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Summary of the news

• Moove has secured $8 million in financing
• Airtel has launched its 5G network in Kenya
• Medsaf has reportedly laid off all its full-time employees
• Agenz has raised $1.3 million through a pre-Series A funding round

Ecosystem

• Agenz, a Moroccan startup focused on digital real estate evaluation, has raised $1.3 million through a pre-Series A funding round. This investment will help the proptech startup fast-track its growth and transform the real estate market within the country by simplifying property deals for all those involved. The funding round involved the likes of Azur Innovation Fund, Maroc Numeric Fund II, and Beenok a foreign investment fund. Commenting on the significant investment, Agenz expressed gratitude for the investor’s willingness to support the company’s vision. It said, “The funds, one of the largest ever for a Moroccan start-up, testifies to investors’ confidence in the company’s vision and its ability to transform the real estate market.” (Technext)
• Airtel has launched its 5G network in Kenya, becoming the second telecommunications company to do so after Safaricom in the country. “Today marks a significant milestone as we proudly introduce our 5G network. Airtel 5G will revolutionize various sectors such as smart cities, education, healthcare, agritech, transport systems, entertainment, and more, shaping the future of Kenya,” said Airtel Kenya’s CEO, Ashish Malhotra. Airtel’s 5G network will be available in 16 counties, with 370 active 5G sites spread across 180 wards. It is in specific zones, including central business districts, highly populated residential areas, city centres, and hospitals. (CIO Africa)
• Nigerian health tech startup, Medsaf has reportedly laid off all its full-time employees. According to a report, COO, Rotimi Lawal, told employees on Slack that Medsaf had to reduce its workforce following “challenges ranging from funding gaps to account receivables due to different the macroeconomic policies and dismal payment behaviour of hospitals in our industry.” The report says about 30 employees were affected. At the time of Lawal’s Slack message, several employees confirmed that they hadn’t been paid salaries since December 2022. The company acknowledged the salary delays and promised to make good on the payments. “In the context of how work activity has fared so far this year, with the majority of the employees staying at home and doing little or no work, the Company will be paying full salary for December 2022 to those who I haven’t paid yet and half payments for January 2023 up till March 2023. These payments will be made to the staff’s bank account in the Month of April 2023,” Lawal wrote in the Slack message. Medsaf has also sent a “cease and desist” letter to TechCabal. (TechCabal)
• In a LinkedIn post CEO of Medsaf, Vivian Nwakah-Lawal disputed the claims in the report, brandishing it as "a story that is so full of lies, misinformation and slander." "Let’s be clear, TechCabal is doubling down on a really dangerous practice of not ensuring that the information they provide to the public is factual. They may be doing this specifically to achieve an aim that is unknown," she wrote. (LinkedIn)
• Mobility fintech, Moove, has secured $8mn in financing from Absa Corporate and Investment Banking (CIB), bringing its total funding to-date from the bank to USD $28mn. The new funding will play a crucial role in bolstering Moove’s expanding vehicle fleet in Ghana, further fuelling its mission to democratise vehicle ownership and provide employment opportunities within gig economies worldwide. The new expansion is expected to further propel Moove’s sustained traction in Ghana, which has seen the startup deliver over 2.7mn trips through Moove-financed vehicles and cover over 3,000 lives through its health and life insurance policies for its customers and their dependents. (TechNova)

Policy

• Namibia has passed a significant milestone by approving a crypto bill in the National Assembly. The bill, which passed Namibia’s lower house of parliament, aims to regulate digital assets, cryptocurrencies and virtual asset service providers (VASPs) in the country. The legislation aims to establish a framework for licensing and regulating VASPs in Namibia. It also seeks to appoint a regulatory authority responsible for supervising these providers and their activities. The bill is now awaiting official publication before coming into effect. (Technext)
• The president of The Association of Mobile Money and Bank Agents in Nigeria (AMMBAN) Lagos, Abiodun David, said the proposed price hike was due to the economic realities of PoS operators. According to him, PoS operators may consider other lines of business if the authorities don’t approve the service charge increase. “There is nothing strange in what we have done. The current realities are not convenient for us. Transporters and market traders have done so,” he said. “Why is our case different?” Last week, the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) barred PoS operators in Nigeria from increasing the service charges and threatened a sanction. AMMBAN fixed a service charge of ₦100 for withdrawals between ₦1000 to ₦2400. (TechCabal)

Social Tech

• The harassment and defamation of borrowers from digital lending companies, popularly known as loan apps, is far from over despite the recent regulatory moves by the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC). A report says that some of the loan apps, including 9jcash and NowNowmoney, registered by the FCCPC continue to defame their customers through the usual practice of sending messages to contacts of their debtors. This also contradicts a recent Google policy forbidding loan apps from accessing their customers’ photos and contacts. While Google is collaborating with the FCCPC to ensure that loan apps in Nigeria adhere to ethical standards, apps currently listed on the Google Play Store are still among the culprits. (Nairametrics)
• Twitch is finally making it easier to find new streamers to follow. It revealed a lot of new features today at TwitchCon, coming over the next few months. Updates include a new discovery feed that will surface streamers you aren’t following; the ability to export clips to TikTok; a new shared streams update letting streamers go live on their individual channels during a Guest Star session; and a new "stories" format. (TheVerge)
• Instagram head, Adam Mosseri said that Threads, which now has more than 70 million signups, will not prioritise news and politics on the new social network. “Politics and hard news are inevitably going to show up on Threads - they have on Instagram as well to some extent - but we’re not going to do anything to encourage those verticals,” he wrote in a response to a reporter’s question about Threads replacing Twitter for news industry professionals. “Politics and hard news are important,” Mosseri continued. “But my take is, from a platform’s perspective, any incremental engagement or revenue they might drive is not at all worth the scrutiny, negativity (let’s be honest), or integrity risks that come along with them.” (CNBC)

Global News

• Elon Musk has sued the elite law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to recover most of a $90 million fee it received from Twitter for defeating his bid to walk away from his $44 billion buyout of the social media company. The complaint by Musk's X Corp, which owns Twitter, was filed last week. Musk accused Wachtell of exploiting Twitter by accepting, in the final days before the Oct. 27, 2022, buyout closed, huge "success" fees doled out by departing Twitter executives who were grateful that Musk would be forced to close. Musk called the $90 million payout "unconscionable," given that Wachtell had billed less than one-third that sum for its few months of work on the Delaware lawsuit. "Wachtell arranged to effectively line its pockets with funds from the company cash register while the keys were being handed over" to Musk, the complaint said. (Technext)
• Ant Group—an Alibaba affiliate founded by billionaire Jack Ma, a recent target of Chinese regulators—was fined $985 million by the People’s Bank of China on Friday, according to China’s central bank, concluding a probe into the company after its initial public offering was pulled by regulators two years earlier. The People’s Bank of China said the fines were in response to “violations of laws and regulations” related to financial consumer protection, payment and settlement business and anti-money laundering requirements. Ant Group said in a statement it would “comply with the terms of the penalty,” adding the company has “completed the related work on the rectification” required by China’s financial regulators. (Forbes)
• Microsoft is predicted to become the next mega-cap tech company to achieve a valuation of $3 trillion, following in the footsteps of Apple, which recently reached this milestone. his is according to a study by American investment bank, Morgan Stanley, The investment bank has labeled Microsoft stock as a “Top Pick,” projecting a potential upside of 22% from its current levels. The main driving force behind this positive outlook is the tech giant’s dominant position in the generative AI race, which positions the company to capitalize on the expanding trend and quickly monetize it. Morgan Stanley analyst, Keith Weiss highlighted the significant potential of generative AI, a technology that aims to automate a wide range of business processes through software. Microsoft is deemed the best-placed company in the software sector to monetize this expansion due to its extensive portfolio and integration capabilities. Weiss also emphasized that the company’s valuation remains reasonable, despite its already strong positioning in the field of generative AI. (Technext)
• Samsung reported a likely 96% plunge in second-quarter operating profit on Friday, largely in line with forecasts, as an ongoing chip glut drives large losses in the tech giant's key business despite a supply cut. The world's largest memory chip and smartphone maker estimated its operating profit fell to 600 billion won ($459 million) in April to June, from 14.1 trillion won a year earlier in a short preliminary earnings statement. It would be Samsung's lowest profit for any quarter since a 590 billion won profit in the first quarter of 2009, according to company data. The profit was largely in line with a 555 billion won Refinitiv SmartEstimate, which is weighted toward forecasts from analysts who are more consistently accurate. (Reuters)
• Note-taking company Evernote has laid off most of its US- and- Chile-based employees, the company announced. Now Italian parent company Bending Spoons is taking most of Evernote’s operations to Europe. The company says the step is intended to “boost operational efficiency and to make the most of the Bending Spoons employer brand, which is extremely strong in Europe.” (TheVerge)

Latest in funding

• Morocco’s Agenz secures $1.3 investment to transform the real estate market
• Mobility Fintech Moove Raises $8 Million In Financing From Absa Bank

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