Author: Elan

Ghana’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the country’s capital markets regulator, has admitted 11 crypto companies into a regulatory sandbox as it begins rolling out a new law that formally legalises and regulates the virtual asset industry. On Tuesday, the SEC announced that Africoin, Blu Penguin, Goldbod, Hanypay, Hyro Exchange GH Ltd, HSB Global, Koinkoin, Whitebits, Vaulta, Xchain, and Bsystem Ltd will test their products and services in a 12‑month pilot programme under regulatory oversight. “The sandbox aims to support responsible innovation while strengthening investor protection, market integrity, and compliance with anti‑money laundering and counter‑terrorism financing standards,” the SEC said…

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has emerged as the world’s most valuable private company, reaching a staggering $1.25 trillion valuation. This follows its merger with xAI, the billionaire’s artificial intelligence venture. The deal makes SpaceX the most valuable private company in history, overtaking OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, whose valuation has also surged to $840 billion after securing the largest investment ever made in a private company, a $110 billion backing from Nvidia, SoftBank, and Amazon. The findings come from data analysis by BestBrokers, a financial research and analytics platform that tracks global startup valuations. The firm analysed the latest data from…

Spending a lot of time in Prime Video’s huge library of documentaries can get a bit … weird. There’s a lot in there, from super-specific explorations of Houdini to exposés on the royal family to everything you ever wanted to know about the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. Maybe I’ll get to some of those in a future roundup, but for this weekend (March 12 to 15), I’ve got two documentary features and a series for you. The first is a surprisingly emotional Mars exploration crowd-pleaser, the second is a fascinating deep dive into the making of a sci-fi horror classic, and…

** For the best experience, download the free Africa Private Equity News app Android | iOS **French development finance institution Proparco has committed $15 million to the African Transition Acceleration Fund (ATAF), a new pan-African fund focused on financing climate infrastructure at an early stage of development. The fund is managed by African Infrastructure Investment Managers (AIIM), a pan-African infrastructure investment manager, and has reached a first close as part of a targeted $200 million fundraising.The fund will invest equity or quasi-equity in about 14 infrastructure development companies or platforms, with ticket sizes of $10–$30 million. These investments are intended…

** For the best experience, download the free Africa Private Equity News app Android | iOS **Mirova has announced a $15 million senior secured facility for iSAT Africa Mauritius, a rural connectivity platform, to support the deployment of fully solar-powered mobile towers in Liberia and Zambia. The 10-year facility will finance the rollout of scalable network-as-a-service and energy-as-a-service solutions as part of iSAT’s broader 1,000-tower expansion strategy across sub-Saharan Africa. The towers, financed by the Mirova Gigaton Fund, will be entirely off-grid, powered by solar energy and battery storage. John Kimotho, investment director at Mirova Kenya, said, “This investment reflects…

Yemisi Iranloye Our new book, How we made it in Africa II: Real stories of entrepreneurs turning opportunity into profit, is available here. Interview with Yemisi IranloyeFOUNDER and CEO, PSALTRY INTERNATIONAL Lives in: Nigeria Cassava is a root crop that resembles a large sweet potato. Nigeria produces and consumes more of it than any other country. Most often, it is processed into garri or fufu, which are eaten as thick, dough-like accompaniments used to scoop up traditional soups and stews. However, cassava also has major industrial applications. The roots can be processed into starch, ethanol, glucose syrup and flour. Among its many uses,…

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In brief Eightco shares are rising after the firm announced a new $125 million fundraise from BitMine and Ark Invest. The firm previously raised $20 million from BitMine and created a Worldcoin treasury. Eightco aims to expand its reach into AI, blockchain, and digital consumer products, having completed investments in OpenAI and Beast Industries. Shares in publicly traded blockchain and artificial intelligence firm Eightco (ORBS) are up more than 15% Thursday following news that the firm has raised $125 million to continue its expansion into AI and blockchain. The firm earned commitments of $75 million from leading Ethereum treasury firm BitMine…

In much of Africa’s startup ecosystem, user growth is still treated as the clearest signal of product market fit. Teams are constantly checking dashboards and celebrating downloads, sign-ups, and onboarding completion. But when we recently engaged 500 women across eight West African countries, what emerged was a more complicated story. It suggests many products may be overestimating what adoption actually means. Women have historically lagged behind in digital adoption. But across West Africa, that gap is narrowing faster than many product assumptions reflect. More and more women are coming online, and their motivation for doing so is increasingly clear and…

For years, developers have been hacking around the limitations of border-radius, using clip-path, SVG masks, and fragile workarounds just to get anything other than round corners. The new corner-shape property finally changes that, opening the door to beveled, scooped, and squircle corners.When I first started building websites, rounded corners required five background images, one for each corner, one for the body, and a prayer that the client wouldn’t ask for a different radius. Then the border-radius property landed, and the entire web collectively sighed with relief. That was over fifteen years ago, and honestly, we’ve been riding that same wave…