Author: Elan

By David McDonald, CEO at SolarAfrica If you ever find yourself sitting around a C-suite industry dinner table, you’ll soon notice that since the recent-ish abolition of loadshedding (long may it last!), the energy conversation is generally filled with optimism, dominated by big ideas and peppered with bold timelines. But if you’re on the ground, you know that the market moves in its own time, and in a far more practical way. The realities shaping 2026 aren’t predictions or policy aspirations, but they’re already playing out in how projects are financed, how municipalities procure power, and how businesses think about energy risk. …

African fintech startups seeking to onboard the continent’s next billion users will need to rethink their long-standing growth strategies, Musty Mustapha, managing director of Kuda Microfinance Bank, has said. He stated this while speaking at a fintech panel on ‘scaling digital financial services across Africa’ during the Tech Revolution Africa conference in Lagos, adding that the growth at all costs’ mindset has shaped much of the sector’s expansion. While incentives can quickly inflate user numbers, they often fail to create the kind of trust and consistent usage that keeps customers long-term. “It is easy to buy users,” he said. “But…

Mauritius hopeful after Trump’s apparent Chagos u-turn – African Business Mauritius hopeful after Trump’s apparent Chagos u-turn – African Business

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Congress he has no authority to bail out Bitcoin. The exchange came during a Senate Banking Committee hearing, when Senator Brad Sherman asked whether the Treasury could intervene to support cryptocurrency prices.Bessent’s answer was direct: he cannot use taxpayer dollars to buy Bitcoin, and the question falls outside his mandate as chair of the Financial Stability Oversight Council.Sherman’s question was a challenge, not a policy proposal. Could the President Donald Trump administration use taxpayer money to prop up assets aligned with the president’s interests?Bitcoin, along with Trump-branded tokens, sat at the center of that concern.The…

For decades, the question of who gets to tell Africa’s stories has been tied to influence: who controls the cameras, the budgets, the distribution pipelines, and, ultimately, the narrative. Today, a new force has entered that debate: artificial intelligence (AI).  As generative AI tools reshape global filmmaking, African creatives are asking a familiar question in a new context: when these tools are developed abroad, who truly owns the stories they help create? For Sandra Adeyeye Bello, founder and creative director of Abuja-based creative media organisation and content studio SAB Studios Nigeria, the answer is straightforward.  “AI does not tell stories…

Prescriptive class name conventions are no longer enough to keep CSS maintainable in a world of increasingly complex interfaces. Can the new @scope rule finally give developers the confidence to write CSS that can keep up with modern front ends?When learning the principles of basic CSS, one is taught to write modular, reusable, and descriptive styles to ensure maintainability. But when developers become involved with real-world applications, it often feels impossible to add UI features without styles leaking into unintended areas.This issue often snowballs into a self-fulfilling loop; styles that are theoretically scoped to one element or class start showing…

** For the best experience, download the free Africa Private Equity News app Android | iOS **Sahel Capital has closed a $1.5 million working capital loan to Rasad Nigeria through its Social Enterprise Fund for Agriculture in Africa (SEFAA). The new facility represents a renewal and scale-up of SEFAA’s earlier financing and will support Rasad’s growing working capital needs across the cocoa value chain.Rasad is a family-led agribusiness based in Ogun State that aggregates cocoa and cashew from over 1,000 smallholder farmers and aggregators across Nigeria. The company supplies both domestic and international buyers.“Rasad has demonstrated strong operational discipline and…

** For the best experience, download the free Africa Private Equity News app Android | iOS **British International Investment, the UK’s development finance institution, has announced $5m financing for Lovegrass Ethiopia, an Ethiopian agri-food company producing teff‑based products for domestic and global markets. Teff – a nutrient rich indigenous grain – is cultivated by more than 6.6 million smallholder farmers and remains central to Ethiopia’s food system and rural livelihoods. “Our $5 million financing will help expand production, strengthen local value addition, and create skilled jobs, while supporting exports that generate vital hard‑currency inflows for Ethiopia. By sourcing teff from…

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Bitcoin has long served a simple purpose: storing and transferring value. The blockchain’s inherent limitations in scalability and programmability prevented use cases like high-frequency payments and smart contracts.Launched in 2018, the layer-2 solution Lightning Network introduced noticeable improvements in scalability. It takes some of the burden offchain by creating side channels between the sender and receiver.The model settles transactions faster, with lower fees. Rendering Bitcoin feasible for daily use, the solution spurred the development of many payment apps on the blockchain.Programmability also arrived in Bitcoin through secondary protocols, such as RGB, an open-source solution designed to expand Bitcoin’s capabilities. The…