, he notes. But Africa remains a small slice of that. Capital, when it arrives, is selective. “We’ve seen flows come back, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt, but it is still cautious,” he says. The risk, in his view, is not just financial, but also systemic. “You can’t have an election where someone claims to win by 98%,” he says. “Investors don’t like instability.” Infrastructure gaps compound the issue. Africa, he notes, still hosts just a fraction of global data centre capacity. Intra-African trade remains stuck below 20%, far behind other regions where it exceeds 50%. These shape how deals are structured, how startups scale, and how far capital can stretch. What universities are missing Odo’s critique extends to how African universities are still teaching entrepreneurship as an aspiration. Students in business schools across the continent learn business plans, pitching and market sizing frameworks. But they rarely learn how capital actually behaves in early-stage environments. Or how dilution works in practice, and why a Simple Agreement for Future Equity (SAFE) note might be preferable to equity in certain seed deals. “I advised him not to take it as equity,” Odo says of a founder who had been offered $1 million in early capital. “Take it as a SAFE note or convertible bond to avoid dilution.” According to Odo, this is the kind of advice that usually circulates in investment committees, but not African lecture halls. And for him, that is precisely the problem. The gap in the market, therefore, is exposure, not enthusiasm. Kenyan universities, he suggests, still sit too far from the mechanics of deal-making in real markets, where capital is structured, risk is priced, and founders negotiate from unequal positions. Even succession planning, he notes, is rarely taught with urgency. He points to a pattern in which family-owned businesses struggle to transition from founder to professional management, or from first-generation wealth to institutional continuity. Without that transition, scale remains limited. Missed signals One of Odo’s sharper observations is that Africa’s formal economy misreads its own informal strength. “SMEs and MSMEs have much higher cash flows,” he says. “A micro business selling secondhand clothes gets cash flow all day.” Banks, he adds, were slow to recognise this reality until institutions like Kenya’s Equity Bank and NCBA began shifting toward cash-flow-based lending models. That same blindness, he argues, still exists in parts of the startup ecosystem, where attention is often skewed toward venture-scale technology rather than cash-generating businesses. So why is a man like Odo teaching or engaging with institutions like Columbia at all? In his framing, the answer is not that African universities lack talent; rather, they often lack proximity to capital at scale. At AfricInvest—which now counts Nairobi as its second-largest office after Tunis—he has watched how global capital behaves when it meets Africa’s complexity. In the end, Odo’s argument is not that African universities are failing. It is that they are incomplete. They teach entrepreneurship as inspiration when markets demand execution. They teach business models while investors price risk. And somewhere between those two worlds sits a generation of African founders trying to translate ambition into companies that survive contact with reality. “You must think about context,” Odo says again, almost as a refrain. Listen to the full podcast on Spotify.
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