Twitter Inc, the company, has ceased to exist as a standalone company and has been merged into an entity called “X Corp”.
Twitter would merge with X Holdings II, but keep its name and general corporate structure while continuing to operate under Delaware law.
X Holdings I, controlled by Musk, would then serve as the merged entity’s parent company, while X Holdings III would take on the $13 billion loan that a group of big banks provided Musk to help cover the $44 billion purchase.
X Holdings II was slated to be defunct after it merged with Twitter. So the official structure after Musk’s takeover was: X Holdings I oversees Twitter Inc, while X Holdings III handles the cash. But that has not been the case.

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Kenyan loan company, WhitePath Company Limited and workspace provider Regus Kenya are feeling the heat for not playing by the data protection rules, Techweez reports.
Each company has been slapped with a hefty penalty of Ksh5 million as per the Data Protection Act and Complaints Handling Procedure and Enforcement Regulations.
It turns out that WhitePath has been receiving a barrage of complaints, with close to 150 users claiming that their applications have been accessing their phone contacts without permission and bombarding them with unwanted text messages.
Regus Kenya was accused of spamming improper information to a complainant despite attempts to make them stop.

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Global pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca has announced that it is partnering with South African healthtech firm MedSol AI Solutions to help promote the use of Artificial Intelligence in the detection of breast cancer.
The initiative will be done through a state-of-the-art Wi-Fi ultrasound probe that can detect cancer in seconds.
The partnership is part of AstraZeneca’s Africa Health Innovation Hub, an initiative mandated to use the latest science and technology to improve access to healthcare for patients on the continent.

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The City of Cape Town has announced that it is pursuing the Paardevlei Ground-mounted Solar Photovoltaic and Battery Energy Storage System project.
The R1.2 billion project promises to shield the city from one full stage of load shedding.
The assistance will come in the form of expertise required for specialist studies regarding environmental impacts, the engineering design of the project, as well as the means to finance the project.
Of the R1.2 billion required for the project, the city will be allocating R447-million from its R2.3-billion budget to end load shedding over three years.
Other possible funding options which will be assessed include private-public partnerships or having an Independent Power Producer develop the project and then have the city enter into a power-purchase agreement for the electricity.

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Chinese technology giant Alibaba has announced plans to roll out its own artificial intelligence ChatGPT-style product called Tongyi Qianwen.
Its cloud computing unit says it will integrate the chatbot across Alibaba's businesses in the near future but did not give details on its timeline.
The company says Tongyi Qianwen, which is capable of working in English as well as Chinese, will initially be added to DingTalk, Alibaba's workplace messaging app.
Alibaba says it will also be integrated into Tmall Genie, which is similar to Amazon's Alexa voice assistant smart speaker.

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Google has announced plans to restrict loan apps on its Play Store from accessing sensitive user data such as photos, videos, and contacts.
The update, which was pushed to the Personal Loans Policy yesterday, will take effect from May 31st.
Kenya’s central bank and Nigeria’s Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission are gradually overhauling the industry, one licence at a time. Google is also privy to these changes, allowing only the licenced apps to remain on its platform
Google has been described in recent times as a pseudo-regulator of African digital credit providers.
This move adds another regulatory stroke that will further manage the operators in the space, and hopefully, deal a fatal blow to predatory lending in Africa

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Liquid Intelligent Technologies has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the government of Zambia to launch a new data centre in the country.
The agreement is part of an initiative to accelerate the country’s digital transformation and provide reliable and affordable connectivity to all Zambians.
The data centre is intended to respond to increasing data-hosting needs from local businesses and hyper scalers establishing their presence in Zambia.
The MOU entails a planned expansion of Liquid’s fibre network will see the connection of more towns across the country, and the physical infrastructure needed to connect schools and clinics along Liquid’s network will also be deployed.

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The Eskom Pension and Provident Fund plans to expand into venture capital to reduce its dependence on traditional investments.
Bloomberg says the fund has about R185 billion worth of assets under management, with roughly two-thirds allocated to South African stocks, inflation-linked debt, property and nominal bonds.
Phathutshedzo Mabogo, deputy chief investment officer of the fund says they are about to invest in venture capital, which is a subset of private equity adding that they will start with offshore development markets like North America and Europe. We’ve committed $100 million.
Mabogo further adds that private equity and venture capital represent an area of growth that could deliver decent returns without introducing too much risk in the total portfolio.

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DataPortal’s Digital 2023 South Africa report shows that more than a quarter of the country’s population still does not have access to the internet.
South Africa had 43.48 million internet users, an internet penetration rate of 72%. Social media users stood at 25.80 million people, roughly 42.9% of the total population which stood at 60 million.
The number of internet users in the country increased by 357,000 compared to the same period in 2022.

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Nigeria’s consumer protection agency, the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, released a list of all the loan apps licensed to operate in the country.
173 digital loan companies have been approved, with 119, including Renmoney and FairMoney, holding full approvals; and 54, including Soko Lending, holding conditional approvals.
These processes come at a critical time when loan apps are taking predatory and unethical steps to amass customers and deal with defaulters.

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