B2B e-commerce startup Zumi is shutting down due to its inability to raise the funding necessary to sustain its operations.
This close will see the company lay off its team of 150 people who have previous work experience from companies like SpaceX, Amazon, Twiga, and Jumia.
CEO and co-founder of the Kenya-based startup, William McCarren, announced the company’s close in a Linkedin post saying, the current macro environment has made fundraising extremely difficult, and unfortunately, our business was not able to achieve sustainability in time to survive.

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Meta’s head of commerce and financial technologies Stephane Kasriel says that the company will sunset its NFT and digital collectables features on Instagram and Facebook.
By July, Meta expanded NFT support on Instagram for creators in 100 countries. Less than a year later, Meta is moving on from NFTs.
Kasriel says they are winding down digital collectables, for now, to focus on other ways to support creators, people, and businesses.
The company says it is testing ways for creators to earn ad revenue on Reels.

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EchoVC, a pan-African VC firm with a global presence, has announced a fresh $8 million fund dedicated to blockchain startups in Africa.
The fresh capital will be deployed to blockchain startups that are substantiating the utility of blockchain products and solving some of Africa’s pressing challenges.
EchoVC is notably raising this capital at a time when overall customer and investor trust in crypto and blockchain startups seems to be hanging by a thread. The past year has not been rosy for blockchain players in African tech.
EchoVC’s founder and general managing partner, Eghosa Omoigui, acknowledge these struggles, yet, he’s convinced that there is no better time than now to launch the blockchain-focused fund for African startups.

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HSBC Holdings Plc has announced that its UK subsidiary, HSBC UK Bank, will acquire Silicon Valley Bank UK for £1.
The deal, described as a strategic acquisition to strengthen HSBC’s banking franchise in the UK, will further restrict the economic fallout resulting from the bank’s collapse.
HSBC Group CEO, Noel Quinn, says his acquisition makes excellent strategic sense for our business in the UK.
It strengthens our commercial banking franchise and enhances our ability to serve innovative and fast-growing firms, including in the technology and life science sectors, in the UK and internationally.

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Africa’s most valuable company by market capitalisation, Naspers, has shut down its venture capital fund Naspers Foundry in an effort to scale down its operations.
Post the sunsetting of the fund, the Foundry will continue to maintain the investments it has made which include in startups like Naked Insurance, SweepSouth, and most recently, Planet42’s $100 million mega-round.
Naspers will continue to support the development of SA’s early-stage tech sector, assessing the market and new opportunities in a way that is consistent with our other global markets.
Since its launch in 2019, Naspers Foundry has funded over nine startups to the tune of over R740 million.

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The Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority has opened an application portal for the maiden edition of its prize for an innovation programme.
It says that the newly opened portal was the only means for submitting applications for the programme with each applicant allowed only one entry.
It says the agency had December 2022 launched the NSIA Prize for Innovation programme with a total prize value of $255,000 to be awarded as a combination of cash and equity investment to the underlying businesses of the winners.
NSIA introduced the NPI as a measure to stimulate the ingenuity of Nigerian startups, innovators and technopreneurs to develop solutions that address real-world challenges with global applications.

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The European Commission has just announced that messaging platform, Whatsapp has agreed to improve how it communicates to users and presents future ToS updates.
WhatsApp triggered a major user backlash after it pushed out an aggressive and confusingly worded update to its ToS that required users to accept the update in order to continue using the platform without making it clear what exactly was changing.
The episode caused widespread confusion and drove some users to ditch the platform altogether — with rivals like Signal and Telegram reporting a surge in adoption.
The Commission asked WhatsApp to confirm whether or not it derives any revenue from commercial policies related to user data.

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Africa’s largest digital payments network MFS Africa has announced a partnership with Western Union.
Users of the MFS Africa platform will be able to receive money from over 200 countries in their mobile wallets. MFS Africa reportedly connects over 400 million mobile money wallets and 200 million bank accounts across 35 African countries.
The partnership will launch its service first in Madagascar before expanding to other African regions.
Hassan Chatila, the global head of the account payout network at Western Union says their efforts to drive global financial inclusion mean delivering on customer needs today and into the future.

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Kenya is planning to generate Ksh3 trillion in taxes in the 2023/24 financial year, and Ksh4 trillion over the medium term.
The Kenya Revenue Authority has launched a new tax-monitoring software: the electronic Tax Invoice Management System (eTIMS).
KRA deputy commissioner George Obel says the new system will improve compliance with VAT law through transparency and visibility of transactions subject to VAT.
The KRA has urged all taxpayers and businesses to onboard themselves on the eTIMS platform or risk paying a fine of up to Ksh1 million.

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Safaricom is in court over the operations of its mobile money arm, M-Pesa.
Three plaintiffs have indicted Safaricom and Vodafone in a lawsuit which claims that Safaricom is operating its M-Pesa arm and Fuliza, its overdraft service, illegally.
According to the petitioners—Gichuki Waigwa, Lucy Nzola, and Godfrey Okutoyi—since Safaricom uses the money from non-borrowing M-Pesa account holders as loans to Fuliza users, then the interest Safaricom accrues from Fuliza should be shared with all M-Pesa account holders.
The petitioners, who allege to be acting on behalf of all M-Pesa users, now want Ksh305 billion ($2.4 billion) in damages for fraudulent misrepresentation and non-disclosure of information.


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