Author: Elan

USBC increased a Bitcoin-backed loan to $18 million in late July. That created a price-dependent risk: the company could have to add collateral or repay debt within 24 hours. Using the filing’s July 31 inputs, the disclosed 130% call ratio equates to an illustrative Bitcoin price near $48,852.The company is developing a tokenized-deposit offering. In its Aug. 7 Form 10-Q, it said a fourth draw of $3 million on July 28 raised the balance under its Payward Interactive facility from $15 million. USBC had pledged 479 Bitcoin worth about $30.1 million as of July 31. The filing reported a 59.8%…

Leading telecoms company, MTN Nigeria, has noted that the Y’ello Street symbolises how Nigeria has transformed in voice and data connections over the past 25 years.  Speaking to journalists and well-wishers at the MTN Plaza on Monday, MTN Nigeria’s Chief Financial Officer, Modupe Kadri, said the company’s celebration goes beyond its 25th anniversary. He said the milestone also reflects how long Nigerians have been connected through the brand. “We are celebrating 25 years of believing in Nigeria, 25 years of connecting people, 25 years of investing, 25 years of innovation, 25 years of learning, sometimes stumbling, adapting and getting better,…

If your Netflix home page is doing its job, you’ve likely already seen that Kevin Hart’s 72 Hours is at No. 1 on the U.S. Top 10 charts at the moment, and that a Liam Neeson action movie (In the Land of Saints & Sinners) from 2024 is up there, too. While both are solid picks for a fun movie night this week, there are, of course, loads more options. This week we’re going a bit deeper with a few picks—two new and one new to Netflix this month: a claustrophobic sci-fi horror about a family trapped inside their house,…

Image credit: Husqvarna South Africa Wildfires are becoming a growing challenge across Southern Africa, threatening rural communities, agricultural businesses, and natural ecosystems. Rising temperatures, changing weather patterns, dry vegetation, and extreme conditions are increasing the risk of more frequent and intense fire events. For farmers and landowners, wildfire preparedness is becoming an important part of climate resilience. In many rural areas, emergency response can be limited by distance, infrastructure challenges, and a lack of immediate access to firefighting resources. As climate risks increase, technology and better resource management are helping communities prepare before disasters occur. Building a first line of…

Ibrahim Sagna spent more than two decades in finance, including at the African Export-Import Bank and the Africa Finance Corporation, before co-founding Silverbacks Holdings, a firm that invests in technology, entertainment, sport and the creative industries. Africa Private Equity News editor-in-chief Jaco Maritz spoke to Sagna about the firm’s origins and how it picks its investments.Topics discussed during the interview include:The backstory to the founding of SilverbacksWhy it doesn’t directly invest in early-stage companiesWhat it looks for in an investmentHow it decides when to exitWhy Sagna hosts his own podcastWhether ordinary people should invest in startups

Africa’s startup funding activity slowed sharply in July 2026, with 47 startups raising a combined $102.2 million across disclosed deals. Data compiled by Nairametrics shows that the funding landscape remained heavily concentrated, as the top 10 funded startups attracted $88.85 million, accounting for 86.94% of all capital raised during the month. This means nearly nine out of every ten dollars invested in African startups during the month went to just ten companies. Three startups involved in merger and acquisition (M&A) transactions did not disclose the value of their deals during the period, as the deal values were not disclosed and…

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Bitcoin’s BIP-110-enforcing branch stalled at block 961,633 on Sunday after producing only two blocks, while the non-enforcing chain advanced to 961,721, widening the gap to 88 blocks. According to the BIP-110 monitor, updated at 10:19 am UTC, the branch’s latest block had been mined about 12 hours earlier. Ocean records show that a pseudonymous mining group called Roughnecks produced the branch’s first two blocks using Ocean’s Decentralized Alternative Templates for Universal Mining (DATUM) mining protocol. The divergence began after BIP-110 entered mandatory signaling at block 961,632 on Saturday. Only 51 of the preceding 2,016 blocks, or 2.53%, signaled support. During this window,…

Rest Essence never expected to watch a family friend come close to dying while giving birth. It was around 1 a.m. when she went into labour, and she was taken from one hospital to another. The first hospital refused to admit her for reasons that remain unclear, while the second had no electricity. Under the glow of handheld flashlights at the third hospital, she delivered her second child by caesarean section. She then began haemorrhaging, and for a moment, Essence feared she would not survive.  She did, but that experience changed the course of his own life. At the time,…

The gap between “you need a library for this” and “the browser does this” keeps closing. A practical guide to auditing your dependencies and finding what the web platform can now handle for you.Most of us install a dependency once and never look at it again. It does its job, the tests pass, and we move on. But the web platform keeps moving too, and a surprising number of the libraries sitting in your package.json today are now built into the browser.In a typical mid-sized JavaScript app, you can often find somewhere between 60KB and 90KB (minified and gzipped) of…