He has over 12 years of experience in various fields such as humanitarian aid, finance, and entrepreneurship. With Naledi Services, he supports SMEs and start-ups in their digitization process.
Patrice Binwa Aganze (photo) is a Congolese entrepreneur who graduated from the University of Goma in 2011 with a degree in finance and financial management services. He also holds certificates of Professional Competence from Trust Merchant Bank and HavardX. He is renowned as the founder and CEO of tech company Naledi Services.
The company was founded in DR, in 2014. It develops custom web and mobile apps, and offers and maintains security systems, among other things, to help entrepreneurs in their management tasks.
"Naledi Services was created to provide solutions that improve the management of SMEs and startups. Our slogan says it best: “Think IT, Get IT”. We have noticed that many people start their businesses with the buzz around entrepreneurship, but the vast majority of Congolese SMEs do not have management tools adapted to their business," said Patrice Binwa Aganze on what prompted him to create the company, during an interview with TechCabal on May 2, 2023.
The digital solutions he provides SMEs and startups include Reflet, a store management software that offers the possibility to create loyalty programs to reward customers when they visit points of sale. There is also Akiba, a savings management software designed for microfinance institutions and establishments.
Naledi Services is also a communications agency that offers its clients advertising, media, print, marketing, press, and public relations management. It also manages professional and leisure events. To date, Naledi Services has 2,351 active users and has worked with over 375 SMEs and NGOs.
Its founder, Patrice Binwa Aganze, is a UN Capital Development Fund Business Development Support Expert since 2020. He entered the professional world, in 2009, by joining Radio Kivu One as a columnist. At the same time, he was working for APROFIME (Action pour la promotion de la fille-mère) as a senior accountant. He was also a customer service agent for Trust Merchant Bank from 2013 to 2014.
Melchior Koba
Nestcoin, a Nigerian company that makes modern finance borderless, recently announced the launch of "Onboard," a platform aimed at providing modern digital financial services that connect Africans to the global economy.
Among other things, the new platform will allow users to store and move digital assets directly to and from their bank accounts.
Last weekend, Congolese Minister of Posts and Telecommunications Leon Juste Ibombo (photo, right) granted an audience to Guinean Minister of Transport, Evita Oma Honorato (photo, left).
The two officials discussed future agreements to develop the ICT sector in their respective countries. The envisaged cooperation will focus on mobile money interoperability and the implementation of the Oyola training project.
In recent months, various accusations have been leveled against social media giants in Africa. This could take another turn with the birth of an African union of moderators.
On the sidelines of labor day, last May 1, more than one hundred and fifty employees of subcontractors of Meta, OpenAI, or ByteDance met in Nairobi, pledging to create the first African union of content moderators, several media outlets reported.
The new union aims to address issues that these workers regularly complain about, including poor working conditions, pay that is sometimes less than $2 an hour, and the impacts of content moderation on their mental health.
"There have never been more of us. Our cause is right, our way is just, and we shall prevail. I couldn’t be more proud of today’s decision to register the Content Moderators Union," said Daniel Motaung, a former content moderator who was fired after he decided to register a content moderators’ union.
The unionization efforts began three years ago after several contested terminations, including that of Daniel Motaung employed by Sama, the company responsible for Facebook content moderation in East and South Africa since 2019.
Another issue that led to the creation of the union is the low budget dedicated to “the rest of the world.” In 2021, a Wall Street Journal investigation found that Meta's Facebook was spending 87 percent of its disinformation resources in the United States and Western Europe at the time, leaving the rest of the world vulnerable to the dangers of misinformation.
By setting up the African Union of Moderators, the professionals who work or have worked for Facebook, TikTok, or ChatGPT hope to give workers more bargaining power, which can translate into higher wages, better working conditions, and more benefits.
Samira Njoya
She is a computer scientist with a passion for digital transformation, and her contribution to the Ugandan ICT sector was recently celebrated with a national medal.
Aminah Zawedde (photo) is currently the Permanent Secretary of Uganda's Ministry of Information and Communication Technology and National Guidance. She is a graduate of Makerere University, where she earned a bachelor's degree in statistics in 2001 and a master's degree in information systems in 2005. She also holds a graduate degree in education technology from the University of Cape Town (2014) and a Ph.D. in software engineering from Eindhoven University of Technology (2016).
Since 2021, she has been assisting the Ministry of ICT in leading, coordinating, and supporting the formulation of policies, laws, regulations, and strategies to develop the national ICT sector. Her career began in 2001 as the Data Officer for the Uganda Electoral Commission, followed by an internship in the IT department of the Uganda Revenue Authority in 2005. In 2006, she joined the Infectious Diseases Institute-Mulago Hospital as an IT consultant. From 2008 to 2016 and then from 2016 to 2021, respectively, she was an assistant lecturer and teacher-researcher at Makerere University.
Aminah Zawedde's outstanding work in promoting and advancing the use of ICT in Uganda was recognized on May 1, 2023, when the Ugandan government awarded her a national medal, along with Vivian Ddambya. She is also a member of the Board of Directors of the National Information Technology Authority-Uganda (NITA-U) and serves as the Non-Executive Director of DFCU Limited, one of Uganda's strongest financial institutions.
Melchior Koba
The PAYAIG (Pan-African Youth Ambassador for Internet Governance) initiative developed by Cyber Czar and supported by the British government announced, Tuesday (May 2), the opening of applications for its Internet governance program in Africa.
Applicants must be between 18 and 30 years old, reside in any African country, be able to communicate effectively in one of five languages: English, Arabic, French, Portuguese, or Swahili, and be motivated by Internet governance. The deadline for applications is May 19.
Nigerian fintech company Storspay announced on Monday (May 1st), the successful completion of a $320,000 funding round. The deal allows the startup to join the New York-based accelerator Techstars for a 13-week fundraising and mentoring program. The funds raised will allow the fintech to develop its technology and improve the financial well-being of entrepreneurs through its decentralized Internet lending infrastructure.
Since 2020, the U.S.-based international organization has been providing additional capital to associations working for digital inclusion in three countries around the world. For this edition, six countries are concerned, including Ghana and Senegal.
The Internet Society Foundation, an organization that promotes the development of the Internet worldwide, announced on April 30, the opening of applications for the 2023 edition of its Strengthening Communities, Improving Lives, and Livelihoods (SCILLS) program.
The organization will award up to $250,000 in grants for projects that leverage the Internet to promote economic inclusion and boost education opportunities. In Africa, two countries are eligible, namely Ghana and Senegal.
"Internet access has increased significantly in Indonesia, however, access to Internet knowledge and skills remain out of reach for some. This new round of SCILLS program grants will support organizations that connect underserved communities with the critical digital skills needed to unlock economic growth and educational opportunities," said Sarah Armstrong, executive director of the Internet Society Foundation.
Interested parties are invited to apply with complete applications by May 31st.
Let’s note that at the of end 2022, the Internet penetration rate was 99.03%, up from 94.82% the previous year, according to a report by the Senegalese Telecommunications and Postal Regulatory Authority (ARTP).
Samira Njoya
In Africa, the lack of financial resources is not the only factor that affects access to education. The social environment can sometimes also be an obstacle. In those conditions, the well-directed use of ICT tools can address the issue.
ICT tools can be beneficial in many ways for children’s education, according to the World Bank. The international institution makes this assumption based on the experiment it facilitated, between 2018 and 2020, in the States of Kano and Jigawa, in Northwest Nigeria. The experiment involved 9393 rural households whose children aged 6 to 9 and their parents were subjected to two digital learning approaches. The approaches led to a 42% drop in the nonenrolment rate.
The baseline sample selected by the World Bank included 2,335 households in 32 communities that received only aspirational videos for parents to change their mindset and wish for better for their children. Also, 2,345 households in 32 communities received aspirational videos, and 40% of them also received a smartphone with educational content. 4,713 households in 64 communities served as a control group.
The results, documented in the “Improving Enrollment and Learning through Videos and Mobiles Experimental Evidence from Northern Nigeria” policy research paper demonstrate that aspirational videos alone reduced girls' aspirations to marry at the ages of 15 to 18. The videos had the greatest impact on the girls' parents. In households that received the aspirational videos and the smartphone, children's literacy and numeracy skills improved by 0.46 points and 0.63 points, respectively, compared to the control group.
According to the World Bank, no evidence of heterogeneous effects by gender was found overall, "highlighting the potential of edtech to also effectively reach girls in conservative settings, where girls' seclusion or a strong bias towards boys’ education may prevent girls from accessing formal schooling."
"Our heterogeneous analysis by gender shows that the interventions worked for both girls and boys and that the magnitude of treatment effects across gender were generally similar for the main outcomes (school enrollment, and literacy/numeracy skills),” the research paper informs.
Social pressure, a barrier to education
The research reveals that since smartphones are often used by multiple household members in low-resource settings, the resources provided for the experiment improved the literacy and numeracy skills of older, non-targeted siblings, reduced early parenthood among adolescents living in targeted households, and reduced early labor market entry.
For the World Bank, this is bonanza. In its 2019 Reading and Access Research Activity report, the institution revealed that northern Nigeria was significantly behind the national average in terms of education. Less than 3 percent of second graders in public elementary schools could read Hausa text with 80 percent or better comprehension. In the northwest, only 29 percent of women aged 15-49 and 59 percent of men were literate. Only 40 percent of 30-34-year-olds were educated in the northeast and northwest zones, compared to 90 percent in the southeast and southwest regions of the country.
The study believes the situation in the northwest is due to the strong adherence of the population to traditional norms. The formal legal institution of Sharia law, which applies in most northern states and covers social, civil, and criminal matters, has reinforced social norms that encourage early marriage among adolescents and thus early pregnancy. All of this represents additional barriers to education. The emergence of the militant terrorist group Boko Haram, which translates to: "Western education is forbidden," has created an additional barrier to school enrollment and attendance in the north of the country.
According to the World Values Survey 2017-2021 cited by the World Bank, 42 percent of respondents in Nigeria believe that college is more important for a boy than a girl and 41 percent believe that preschoolers suffer when mothers are employed. These norms contrast with those observed in other countries such as Kenya, where the proportions of the population holding these views are 18% and 23% respectively.
Africa has a well-documented agricultural potential. Yet, its farmers struggle in various aspects of their work. This can change with the introduction of technology in the sector.
TroTro Tractor is a digital solution developed by a Ghanaian startup. The platform allows farmers and agricultural entrepreneurs to rent agricultural equipment such as tractors, seeders, combine harvesters, and sprayers. It was developed by an eponymous startup launched, in 2016, by Adam Muhammed Muhideen and Kamal Yakub to enable easy access to modern, high-quality agricultural machinery that can help Ghanaian farmers improve productivity and maximize yields.
Through its Android app, farmers and entrepreneurs can create accounts to access the machines available. The machines can be sorted by rental rates, geographical location, and most importantly type of machine. TroTro Tractor also has a USSD code that allows farmers with no access to the internet or living in remote areas to access its services.
The startup also offers training on how to use agricultural machines, technical assistance, and maintenance services. With its maintenance reminders and management reports, it also helps farmers plan and manage their farming operations more efficiently.
According to play store’s stats, the app has been downloaded just over 100 times. This, however, is not considered a good indication of the popularity enjoyed by the solution since most African rural areas lack internet connection and the USSD code may be the most used option.
Adoni Conrad Quenum
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A few years back, Morocco's General Directorate of National Security (DGSN) embarked on a series of measures to advance the country's digital transformation, collaborating with both public and private entities within the kingdom.
Recently, the Moroccan Court of Accounts (MCA) joined forces with the DGSN to encourage local financial courts to increasingly adopt the national digital identity system. To solidify their partnership, the two organizations signed a memorandum of understanding last Thursday in Rabat.
The MCA stated in a press release that the agreement "will facilitate the creation of a secure and reliable system to verify and supplement national identification data, streamlining financial jurisdiction operations and enhancing efficiency in executing and notifying procedures entrusted to them."
Launched by the DGSN in 2021, the digital identification system aims to provide citizens with highly secure digital identities, incorporating cutting-edge technologies in identity documents by 2030.
Abdellatif Hammouchi, the DGSN's director general, emphasized the need to broaden institutional partnerships that aid in identifying and authenticating digital users in order to safeguard, simplify, and digitize government services.
As per the new memorandum, financial courts will gain the capability to verify and complete data on individuals subject to the law. This is anticipated to reinforce the rule of law and its implementation while adhering to a secure system that upholds personal data protection standards.
Samira Njoya
In 2009, the Universal Postal Union encouraged its members to upgrade their addressing systems. With the current digital transformation wave sweeping across the tech landscape, many nations are seizing this opportunity to modernize their postal sectors.
Liberia recently unveiled a digital addressing system, SnooCODE, launched on April 25 in the capital city, Monrovia, by Cooper Kruah, the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications.
Developed by the UK-registered company of the same name, based in Ghana, SnooCODE operates on the mapping of the Liberian national territory. It's versatile, allowing for sending mails, tracking parcels, and even serving as a digital signature.
"Today, every corner of Liberia has a digital address, and efforts are underway to complete the operationalization of codes and to bring everyone on board. This system has been designed to address pressing health issues via technology," declared Minister Kruah.
He further revealed that the system underwent two trial phases in 2013 and 2019, as part of Liberia's initiative to foster digital technologies within the nation.
Sesinam Dagadu, the founder and CEO of SnooCODE Limited, stated that the new digital addressing system is among the most advanced globally. Users can access this system through an app available for download on the Google Play Store and App Store, with both online and offline functionality.
Once fully implemented nationwide, SnooCODE will bolster the efficiency of emergency services and security forces. It will also propel the growth of e-commerce and postal activities and streamline the duties of tax authorities.
Samira Njoya
As Africa's ecommerce sector expands, a growing number of innovations emerges and more entrepreneurs employ various tactics to secure a spot in competitive markets.
Sharwa, an Egyptian startup's e-commerce platform, enables users to buy and sell items such as clothing, beauty products, and electronics. Founded in 2022 by Alaa Shalaby, Hassan Elshourbagi, and Mohamed Hanafy, the Cairo-based startup has since raised roughly $2 million to fuel its expansion.
"Our goal is to replicate the experience of visiting a hypermarket with family, where everyone adds items to the same cart, benefiting from the low prices that become available. Our clients appreciate our service as a weapon against inflation," remarked Sharwa CEO, Alaa Shalaby.
Downloaded over 100,000 times, the Sharwa app, available on Android, allows users to set up accounts, upload item photos, and provide descriptions to entice potential buyers. Buyers can then browse the offerings and place orders for items they desire.
Upon receiving orders, sellers are alerted and begin preparing the products for shipping. Utilizing the startup's last-mile delivery services, purchased items are directly sent to homes or offices.
The platform incorporates online payment methods, such as bank transfers and payment gateways, to ensure secure transactions within its virtual marketplace. Additionally, users can group orders to take advantage of the best deals by simply clicking the "buy with friends" button. Once completed, these orders will be delivered the next day.
Sharwa also offers a Whatsapp ordering option, where users can chat with a designated number to place and manage orders.
Adoni Conrad Quenum
Last Saturday, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) announced an order requiring Cornelius Johannes Steynberg, CEO of South African company Mirror Trading, to pay $3.4 billion over bitcoin fraud. Specifically, Steynberg will have to restitute in excess of $1.7 billion to defrauded victims and pay over $1.7 billion in civil penalties.