Tech Tides Africa

The legal definition of creativity in East Africa has changed forever. In a high-stakes dispute involving an author who used AI tools to produce a series of commissioned books, Kenya’s Copyright Tribunal ruled that authorship is solely reserved for human beings.
While the judgment doesn’t ban creators from using tools like ChatGPT or Midjourney, it establishes a strict legal precedent: purely machine-generated outputs lack legal personality, and anyone hoping to protect or commercialise AI-assisted content must now prove "sufficient human intervention" and keep meticulous records of their own input. We unpack what this means for publishers, musicians, and agencies across the continent.
Other interesting stories in this episode:
Nigeria's Responsible AI Leap: Overtaking regional giants like Kenya and Egypt, Nigeria has claimed the top spot in Africa on the Global Index on Responsible AI (GIRAI). The index singled out Nigeria as a global "Bright Spot" for combining massive technical talent programs (such as the 3MTT) with concrete child data protections.
The Crypto Hack Paradox: H1 2026 saw a record 207 crypto hacks, yet total stolen funds dropped by 57% to $972 million. We look at the data to analyse whether smart contract auditing is improving or whether hackers are simply shifting to lower-value protocols.
Rebuilding the Vaults: The rise of sophisticated, AI-driven phishing and automated exploits is forcing traditional African banks to abandon their old security playbooks and rebuild their cyber architecture from scratch to keep pace with algorithmic threats.
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The race to build the ultimate financial "super-app" for the diaspora just got real. Following its acquisition of credit specialist Pillar last year, LemFi has received FCA approval to fully acquire UK-based investment platform Wealth8. By integrating cross-border wealth management alongside high-frequency remittances and savings, LemFi is moving to capture a massive market segment and address ethnic wealth inequalities head-on—allowing users to invest in portfolios for as low as £8. We dive into the brilliant unit economics of capturing migrant users at the border and gradually graduating them into high-margin wealth products.
Other interesting stories in this episode:
DRC Stablecoin Trial: Onafriq is moving cross-border settlements for M-Pesa, Airtel, and Orange wallets onto USDC rails via the US platform Conduit, setting up a live, high-stakes test for digital-dollar payments in a highly dollarized economy.
The Generator War: South African startup bPOWERd expands to Lagos in partnership with Mobil stations, offering an alternative to loud, costly fossil-fuel generators with solar battery rentals that can slash small-appliance power costs from ₦10,000 to ₦3,000 a day.
AI-Powered Harvests: Tunisia’s agritech startup RoboCare secures a six-figure investment from 216 Capital to scale its precision farming models across the Middle East and Africa, targeting regional staples like olive trees and cereals.
The Compliance Lock: Raenest’s CEO speaks out following an internet uproar over a $9,700 account restriction, admitting to frustrating support delays but reinforcing that strict compliance reviews are the non-negotiable reality of global fintech operations today.

In this special episode of Tech Tides Africa, Karen and Kelvin are joined by Linnet Kitonga, the co-founder and CMO of G-Rani Mobility, a Kenyan carpooling platform that is turning one of the continent’s oldest informal commuting habits into structured, reliable digital infrastructure.
We dive deep into why importing a Silicon Valley playbook fails in the African transport ecosystem, the hidden financial drain of ride-hailing subsidies, and how building for existing cultural behaviours is the key to mastering unit economics. Linnet also drops massive insights on navigating regulatory grey areas by building the playbook with regulators, and why investors are completely missing the boat by focusing solely on electric vehicles (EVs) while ignoring the crucial "coordination layer" that actually moves people.
Key Takeaways From This Episode:
The Illusion of Disruption: You don’t change behaviour in Africa by telling people they're doing it wrong; you change it by taking an existing, trusted informal behaviour (like neighbourhood carpooling) and building infrastructure that removes unspoken friction points—like the awkwardness of fuel costs.
The Coordination Gap vs EV Hype: Millions of dollars are pouring into electric motorbikes and clean-engine technologies. However, thousands of EVs on the road won’t solve traffic congestion or empty seats. The real, underfunded opportunity is the coordination layer that connects existing abundance to the people who need it.
Writing the Regulatory Playbook: Instead of waiting for boardroom-bound policymakers to pull the rug out from under them, G-Rani’s strategy is to proactively bring regulators to the table early, using real-world data to shape the framework for an entirely new mobility category.
Redefining African Unit Economics: Giani boasts positive month-on-month growth with zero paid acquisition. Why? Because true sustainability means delivering real value from day one, without burning investor cash on temporary promo codes and subsidised rides.
A Lesson for Female Founders: Navigating a male-dominated mobility space means dealing with a credibility double standard. Linnet shares a powerful reminder that women make it in this space not by shrinking, but by being so undeniably good that their work speaks louder than anyone’s assumptions.

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has dropped a regulatory hammer that will reshape the back-end infrastructure of Nigeria's fintech sector. Under a newly issued circular, all deposit money banks, fintechs, and microfinance institutions have until January 1, 2027, to localise their data storage, meaning all payment transaction data generated within Nigeria must live on local servers.
But that’s not all—the CBN is also enforcing strict market concentration caps. No single entity is allowed to control more than 25% of the consumer payments market while simultaneously controlling more than 15% of merchant acquiring (and vice versa). This is a direct shot at market monopolisation, effectively forcing giants to choose a lane. We dive into the massive compliance costs, the technical risks of migrating live data rails, and what this means for the global cloud hyperscalers currently hosting Africa’s biggest platforms.
Other interesting stories in this episode:
The Chimoney Resurrection: Four weeks ago, Chimoney announced a textbook, clean shutdown. Today, they are being acquired by CapitalSage Holdings. We look at how doing a shutdown "the right way"—and holding onto a hard-to-get Canadian Payment Service Provider (PSP) licence—made them the perfect acquisition target.
Kenya’s Hardware Tax Threat: New fiscal proposals in Kenya could dismantle local assembly plants for M-KOPA and Sun King. We discuss how taxing components could reverse smartphone penetration and clean-energy progress.
E-Commerce Without the Wallets: A new Visa study in Egypt reveals a fascinating cultural paradox: consumers are heavily adopting AI tools to personalise their shopping and find deals, but a strict wall of distrust remains when it comes to letting AI handle automated payments.
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The era of hyper-independent, overlapping fintech apps is giving way to a massive wave of consolidation. Two years after a high-profile, Paystack-led consortium stepped in to save the digital business banking platform Brass from a severe liquidity crisis, the brand is officially being retired. Brass announced that its entire operations and customer base will be completely folded into Paystack Microfinance Bank before July 31, 2026. This transition marks the end of an era for a startup darling and highlights a broader macro trend: established payments giants are aggressively swallowing up niche players to build comprehensive, fully licensed banking ecosystems. We unpack what this means for SME banking and consumer trust in digital-first financial services.
Other interesting stories in this episode:
Flutterwave’s Quarter-Staff Promotion: Marking its 10th anniversary, Flutterwave promoted over 100 employees globally. Along with the titles, the fintech giant introduced global cost-of-living adjustments, tax support for Nigerian staff, and economic relief packages to stave off poaching from global tech firms.
Interswitch Enters the Core Banking Race: The payment infrastructure giant has partnered with global banking software provider Temenos. The deal allows Interswitch to offer cloud-hosted and on-premise core banking, wealth management, and financial crime systems to banks in Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, and Côte d'Ivoire.
Localised Voice AI Gets a Boost: AethexAI emerged from stealth with a $3 million pre-seed round led by 4DX Ventures. Instead of relying on Western LLMs that struggle with local dialects, latency, and accents, the startup built its own localised voice models (Kora 1) to automate call centres, debt collection, and KYC checks across Africa and the Middle East.
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The intersection of state power and digital spaces takes centre stage this week. Kenya’s State Department for Broadcasting and Telecommunications is seeking parliamentary approval for a KSh 2.7 billion ($21 million) budget to build an AI-driven social media monitoring framework.
While the state argues this is a necessary defence against misinformation and "malinformation," privacy advocates point out that using machine learning to parse public sentiment and track narratives online looks a lot like automated mass surveillance. We dive into the political fallout of this proposal, drawing parallels to the digital organisation that fueled the 2024 Finance Bill protests.
Other interesting stories in this episode:
Kenya is proposing a 15% levy on foreign VC capital gains during startup exits. We discuss whether this will protect local wealth or simply cause foreign investors to route their capital elsewhere.
In Nigeria, Airtel and Globacom have immediately resumed their lucrative airtime and data lending services after a court blocked the FCCPC’s strict consumer lending regulations.
Following its infamous ChatGPT hallucination scandal, South Africa’s Department of Communications has officially delayed its Draft National AI Policy to 2027 to rebuild the framework from scratch.
Kenya's Ministry of Tourism and Wildlife has teamed up with Google to launch a "Magical Kenya" AI trip planner powered by Gemini, moving destination marketing from intuition to real-time data.
South Africa’s Mia Healthcare has closed a $920,000 funding round, proving that specialised, tech-enabled health clinics are highly attractive to regional investors. • We look at Bloomberg’s newly released feature highlighting 25 African startups to watch, assessing who is actually positioned to scale in this tight macro environment.
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Paystack just rolled out a total redesign of its merchant dashboard, built from the ground up as an AI-native command centre. Instead of digging through endless nested analytics links, over 300,000 businesses can now ask plain-language questions like "Why is revenue down this week?" to instantly generate custom data tables and charts. We discuss whether this practical, integrated approach is exactly how AI crosses over from tech novelty to a daily workflow tool.
Other interesting stories in this episode:
The 14-Day Monopoly Break: We take a retrospective look at 2019 and analyse how Flutterwave and Moniepoint moved with unprecedented speed to dismantle a deeply entrenched card monopoly in Nigeria in just two weeks.
Tether’s Diaspora Bet: Stablecoin giant Tether is investing heavily in cross-border fintech LemFi, aiming to power up stablecoin-driven remittances and slash the high friction of sending money home across the diaspora.
AI in the Skies: Kenya Airways enters the AI era by deploying Jupiter 5.0, a machine-learning pricing engine designed to analyse millions of real-time data points and dynamically adjust airfares to maximise seat occupancy.
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East Africa's most ambitious tech infrastructure project—a massive $1 billion digital partnership—has hit a major roadblock. Microsoft is reportedly locked in a high-stakes payment dispute with the Kenyan government, threatening to delay a flagship data centre deployment intended to anchor the region's cloud ecosystem. We unpack the details behind this standoff and discuss what it means for Kenya’s reputation as the continent's primary "Silicon Savannah."
Other interesting stories in this episode:
Homegrown powerhouses OmniRetail, M-KOPA, Sabi, and TymeBank have officially topped the charts, making the Financial Times' prestigious list of Africa’s fastest-growing companies.
In a venture ecosystem parched for liquidity, Egyptian logistics startup Bosta hands its investors a massive win, delivering a clean cash exit with a striking 75% Internal Rate of Return (IRR) after just two years.
South Africa’s GoTyme Bank makes a bold play for talent retention and workplace culture by granting equity shares to every one of its 2,000 employees.
E-commerce giant Jumia is cutting another 200 jobs—roughly 10% of its workforce—as part of an aggressive, AI-driven strategy to slash overhead costs and finally achieve profitability by the end of the year.
Techstars-backed fintech Chimoney closes its doors after four years. We analyse the founder's candid lessons on distribution struggles versus real-world user feedback, highlighting the brutal compliance and licensing costs of cross-border financial infrastructure.
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The South African government’s attempt to lead the continent in AI regulation has hit an embarrassing snag. The Department of Communications and Digital Technologies had to pull its 86-page Draft National AI Policy after eagle-eyed researchers found it was riddled with "AI hallucinations." From fake academic studies to non-existent bibliographies, the very tool the government sought to regulate ended up undermining the policy meant to govern it. We discuss the fallout and what this means for the credibility of digital policy-making in the region.
Other interesting stories in this episode:
Swoop’s Bold Gamble: The Lagos food delivery market is notoriously difficult, but Swoop is trying a 100% rider-income model to win loyalty. We look at the fragile unit economics of a "no-cut" delivery platform.
Starlink Crackdown in CAR: The Central African Republic has suspended the use of "roaming" Starlink kits purchased abroad, citing national security and regulatory traceability.
Nokia Targets Cairo: Nokia has officially selected Egypt as its regional hub for Middle East and Africa operations, leveraging the country's growing pool of technical talent.
Amazon vs. Starlink: Project Kuiper (rebranded as Amazon LEO) is applying for a Tier 2 license in Kenya, signaling a major expansion of satellite internet competition in East Africa.
Ethiopia’s Green Surge: Addis Ababa-based Dodai has raised $13 million to scale its electric motorbike and battery-swapping network, capitalizing on Ethiopia's aggressive ban on internal combustion engine imports.
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Ghana is positioning itself as a continental hub for aerospace innovation. Terra Industries has announced plans to build Africa’s largest drone factory, a facility aimed at scaling domestic production of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). This isn't just about manufacturing; it’s about reducing the continent's reliance on imported tech and creating a localised supply chain for industries ranging from precision farming to medical deliveries. We discuss what this means for high-tech manufacturing jobs in West Africa.
Other interesting stories in this episode:
Absa Kenya is set to spend $23.2 million a year on digital transformation to stave off competition from agile fintechs.
Kenya’s DCI takes a hard line on crypto, requesting the freezing of multiple Binance accounts amid regulatory pressure.
South African authorities are planning to investigate giants like Netflix and WhatsApp, likely examining how these global platforms affect local broadcasting and telecommunications.
Mozambique’s parliament has unanimously approved a new Cyber Security Law, a critical step in modernising the nation’s legal framework against digital threats.
Flutterwave officially denies reports of a massive Nigerian government investment, leaving the tech ecosystem wondering where the rumour started and why.
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