Author: Insider Editor

Apotierioluwa Owoade couldn’t shake the problem. It lingered long after his stint at Aforevo, a Lagos-based streaming and dubbing company, where he worked between 2022 and 2023. There, he saw up close just how expensive and imperfect film dubbing could be. Translating a full-length production into another language could cost upwards of $500,000, far beyond the reach of many African filmmakers. But for Owoade, the cost wasn’t even the most frustrating part. What bothered him more was what got lost in translation. Dialogue stripped of cultural nuance. Emotions flattened. Voice actors often overstretched and underpaid reduced powerful scenes to something…

Standard Chartered Kenya has trimmed its workforce to fewer than 1,000 employees, marking the 11th straight year of staff reductions as the lender deepens its shift toward digital banking. The bank employed 942 people at the end of 2025, down slightly from 1,001 a year earlier, according to its latest annual report. The figure underscores a long-running restructuring drive that has cut headcount by more than half from a peak of 2,048 in 2014. While layoffs have continued, the pace appears to be slowing. Redundancy costs fell sharply to KES 112.27 million ($870,000) in 2025, compared to KES 580.1 million…

Africa’s private capital market is entering a more pragmatic phase, investors said at the AVCA Annual Conference, as venture-backed exits hit record levels in 2025 despite continued fundraising challenges. Speaking at the opening of the 22nd Venture Capital Summit in Nairobi, Abi Mustapha-Maduakor, CEO of the African Private Capital Association, acknowledged the tough environment but pointed to a shift in how the ecosystem is evolving. “The centre of gravity is moving toward local capital, local expertise, and local conviction,” she said. While venture funding across Africa has cooled from its peak reflecting a broader global slowdown 2025 still saw a…

Kuiper, Amazon’s satellite internet project, is looking to expand its footprint in Africa, with Kenya next on its radar following its recent approval in Nigeria. The company has applied to the Communications Authority of Kenya (CAK) for a Network Facilities Provider (NFP) Tier 2 licence. If granted, the licence would allow Kuiper through its local unit, Amazon Kuiper Kenya Limited to build and operate telecommunications infrastructure across the country. The move comes just months after a major breakthrough in Nigeria. In January 2026, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) granted Kuiper a seven-year licence covering satellite transmission, internet services, and international…

An Ethiopia-based electric mobility startup Dobai focused on electric motorbikes, has raised $13 million in Series A funding to scale its production and expand its battery-swapping network across Addis Ababa. The round combines $8 million in equity and $5 million in debt, with backing from investors including Value Chain Innovation Fund, UTokyo Innovation Platform Co., Nagase, Persistent Energy, For Seasons, CBC Co., Ltd, Inclusion Japan (ICJ), and British International Investment (BII), which provided the debt financing. The raise comes at a time when Ethiopia is emerging as one of Africa’s most ambitious electric vehicle markets. The government banned imports of…

Nigeria is moving to break what regulators describe as a long-standing culture of silence around cyberattacks, pushing banks, fintechs, and other organisations to disclose breaches or at least share threat intelligence as incidents become more frequent and increasingly interconnected. Kashifu Abdullahi, director-general of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), said organisations can no longer afford to treat cyberattacks as isolated or reputational issues, warning that a single breach can quickly cascade across the wider financial and digital ecosystem. “The landscape is elevated because of AI and other dynamics, and we are all connected,” Abdullahi said on the sidelines of…

MTN Nigeria shareholders are set to vote on Thursday on a major restructuring plan that would separate its fintech business from its core telecoms operations, in a move that could redefine how the company is organised and funded going forward. According to a regulatory filing on the Nigerian Exchange, the proposal scheduled for decision at the company’s Annual General Meeting on April 30 will transfer control of MTN Nigeria’s fintech subsidiaries, MoMo Payment Service Bank Limited and Y’ello Digital Financial Services Limited, into a new holding structure backed by MTN Group. The restructuring comes as MTN Nigeria looks beyond self-funding…

WapiPay, a Nairobi-based remittance startup, has received regulatory approval to begin operations in Jamaica, marking its first move into the Caribbean and a strategic push into one of the world’s most remittance-reliant regions. The green light from the Bank of Jamaica allows the company to launch through a partnership with JN Money Services Limited (JNMS), a local payments provider. Through this collaboration, WapiPay will facilitate cross-border transfers linking Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean serving both diaspora remittances and trade-related payments. The expansion places WapiPay in a competitive corner of global finance that underpins money flows into emerging markets. It also…

Telecel Zimbabwe is officially up for sale but under mounting pressure that highlights just how far the operator has declined. Last week, corporate rescue practitioners from Grant Thornton invited investors to bid for a stake in the struggling telco, as it looks to exit a court-supervised rehabilitation process that began in October 2025. Interested buyers have until April 28, 2026, to submit offers, with full financial details only accessible after signing non-disclosure agreements. The urgency is clear. Telecel is weighed down by more than $240 million in debt and faces the real prospect of liquidation if a buyer does not…

Nigeria is preparing to modernise its internet infrastructure over the next three years, as rising demand for connectivity begins to outpace the limits of its current system. At the centre of the shift is a move away from Internet Protocol version 4, the decades-old technology that still underpins most of the country’s internet connections. While IPv4 has powered the web since the 1980s, it can only support a finite number of device addresses a growing constraint as millions more Nigerians come online and data usage accelerates. To address this, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) is pushing for a transition to…