Author: Elan

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…

Cape Town, South Africa** For the best experience, download the free Africa Private Equity News app Android | iOS **A MESSAGE FROM OUR SUPPORTERSSAVCA VC Conference 2026: VC’s biggest stage. One unmissable day.On 10 September 2026, Southern Africa’s venture capital ecosystem will come together at Hazendal Wine Estate in Stellenbosch for the SAVCA Venture Capital Conference 2026. The conference brings together the investors, fund managers, founders, policymakers, advisers and industry leaders shaping the future of venture capital across the region. Read moreHere are summaries of the five most widely read stories from the past week on Africa Private Equity News.1.…

For years, African finance ministers have made the same case at investor conferences and multilateral summits: the continent is not short of bankable projects, it is short of affordable capital. This week, that case took a tangible step forward. Legal & General Asset Management, one of Britain’s largest institutional investors, launched the L&G LSF African Government Bond (USD) UCITS ETF — the first exchange-traded fund of its kind available to European investors — built on the iBoxx LSF USD African Sovereigns Index and developed in partnership with the Liquidity and Sustainability Facility (LSF). It is a milestone worth pausing on. For…

SOUK Farms’ main export markets are Europe and the Middle East.Our new book, How we made it in Africa II: Real stories of entrepreneurs turning opportunity into profit, is available here. The book was recently shortlisted for the Business Council for Africa (BCA) African Business Book of the Year Awards 2026.Entrepreneur Seun Rasheed is the founder of SOUK Farms, which supplies Rwandan-grown produce – including avocados, chillies and beans – to supermarkets in Europe and the Middle East. The company sources its produce both from its own farms and from about 2,000 smallholder farmers in Rwanda.Of Rwanda’s 10 largest agricultural…

Executive Summary Africa’s industrialisation challenge is not primarily a shortage of ideas, policy intent, or entrepreneurial energy, but a constraint in financial architecture and capital deployment. The continent’s ability to build factories, infrastructure, and value-added industries is limited by the cost, structure, and accessibility of long-term finance. Until capital markets are deepened and better aligned with industrial timelines, Africa’s development ambitions will remain difficult to realise at scale. In this sense, industrialisation is fundamentally a financial systems problem before it is anything else. Can Africa finally finance its industrialisation? For decades, Africa’s development agenda has been defined by a consistent…

For years, the Nigerian creator economy followed a familiar formula: build an audience, go viral, secure brand deals, repeat. But as the industry matures, some of the country’s most recognisable creators are beginning to play a different game. They are moving from promoting other people’s products to building their own. Having an audience and owning a business are two very different things. A creator can have millions of followers and still depend on algorithms, advertising budgets and brand partnerships for income. But when that same creator launches a skincare line, restaurant, technology platform or automobile company, the audience becomes something…

Lebara Nigeria has entered into a strategic partnership with African payment infrastructure provider Payaza to integrate advanced payment capabilities into its telecommunications ecosystem, marking another step toward improving digital connectivity and financial access for millions of Nigerians. The collaboration will see Payaza power payment experiences across Lebara’s services, enabling customers to seamlessly purchase airtime and data, manage subscriptions, and access digital services through secure payment channels. The partnership strengthens both companies’ ambition of creating a more connected and financially inclusive digital economy while demonstrating the growing convergence of telecommunications and financial technology in Africa. Bringing Fintech and Telecommunications Together As…

Shimul Sood / Android AuthorityTL;DR Google is rolling out an update for Gemini Notebooks. An “Add a source to Gemini Notebook” step has been added to automate adding sources. This feature is available for Business, Enterprise, and Education customers. Earlier this year, Google rolled out automatic Drive syncing to Gemini Notebooks. The change made it much easier to keep your sources up-to-date. Another source-related change is now rolling out to Notebooks. This change aims to take the burden out of adding sources.In a blog post, Google announced it’s pushing out an update to Gemini Notebooks. The update will add a…

Sazini Mojapelo, the first Africa-based CEO of Village Enterprise. Published on August 08, 2026 at 09:00 am (GMT +1) The bus rides through her hometown of Bulawayo became Sazini Mojapelo’s first lessons about inequality. Sitting beside her mother, she would watch cars sweep past and wonder why some families seemed to move through life with ease while hers struggled to get by. Her mother worked tirelessly, yet money was always tight, leaving the young Mojapelo with questions she could not answer. Why did hard work produce such different outcomes? Who decided who had opportunities and who did not?“I was always…