Author: Elan

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…

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…