Author: Elan

$56 billion. That was the amount that flowed into Sub-Saharan Africa as remittances in 2024, according to World Bank estimates. Yet, moving money across Africa still often means routing payments through correspondent banks, delays, foreign exchange (FX) costs, and fees that can reach double digits.  Ryan Kirkley, co-founder and chief executive officer of Global Settlement Network (GSX), a US-based blockchain infrastructure company, believes those inefficiencies are creating an opening for a new generation of financial infrastructure built on blockchain.  “Some African economies already run on stablecoin rails,” Kirkley told TechCabal in an interview in May. “The question now is whether…

Kelvin Obasuyi says his mother used to tell him that there is dignity in labour. It is a piece of advice that has guided him through years of work that rarely looked dignified from the outside: a chocolate popcorn business that folded within a year, selling varsity jackets, and freelance data analysis for anyone willing to pay.  “I was [doing] anything I could do for money,” he says. Years later, as an entrepreneur, his mother’s words stopped being about his own survival and became about everyone else’s. “People [who] work for me are depending on the business to feed families,”…

Microsoft has confirmed a Windows 11 bug that causes the Capability Access Manager write-ahead log file to grow continuously without being compacted, which can lead to the use of over 500GB of drive space on affected systems.The fix is included in update KB5095093, which contains builds 26200.8737 and 26100.8737. Users can install this update through the optional updates section of Windows Update or wait for it to be included in the July 2026 Patch Tuesday rollout.The issue was documented by Windows Latest. Microsoft’s release notes for KB5095093 state that the update “improves disk space usage for the CapabilityAccessManager.db-wal file.What Is…

By Ben Ouattara, Head of Africa, Puma Energy History offers a familiar lesson: when global energy markets are disrupted, Africa often bears a disproportionate share of the consequences. The continent is rarely the source of the crisis. Yet it often finds itself on the front line of the fallout. Higher transport costs, inflation, pressure on foreign-exchange reserves and fiscal strain can arrive quickly, particularly in fuel-importing economies. Unlike larger consuming nations, many African countries have fewer tools available when global energy markets are disrupted. That reality is being tested once again. More than ten weeks into the Iran conflict, global…

** For the best experience, download the free Africa Private Equity News app Android | iOS **The Fund for Export Development in Africa (FEDA), the development impact investment arm of the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), today announced the appointment of One Street Studios as the co-general partner of the Pan African Film Fund. This fund aims to mobilise up to $1 billion for Africa’s film and creative industries.Launched in May 2025 as part of the Afreximbank Creative Africa Nexus programme, the Pan-African Film Fund will mobilise and direct capital towards the growth of Africa’s film, television, and immersive media industries,…

In brief China’s Ministry of Commerce has held talks with Alibaba, ByteDance, and Z.ai about restricting overseas access to China’s most advanced AI models—including unreleased ones—per Reuters. The proposed framework: a tiered system from simple filing for basic tools to domestic-only restrictions on the most sensitive frontier models. If China restricts its own open-weight models, the alternative businesses reached for when the U.S. cut off Anthropic and gated GPT-5.6 in June disappears with them. The U.S. used its AI kill switch in June. China appears to be building one for July.Beijing has spent the past month in quiet talks with…

Banking technology company Backbase has acquired Kasisto, a leader in agentic AI for financial services, integrating the company’s banking-grade artificial intelligence directly into its platform as African banks face challenges with legacy IT systems that hinder their digital transformation. Kasisto’s financial intelligence models are now part of Backbase’s Banking Operating System. This change aims to help banks and financial organisations in Africa overcome limits in their infrastructure that have slowed the use of AI technology. A recent survey of 277 bank executives across Africa, conducted by Backbase with African Banker magazine, found that the main challenge to adopting AI in…

I’ve owned various headphones and earbuds over the years with hi-res LDAC codec support. The only problem is that Windows 11 doesn’t support LDAC, which means I invariably connect to my phone, which does, but then it becomes a problem playing audio from my PC. I know, I know, it’s not the worst problem, but it is frustrating. There is a solution to this problem: The Alternative A2DP Driver. It’s a paid tool, but it brings much needed codec support to Windows 11, adding drivers that Microsoft, for some reason, believe we don’t really need. Related My expensive earbuds sounded…

Olugbenga “GB” Agboola, founder and CEO of Flutterwave** For the best experience, download the free Africa Private Equity News app Android | iOS **Africa-focused payments company Flutterwave today announced an investment from Circle Ventures, the corporate venture arm of Circle Internet Group.This investment supports Flutterwave’s effort to embed USDC settlement directly into the payment flows businesses already use today. Merchants can collect locally and settle in USDC, reducing delays and costs while enabling near-instant settlement beyond traditional banking hours.It is Flutterwave’s strategy to position stablecoins as financial infrastructure to provide reliable and fast settlements in Africa. Olugbenga “GB” Agboola, founder…

The Nigeria Civil Society Situation Room expresses serious concern over recent media reports of the scandal regarding the alleged Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC) also described as the Presidential Economic Advisory Council and the appointment of Prince Adeyemi Adeniyi Matthew as Director-General of the purported federal agency. The scandal involves allegations of forged appointments, the operation of an alleged non-existent federal agency, claims of influence peddling, budgetary allocations and serious accusations of corruption involving senior public officials. While the authenticity of these claims and the circumstances surrounding them remain matters for competent authorities to establish, the controversy raises fundamental…