Techbuild Africa Community

Global Insurtech Alan Enters Africa With Tanel Acquisition Alan, the global prevention insurance player, has finalised its acquisition of Tanel, a Dakar-based digital health company operating in Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire. The deal marks Alan’s first move into Africa and a notable exit for Francophone Africa’s healthtech ecosystem. Tanel was launched in 2021 by Mouhamed Ndoye and Makhtar Diop to solve the challenge… https://techbuild.africa/global-insurtech-alan-africa-with-tanel/

Egypt’s 3C Coding School Lands $3M to Expand Coding Education Egyptian edtech startup 3C Coding School has raised $3 million in seed funding as it prepares to enter Saudi Arabia and develop an AI-powered platform for personalised learning. MRG Economic Group led the round, which also included investor Amr Saad and several angel investors. 3C plans to put the money toward its Saudi expansion and… https://techbuild.africa/egypts-3c-coding-school-lands-3m-coding-education/

Nigeria’s AI Paradox: World-Class Talent, Unprepared Enterprises Silas Adekunle may not look like the face of a global AI ranking, but he is the co-founder of Awarri, the Lagos-based startup behind Nigeria’s first government-backed multilingual AI model, and is more likely to talk about Yoruba proverbs than benchmark scores. But a new dataset released last month puts an exact figure on what… https://techbuild.africa/nigerias-ai-paradox-world-class-talent-ataraxis/

WhatsApp Tests Tool to Help iOS Channel Users Spot AI-Generated Content WhatsApp is testing a new label for AI-generated and AI-edited media shared through Channels, giving users a clearer way to identify content that has been created or modified with artificial intelligence. The feature is currently being tested with a limited group of iOS beta users running WhatsApp version 26.34.10.70 through TestFlight. It follows a similar… https://techbuild.africa/whatsapp-ios-channel-users-ai-generated-content/

Two Ex-Jumia Managers Built a Gig-Worker Fintech. The IFC Wants to Write a $4M Cheque Kayode Adeyinka spent years at Jumia watching one problem repeat itself across West Africa: drivers who could not afford vehicles could not take delivery jobs, and without delivery jobs they could not afford vehicles. No conventional financial product could break that loop. Banks wanted collateral, but gig workers had none. In 2022, Adeyinka and Samuel… https://techbuild.africa/two-ex-jumia-managers-built-gigmile-ifc-4m-cheque/

Cyber Threats Escalate Rapidly as 82% of META SMBs Report Attacks — Kaspersky Within GITEX Nigeria, taking place from 31 August to 3 September in Lagos, Kaspersky, global cybersecurity and digital privacy company, warns that cyber attackers are currently deploying the same methods against small businesses as they do against large enterprises. To help strengthen corporate defences, Kaspersky is releasing recommendations alongside findings from a global survey by… https://techbuild.africa/cyber-threats-82-of-meta-smbs-attacks-kaspersky/

ACAI Summit Draws 2,000+ as AI Leaders Urge Greater Investment in Talent and Research More than 2,000 students, researchers, technology professionals, entrepreneurs, academics and technology enthusiasts gathered at Oduduwa Hall, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, on Thursday for the 2026 ACAI Summit, organised by the American Center for Artificial Intelligence (ACAI), a Dallas and Abuja-based nonprofit organisation dedicated to advancing artificial intelligence research, education and application. The summit, themed around… https://techbuild.africa/2000-2026-acai-summit-african-talent-research/

Black Women-led VC Mamor Capital Raises $18.8M to Fund SA’s Tech Ecosystem Mamor Capital Ventures has reached a R300 million ($18.8 million) first close for its debut venture capital fund, giving the South African firm enough capital to begin investing in post-revenue technology companies as it continues raising toward a R550 million ($34 million) target. The Johannesburg-based firm, which is black women-owned and managed, reached the milestone… https://techbuild.africa/black-women-led-vc-mamor-capital-18-8m-sas-tech/

WhatsApp Tests On-device AI Feature to Warn Users About Potential Scams WhatsApp is testing a new feature that could warn users when a message from someone they don’t know looks like a scam. Called Scam Alert, the tool is currently being tested with a limited number of Android beta users running WhatsApp version 2.26.34.1. It’s optional and turned off by default, so installing the beta doesn’t… https://techbuild.africa/whatsapp-ai-feature-to-warn-users-potential-scams/

FairMoney Aligns Product Design with Stricter CBN, FCCPC Consumer Protection Rules By James Edeh, Head of Compliance at FairMoney Microfinance Bank FairMoney Microfinance Bank says it is embedding regulatory compliance and consumer protection into the design and lifecycle of its financial products as Nigerian regulators intensify scrutiny of digital lending and financial technology operators. The lender said its approach goes beyond meeting regulatory requirements after products… https://techbuild.africa/fairmoney-cbn-fccpc-tighten-consumer-protections/

6th in AI Workforce Literacy, 19th in Enterprise Deployment: Nigeria’s AI Paradox, Explained Nigeria’s workers have adopted AI faster than any country in Europe, Latin America or the rest of Africa, according to a new global outsourcing report. They rank sixth worldwide for workforce AI literacy among 25 major outsourcing destinations. Their employers tell a very different story, ranking 19th for actual enterprise AI adoption. That 13-place difference… https://techbuild.africa/workforce-literacy-enterprise-nigerias-ai-paradox/

Reimagining Anambra: A 35-Year Vision for a Smarter, Greener and Connected State By Chukwuemeka Fred Agbata (CFA) As Anambra marks its 35th anniversary, the theme, “Our Environment, Our Future”, speaks directly to one of the defining challenges of our dear state. For Anambra, the environment is not an abstract conversation. We live with erosion, flooding, blocked drainage channels, indiscriminate waste disposal and increasing pressure on our land… https://techbuild.africa/anambra-35-year-vision-smarter-greener-connected/

Meta’s $18 Billion Child Safety Settlement Raises a Bigger Question for Africa Meta has been ordered to pay about $18 billion to settle a major lawsuit brought by US states that accused Facebook and Instagram of being designed in ways that could addict children and teenagers. The states also alleged that Meta misled the public about the risks its platforms posed to younger users. Meta has not… https://techbuild.africa/metas-18-billion-child-safety-settlement-raises-a-bigger-question-for-africa/

Africa’s MVNO Gap: A Market Still Waiting to Be Tapped By Warren Alberts, Chief Executive Officer at VAS-X According to a GSMA 2025 report, the mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) business model boosts access, diversifies services and fosters greater competition. The same report found that over 2000 MVNOs operated across nearly 100 markets worldwide, but only 65 were in Africa. And yet, Africa is the… https://techbuild.africa/africas-mvno-gap-a-market-still-waiting-tapped/

Google Cloud Targets Finance and Law Sectors With Gemini Enterprise Google Cloud has launched two purpose-built AI products simultaneously, one for financial services institutions and one for law firms, in a move that signals a deliberate shift away from selling general-purpose AI tools to enterprise clients and toward industry-specific solutions that arrive pre-configured for the compliance, confidentiality and workflow requirements of heavily regulated sectors. Gemini… https://techbuild.africa/google-cloud-finance-law-gemini-enterprise/

Zoho, SMEDAN Launch ₦20B Push to Digitize 25,000 Nigerian MSMEs Zoho, a global technology company, has announced a strategic partnership with the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN) to improve access to affordable cloud technology for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) across Nigeria. The strategic partnership combines SMEDAN’s reach and mandate to promote and facilitate the development of Nigeria’s MSME sector… https://techbuild.africa/zoho-smedan-₦20b-digitize-25000-nigerian-msmes/

Intron Rolls Out Sahara v2.5 to Support Mixed African Languages in Voice AI Intron, an Africa-centric voice technology platform, today unveiled Sahara v2.5, a major leap forward for African voice AI that enables computers to understand one of the continent’s most common ways of communicating: mixing languages within the same sentence and conversation. Across Africa, people often move between languages in everyday conversations. A doctor may explain a… https://techbuild.africa/intron-sahara-v2-5-african-languages-voice-ai/

Ventures Platform Hits $84M fund, Defying Global VC Downturn Ventures Platform, Africa’s leading seed-stage fund, has announced the final close of its second institutional fund – VP Pan-African Fund II (VP PAF II)– at $84 million, exceeding its original target of $75 million. Achieved just three years after the close of Fund I and against a markedly more cautious global venture backdrop, the oversubscribed… https://techbuild.africa/ventures-platform-84m-fund-global-vc-downturn/