TechCabal

What drives a 22-year-old university student to write and publish a book? Motunrayo Sanyaolu shares the powerful reason behind her decision and how she’s helping young innovators break free from the limits of traditional education. 📹 Watch the full interview 👉 https://lnkd.in/dY4bFg2m

In Africa, some first-time founders face a catch-22: stay home and struggle for funding, or chase foreign investors. Some of them resort to seeking global mobility to access investor networks and get a chance at being funded. The effect is causing some first-time founders to increasingly build 'global businesses' as they shuffle to the US to make their funding prospects more... geographically appealing. 🔗 Read this week’s Digital Nomads to learn more  👉 https://lnkd.in/dfkzhit6 

In the early days of Arnergy, I had to define my WHY. One key driver was creating the opportunity I never had. While I’ve been fortunate to work with great companies and earned across currencies, including US$, something was always missing. I often thought that if we worked hard and the company delivered exponential growth, I'd love to share in the upside. But there was no such opportunity at the time. I promised myself that if I ever built something, we’d do things differently: foster ownership, not just employment, and create our version of the Silicon Valley story. Seeing our team members across all levels benefit from secondary liquidity after our recent capital raise is incredibly fulfilling. A new narrative is unfolding. The game is changing, and I’m excited for what lies ahead. A huge thank you to our investors who aligned with us and made this possible. We’re all in, this is day 0, and the journey ahead will be exciting! Read more here

ICYMI, Nigeria’s Central Bank (CBN) has approved the launch of open banking, mandating that banks begin sharing customer data with other financial institutions starting in August 2025. Nigeria becomes the first African country to implement open banking, four years after the Central Bank of Nigeria first released its regulatory framework for the initiative. With the CBN’s approval, customers can now consent to allow regulated financial institutions to access their data, such as account balances, transaction histories, and spending patterns, and, in some cases, even initiate transactions on their behalf. Get all the details 👉 https://lnkd.in/dPjGGfcg

South African fintech startup SOLmate has doubled its active user base over the past year to about 100,000, driven by soaring demand for eWallet services and new partnerships that expand access to digital payments in underserved areas. The company claims its eWallet service recorded a 500% surge in transaction volume, enabling users to send money directly to mobile numbers, a functionality increasingly preferred over traditional EFTs (electronic funds transfers) in the country’s underbanked population. 🔗 Get all the details 👉 https://lnkd.in/dVSMk3Yh

What if AI could tell if you’ll repay a loan just by hearing your voice? 🤯 Lendsqr, a Nigerian startup, is building exactly that—a tool that uses AI to assess loan eligibility through a simple voice or video response. Would you trust it? Tell us in the comments.

When Nigerian remittance startup LemFi closed its $53 million Series B round in January 2025, one of the biggest winners was Silverbacks Holdings. The Africa-focused private equity firm, which also invested in Flutterwave and Moove, quietly exited its stake in the round, achieving a 29x return on its initial investment. The exit, Silverbacks’ eighth overall, aligns with the firm’s strategy of partially exiting its investments to realise profit. It is also the firm’s sixth exit from a Nigerian tech-enabled company and marks the fourth time a Nigerian fintech has delivered returns to Silverbacks’ investors. 🔗 Get more details 👉 https://lnkd.in/dpuEA7ew 

TVC News has become the first Nigerian broadcaster to introduce artificial intelligence (AI) news anchors that deliver bulletins in five major local languages. The innovation is part of a broader push by TVC News, a subsidiary of TVC Communications, to modernise its newsroom with emerging technologies. The AI anchors are designed to complement human journalists by expanding the station’s reach across Nigeria’s six geopolitical zones and tapping into underserved audiences in their native languages, TVC Communications said in a statement. 🔗 Learn more 👉 https://lnkd.in/dXgD4D7S 

Two months before Arnergy, a Nigerian solar energy startup, raised an additional $15 million in April 2025 to complete its $18 million Series B round, current and former employees received an email outlining how to sell their shares back to the company. It was an unexpected liquidity event that earned millions of naira after selling part of their shares, four employees told TechCabal, who declined to disclose specific figures for privacy reasons. Arnergy introduced stock options in 2019 for employees who committed to staying with the company for the four-year vesting period as a way to encourage long-term commitment. It also used stock options to reward exceptional performers regardless of tenure.   🔗 Get more details  👉 https://lnkd.in/dMB5QijS 

👨🏿🚀TC Daily — Kenyan banks, CBK locked in a disagreement over loan pricing Kenyan banks and their regulator, the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK), are in disagreement over how loans should be priced and how much interest banks should charge. The CBK is pushing lending rates to align more closely with the benchmark rate, as banks have refused to lower their rates despite recent cuts by the CBK. But banks are wary of the high default rates among Kenyans and are trying to hedge against losses from bad loans. While the CBK says it’s acting out of concern and trying to stimulate economic activity, banks argue that they’ve already done more than enough for SMEs—and that a new loan pricing system tied to the benchmark rate does more harm than good. In today’s dispatch: why Kenyan banks are refusing to adopt the CBK’s new loan pricing system; SEC warns Nigerians against Tofro, another Ponzi scheme; Access-owned Oxygen X raked in half a million dollars in 2024; and why Nigerians will now pay more for bank SMS alerts. Sign up and read TC Daily 👉 https://lnkd.in/dH3aQFrw