African Tech Round-Up

Jacques de Vos is the MD of the Vodacom IoT subsidiary, Mezzanine Ware. Mezzanine deploys mobile (GSM) enabled solutions and helps clients (primarily within the healthcare, agriculture and education services) develop innovative business models that harness IoT technologies to achieve cost efficiencies and improved accessibility.

This is our 100th episode! To everyone who's ever listened in to the show, interacted with us via social media, recommended the podcast to other people, made an audio contribution, emailed a comment or question, been featured as a guest, attended one of our live events, tuned in to a live stream on Facebook, or even come on board as a podcast/event sponsor, thank you. We all did this. The love is real, and we salute you! To celebrate this milestone, we're publishing live audio taped at the African Tech Round-up LIVE: State of the Startup event we hosted a couple of weeks ago. At the gathering, Andile Masuku facilitated a lively panel discussion featuring special guests, Indresen Chetty (Managing Director: TRACE Mobile), Dominique Collett (Senior Investment Executive: RMI & Alpha Code), Ben White (Founder & CEO: VC4Africa) and Daniel Rubenstein (Co-founder: My Treasury). Happy listening and here's to the next hundred episodes! Music Credits: Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Music licensed under

It's been barely a week since we hosted the African Tech Round-up LIVE: State of the Startup event in Johannesburg, and believe it or not, next week will mark the 100th podcast we'll have published in consecutive weeks. We've done our best to deliver the biggest digital, tech and innovation headlines from Africa and beyond while offering candid analysis and commentary, as well as useful insights gleaned from some of the Africa's leading entrepreneurs, executives, investors and technical talent. The conversation we're sharing on this week's show brings things full-circle in that the show's host, Andile Masuku, finally got to meet the Texas-based Nigerian, Bola Lawal, in person at our recent event-- after they interacted online, brought together by the podcast. It's humbling to realise how this little podcast has grown into a lively international community of people-- Africans and otherwise, who are actively involved and/or care deeply about the continent's growing tech ecosystem. Bola is one of the co-founders

The Tech Minute 17-03-2017 by African Tech Roundup

Mobile telcos on the continent are certainly having a rough time of it on the continent. In the same week that MTN South Africa CEO, Mteto Nyati, announced his resignation, a consortium of banks including Guaranty Trust Bank, Access Bank and Zenith Bank reportedly assumed control of Etisalat Nigeria over an outstanding $1.72 billion loan. Media reports suggesting that Etisalat Nigeria failed to meet its debt servicing obligations since 2016 have led to speculation over what might have contributed to this crisis-- could it be unsound management decisions or simply an unfortunate consequence of operating in Nigeria's recessionary environment? In this week's African Tech Round-up, Simon Dingle joins Andile on the show to comment on the week's biggest headlines and to discuss the import (or lack thereof) of Bitcoin reaching price parity with gold, as well as to share insights on the exciting potential of blockchain technology to revolutionise monetary regimes on the continent. Music Credits: Music by Kevin MacLeo

In this Tech Minute, Brian Lupiya shares the latest on Etisalat Nigeria's $1.72 billion credit dispute with a consortium of banks including Guaranty Trust Bank, Access Bank and Zenith Bank, and reveals which international VOD subcription service has set its sights on seven African countries. Music credit: Muzikid

Oops... Amazon is still recovering from their embarrassing human error that caused a massive outage of their Simple Storage Service, leading to significant portions of the web to go down for several hours. For more on that story and one other major news item from the past week, listen in to this Tech Minute with Brian Lupiya. Music credit: Muzikid

Pule Taukobong is a Founding Partner at CRE Venture Capital (CRE VC), a seed-focussed fund which invests in technology-enabled startup companies in Sub-Saharan Africa. Their impressive portfolio includes stakes in startups like Andela, Esaja, Angani, Flutterwave and more recently, Yoco. Pule is responsible for the group's deal flow and performs industry and financial due diligence on both incoming business plans and targeted companies, while also sitting on several startup advisory boards. In this conversation, Pule unpacks his approach to identifying sound prospects and discusses what it takes to groom promising startup founders for success.

Whatever you think of Nokia's re-introduction of the legendary 3310 device, you've got to hand it to HMD Global for completely owning Mobile World Congress 2017 in terms of capturing headlines. In fact, you'd be hard-pressed to recall any other major announcement made at the world's premier mobile showcase this year. In this week's African Tech Round-up, Andile Masuku is joined by Zambian author, speaker and marketer extraordinaire, Musa Kalenga, to work out how much of the hype surrounding Nokia's new/old "dumbphone" is actually deserved, and whether the handset has the potential to do well if it's rolled out in Africa. You should also tune in to hear Musa factor in on some of the biggest headlines from the last couple of weeks, as well as to hear him unpack insights from a second book he has in the works, The Kalenga Conundrum-- which is just one of the many projects keeping him very busy in the wake of giving up his client partner role at Facebook Africa in recent weeks. Music Credits: Music by Kevin MacLe

In this Tech Minute-- media reports have surfaced alleging SAP South Africa Managing Director Lawrence Kandaswami's involvement in a kickback scandal linked to the Department of Water and Sanitation. For more on this and other leading tech news from the past week, be sure to spare a minute to listen in.​ Music credit: Muzikid

Katlego Maphai is the co-founder and CEO of the South African mobile payments startup, Yoco.   Yoco launched out of beta in October 2015 and the venture has since acquired over 6 500 merchants, has gone on to process approximately $76,7 million (R1 billion rand) in annualised transactions. The company has recently announced the conclusion of a Series-A funding round (sum undisclosed) led by two foreign, fintech-focused institutional investors-- US-based Quona Capital (manager of Accion Frontier Inclusion Fund) and the Netherlands-based, Velocity Capital.

In this Tech Minute, Brian Lupiya unpacks how Kenyan banks have teamed up to take on the disruptive threat posed by M-Pesa, and touches on two other leading stories from the latest African Tech Round-up podcast. Music credit: Muzikid

We're often asked what informs our opinionated take on the biggest tech and innovation headlines each week. Our secret is having five to ten times as many conversations per week than most people. From established tech entrepreneurs and high-flying C-suite types to striving startup founders, career tech-heads, VC’s, business angels and everyday Africans who are leveraging tech to make a better life for themselves, we talk to everybody. On this week's African Tech Round-up we've decided to let you in on some typical offline chatter that tends to colour our worldview. Listen in to hear Chris Campbell, co-founder of the African Business Angels Network (ABAN) catch up briefly with Candace Johnson at the World Business Angels Investment Forum that recently went down in Turkey. Candace is the co-chair of the Global Business Angels Network, and Chris got her to react to the presence of an African delegation at the event. Chris also tapped Nigerian Angel Investor, Tomi Davies for his thoughts on how the world is comin

While at the World Business Angels Investment Forum 2017, Chris Campbell, co-founder of both the African Business Angels Network (ABAN) and the South African Business Angels Network (SABAN) catches up with Nigerian angel investor and president of ABAN, Tomi Davies, to get his thoughts on how readily the world is starting to think of Africa is a serious tech investment destination.

In the same week that Neotel officially became part of Liquid Telecom (a subsidiary of the Econet Group), Anglophone Cameroon clocked a month of going without internet access. Brian Lupiya shares the details in this Tech Minute. Music credit: Brian Lupiya Image credit: Edouard Tamba

Alison Treadaway is a director and shareholder of the South African eBilling and eMarketing software and services company, Striata. In this chat, Alison unpacks the noble aims of South Africa's imminent enaction of the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPI), and highlights some of the pain points that this ground-breaking piece of legislation is expected to address-- gaps that other African countries will no doubt seek to plug through passing personal data laws of their own.

The continent's two most prominent central banks-- the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the South African Reserve Bank (SARB), have decidedly different attitudes towards the notion of adopting virtual currencies. While the CBN has recently warned the country's financial institutions and citizens that virtual currencies are not legal tender, the SARB has displayed a willingness to emulate Tunisia by launching a blockchain-based digital version of the South African Rand. With bitcoin showing signs of maturing into a legitimate asset class, central banks the world over are grappling with a very real fear of missing out on the cryptocurrency wave. The surf's up, it seems. Also in this week's African Tech Round-up is a chat with Alison Treadaway, director and shareholder of the South African eBilling and eMarketing software and services company, Striata. Alison unpacks the noble aims of South Africa's imminent enaction of the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPI). She highlights some of the pain points th

In this Tech Minute, Brian Lupiya gives the lowdown on an impressive large-scale green project in Cape Town, South Africa and touches on two other leading stories from the latest African Tech Round-up podcast. Music credit: Muzikid

Lionel Chmilewsky is the CEO of Cambridge Broadband Networks (CBNL), a UK-based, privately-held multipoint microwave tech firm which has an impressive client list that includes seven of the world’s top ten mobile operators-- among them, African biggies like MTN and Vodacom. Lionel shares insights on the state of play on the continent’s wireless network scene, and explains why recent advances in multipoint microwave tech are potentially game-changing.

The Indomitable Lions of Cameroon are probably still celebrating their win against The Pharaohs of Egypt in the AFCON final. How ironic that roughly 20% of the Central African country’s population was unable to celebrate their national team’s win on social media thanks to the government’s ongoing broadband blackout following anti-government protests in the north-west and south-west regions of that country. No doubt some Cameroonians-- particularly the tech heads who make up the nation’s “Silicon Mountain” community, might even now gladly give up the country's recently won AFCON trophy if it meant getting their internet back. Increasingly, many African governments cannot be trusted not to tamper with public access to the web. With disturbing frequency, citizens across the continent are cut off without notice whenever their governments' interests are threatened. The unfortunate truth is that for the average African, the concept of internet access as a human right is a myth. As for the concept of net neutrality,