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Naivas-FlexPay Dispute Escalates Into Criminal Case
A commercial relationship between Kenyan supermarket giant Naivas and buy-now-pay-later fintech FlexPay has escalated into a criminal investigation, ending with the arrest of two FlexPay executives over a disputed KES 31.2 million, worth roughly $231,000. The dispute dates back to a partnership that began in 2021, when Naivas engaged FlexPay to allow customers to purchase…
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Koko’s Collapse Exposes the Risks of Africa’s Carbon Credit Market
Koko, the African climate technology company that built a business around carbon credits and clean cooking, is facing a difficult endgame as efforts to find buyers for its carbon assets have failed, leaving creditors to fund the company’s wind-down in the United Kingdom. The development highlights a growing problem in Africa’s carbon market: generating climate…
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African Startups: A Decade of Investor Returns and Exits
Over the past decade, Africa’s startup ecosystem has evolved from a largely experimental market into a major destination for venture capital, with fintech, mobility, e-commerce, logistics, healthtech, and climate technology attracting billions of dollars in investment. Yet beyond the headline funding figures, an increasingly important question is emerging: what have African startups actually returned to…
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From Orbit to AI: Satlyt Raises $8 Million for Space Data Centres
The idea of running artificial intelligence workloads in space has moved another step closer to reality after Satlyt, a space-tech startup with African headquarters in Nairobi, raised $8 million in seed funding to develop its vision of virtual AI data centres in orbit. The company is taking a different approach to space infrastructure. Rather than…
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Safaricom Brings Contactless M-PESA to 30,000 POS Terminals
Safaricom is taking M-PESA further into physical retail with a new partnership with Kenyan payments company Pesapal, allowing customers to make contactless payments by tapping their smartphones on compatible point-of-sale (POS) terminals. The rollout covers about 30,000 Pesapal terminals across Kenya, giving Safaricom a way to expand M-PESA’s presence at physical checkout points without having…
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Dangote’s Expansion Offers Nigerian Startups an Exit Blueprint
Dangote Industries Limited is showing what happens when an African company moves from building a dominant domestic business to testing its strength in international markets. For Nigerian startups, that expansion offers a lesson that goes beyond manufacturing: building a valuable company ultimately requires creating something that can survive beyond its original market. Dangote’s growth has…