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Monday, 04 September 2023
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Supported By
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Good morning!
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Today we are following the latest from President Bola Tinubu's bid to win the support of young Nigerians by including them in the halls where decisions are being made.
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Tinubu has invited young members of the tech ecosystem to attend the Nigeria-India Presidential Round Table in New Dehli on the 6th of September. Flutterwave’s CEO Gbenga Agboola, Interswitch’s Mitchel Elegbe, Ceviant’s Idris Bamidele Saliu, Venture Platform's Olamide Ainaand GIG’s Chidi Ajaere have been invited.
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Whether he will take their contributions on how we can shape the ecosystem remains to be seen.
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Then it will be over Mark Zuckerberg's dead body before news providers on Facebook are compensated for their content on the platform.
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Meta said it will not accept the terms of a new law by Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, that would compel social media giants to pay news providers for their news content on their platforms.
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The legislation stipulates that both Meta and Alphabe must remit a minimum of 4% of their annual revenues generated within Canada to news outlets in exchange for featuring links to news articles.
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Below are the tech stories and news you need to know to start your day, carefully curated by Technext.
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We are thrilled to share that MyCover.ai has successfully raised pre-seed funding of $1.25M! This round was led by Ventures Platform and Founders Factory Africa, with participation from TechStars Toronto.
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With this funding, we can strengthen our operations in Nigeria and strategically fuel our expansion into other African markets. Join us on this exciting journey as we tackle the issue of inadequate insurance access, coverage and affordability in Africa and beyond!
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Summary of the news
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- Microsoft has removed Teams from its 365 bundle to customers in Europe
- NUC has introduced revamped tech courses to Nigerian universities
- Meta is considering paid versions of Facebook and Instagram in EU
- Flutterwave, Interswitch, Venture Platform bosses will travel will Tinubu to India
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Ecosystem
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M-PESA introduce standing orders: Safaricom’s M-PESA is set to introduce standing orders in an announcement revealed by the telco’s CIO George Njuguna. This will effectively make it the first mobile money platform with this feature, although standing orders are quite common in traditional banking and neo-banking products.
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“This is the first initiative, where you will have standing orders on a mobile platform – the first in the world, and not just the first in Africa. We will use it in other areas such as health because we understand this economy to increase accessibility and affordability,” Njuguna said.
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With a standing order, users can set up a regular payment to be made from their mobile money account to another person, business, or service. (TechCabal)
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Policy
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Tinubu's push for innovation: President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has invited young members of the tech ecosystem to attend the Nigeria-India Presidential Round Table in New Dehli on the 6th of September. Flutterwave’s CEO Gbenga Agboola, Interswitch’s Mitchel Elegbe, Ceviant’s Idris Bamidele Saliu, Venture Platform's Olamide Ainaand GIG’s Chidi Ajaere have been invited.
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The move further positions Tinubu as a president who has the youth, but especially the tech ecosystem at heart at a time when the world is increasingly turning to the miracles of technology to solve all its problems.
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Already he has appointed Tijani Bosun, the CEO of CcHUB Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy. The administration has also deployed funds that will focus on increasing innovation including electric cars in the country. (Technext)
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- India is in talks with African governments including Namibia, Mozambique and Kenya, and BRICS members on the expansion of Unified Payments Interface to enable cross-border payments. (Benjamin Dada)
- The National Universities Commission (NUC) has introduced revamped core tech courses to the curriculum of Nigerian universities, including Cybersecurity, Data Science, Information and Communication Technology, Computer Science, Information Systems, and Software Engineering. (Technext)
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Social Tech
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Advert-less Facebook: Meta is considering paid versions of Facebook and Instagram that would have no advertising for users in the European Union, three people with knowledge of the company’s plans said, a response to regulatory scrutiny and a sign that how people experience technology in the United States and Europe may diverge because of government policy.
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Those who pay for Facebook and Instagram subscriptions would not see ads in the apps, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the plans are confidential. That may help Meta fend off privacy concerns and other scrutiny from E.U. regulators by giving users an alternative to the company’s ad-based services, which rely on analyzing people’s data, the people said.
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Meta would also continue to offer free versions of Facebook and Instagram with ads in the European Union, the people said. It is unclear how much the paid versions of the apps would cost or when the company might roll them out. (New York Times)
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- Microsoft is no longer updating WordPad and plans to remove the word processor from a future release of Windows. The software giant will instead recommend Microsoft Word, its paid word processor that has always been far more feature rich than the basic WordPad app that has shipped as part of Windows since Windows 95. (TheVerge)
- A court in Saudi Arabia has sentenced to death the brother of an exiled dissident, convicting him of disloyalty to the kingdom’s rulers in a case built around anonymous social media accounts where he shared criticism of the government. The defendant, Mohammed bin Nasser al-Ghamdi, a 54-year-old retired teacher, had almost no public profile before he was arrested last year and accused of treason. (New York Times)
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Global News
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Over Zuckerberg's dead body: Meta said it will not accept the terms of a new law by Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, that would compel social media giants to pay news providers for their news content on their platforms.
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The legislation stipulates that both Meta and Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google, must remit a minimum of 4% of their annual revenues generated within Canada to news outlets in exchange for featuring links to news articles.
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“As the legislation is based on the incorrect assertion that Meta benefits unfairly from the news content shared on our platforms, today’s proposed regulations will not impact our business decision to end news availability in Canada,” Rachel Curran, head of public policy for Meta in Canada, said.
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“Canadians rely on digital platforms to access their news and information, but these tech platforms have to act responsibly and support the news sharing they and Canadians both benefit from,” Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge said. (Technext)
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- Worldcoin witnessed a significant rise in its popularity and demand in Argentina, getting a signup every 9 seconds. The Sam Altman-backed project has come under investigation in Kenya for the kind of data it collects including eye scans. (Technext)
- Microsoft has announced that it will no longer offer Teams as part of its 365 bundle to enterprise customers in Europe. This move aims to pacify European Union (EU) regulators who are investigating the company based on possible anti-competition activities. (Technext)
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Latest in funding
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Other stories we are following
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