Tech Top 5 News

AfDB Approves €9.8m Fund for African Startups

The Board of Directors of the African Development Bank (AfDB) has endorsed a 9.8 million Euros equity investment to stimulate venture capital investments in African entrepreneurs at all stages of development.
AfDB will provide €7 million from its funds to the equity fund. The additional €2.8 million will be funds from the European Union through a partnership with the Organisation of African Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS).
The investment is expected to help Cathay-AfricInvest Innovation Fund meet its target of securing €110m to invest in over 20 early-stage ventures across sub-Saharan Africa. The Innovation Fund focuses on financial inclusion (financial tech and insurance tech), retail and logistics platforms targeting online and mobile consumers, healthcare technologies, and pay-as-you-go, off-grid energy technologies.
More recently, the Innovation Fund has expanded its focus to include startups that use emerging digital opportunities created by the COVID-19 pandemic or with a massive potential to contribute to the coronavirus fight. The Mauritius-based Fund is jointly sponsored by AfricInvest Capital Partners and Cathay Innovation SAS.
AfDB Director for Financial Sector Development, Stefan Nalletamby, in a statement, said, “The Bank’s approval signals the importance given to Africa’s tech-enabled rising entrepreneurs, as well as the significant role played by AfricInvest and Cathay Innovation in supporting this key business segment to achieve Africa’s growth, transformation and integration objectives.”
The bank’s investment is expected to accelerate the creation of a new class of successful African entrepreneurs that will serve as a model to younger innovators. Through appropriate technology and innovation, it will also support youth and women-led startups and increase access and inclusion to financial and ‘real sector’ services and goods.

Pantami Seeks Deployment of Emerging Technologies in Education Sector

To prioritise deploying emerging technologies in Nigeria’s education sector, the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND) has been tasked with ensuring this happens.
The Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Ali Pantami, disclosed this when he received the Executive Secretary of TETFUND, Sunday Echono, in his office.
He noted that the deployment of blockchain technology in Nigeria’s tertiary institutions would help preserve data integrity and promote efficiency in administering certificates, transcripts, and records.
The TETFUND team was at the Communications and Digital Economy Complex, Abuja, to explore collaboration with the Ministry on the Internet for Education, Broadband Penetration, Subsidies Data for Educational Contents, Data Hosting, Digitalisation of Thesis and Facilitation of Hybrid Education.
Pantami said, “The deployment of blockchain technology in Nigeria’s tertiary institutions will help preserve data integrity and promote efficiency in the administration of certificates, transcripts, and records, among others.”
By using Blockchain, students cannot alter their creditability like grades, degrees, and certification, thus guaranteeing the employers that the job applicants have the necessary skills for the job post.

Netflix Stock Price Plummets to 35% After Losing 200,000 Subscribers

Netflix announced that it has recently lost 200,000 subscribers in the first three months of the year, which marks a major setback for the streaming giant.
In its recently released quarterly earnings report, the company further projected a loss of another two million subscribers over the next quarter.
With the weak performance in Q1, Netflix said its slowdown in growth was due to various factors, including account sharing, continued disruption caused by the pandemic and increased competition from rival streamers.
It ended March with 221.6 million worldwide subscribers.
The week finished with a 35 per cent drop in Netflix’s stock price as investors fretted about the company’s slowing growth and mounting competition.
In terms of capitalisation, Netflix is now worth $1009 billion, making it more difficult to raise money to fund the investment for content production upon which subscriber growth has been dependent.
Even though it has plans to introduce low-cost subscriptions that adverts will support to boost customer acquisition, users fear that its prices will go up to compensate for fewer subscribers and the biggest single-day loss of value in its history.
The streaming giant signaled that it would likely crack down on sharing subscriber passwords that have enabled multiple households to access its service from a single account.

Instagram Creates Special Features to Recognise Original Content Creators

Instagram has introduced few changes to ensure content creators are recognised for their work.
According to Instagram Head, Adam Mosseri, the updates are meant to “make sure that credit is going to those who deserve it.”
The first change is through product tags. The feature allows users to tag products in the post. Creators can assign themselves a category such as ‘photographer’ ‘make-up artist’ E.T.C, and that category will appear every time they are tagged in a post. In addition to this, the Meta-owned app promises to promote original content on the platform heavily.
Explaining these new features in a video posted on Twitter, Mosseri said, “You create something from scratch; you should get more credit than if you are re-sharing something that you found from someone else. We are going to try and do more to try and value original content more, particularly compared to reposted content.”
Mosseri explained further that original contents edited outside of Instagram and uploaded to the app would not be penalised as long as there’s no watermark on the content.
“The idea is if you made it, it is original. It is okay if you edited it outside of Instagram and then bring it in via the gallery,” he said.
The change is likely to be a significant problem for aggregator accounts, which are often accused of stealing content and credit from authors despite being immensely popular sources of memes and trends. Mosseri emphasised that if the account is an aggregator, they will more likely be able to detect that it’s not original.
“As we lean more into recommendations, it’s becoming increasingly important that we don’t overvalue aggregators,” Mosseri tweeted, “as that would be bad for creators and therefore bad for Instagram long term.

Mastercard Foundation, Trace Launch Free Learning App

Mastercard Foundation and Trace have launched a new learning application to enable 26 million young Africans to acquire on-demand market-relevant skills.
The mobile-based app, Trace Academia is free-to-use and interactive, and tested in four African countries.
The learning content will include technical courses relevant to 15 different industries such as technology, energy, beauty, fashion, Do it yourself (DIY), digital marketing, hospitality, the creative arts, journalism, and film, as well as courses that are more broadly relevant. Each course featured on the application has been designed in collaboration with an industry-leading organisation to ensure its relevance to employers and the job market.
Users can access courses in both English and French, with Portuguese-language courses to be launched soon.
The chief programme officer, Peter Materu, said the Mastercard Foundation is pleased to support the platform as part of the Young Africa Works strategy to enable 30 million young people to access dignified and fulfilling work by 2030.
“The platform offers young people total flexibility and control over their learning. Users can learn at their own pace, in their own time, and customise their journey to the emergent demands they face as they navigate the world of work. Secondly, the courses are deeply practical and designed in collaboration with market-leading organisations to ensure they are industry-relevant,” he said.”

TECH PERSONALITY OF THE WEEK

Maya Horgan Famodu

This week’s tech personality is the founder and partner at Ingressive Capital, Maya Horgan Famodu. Famodu is also a venture capital investor and the co-founder of Ingressive for Good.
Ingressive Capital is a $10 million VC Fund focused on early-stage African technology.
It invests in brilliant, resourceful founders with demonstrated grit building tech-enabled businesses in sub-Saharan Africa.
Ingressive for Good is a non-profit initiative that provides micro-scholarships, technical skills training, and talent placement.
She also founded Ingressive, an advisory firm providing market entry, technology research, market operations services and tech research for firms and businesses expanding into Africa.
Maya was listed among 2019’s ‘10 Inspiring Women Ruling Nigeria’s Tech Ecosystem’. She also appeared on the Forbes Africa 30 under 30 lists in 2018 under the technology category.