Daystar Power, a Lagos-based Nigerian tech startup, providing solar power solutions to businesses in the region, has secured $38million in a Series B Investment. The investment was led by the Investment Fund for Developing Countries (IFU), the Danish development finance institution (DFI) with additional investors including STOA, a French impact infrastructure fund, Proparco, and several other investors. The solar power-focused startup will reportedly use the funding to grow its operations in Nigeria and Ghana, with an aim to expand to other countries such as Senegal, Togo, and Côte d’Ivoire, according to a report in ventureburn.com The report said the funding will assist Daystar Power…
Author: DigitalTimesNG
Microsoft said that it has learned a lot from its increased engagement with the open-source world, adding that open source is also now the “accepted model” for collaboration between companies. Microsoft was once one of the purest purveyors of proprietary software, but it has gone some way toward shedding that image over the past decade, according to a report in Venturebeat. Spearheaded in large part by Satya Nadella, who oversaw .NET’s open-sourcing, Microsoft’s joining of the Linux Foundation, and the open-source initiative, Microsoft has pushed hard to convince the world that it’s “all-in on open source.” The year 2020 continued on a similar footing,…
atingi (www.atingi.org), the digital learning platform of The German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) has exceeded expectations in its first year. Within twelve months, atingi has reached almost a million people in Africa and already enabled 100,000 of them to access vocational education and self-development courses for free. atingi means “to achieve” in Esperanto, and the platform strives to improve the employability of young people through modern digital learning opportunities. With a large network of strategic cooperation partners – from politics and business to science and civil society – educational content which meets the needs of African audiences…
MultiChoice said it is delighted to bring back the hugely popular Step Up campaign offer to its DStv and GOtv customers this January. The Step Up campaign offer gives all active and disconnected DStv Compact, Confam and Yanga customers the opportunity to pay for a package a step above their current package and get a boost to view programming on the next higher package. While customers on GOtv Jolli and Jinja can upgrade to enjoy GOtv Max for less at a special discount of N2,999 instead of N3,600 per month, all the upgrades are scheduled to happen within 48 hours…
PayPal Holding Inc has become the first foreign operator with 100% control of a payment platform in China. According to Chinese government data, this comes as the U.S. fintech giant eyes a bigger foothold in a booming market for online payments. Reuters reports that PayPal acquired the 30% stake it doesn’t already own in China’s GoPay, formally known as Guofubao Information Technology Co., on Dec. 31, 2020, according to shareholder data from the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System. Financial details weren’t disclosed in the data, according to Reuters. The stake purchase came a year after PayPal bought a 70%…
Mweb, which is owned by Dimension Data, has been put on the market with Standard Bank running the process, MyBroadband reports. Mweb is one of South Africa’s oldest and best-known Internet service providers which offer a range of products, including fibre, LTE, ADSL, VoIP, and hosting. The ISP was founded in 1997 and quickly gained traction through its Big Black Box dial-up offering. Over the years it added new connectivity services, including ADSL in 2003, iBurst and 3G in 2006, and fibre-to-the-home in 2014. Mweb also shook up the broadband market in South Africa when it launched affordable uncapped ADSL…
By Elvis EROMOSELE The COVID-19 pandemic is not letting up. It continues to race and rage across the globe. With 92 million cases and almost two million deaths, one expects every hand to be on deck to curb the spread. The World Health Organisation (WHO) advises that if COVID-19 is spreading in your community, stay safe by taking some simple precautions, such as physical distancing, wearing a mask, keeping rooms well ventilated, avoiding crowds, cleaning your hands, and coughing into a bent elbow or tissue. Yet, in Nigeria, where the second wave is blossoming, crowds have besieged National Identity Management Commission…
WhatsApp this week published an FAQ clarifying the terms of its updated privacy policy and responding to concerns that the firm behind the text-messaging app shares personal information with parent company Facebook. WhatsApp noted the update doesn’t affect the privacy of messages with friends and family, and instead relates to messaging businesses through the platform, according to a report by CNET. The company also said the update “provides further transparency about how we collect and use data.” WhatsApp emphasized that neither it nor Facebook can see users’ private messages or hear their calls, noting that it also doesn’t keep logs of who people message or call, can’t see…
President Donald Trump has been banned from uploading videos on YouTube “in light of concerns about the ongoing potential for violence”, the platform said. YouTube, which is owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, said it had removed new content from the president’s channel on Tuesday for violating its policies, according to a report in Sky News. Trump will be unable to upload anything “for a minimum of seven days,” a spokesperson said. 1/ After review, and in light of concerns about the ongoing potential for violence, we removed new content uploaded to Donald J. Trump’s channel for violating our policies. It…
TradeDepot, the Business to Business (B2B) eCommerce platform for consumer goods in Africa, has released new insights from its market data that highlights the trends that will shape Nigeria’s retail sector in 2021. TradeDepot said in the report that the impact of the pandemic, rising inflation, border closures and other issues drove significant changes in behaviour for retailers, distributors and manufacturers in 2020. As the sector settles into the new year, TradeDepot predicts that some of the main trends that shaped 2020 – particularly smaller packaging for consumer goods and increased spending on food and essential goods due to dwindling…