July 29th, 2023
 

Africa’s Weekly Fintech Review

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• Kenyan government and businesses targeted in DDoS cyberattack
• Namibia begins setting up regulatory authority to oversee crypto and virtual assets
• CBN unfreezes accounts for Bamboo, Risevest, etc. 
• Smile ID launches much-anticipated State of KYC in Africa Report
AND MORE!

Cyberattacks in Kenya temporarily stopped customers from accessing mobile money, government services, media companies, etc. 
“Anonymous Sudan, a pro-Russian hacktivist group says it is responsible for a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack which intermittently took websites belonging to Kenyan media, hospitals, universities, and businesses, including Safaricom, offline. The group had previously been involved in a series of “unprecedented escalation in DDoS attack sophistication” with pro-Russian hackers that targeted Western websites including Microsoft, according to a report published by Cloudflare earlier this year.” TechCabal

Namibian government setting up regulatory authority to oversee virtual assets including cryptocurrency
“After Namibia’s parliament passed a bill in June which aims to legalise and establish regulations for virtual assets, including cryptocurrency, the bill has been enacted into law by the southern African nation. [The new regulator will be] acting on the provisions of one of the major mandates of the newly passed law. The authority will be responsible for licensing virtual asset service providers and overseeing, supervising, and monitoring activities related to the provision of virtual asset services.” TechCabal

Kenya’s Data Protection Commissioner issues warning about Worldcoin as thousands wait hours in line 
“The Office of the Data Protection Commissioner (ODPC) has called for heightened vigilance from members of the public as they continue to engage with digital identification platform Worldcoin, an entity engaged in processing activities of iris data via an orb scanner. Users are being issued with one of the company’s tokens for free once they prove that they are not robots. The value of the tokens is currently not clear.” Business Daily

CBN unfreezes accounts for Bamboo, Risevest & Chaka
“The CBN has ordered that the bank accounts of fintech investment firms; Bamboo, Rivevest, Chaka and 437 other companies should be unfrozen. The accounts were placed on a post-no-debit restriction which stopped them from making debit transactions. Essentially preventing them from taking money out of the account, but allowing inflows.” Techpoint.Africa 

Banking & Telecom Activity

• Safaricom’s M-Pesa launches BNPL service, Faraja, an interest-free service allowing individuals to spend up to 100K shillings each month
• MTN and Airtel launch 4G LTE network in Rwanda after the government decides to rely on single wholesale network

 

Startup Activity

 Kenya – AgTech startup, FarmWorks, raises $4.1M USD to strengthen their data analytics capabilities, & use AI to enhance production, planting & lending decisions
 Nigeria – Cloud MarTech startup, Terragon, raises $9M USD to expand its focus on offering mobile B2C messaging

Investor Activity

• Africa Impact Investing Group launches with the aim of driving capital for prosperity, inclusion and measurable impact

Featured Article

Everything you need to know about the e-Naira, Nigeria’s digital currency – Bolu Abiodun in Techpoint.Africa 
“The eNaira is Nigeria’s way of enabling the use of blockchain — a technology popularized by cryptocurrencies — in mainstream finance. It is also another way to rival cryptocurrencies, which have become increasingly popular among young Nigerians. It was touted to aid financial inclusion in Nigeria, cross-border transactions, and direct payments from the government to citizens.” Continue reading.