Google Arts & Culture in partnership with The Adunni Olorisha Trust and CyArk announced the launch of the first and largest digital library of content showcasing the Osun Osogbo Sacred Grove.
The launch also marks the digital preservation of one of Nigeria’s last remaining sacred groves, being part of Google Arts and Culture’s wider Heritage on the Edge project. The project supports site managers in digitally documenting heritage sites at risk due to climate change, using the imagery captured to support community maintenance and conservation further.
The highlights of the Osun Osogbo Sacred Grove project which can be explored online include a Street View of the Osun Osogbo Sacred Grove, including the Busanyin Shrine before it was affected by the flood and 3D models of four of the site’s dynamic shrines.
Nigeria’s minister of information and culture, Lai Mohammed, expressed his delight and gratitude that the Grove has been brought online.

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Google has teamed up with Coinbase to facilitate payment with cryptocurrencies for its cloud services.
The partnership, which was announced at Google’s Cloud Next conference, will also see Coinbase move its data-related applications to Google from Amazon Web Services.
Jim Migdal, Coinbase’s vice president of business development, says that Coinbase will earn a percentage of transactions that go through it, as it does in other Coinbase Commerce arrangements.
The Coinbase Commerce service currently supports 10 cryptocurrencies: bitcoin, bitcoin cash, ether, USD coin, tether USD, ApeCoin, bitcoin cash, DAI, Shiba Inu, and BCH. It will be integrated into the Google Cloud Platform infrastructure service in 2023.

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Botswana has edged out Kenya in the list of top global innovators as more African countries punch above their weight to come up with ideas and technologies that increase productivity and output.
Botswana is now the continent’s fifth most innovative country and ranked among sixteen African countries that improved their global innovation positions, fuelled by the COVID-19 pandemic.
These three are among a list of eight African countries leading the world in delivering higher-than-expected innovation. Other economies on this list are Madagascar, Burundi, Zimbabwe, Morocco and South Africa.

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Airtel Zambia has announced that it has purchased 60MHz of additional spectrum spread across the 800MHz and 2600MHz bands from the Zambia Information and Communications Technology Authority for a gross consideration of $29 million, payable in Zambian Kwacha.
Airtel Zambia says the additional spectrum will support the expansion of the telco’s capability in providing mobile data and fixed wireless home broadband services, and help accelerate the 5G rollout.
ZICTA further clarified that the spectrum in the 26 GHz band will be open for assignment on a first-come, first-served basis in the fourth quarter of 2022.

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Bank of Namibia governor Johannes !Gawaxab stated that the central bank’s strategic direction and the rapid digitisation of the financial system have prompted it to think critically about a potential Namibia Dollar CBDC in the digital payment landscape of the future.
!Gawaxab stated that a public consultation paper on central bank digital currencies would be published soon to further demonstrate the Bank’s commitment to continued cooperation and dialogue with the industry and private sector innovators and the fintech community and other stakeholders in transforming the financial sector for the prosperity of all Namibians.
The bank stated that Initial Coin Offerings pose high risks and possibilities of fraud, manipulation, and misrepresentation.

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NALA, a Tanzanian-born fintech startup with a growing dominance in East Africa, made a pioneering move in Africa’s fintech space by enabling its African diaspora users to make local payments directly.
This newest integration with world payment service, Apple Pay, reaffirms NALA’s ambition to enable seamless and lightning-fast payments to Africa.
NALA’s integration with Apple Pay comes seven months after the African fintech launched operations in the US with an event held in New York, attended by six members of the Tanzanian parliament.
Benjamin Fernandes, NALA’s founder and CEO, says that NALA’s moves are geared towards connecting Africa with global payment options while building a rich financial infrastructure for Africans.

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The special advisor to the Lagos state governor on innovation and technology, Olatunbosun Alake, says that the government is planning to launch its own venture capital fund that would write bigger equity cheques for Nigerian startups than most privately-owned VC.
Olatunbosun says the fund would be cross-sectoral including fintech, agriculture, health, and most importantly, research and development startups.
Alake didn’t reveal the size of the funds and the actual ticket sizes, but he mentioned that it would be launched a few weeks from now and the state is already in conversations with some local and foreign investors that would join as limited partners

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The Harare Institute of Technology has announced that it is working on developing a central bank digital currency.
The tertiary institution stated that it was developing the currency to reduce printing and transactional costs, and eliminate currency manipulation, cash hoarding, and black market currency trading.
HIT vice-chancellor, Dr Quinton Kanhukamwe, did not touch on why but he stated that the project had so far covered great mileage.

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Nigerian data and intelligence company, Stears has raised $3.3 million to enhance its data collection and analytics capabilities, acquire talent and expand into East and Southern Africa. This seed round was led by MaC Venture Capital. It also saw participation from Serena Ventures, Melo 7 Tech Partners, Omidyar Group’s Luminate Fund and Cascador.
The startup’s flagship product is Stears Insights, formerly known as Stears Business, a site that offers in-depth insight for finance professionals, using data. By crunching proprietary and publicly available data, Stears Insights is able to provide valuable insights for its individual and corporate clients.
Stears’ CEO Preston Ideh says that they know global professionals need their data and insight because banks, research firms, development organisations and investors are already using their early products.

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Kenya’s Safaricom officially launched its Ethiopian network becoming the first private operator in one of Africa’s largest telecoms markets Ethiopia’s governments welcomed M-Pesa.
Safaricom Ethiopia’s launch follows a ten-city pilot and a phased launch across the country, which started in August 2022 in the city of Dire Dawa, 350km east of Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital. Until now, state-owned Ethio Telecom operated as a monopoly with 54 million subscribers in Ethiopia, Africa’s second most populous country with an estimated population of 118 million people.
Safaricom Ethiopiaso far the only competitor to state-owned Ethio Telecom—plans to roll out services in 14 additional cities between now and April 2023 to cover 25 cities and enable it to meet the 25% population coverage obligation in its licence.
Safaricom will likely build its offering on superior service—which means significant and rapid building out of its network coverage.

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