African fintech giant Flutterwave is seeking to retrieve $24 million illegally transferred in October 2023 through a combination of a technical glitch and potentially fraudulent activity by POS merchants.
The fintech company will reach out to over 6,000 account holders across 35 banks and financial institutions involved in unauthorised transactions.
A recent High Court ruling will allow Flutterwave to contact account holders via email, SMS, and WhatsApp messages, with assistance from a recovery agency to recover the funds, according to court documents

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MTN-owned fibre solutions Bayobab announced that its subsea internet cable, 2Africa, has landed in Nigeria and Ghana.
TechCabal reports that the cable was set to land in Nigeria in November 2023.
The 45,000-kilometre cable is being hailed as the world’s largest subsea cable project, and Bayobab, which is backed by Meta, says the cable will provide Ghanaian and Nigerian internet providers with more capacity and fairer access to data centres, leading to faster, more reliable internet for businesses and individuals alike.

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The Space X-owned service which kicked off in Nigeria has snaked its way across the continent, launching in Kenya, Rwanda, Zambia even eSwatini, all while avoiding South Africa.
Starlink won’t acquiesce to South Africa’s equity requirement: that 30% of its company or any foreign company launching in the country must be owned by South Africans.
South Africans are however using Starlink though via resellers like IT Lec and StarSat.
Starlink says resellers are violating its terms of use, and its copyrights by using the Starlink logo for their marketing.
The SpaceX-owned company has also asked resellers to cease all unauthorised resales immediately.

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The Central Bank of Nigeria eliminated the cap on exchange rates quoted by International Money Transfer Operators.
CBN previously controlled the exchange rate at which International Money Transfer Operators like Western Union and MoneyGram could sell foreign currency to Nigerians.
The CBN previously allowed the IMTOs to deviate from the official rate by a maximum of 2.5% (-2.5% to +2.5%).
The new development is in response to the suspected hoarding of foreign currency by Nigerian commercial banks.
The FG earlier gave a directive to commercial banks to release non-essential foreign currencies—currencies not needed for legitimate import payments, overseas travel allowances, or student tuition fees—to tame the naira’s depreciation against the dollar.

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The European Union’s AI Act, a risk-based plan for regulating applications of artificial intelligence, has passed what looks to be the final big hurdle standing in the way of adoption after Member State representatives today voted to confirm the final text of the draft law.
The development follows the political agreement reached in December — clinched after marathon ‘final’ three-way talks between EU co-legislators which stretched over several days.
The work to turn agreed positions on scrappy negotiation sheets into a final compromise text for lawmakers approval kicked off — culminating in today’s Coreper vote affirming the draft rules.
The planned regulation sets out a list of prohibited uses of AI (aka unacceptable risk), such as using AI for social scoring; brings in some governance rules for high risk uses (where AI apps might harm health, safety, fundamental rights, environment, democracy and the rule of law).

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CEO Stefan Ytterborn says Electric motorcycle startup Cake filed for bankruptcy February 1.
The Swedish company was in the middle of a funding round, just prior to the filing, but apparently the withdrawal of an investor was what tipped the company over the edge.
Ytterborn says that he had nothing else in mind but to find a solution in one format or another.
Cake raised a $14 million Series A in 2019. It followed that with a $60 million Series B round in 2021 led by Swedish pension fund AMF.
The capital was meant to fund manufacturing facilities in Europe, North America and Asia and to scale up its retail capabilities.

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MultiChoice says it will make a new $89 million cash injection in Showmax, its streaming platform, by the close of March 2024. The latest development comes as Showmax gears up for its February 12 relaunch.
MultiChoice is now in talks to be acquired by Canal+ after the French giant offered to acquire all outstanding shares they don’t already own in the company for R105 ($5.65) per share—an increase from the broadcaster’s current share price of R79 ($4.25). Canal+ began acquiring shares in the South African company in 2020, and steadily increasing its stake to 31.7% by June 2023.
Vivendi, owners of Canal+ stated that it was increasing its stake in MultiChoice for international expansion.

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Starlink has had its application to launch in Botswana rejected
The low-orbit satellite service, owned by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, was denied its application to operate in the African nation ahead of a planned Q4 2024 launch.
The regulator says that the company did not share all the necessary information. It is unclear which information Starlink did not provide in its original application.
Starlink also continues to face regulatory pushback in Southern Africa. The South African government rejected its application for failing comply with a mandatory requirement of 30% ownership to historically disadvantaged people.
In Zimbabwe, legislators based their rejection of Starlink’s application on an EU investigation into X.

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Airtel Africa, a telecom company operating across 14 African countries faced headwinds from Nigeria’s naira devaluation and reported a loss after tax of $151 million in its Q1—April 1 to June 30, 2023 results.
The telecom giant recently released its 9-month financial report ending December 2023, of a profit before tax of $2 million, a significant decline from the $523 million profit it recorded in the same period in 2022.
Airtel witnessed a significant drop in profits last year due to the decrease in the value of currencies in some of its main markets: Nigeria, Malawi, Zambia, and Kenya.

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Spotify issued its response to Apple’s new DMA rules, calling the new fees imposed on developers extortion and Apple’s compliance plan a complete and total farce that demonstrated the tech giant believes that the rules don’t apply to them.
Apple earlier this week announced a host of changes that comply with the letter of the EU law.
The company say that app developers in the EU will receive reduced commissions, but it also introduced a new core technology fee that requires developers to pay €0.50 for each first annual install per year over a 1 million threshold, regardless of their distribution channel.
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, whose company sued Apple over antitrust concerns, already condemned Apple’s plan, saying it was a case of malicious compliance and full of junk fees, and now Spotify is essentially saying the same.

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