Explorez tous les épisodes du podcast Africa Tech News

Amazon alleged in a legal filing published that the National Labor Relations Board is unconstitutional.
SpaceX and companies that, like Amazon, have repeatedly faced labor law violations from the federal agency have recently made similar attacks that threaten national worker protections.
Amazon claims that the NLRB’s structure is unconstitutional because administrative law judges are insulated from presidential oversight, thus violating the separation of powers. The company also argues against the structure of NLRB itself, as well as its ability to fine a company for unfair labor practices after a hearing, rather than a full jury trial.

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Partech has closed its second Africa fund, Partech Africa II, at $300 million+, just one year after reaching its first close.
Partech Africa, which originally targeted €230 million before its fundraising efforts started, solidifies its position as the largest fund dedicated to African startups.
Amidst a backdrop of global VCs and institutional investors pulling back from Africa, Partech Africa’s recent fund closure is significant.
The continent witnessed a notable decline in investor activity, with a 50% decrease in 2023 compared to the previous year, as highlighted in a Partech report.
This retreat, influenced by global economic shifts and local challenges, translated into reduced venture capital inflows for African startups, totalling between $2.9 billion and $4.1 billion last year, down from $4.6 billion to $6.5 billion in 2022.

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Roam, a Kenya-based electric vehicle company has raised $24 million in equity and debt to expand local manufacturing capabilities in Kenya, scale up production at its new 10,000 sqm Roam Park facility, invest in research and tooling for cost efficiencies, and streamline local and global supply chain networks.
The $14 million Series A funding round was led by Equator Africa and participation from At One Ventures, TES Ventures, Renew Capital, The World We Want, and One Small Planet, among other prominent private and institutional investors.
The $10 million debt facility was provided by the International Development Finance Corporation.
Estimates from the BloombergNEF show that EV sales are projected to reach 16.7 million in 2024, representing a 20% increase from the previous year.

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Botswana’s telecoms regulator has warned the public against the importation, use, and resale of Starlink devices in the country.
The importation, use, and resale of Starlink devices are punishable offences in Botswana, according to the Botswana Communications Regulatory Authority.
Starlink is not yet licensed in the country and the regulator has stated that it is currently vetting the service’s application.
Reports indicate that some owners of Starlink devices, who claim to be using them for personal use, are being barred from entering the country with them at the Kazungula border post with Zambia, where the service has officially launched.

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Disha announced the product will be paused indefinitely from March 31, 2024. Its 100,000 creators have until then to migrate their content and profiles to other platforms.
Flutterwave’s CEO Olugbenga Agboola says at the time, that he considered Disha the creator version of Flutterwave Store which now serves over 900,000 businesses across 154 countries.
Early in 2022, Flutterwave also paused its Barter by Flutterwave, its virtual dollar card service, due to problems its partner company, Union54, faced with chargeback fraud.

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The country, in 2019, approved $433 million to bankroll a five-year project that would provide everyone with unique 11-digit identification numbers that would be registered to every SIM card. So far, about 102.39 million NINs have been registered.
Security officials in the country’s tech capital of Lagos have announced the reactivation of tracking devices to apprehend kidnappers.
The Lagos State Commissioner of Police says that it’s working with several other agencies to apprehend culprits in hot zones.
The tech used to track SIM cards and match the national identity numbers registered to the cards has been deactivated since 2021.
The sources also revealed that the payment for the tracking service at the NPF was suspended at the same time.

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Oregon may soon become the latest state to pass right-to-repair legislation.
Last month, Google lent its support in an open letter, calling Senate Bill 1596 “a compelling model for other states to follow.
The bill, sponsored by a sextet of state senators and representatives, was inspired in part by California SB 244, which Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law in October.
Apple openly supported that bill — a rare endorsement from a tech giant that loves playing it close to the vest. Cupertino is, however, less enthusiastic about certain inclusions in the Oregon legislation that were absent from the California law.
John Perry, Apple's senior manager, of Secure System Design, says Apple agrees with the vast majority of Senate Bill 1596 and appreciates her willingness to engage in an open dialogue.

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Ethiopia is placing a ban on gasoline and diesel car imports, and express admission on electric vehicles.
Transport Minister Alemu Sime, says prioritises both green energy and reducing dependence on fuel imports.
The ban will involve smoke tests for current vehicles, with those failing considered unsuitable for road use.
The government intends to establish a robust network of EV charging stations to support the expected increase in electric vehicles. The government’s decision in 2022 to offer tax exemptions for electric cars also underscores its commitment to green initiatives.
However, several companies are starting to assemble and sell EVs locally, including Hyundai and Marathon Motor Engineering.


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Kenya has proposed an AI and robotics law that includes fines of up to $6,250 for unlicensed businesses.
The Kenya Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Society Bill 2023 introduced the fine to regulate and support the growing sector.
The bill also outlines the establishment of the Robotics Society of Kenya (RSK), a proposed regulatory body empowered to issue licences and levy the $6,250 fine on unlicensed businesses. Failure to comply could even land offenders in jail for two years. This body will also advise the government on emerging trends in AI and robotics.
The proposal has sparked discussions among AI enthusiasts and advocates, who view the law as a severe threat to innovation and growth and believe that it is merely another avenue for the government to create unnecessary bureaucracy and generate revenue.

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Ibrahim Ibitade, CEO of Leatherback, a cross-border payments startup that operates in seven countries, has successfully cleared his name following an intense episode with Nigeria’s anti-graft agency, the EFCC.
Ibitade deemed the EFCC’s actions bullying and is now seeking accountability for the agency’s lack of due diligence.
Leatherback denied the rumours, of lost money to SDQ Facilitators but an EFCC investigation into SDQ Financials was launched. The investigation revealed that SDQ used Leatherback’s naira and USD wallets, but Leatherback claims they were unaware of any fraudulent activity.
Leatherback says it will continue its trajectory towards success, as the company claims it processed $500 million in monthly transactions by June 2023 and was nearing the $1 billion mark before the EFCC episode.

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African fintech giant Flutterwave is seeking to retrieve $24 million illegally transferred in October 2023 through a combination of a technical glitch and potentially fraudulent activity by POS merchants.
The fintech company will reach out to over 6,000 account holders across 35 banks and financial institutions involved in unauthorised transactions.
A recent High Court ruling will allow Flutterwave to contact account holders via email, SMS, and WhatsApp messages, with assistance from a recovery agency to recover the funds, according to court documents

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MTN-owned fibre solutions Bayobab announced that its subsea internet cable, 2Africa, has landed in Nigeria and Ghana.
TechCabal reports that the cable was set to land in Nigeria in November 2023.
The 45,000-kilometre cable is being hailed as the world’s largest subsea cable project, and Bayobab, which is backed by Meta, says the cable will provide Ghanaian and Nigerian internet providers with more capacity and fairer access to data centres, leading to faster, more reliable internet for businesses and individuals alike.

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The Space X-owned service which kicked off in Nigeria has snaked its way across the continent, launching in Kenya, Rwanda, Zambia even eSwatini, all while avoiding South Africa.
Starlink won’t acquiesce to South Africa’s equity requirement: that 30% of its company or any foreign company launching in the country must be owned by South Africans.
South Africans are however using Starlink though via resellers like IT Lec and StarSat.
Starlink says resellers are violating its terms of use, and its copyrights by using the Starlink logo for their marketing.
The SpaceX-owned company has also asked resellers to cease all unauthorised resales immediately.

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The Central Bank of Nigeria eliminated the cap on exchange rates quoted by International Money Transfer Operators.
CBN previously controlled the exchange rate at which International Money Transfer Operators like Western Union and MoneyGram could sell foreign currency to Nigerians.
The CBN previously allowed the IMTOs to deviate from the official rate by a maximum of 2.5% (-2.5% to +2.5%).
The new development is in response to the suspected hoarding of foreign currency by Nigerian commercial banks.
The FG earlier gave a directive to commercial banks to release non-essential foreign currencies—currencies not needed for legitimate import payments, overseas travel allowances, or student tuition fees—to tame the naira’s depreciation against the dollar.

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The European Union’s AI Act, a risk-based plan for regulating applications of artificial intelligence, has passed what looks to be the final big hurdle standing in the way of adoption after Member State representatives today voted to confirm the final text of the draft law.
The development follows the political agreement reached in December — clinched after marathon ‘final’ three-way talks between EU co-legislators which stretched over several days.
The work to turn agreed positions on scrappy negotiation sheets into a final compromise text for lawmakers approval kicked off — culminating in today’s Coreper vote affirming the draft rules.
The planned regulation sets out a list of prohibited uses of AI (aka unacceptable risk), such as using AI for social scoring; brings in some governance rules for high risk uses (where AI apps might harm health, safety, fundamental rights, environment, democracy and the rule of law).

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CEO Stefan Ytterborn says Electric motorcycle startup Cake filed for bankruptcy February 1.
The Swedish company was in the middle of a funding round, just prior to the filing, but apparently the withdrawal of an investor was what tipped the company over the edge.
Ytterborn says that he had nothing else in mind but to find a solution in one format or another.
Cake raised a $14 million Series A in 2019. It followed that with a $60 million Series B round in 2021 led by Swedish pension fund AMF.
The capital was meant to fund manufacturing facilities in Europe, North America and Asia and to scale up its retail capabilities.

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MultiChoice says it will make a new $89 million cash injection in Showmax, its streaming platform, by the close of March 2024. The latest development comes as Showmax gears up for its February 12 relaunch.
MultiChoice is now in talks to be acquired by Canal+ after the French giant offered to acquire all outstanding shares they don’t already own in the company for R105 ($5.65) per share—an increase from the broadcaster’s current share price of R79 ($4.25). Canal+ began acquiring shares in the South African company in 2020, and steadily increasing its stake to 31.7% by June 2023.
Vivendi, owners of Canal+ stated that it was increasing its stake in MultiChoice for international expansion.

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Starlink has had its application to launch in Botswana rejected
The low-orbit satellite service, owned by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, was denied its application to operate in the African nation ahead of a planned Q4 2024 launch.
The regulator says that the company did not share all the necessary information. It is unclear which information Starlink did not provide in its original application.
Starlink also continues to face regulatory pushback in Southern Africa. The South African government rejected its application for failing comply with a mandatory requirement of 30% ownership to historically disadvantaged people.
In Zimbabwe, legislators based their rejection of Starlink’s application on an EU investigation into X.

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Airtel Africa, a telecom company operating across 14 African countries faced headwinds from Nigeria’s naira devaluation and reported a loss after tax of $151 million in its Q1—April 1 to June 30, 2023 results.
The telecom giant recently released its 9-month financial report ending December 2023, of a profit before tax of $2 million, a significant decline from the $523 million profit it recorded in the same period in 2022.
Airtel witnessed a significant drop in profits last year due to the decrease in the value of currencies in some of its main markets: Nigeria, Malawi, Zambia, and Kenya.

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Spotify issued its response to Apple’s new DMA rules, calling the new fees imposed on developers extortion and Apple’s compliance plan a complete and total farce that demonstrated the tech giant believes that the rules don’t apply to them.
Apple earlier this week announced a host of changes that comply with the letter of the EU law.
The company say that app developers in the EU will receive reduced commissions, but it also introduced a new core technology fee that requires developers to pay €0.50 for each first annual install per year over a 1 million threshold, regardless of their distribution channel.
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, whose company sued Apple over antitrust concerns, already condemned Apple’s plan, saying it was a case of malicious compliance and full of junk fees, and now Spotify is essentially saying the same.

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The Indian state government has fixed security issues impacting its website that exposed the sensitive documents and personal information of millions of residents.
The bugs existed on the Rajasthan government website related to Jan Aadhaar, a state program to provide a single identifier to families and individuals in the state to access welfare schemes.
The bugs exposed the copies of Aadhaar cards, birth and marriage certificates, electricity bills and income statements related to registrants, as well as personal information such as their date of birth, gender and father’s name.
Security researcher Viktor Markopoulos, working for cybersecurity company CloudDefense.ai, found the bugs in the Jan Aadhaar portal in December and asked TechCrunch for help in disclosing to the authorities.

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Sama which preps datasets for AI training, ensuring models meet high accuracy standards, now connects to three cloud storage providers: AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure.
Customers can now keep their data on their preferred cloud and Sama can still access it securely, and train their models faster and more efficiently. With multi-cloud integrations, customer onboarding time is reduced to one day, expediting the entire process by up to seven times.
Sama’s multi-cloud integration ensures data stays on your chosen cloud platform (AWS, Google Cloud, or Microsoft Azure, potentially lowering data transfer and development expenses.

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October Cadre Harmonise says an estimated 17 million Nigerians grappling with critical food insecurity, and an estimated 25 million Nigerians were likely to be food insecure between June and August of 2023.
Ten Agritech Startups will focus on using these 4IR technologies to improve various agricultural sub-sectors including forestry, crop production, fishery and livestock.
The ministry announced that 10 startups were placed in the programme.
The selected agritech startups are Agri-Wing Project, Ranch.ID LivestockPro, Precision Farm Management, Automated loT-Based Irrigation System, Geospatial Intelligence model for enhanced prediction of crop yield and crop stress assessment, AgriTrust Solutions by Ledger Labs Ltd., Alfor Livestock diseases and health reporting, loT Climate-Smart Device, Smart Pond (SP) and Future Fish Farms.

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The African tech ecosystem continues to witness significant M&A activities in 2023, 30 acquisitions took place, including Bitmama’s acquisition of PayDay. Commercial banks are however way ahead of startups in this M&A game.
Take Nigeria’s Access HoldCo, completed its third acquisition of the month. It acquired Nigeria’s second-largest independent pension fund manager, ARM Pensions.
ARM will be Access’ third acquisition this month—with Zambia’s Atlas Mara and Megatech Insurance as the first two—and the third overall that showcases the bank’s strong venture into other plays like insurance and pension.

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Singapore-based Terraform Labs, the company behind digital assets TerraUSD and Luna, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Delaware following the collapse of its cryptocurrencies in 2022.
Terraform Labs, which confirmed its Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection filing, says the filing is a strategic step that will enable it to continue its operations and support litigation pending in Singapore and U.S. litigation involving the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The outfit also says it would meet all financial obligations to employees and vendors during the Chapter 11 case without requiring additional financing.
Terraform Labs’ estimated assets and liabilities range from $100 million to $500 million, while the number of creditors is between 100 and 199.
Terraform Labs plans to continue expanding its Web3 business and recently acquired Pulsar Finance, a cross-chain portfolio manager and data provider, and launched Station v3, a cryptocurrency wallet, earlier this month.

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The Nigerian Communications Commission has granted the telecom a 21-day extension to settle interconnect fees owed to MTN, delaying a planned phased disconnection.
Globacom reportedly owes MTN about ₦6 billion ($6.7 million) in interconnect fees, which led the NCC to approve the partial disconnection of Globacom from MTN Nigeria on January 8.
In 2019, MTN disconnected Globacom for five days, resulting in Glo paying ₦2.6 billion ( out of a total ₦4.4 billion owed, in interconnect fees. During the same period, Airtel also issued threats to disconnect Glo.

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South African broadcaster Openview has taken MultiChoice to court for monopolising broadcasting rights for the Rugby World Cup.
The eMedia parent company argues that Multichoice, through its sports channel SuperSport, unfairly excludes other platforms, like the South African Broadcasting Corporation channel from airing the popular event, hindering competition and limiting viewer choice.
However, MultiChoice says e-media is seeking to reap where it has not sown.

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Amazon Prime, the global streaming giant, is laying off staff and scaling back its local content production in Africa and the Middle East.
The streaming platform, the third largest in Africa, is restructuring its business model to focus on its European market.
Barry Furlong, the vice president of Prime’s EMEA division, says that the decision was made to focus on the areas that drive the highest impact and long-term success.
Amazon Prime will still be present in Africa, but the platform will stop approving local shows in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa.
Africa’s streaming market is projected to have at least 18 million paying streaming customers by 2029, up from 8 million customers last year

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Patricia’s, the crypto exchange’s latest time frame for repayment is now two to five years which the company says it set for expectation management purposes.
Patricia has tried several measures to repay its customers including an app relaunch, a stablecoin backed by the dollar, and fundraising.
Patricia says this will help ensure a safe process for everyone, but it remains to be seen why the company would need video testimonials if it has records of all its users. It calls into question if Patricia is showing genuine concern or pulling a PR stunt.

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Kenya’s phone regulator, the Communications Authority of Kenya, has slapped Airtel and Telkom Kenya with warning notices and fines for failing to meet quality of service standards.
The CA regularly tests mobile networks against benchmarks for call success rate, internet speed, and coverage.
To be considered compliant, networks must score at least 80% on these key performance indicators.
In the latest report covering June 2023, Safaricom, the market leader, exceeded expectations with 90%, but Airtel and Telkom significantly missed the mark with 79% and 65%, respectively.

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Egypt’s government-owned telecom has announced that citizens can expect 5G this year.
Telecom Egypt has begun testing 5G services in five locations across the country, aiming for a full rollout later in 2024.
The company says the tests will span three months, followed by a nationwide rollout.
CEO Mohamed Nasr expects the financial impact to be evident by the end of 2024. Already the telecom saw a 48% net profit in 2023, and more subscribers means even better margins, especially with the $150 million hole in its pockets.

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Google pulled many crypto exchanges, including Binance and Kraken, from its Play Store in India in what is the latest blow to the world’s second-largest internet market’s already dwindling web3 dream.
The ban comes two weeks after these global crypto exchanges were flagged for operating illegally in the South Asian market.
Financial Intelligence Unit, an Indian government agency that scrutinizes financial transactions, late last month issued show cause notices to nine crypto firms and alleged that they weren’t compliant with India’s anti-money laundering rules.
FIU had asked India’s IT Ministry to block websites of all the nine services in India.

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Nigeria’s apex bank has appointed new board members for the three commercial banks whose boards it dissolved.
The Central Bank of Nigeria dissolved the board of directors of Union, Keystone and Polaris banks citing regulatory non-compliance and corporate governance failure.
The dissolution and replacement of board members comes weeks after Jim Obazee’s investigation into the Central Bank under former Governor Godwin Emefiele’s alleged questionable bank acquisitions. Obazee’s report claims Emefiele used proxies to purchase these banks without evidence of payment.
Yetunde Oni takes over the helm of affairs at Union Bank alongside Mannir Ubani Ringim, the bank’s new executive director. Hassan Imam will head KeystoneBank as CEO.

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Amazon is laying off hundreds of employees across Prime Video and the recently acquired Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) Studios, because it wants to focus on creating high-impact content.
Twitch, Amazon’s live-streaming site, is also preparing to cut off 35% of its staff after several top executives left the company in the final months of 2023.
Amazon isn’t alone: Beyond Amazon, the broader streaming landscape is grappling with economic headwinds, prompting layoffs at industry giants like Disney and Warner Bros.

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Global investment bank Citigroup has announced that it will cut 10% of its workforce, about 20,000 jobs, by 2026.
The chief financial officer Mark Mason, the layoffs are part of the company’s reorganisation and bid to boost its bank results.
The company has had four rough quarters culminating in Q4 2023 when it recorded $1.8 billion in losses, the biggest losses recorded since 2009 when it recorded $8.9 billion in losses in its fourth quarter.
The bank has sold some of its operations outside the US including its China consumer unit, its Vietnam business unit, and several other businesses across South East Asia.

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South Africa is seeing another multinational exit with network operator Lyca Mobile’s shutdown.
Last week, the mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) stated that it’s cutting ties in SA. Users had until January 9, 2024, to hop onto another network or face the risk of losing their phone number and access to text, call and data services.
Lyca’s announcement is related but the company’s long-time partner Cell-C is facing significant financial challenges.
Cell-C, however, has lost 9 million customers between 2021 and 2013, and has a R10.7 billion debt.

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Elon Musk’s Space X is redefining global mobile communication dynamics.
The satellite company has launched six Starlink satellites with direct-to-cell capability to eliminate mobile dead zones.
This means mobile phones can connect directly to the satellite, skipping the need for traditional cell towers. This makes it possible for mobile connectivity to work in remote areas and other places where traditional networks reach poorly or not at all.
Musk also clarified that Starlink’s satellite service is not positioned to compete with traditional terrestrial mobile networks, as the satellites only support 7 MB per satellite beam.
Starlink says the satellites will offer basic texting this year and will expand to voice, data, and Internet of Things by 2025.

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Mark Zuckerberg has been selling the shares every trading day since November 1, 2023, till the end of 2023.
The average earnings from each day amounted to $10.4 million, with the largest transaction occurring on December 28, 2023, at $17.1 million.
Meta shares, which grew by 193%, outperformed those of every other major tech giant except Nvidia Corp. last year and is now near its September 2021 record high.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff also cashed out over $475 million in the second half of 2023. Despite the sale, Zuckerberg still owns a sizable 13% of Meta which is worth about $125 billion

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Multichoice-owned SuperSports channel will not show this year’s edition of the Africa Cup of Nations after it lost its broadcasting rights to a Togo-based platform, New World TV.
The Confederation of African Football president Patrice Motsepe described it as a mega deal that no other broadcaster could match.
New World TV secured the exclusive rights to cover both AFCON 2023 in Ivory Coast and 2025 in Morocco.

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The ChatGPT parent company and its investor Microsoft faced a fresh lawsuit when two authors sued the company for allegedly using their books to train the AI service.
Nicholas Basbanes and Nicholas Gage claim that OpenAI infringed on copyrighted works to build an empire that’s now worth millions of dollars.
The authors want the courts to stop OpenAI from using their works without authorisation, and about $2.5 million in damages.
The lawsuit, which is over 150 pages long in total, accuses OpenAI of “copying and using millions of The Times’s copyrighted.

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South Africa has plans to end load-shedding for good. The bad news though, is that it will take a couple of years.
Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe published the country’s Integrated Resource Plan which is South Africa’s plan for stable electricity supply from now till 2024.
The IRP sets out two timeframes: 2023–2030 to stabilise South Africa’s power and end load-shedding, and 2031–2050 to generate enough power for the future.
The plan involves various energy sources like gas, solar, wind, and batteries to eliminate load-shedding.
Eskom will however continue to provide energy to the country, but that may not come to fruition as the struggling electricity-generating company is at risk of shutting down for harmful emissions.

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A U.S. bankruptcy judge has approved cryptocurrency lender Celsius Network's pivot to bitcoin mining, ruling that the company could deviate from a previously approved bankruptcy plan because creditors and customers were no worse off under the new restructuring.
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Martin Glenn in Manhattan says the bankruptcy plan approved in November contained enough flexibility to allow Celsius to switch to a backup plan after it hit a roadblock with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Celsius had scaled back broader ambitions to earn fees from validating crypto transactions and start new lines of business after the SEC rejected that plan.
Celsius expects to emerge from bankruptcy in early 2024.

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Mutual fund company Fidelity has marked down its investment in X holdings — the parent company of X (formerly Twitter) owned by Elon Musk — by 71.5% from the original valuation of shares, according to a new disclosure.
Fidelity spent $19.2 million to acquire a stake in X back in October 2022. The fund manager made a valuation cut of 65% in October 2023.
CEO Linda Yaccarino claimed that the company would turn profitable in 2024.
The biggest challenge for the company is to convince advertisers to spend money on the platform. A lot of prominent advertisers — including Apple, Comcast/NBCUniversal, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, IBM, Paramount Global, Lionsgate, and the European Commission —pulled out from the platform after Musk called an antisemitic conspiracy theory the “actual truth”.

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FTX Trading Ltd has revealed a proposal to repay billions of dollars to customers and creditors.
The crypto exchange proposes to liquidate most of its remaining crypto holdings and convert them into cash which will then be distributed to creditors and customers, according to a yet-to-be-determined formula. The proposal is slated for a vote by creditors next year.
The plan will be subject to final approval by US Bankruptcy Judge John Dorsey.
Nigerian crypto company Nestcoin was affected. Nestcoin consequently had to lay off staff, as most of the money it needed for its operations was trapped in the FTX collapse. FTX owed its 50 largest creditors almost $3.1 billion.

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Starlink, Elon Musk’s satellite internet service provider has officially launched in Eswatini.
Starlink already beams across Kenya, Mozambique, Rwanda, Mauritius, Sierra Leone, Zambia, and Nigeria.
The service is awaiting regulatory nod In Zimbabwe and Botswana where its application for an operation licence is still being vetted. Starlink’s operation went through swiftly in Eswatini, getting a licence in June after applying in March.
Despite being its biggest potential market, South Africa has banned Starlink due to ownership requirements, with the company baulking at the 30% quota for disadvantaged groups.

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The Central Bank of Lesotho discovered that a cybersecurity incident had affected its system. The apex bank has restored transfers, but it advised customers to expect delays as the processing of payments is done manually.
The attack led to several outages and affected the country’s National Payments System, which facilitates inter-bank transactions.
There are concerns that the current wave of attacks might affect Lesotho’s exchange rate against the rand. Lesotho’s incident is not a standalone incident in southern Africa. The Development Bank of Southern Africa confirmed in June that it was hit by ransomware.

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Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, has become the latest tech company to be fined in Italy for breaches of a ban on the advertising of gambling.
Meta has been fined 5.85 million euros in connection with profiles and accounts on Facebook and Instagram, as well as sponsored content which promoted either betting or games with cash prizes.
Communications watchdog AGCOM says earlier this month, announced fines for Alphabet Inc's (GOOGL.O) YouTube and Amazon's (AMZN.O) Twitch for breaching the ban. YouTube and Twitch were fined 2.25 million euros and 900,000 euros respectively

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Israel's government agreed to give Intel Corp a $3.2 billion grant for a new $25 billion chip plant it plans to build in southern Israel.
Intel says the expansion plan for its Kiryat Gat site is an important part of Intel’s efforts to foster a more resilient global supply chain, alongside the company’s ongoing and planned manufacturing investments in Europe and the United States.
The chipmaker also committed to buy 60 billion shekels ($16.6 billion) worth of goods and services from Israeli suppliers over the next decade, while the new facility is expected to create several thousand jobs.
Intel operates four development and production sites in Israel, including a manufacturing plant in Kiryat Gat, and employs nearly 12,000 people in the country.

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Nigeria’s Central Bank has removed a two-year restriction on cryptocurrency transactions as it introduces stringent customer KYC and anti-money laundering checks. The CBN banned banks from crypto-related transactions in 2021, citing money laundering and terrorism financing concerns.
The regulator has now reversed that ban and taken a positive posture towards digital currency assets, issuing new guidelines to financial institutions for crypto transactions.
Based on the new guidelines released, banks must obtain the bank verification number of all directors and owners of crypto businesses that use their services.
The rules also mandate cryptocurrency companies to secure a license from the country’s capital markets regulator, the Securities Exchange Commission.

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Pornhub’s parent company Aylo Holdings will pay $1.8 million to the U.S. government to resolve a charge of profiting off of sex trafficking.
The company, formerly known as MindGeek, will enter a deferred prosecution agreement, which means that a monitor will be appointed to oversee Aylo and its compliance efforts for three years.
Pornhub and other adult content sites owned by Aylo have come under fire for a history of negligence in moderating third-party uploads of adult content.
This particular probe by the Eastern District of New York’s Attorney’s Office focuses on a network called GirlsDoPorn, which has been posting videos on Pornhub and other Aylo websites since 2009.


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