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Summary of the news

• Zumi has shut down
• Opera has increased its stake in OPay to 9.5% from 6.4%
• Liquid Intelligent Technologies has acquired Egypt-based Cysiv MEA
• CBN has raised MPR to 18%

Ecosystem

• Autochek has appointed CloudOne CEO, Robert Granados to its board of directors to support its ongoing growth and expansion, Technext reports. "We are excited to have someone of Robert’s calibre on our board with his vast experience from the most advanced automotive markets in the world," Autochek's CEO Etop Ikpe said. “There is a great opportunity to transform lives and livelihoods across Africa by making car ownership more accessible and affordable, and I am thrilled to be supporting Etop and the team to make this happen," Granados said.
• Opera has increased its stake in OPay to 9.5% from 6.4%. This follows the conclusion of the 2022 sale of Nanobank for $127 million, TechCabal reports.
• Liquid Intelligent Technologies has acquired Egypt-based Cysiv MEA, formerly SecureMisr to extend its operations into the Middle East and Africa, Innovation Village reports. The London-based tech company said that it will rebrand Cysiv MEA to "Liquid C2." “We are thrilled to be joining the Liquid family and to be part of an industry-leading brand like Liquid C2. We are now in an even stronger position to enable our enterprise customers in Egypt and the MENA region to accelerate their digital transformation," Sherif Shaltout, VP of Operations, Cysiv MEA said.
• Zumi has shut down due to its inability to raise the funding necessary to sustain its operations. This close will see the company lay off its team of 150 people, TechCabal reports. "The current macro environment has made fundraising extremely difficult, and unfortunately, our business was not able to achieve sustainability in time to survive,” CEO William McCarren said.

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Policy

• The monetary policy committee of the Central Bank of Nigeria has voted in its February 2023 meeting to raise its monetary policy rate to 18% from 17.5%, representing a 50 basis point increase, Nairametrics reports.
• South Africa’s Competition Commission has announced that it has published the draft Terms of Reference for a market inquiry into the distribution of media content on digital platforms. According to the commission, the inquiry has been set up to address existing market features in digital platforms that distribute news media content. The features are said to impede, distort, or restrict competition and may have adverse implications for the news media sector of South Africa, Techcabal reports.
• The Central Bank wants NIBSS to manage the Open Banking registry, but the banking industry says there is another way, TechCabal reports. Industry professionals say that while they have no qualms with NIBBS building the registry, it is best for the registry to be run by a separate entity. They argue the settlement corporation—which was co-created by the CBN and the Nigerian Banker’s committee—cannot be both regulator of open banking and a participant in the open banking system.

Social Tech

• The Netherlands asked government officials to immediately stop using TikTok and similar apps on their mobile work devices amid fears of security violations, Bloomberg reports. Apps from companies based in countries with an “offensive cyber program” against the Netherlands represent an increased espionage risk, the Dutch government said in a statement yesterday.
• A study conducted in Q4 2022 in 12 Nigerian cities by Orange Business Intelligence Technology discovered that about 86% of smartphone users in Nigeria are using Android phones, while 13% use IOS devices and the remaining 1% rely on Windows phones, despite the huge iPhone hype, Technext reports.

Global News

• Adobe is jumping into the generative AI game with the launch of a new family of AI models called Firefly, TechCrunch reports. “Firefly is the next step on our AI journey — bringing together our new ‘gentech’ models with decades of investment in imaging, typography, illustration and more to produce assets,” Costin said. “We’ll bring this value to our customers’ workflows where content is created across Creative Cloud, Experience Cloud and Document Cloud,” VP of generative AI, Alexandru Costin said.
• China's Baidu has unveiled its chatbot, Ernie Bot to rival Open AI’s ChatGPT, Technext reports. The launch triggered a roller coaster in its share price last week as the Baidu shares plummeted as much as 10%– 14% after a succession of analysts approved the AI chatbot.
• Google has announced a limited public rollout of its ChatGPT competitor Bard, TechCrunch reports. “You can use Bard to boost your productivity, accelerate your ideas and fuel your curiosity. You might ask Bard to give you tips to reach your goal of reading more books this year, explain quantum physics in simple terms or spark your creativity by outlining a blog post,” Google VP of Product Sissie Hsiao and Google VP of Research Eli Collins wrote in a joint blog post.

Latest in funding

• Seed Club Ventures emerges from stealth with $25M fund focused on DAOs
• Bionic Health raises $3M for its AI health clinic using GPT-4 and other ML models to design better preventative care

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