- Streaming platform Showmax finally transitioned to it’s new home and introduced new packages. The Multichoice owned platform with about 22 million subscribers in Africa has a new platform that has been receiving not so good reviews from across the continent. Last year, Showmax announced a revamp…
- Co-operative Bank of Kenya (Co-op Bank) increased its daily ATM withdrawal limit by 50% to KES 60,000, aligning with other banks that are reevaluating transaction ceilings in response to customers’ diminished spending power. Going forward, clients seeking to withdraw between amounts less than KES…
- Safaricom, will no longer allow unregistered mobile money accounts to transact via mpesa. The company becomes the first telco to issue such a directive in the country. Part of Safaricom’s statement on X said ” Effective February 5th, 2024, you will no longer be able to send money from M-PESA to…
- The African media scene experienced some Seismic shift with the news that Videndi’s Canal+ has offered to buy Multichoice (Dstv & Showmax). The French media giant already owns 31.7% of Multichoice and just offered to pay $1.7 billion to buy the rest of the business. Vivendi is a mass media and…
- Most official songs from artists signed under Universal Music Group have been removed from TikTok following the expiry of licensing agreements between the app and UMG. Negotiations to renew the licenses by the record label weren’t successful. From today you can’t use songs from artists like Drake,…
- Pesalink recorded positive Year on Year growth for the period 2022-2023. Showing a preference towards real-time digital transfers, account-to-account (A2A) transactions grew by 57% in 2023. This saw a total of KSH 6 million transacted on Pesalink. For the same period, Real Time Gross Settlement (…
- Global digital payment company Visa, will be hosting it’s Africa Fintech Accelerator program demos. As if to showcase Nairobi’s love for fintech companies, the first demo day is just before Valentine’s Day on February 13th . This will see fintech start-ups from 18 countries across Africa…
- Oracle has announced plans to establish Kenya as a site for its data centers. This will make Kenya Oracle’s second public cloud region in Africa after South Africa. Cloud regions allow users to deploy cloud resources from specific geographic locations or closer to customers, and gives them access…
- Bolt has launched Bolt Send, a same-day parcel delivery service in Johannesburg North. The service will allow users to conveniently send small parcels and gifts through the Bolt app. The new venture is powered by a fleet of Bajaj Qute vehicles. According to Bolt, users can pay with cards or cash.…
- Persons With Disabilities (PWDs) can now self-register and get Disability Certificates from eCitizen. This is in line with the digitization of government services. Onboarding for self registration began last year and is now fully functional. Thus, PWDs can visit eCitizen via a smart device and self…
- In the latest Pixel Feature Drop, Google has unveiled an enhancement to Google Password Manager called passkey upgrades. This new feature enables Pixel users (starting from Pixel 5a), Pixel Fold, and Pixel Tablet owners to easily discover accounts supporting passkeys and seamlessly upgrade with a…
- In the DC Comic “Batman: The Dark Knight Returns” Harvey Dent says “You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a villain.” and no other company is doing that like TikTok shifting from vertical video to horizontal video. The ByteDance-owned company shot to popularity during the…
- Bboxx, the data-driven utility platform has relocated its headquarters from London to Kigali. The news was announced at the UK-Rwanda Business Forum. This is a unique move given startups tend to move headquarters from Africa to Europe. Bboxx also announced plans to train nearly 1000 Rwandans in the…
- TECNO has partnered with Dolby to bring its Atmos sound to its lineup of devices slated for launch this year. TECNO’s past devices came with stereo sound, especially its midrange and flagship devices and now the company is upping its audio game with this partnership with Dolby. TECNO’s future…
- Twitter has been through so many changes since Elon Musk took over and its alternatives have grown and died. We now take an overall look(significant changes) at what has happened over at Twitter since Elon took it private.
Techweez
- Vivo V30 series will be launching very soon and will be the company’s latest midrange series for this year and will succeed the V29 series from late last year. The Vivo V29 was and still is an impressive camera smartphone and it’ll be interesting to see how its newest sibling will perform. The Vivo…
- WhatsApp, the messaging app owned by Meta has been working on new features for its users. The chat app is set to turn 20 later this year as Facebook bought it in early 2014. Over the years, they have acquired over 3 billion daily active users, especially across the global south and Europe. Over 300…
- Chinese smartphone manufacturer, Realme, has unveiled the latest additions to the company’s portfolio. The latest lineup includes two smartphones: the Realme 12 Pro and the midrange Realme 12 Pro Plus 5G, with both smartphones shipping with Android 14 and Realme UI 5.0. The Realme 12 Pro 5G series…
- This morning, six judiciary services commenced at six pilot Huduma Centres: Nairobi GPO, City Square, Makadara, Kibra, Eastleigh, and Kiambu. This is part of a new partnership between the Judiciary and Huduma Secretariat. The rollout of judicial services will extend to the remaining 52 Huduma…
- Standard Chartered Bank and Village Capital, an investment firm targeting early-stage entrepreneurs, have recently announced a new partnership seeking to invest in impact-driven, women-led startups. The partnership will see the launch of a financing facility to invest in Standard Chartered’s Women…
- AI is the new buzzword in town. Indeed, Artificial intelligence (AI) is changing the world. The last two decades have laid the infrastructure to give over 5 billion people access to digital services through smartphones and the Internet. This has primed the world for an AI revolution, the…
- Instagram is finally working to make “Finstas” official as part of the app’s features in its quest to entice users to post more albeit privately with the flipside feature. Many users, especially some millennials and most Gen Z users on Instagram, have secondary private accounts called finstas. They…
- An Auto insurance company in Kenya is making it mandatory for all Public Service Vehicles (PSV) seeking it’s Auto insurance policy to go cashless. Directline Assurance, released a statement yesterday saying it “will provide the technology for the consolidation of the same.” The insurance company…
- Influencer and YouTube sensation MrBeast, now has the crown of the most reposted post on X. Attaining 3.8 million reposts has seen the YouTuber surpass the previous record of 3.6 million. The previous record was held by a Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa. Both scenarios that saw the two men…
- Influencer and YouTube sensation Mr. Beast, now has the crown of “the most reposted post on X. “Attaining 3.8 million reposts has seen the YouTuber surpass the previous record of 3.6 million. The previous record was held by a Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa. Both scenarios that saw the two men…
- Uber has today announced that you can now hail its Electric Boda when you’re in the Nairobi CBD. This new service was introduced in late August last year offering the option to use their electric bikes for rides across Nairobi. When it first launched, it was limited to the outskirts of Nairobi as…
- First time national Identity Card applicants and those replacing old ones are being issued with a Maisha Namba. This is the 3rd generation Kenyan ID that is finally being issued after many setbacks. Originally, the Maisha Namba was set to pilot in December 2023. However, this was cancelled by a…
- OPPO has officially unveiled its latest midrange smartphone lineup – the Reno11 series which includes the base model and the Pro model – and they’re both 5G powered. The two succeed the Reno 10 series from last year including the Pro version. One noticeable design change is the new lens alignment…
- SafeBoda is returning to the Kenyan market after after a break up with Kenyans that lasted 3 years. Perhaps a case of second time is a charm, the startup comes back with some changes. SafeBoda is transitioning from being solely a ride-hailing startup to offering both motorcycle (boda boda) and car-…
- EdTech platform, AltSchool Africa has officially launched in Kenya. Founder Adewale Yusuf points out that Kenya currently ranks behind Nigeria in terms of learner enrollments hence the need to set up shop in the country. From data shared by Mr. Yusuf, Kenya has 610 registered users on the platform…
- Xiaomi Kenya is planning to launch the Redmi Note 13 series in the country later this month. The Note series is the company’s most popular model of smartphones and the new Note 13 series will succeed the Note 12 series that launched in the country early last year. The new devices in the lineup…
- Foldables will be the talking point in terms of consumer electronics this year thanks to the interest they had last year and Samsung wants to strengthen its foundation as an industry leader in this space. There are new rumours that the South Korean giant is looking to make an affordable foldable in…
- Technuary is here as Xiaomi has announced the official date for the launch of the Redmi Note 13 series in the country. The Xiaomi Redmi Note 13 Series succeeds the Redmi Note 12 series launched last year. Xiaomi Redmi Note lineup is the company’s most popular smartphones and the latest Note 13…
- The African Development Bank and the United Kingdom have chosen the Transmission Network Improvement Project in Kenya as a beneficiary project under the Room to Run Sovereign transaction (R2RS). The UK government will guarantee a Ksh.9.6B AfDB loan towards Upgrade of Kenya’s Power Transmission Line…
- The Quality of Service Report (QoS) for the year ended indicates that telephony service quality in Kenya is dropping. For the referenced period, the industry average score was 72.4 per cent. This is a huge drop from the 82.3 per cent registered in the preceding period of 2021/2022. Data released by…
- Pesalink has announced that it will soon have a merchant payment option to rival Safaricom’s Lipa na M-pesa. The news comes after Safaricom’s customers expressed concerns due to over reliance on the Mpesa feature which has been suffering periodic outages in the last 24 hours. Currently, the company…
- alGROWithm has recently received funding from Digital Africa.The cash injection will be used to boost alGROWithm’s Growth Talent Accelerator Program (GTAP) that was launched back in March, 2022. alGROWithm will focus on two things this year. First, offering scholarships for aspiring Growth Hackers…
- Safaricom customers are puzzled by the rise of unsolicited subscription prompts. While this has been happening sporadically since the start of the year, the frequency of the prompts appear to have escalated. Its currently unknown if this is a glitch in the system or bad actors in play. An example…
- A technical issue facing M-PESA Paybill is still affecting transactions this morning. This was confirmed by Safaricom and comes 12 hours after the company had claimed the issue had been resolved. “We are experiencing a recurring service intermittency affecting some PayBill payments. The issue is…
- Kenya Power have confirmed that customers trying to buy electricity tokens via M-Pesa are currently unable to do so. The problem which has persisted for over 5 hours is related to a technical issue experienced by Safaricom’s Mobile Money platform. “We experienced service intermittency with PayBill…
- TECNO is gearing up to launch the Phantom V2 Fold – its second-gen bookstyle foldable to succeed the Phantom V Fold[Review] from last year. The Phantom V Fold was announced at MWC 2023 and TECNO is slated to announce its successor at this year’s MWC which is happening later next month in Barcelona…
- Samsung Galaxy Unpacked 2024 happened last week and if you have been keeping up with tech events you might have noticed that it happened two weeks earlier than usual – last year’s Unpacked was held on 1st February. We had a watch party streamed on our YouTube channel where we shared our hot takes.…
- WhatsApp is set to launch a feature that allows users to share files with contacts who are nearby. This feature is similar to Android’s Nearby Share and iOS Airdrop. Recently, Google and Samsung improved Nearby Share, and renamed it Quick Share. Reports from WABetaInfo indicate it will provide a…
- Onafriq, an African digital payments network, has chosen Alviere to enable payments and remittances from the United States to Africa. Onafriq connects various payment schemes with more than 500 million mobile wallets, over 200 million bank accounts, and 400 thousand small medium businesses in its…
- OPPO is bringing the Reno11 series to the country later next week. The lineup is expected to include the base Reno11, Reno11 Pro and maybe the Reno11 F. The Reno11 lineup succeeds the Reno10 series[Full Reviews] from last year in the company’s upper midrange offerings in the country. There are a…
- OPPO Kenya is kickstarting the year by launching the Reno11 series in the country later next week. The OPPO Reno11 lineup includes the base Reno11 and the Reno11 Pro – both 5G powered will succeed the Reno10 and Reno10 Pro[Full Reviews] that were announced late last year. OPPO Reno11, Reno11 Pro…
- X (formerly Twitter) is finally rolling out the audio and video calling feature on Android starting today. The audio and video calling feature was first announced by the site’s CEO, Linda Yaccarino, and owner Elon Musk in August 2023. It eventually started rolling out to iOS users in October last…
- Samsung teased an addition to its wearable portfolio alongside the official unveiling of Galaxy S24 during its Unpacked Event on Wednesday, January 17th. The wearable, dubbed “Galaxy Ring”, seeks to offer a more discreet and comfortable alternative to smartwatches. The Galaxy Ring is designed to…
- Samsung announced its latest flagship smartphone lineup last night in Kenya, the Galaxy S24 series. The trio include the base model, the Plus model and the Ultra model. Samsung shipped the S24 series with Galaxy AI and a few iterative upgrades as well. Samsung put the best tech with its Ultra…
- It appears that Google isn’t done with layoffs with more job cuts expected throughout the year according to an internal memo sent to the staff by CEO, Sundar Pichai. This comes just days after the tech company laid off hundreds of employees across various departments. Pichai tells employees to “…
