Author: Kaluka wanjala

M-KOPA has marked its 15th anniversary after reaching 10 million customers since its founding in 2011, with the company reporting record revenue of $600 million for its 2025 financial year. The revenue figure represents a 45% increase from 2024, while three million new customers joined M-KOPA over the past 12 months across Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda and South Africa. The company also expanded its workforce, adding about 200 full-time employees, a 9% increase in headcount, alongside more than 5,000 new sales agents. M-KOPA now employs more than 2,500 people and has created income opportunities for nearly 50,000 sales agents. “2025…

IBM and Red Hat today announced that Lightwell has identified and remediated more than 400 previously unknown vulnerabilities in widely used Java libraries. The companies also announced the general availability of Lightwell Clearinghouse, which allows enterprise customers to submit specific open source software dependencies for priority review and remediation. The milestone addresses a growing business risk. As autonomous AI agents become capable of combining several lower-risk software weaknesses into a more serious attack, companies need to do more than identify vulnerabilities. They need a practical way to develop, test and deploy fixes in the software that supports critical applications. Moving…

Pan-African payments infrastructure provider Kora says its new stablecoin payment rail can help reduce the cost of some cross-border transactions in Africa from as much as 2% to below 0.3%. This can be done while cutting settlement times from several days to about 30 minutes or less. We recently spoke to Kora’s CEO and founder Dickson Nsofor who told TechArena that the product will address the fragmentation and delays that affect cross-border payments across African markets. Nsofor says a typical cross-border transfer can take around three days and cost between 1% and 2%. “With One Rail, transactions between any country…

Four young Kenyan women have emerged as the overall winners of the third edition of the GirlCode Kenya Hackathon, held at Konza Technopolis. Mary Wangui, Linet Mugwanja, Aisha Barasa and Cynthia Chepkorir won the two-day competition with Naulisako. This is an AI-powered digital fare collection platform designed to streamline public transport payments. The platform also automates reconciliation for vehicle owners and generates sales records to improve financial tracking and transparency. The hackathon was organised by Absa Bank Kenya, GirlCode and the Technopolis Development Authority. It brought together 44 young women, including students, graduates, developers and aspiring entrepreneurs. Moses Okundi, Chief…

Eric Muriuki has joined Absa Group as Managing Executive for Pan-African Growth Strategy, Platforms & Digital Ventures. This comes after his departure from NCBA Group. At NCBA, he led the LOOP digital financial services business. Muriuki was involved in the development of a number of products that have shaped mobile payments, savings and digital lending in Kenya. His helped design the trust-account architecture behind Safaricom’s M-Pesa electronic value issuance in 2007. He also spearheaded the development of M-Shwari, the mobile savings and micro-credit service that was launched in 2012. Muriuki was also involved with the creation of Fuliza back in…

Dan Kwach has returned to Cassava Technologies. He will be taking up a new role as Executive for AI Data Centres under Africa Data Centres. Kwach announced the move on LinkedIn. This announcement comes less than a year after he announced his departure from Africa Data Centres after a 19-year career with the organisation. We reported on this back in December 2025.  Kwach previously served as Managing Director for the East Africa region. He was involved in the growth of Africa Data Centres and the wider digital infrastructure ecosystem in the region. Kwach said his return comes as artificial intelligence…

Vertiv has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Cybastion, focused on accelerating digital transformation across Africa. The agreement establishes a framework for collaboration within Northwest Africa, with a focus on markets including Morocco, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Chad, and Gabon, where both companies have active engagement and strategic alignment in place. This collaboration is expected to help Vertiv to engage earlier in large-scale digital infrastructure initiatives, by combining its data centre expertise with Cybastion’s existing relationships and experience in government-led digital transformation programmes. “As AI, cloud and sovereign digital infrastructure investments accelerate across Africa, customers are increasingly seeking end-to-end ecosystems rather than…

Jambojet has officially resumed daily flights between Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) and Entebbe International Airport in Uganda. The revived route offers fares starting from KSh 22,950 (USD 170) one-way. The total flight time is approximately 65 minutes. Jambojet first launched the Nairobi–Entebbe route in 2018 and operated it for nearly two years. The airline says its return comes as it has expanded its fleet, strengthened its network and increased its operational capacity. “We are returning to Entebbe with the experience we gained from our first chapter on the route, a densified network and a clear ambition to make…

Google’s Regional Director for Government Affairs and Public Policy for Sub-Saharan Africa says Africa has an opportunity to leapfrog legacy technology systems, but skills, infrastructure and access to AI tools will determine how much of that opportunity the continent captures. I recently had a chat with Charles Murito, Google’s Regional Director for Government Affairs and Public Policy for Sub-Saharan Africa, who said the continent’s relatively limited legacy infrastructure could become an advantage as African developers and businesses increasingly build AI-first solutions in areas such as healthcare, education and agriculture. “We are uniquely positioned to leapfrog legacy infrastructure,” Murito said. He…

Safaricom and Pesapal have announced new payment experiences to make checkout faster and simpler for businesses and customers across Kenya. The partnership expands Safaricom’s M-PESA payment capabilities through Pesapal’s merchant payment infrastructure, introducing Dynamic Scan-to-Pay and Tap-to-Pay on Pesapal point-of-sale (POS) devices. Dynamic Scan-to-Pay allows customers to scan a QR code displayed on a Pesapal POS using M-PESA. The merchant details and payment amount are automatically populated. This allows customers to verify the information before completing the transaction. The new Tap-to-Pay feature allows customers with NFC-enabled smartphones to tap their device on a Pesapal POS, verify the transaction details and…