Education in Africa is still not where it needs to be for the continent to cater to its bustling young population. In solving the education problem in Africa, Co-Creation Hub with its presence in Nigeria and Kenya is launching an accelerator with a focus on ed-tech.
The accelerator which will be called the EdTech Fellowship Program will commit $15 million to support 72 startups in Nigeria and Kenya in the next three years.
The program would give the startups an initial $100,000 check after being accepted into the program.
Bosun Tijani, CcHUB’s CEO, says there is also a provision for follow-on investment to the tune of $50 million that will cater to the seed and Series A stages for the startups

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South Africa mobile network operator Telkom Group, which has operations in numerous other African countries, has released its financial results for the four months period ended 31 December 2022, showing impressive top-line growth in most of its verticals.
The company’s mobile data traffic and subscribers are up 25.6% and 12.9% year-on-year to 309 petabytes and 18.6 million subscribers respectively while mobile broadband customers are up 9.9% to 11.5 million, comprising almost 62% of active mobile customers.
Telkom CEO Serame Taukobong says overall, Telkom’s revenue is up 2.3% to R11 billion. Still, its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation are down 13.5% to R2.5 billion, showing the company’s continued struggle with profitability and bottom-line growth.

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The supervisory board of the e-commerce company, Jumia, has now appointed Francis Dufay as the company’s CEO.
Dufay was announced as the acting CEO after the exit of Jeremy Hodara and Sacha Poginonnec as Co-CEOs.
The exit of both CEOs came after a decade where Jumia was pressed to move towards profitability and was unable to.
Jumia says the executive search that was being conducted has now been concluded.
The appointment reflects the Board's strong confidence in Francis's leadership and ability to scale the business to profitability successfully.

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Blockfinex, a Barbados and Seychelles-registered crypto exchange company, has acquired a 100% stake in Nigerian crypto payment gateway startup, Fluidcoins for an undisclosed sum.
Danny Oyekan, the founder and CEO of Blockfinex says the acquisition was driven by a decision to venture into Wallet as a service business and crypto payment processing and scale it across the world.
Oyekan says the acquisition includes all Fluidcoins entities, including Flip and Fluidshops.

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Yahoo has announced that it is laying off 20% of its staff, or about 1,600, becoming the latest technology company to trim down its headcount in what has become somewhat of a daily trend.
The company’s legacy ad tech division, Yahoo for Business, will be overhauled and transformed into a new division called Yahoo Advertising.
Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone stressed that unlike with other big tech layoffs of late, the company’s layoffs were not as a result of financial challenges but about strategic changes to the company’s Yahoo for Business advertising unit, which is not profitable.

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Apple released a new version of the iPhone and iPad’s operating systems to fix a vulnerability that hackers were exploiting in the wild, meaning they were taking
Apple credited an anonymous researcher for the discovery, and also thanked Citizen Lab for their assistance.
Apple’s spokesperson Scott Radcliffe says that the company has nothing to add apart from what’s in the release notes.
Since January 2022, there have been nine bugs in iOS that may have been actively exploited,”of which four in WebKit.

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YouTube announced its new marketplace, Creator Music, is now fully open to all YouTube Partner Program participants in the U.S.
The online destination offers a large catalog of songs that creators can browse, search through, and purchase where the terms of the music rights are spelled out in plain language, so creators can understand the costs involved.
In addition to being able to purchase licenses, creators are also able to choose tracks offering revenue-sharing options where both creators and the rights holders earn money from the music’s use.

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Mobile games and interactive content publisher, Carry1st has acquired Gebeta a Qene Games product that portrays African culture for an undisclosed amount. This comes weeks after Carry1st announced a $27 million raise.
The deal is the first exit for Qene Games, the company behind the smartphone games Kukulu, Gebeta, Feta, and Tras.
Qene Games will continue collaborating with Carry1st to help Gebeta grow and develop to realise its full potential but from a lesser position.
Qene intends to focus on increasing the gaming capability on the African continent through mentoring, hiring, and upskilling of African game creators.

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Kenyan business publication Business Daily reported that the telco had acquired the necessary spectrum in Kenya, and is planning to introduce 5G network in high-income neighbourhoods in Kenya.
Airtel Africa CEO Segun Ogunsanya, says the service will be launched in selected cities where Airtel recognises enough devices and enough purchasing power to really enjoy the benefits of 5G.
He believes that 5G is good in the medium term adding that their focus will continue to be on expanding our 4G footprint, and selectively launching 5G to capture opportunities in high-income neighbourhoods.

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Neobank Be Mobile Africa has announced the launch of a crypto trading platform which will allow enabling individuals in South Africa to buy and trade cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana as well as USD stablecoins such as USDC using South African rands.
Dr. Cédric Jeannot, CEO of Be Mobile Africa, says enabling their users to buy, sell and hold cryptocurrencies easily and securely is a natural evolution for us.
Be Mobile Africa also added that the cryptocurrency trading platform is bringing the fight to incumbent crypto trading platform operators in the country and also providing users with a new and simpler way to access and trade cryptocurrencies.

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