AFF INDUSTRY INSIGHT WEEKLY(#E02)

A weekly round-up of reported startup, fintech, digital economy, emerging technology and innovation news from Nigeria and Africa, curated for Africa Fintech Foundry and Access Bank audiences.

Moove becomes Africa's newest unicorn after $250 million Series C

Moove, the mobility technology company founded in Lagos in 2020 by Ladi Delano and Jide Odunsi, raised $250 million in a Series C round announced on 5 August, reaching a $2.1 billion valuation and joining Africa's unicorn ranks. The round was led by Abu Dhabi's Mubadala Investment Company and co-led by Woven Capital, Toyota's growth fund, and Ion Pacific, with BlueCrest Capital Management, Sona Asset Management and The Raptor Group joining alongside existing backers including BlackRock, MUFG, Franklin Templeton and Uber. It is the largest single round announced by an African startup so far in 2026.

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Nigerian startup funding fell 96% in July as African funding dropped 80%

Data published on 7 August showed Nigerian startups raised $4.9 million across six disclosed deals in July 2026, a 95.7% fall from the $115.2 million raised across 18 deals in June. Nigeria placed fifth on the continent for the month, behind South Africa, Kenya, Zambia and Egypt, taking 4.79% of Africa's $102.2 million total. Africa-wide funding fell 80.2% month-on-month and 81.6% year-on-year, with debt accounting for $75.5 million, or 73.87% of all disclosed capital. Kenya's M-Kopa was July's largest raise at $30 million in debt from FMO. Read more

Standard Chartered and Sony back Yellow Card in $40 million round

Stablecoin infrastructure provider Yellow Card closed a $40 million strategic equity round announced on 5 August, backed by SC Ventures (Standard Chartered's innovation arm), Sony Innovation Fund, Polychain Capital and Blockchain Capital. The raise takes total equity financing past $120 million. Funds will scale Global USD Accounts, which let businesses hold dollars, swap stablecoins, manage treasury and settle local currencies across more than 50 countries. Yellow Card has processed over $10 billion in transactions and holds licences in 22 jurisdictions. CEO Chris Maurice said the next phase is connecting banks themselves directly to stablecoin rails. Read more

Canal+ backs MultiChoice spin-out Moment in $22 million Series A

Cape Town-based payments company Moment closed a $22 million Series A on 4 August, led by AlphaCode Venture Partners with General Catalyst, MultiChoice and for the first time Canal+, which now owns MultiChoice outright. Total funding reaches $55 million. Moment, spun out of MultiChoice's fintech arm, processes 600,000 transactions a day for 10 million monthly users. Read more

PalmPay crosses $1 billion valuation and weighs Hong Kong IPO

PalmPay is preparing for a possible initial public offering in Hong Kong while raising about $200 million in a round valuing it above $1 billion. Founded in Nigeria in 2019 and backed by Transsion, NetEase and MediaTek, it now reports more than 35 million registered users and up to 15 million daily transactions. It became profitable in 2025 and made Hong Kong its global base earlier this year. Read more

NGX asks Tinubu to push fintechs toward local listings

Nigerian Exchange Limited chief executive Temi Popoola used a meeting with President Bola Tinubu, reported on 8 August, to call for policies encouraging high-growth fintechs to list domestically. "They earn a lot of their profits in Nigeria, but they take that wealth abroad to list on other exchanges," he said, proposing dual listings so local investors can share in the value created. The intervention lands as OPay works with Citigroup, Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan Chase on a possible US IPO valuing it at up to $4 billion, PalmPay weighs Hong Kong, and Flutterwave remains linked to a Nasdaq listing. Read more

Kenya's Cloud9 acquires Chpter in all-stock deal

Cloud9, a Kenyan business banking startup, acquired social commerce platform Chpter in an all-stock deal reported on 5 August — its second acquisition in three months after buying ticketing platform M-Tickets in May. The deal reunites Cloud9 founder Tesh Mbaabu with the company he co-founded and left in September 2025. Chpter's standalone app has been shut down, with its AI-powered sales tools for WhatsApp and Instagram folded into Cloud9's platform and around 4,500 businesses moving across. Cloud9 is "building financial services around the places where people and businesses already transact," Mbaabu told TechCabal. Read more

HSBC finds a buyer for its Egypt retail bank after 44 years

HSBC announced on 2 August that HSBC Bank Egypt has agreed to sell its entire retail banking business to Emirates NBD Egypt, ending 44 years of consumer banking in the market and generating an estimated pre-tax gain of about $300 million. The transaction covers retail loans, deposits, accounts, roughly 43 branches, the ATM network and the staff supporting the business. HSBC keeps its corporate and institutional banking operations, which account for the bulk of its Egyptian business. Read more

Nigeria imposes 1.5% stamp duty on crypto conversions, payable in tokens

The Nigeria Revenue Service published its Guidelines on the Taxation of Virtual Assets on 3rd August, introducing a 1.5% stamp duty on every fiat-to-token and token-to-fiat transaction, alongside a 1% withholding tax on taxable disposals and 10% on staking, mining and DeFi income. The framework has met resistance. Industry participants warn that taxing movement rather than profit could push Nigeria's estimated $92 billion crypto market offshore, citing examples such as an importer paying ₦1.26 million a year in duty on supplier payments against a net profit of around ₦900,000. Read more

Naira stablecoin cNGN launches on Celo for cross-border settlement

cNGN, the naira-backed stablecoin issued by WrappedCBDC, went live on the Celo blockchain on 6 August, opening a channel for instant FX settlement and cross-border payments. Users can swap cNGN for dollar-backed stablecoins such as USDT through Textile FX. WrappedCBDC came through the SEC's Regulatory Incubation programme and joined the CBN's anti-money laundering supervisory pilot in March. As of 7 August, the token had a circulating supply of about ₦2.5 billion and 8,216 holders, with cumulative trading volume of roughly ₦214.2 billion. Read more

South Africa moves to bar companies from cross-border crypto transfers

The South African Reserve Bank and National Treasury published the draft Crypto Asset Manual for Cross-Border Activities on 3 August, an 88-page consultation document that for the first time brings cross-border crypto under exchange control. Read more

Zenith Bank confirms cyberattack exposing customer contact data

Zenith Bank told customers in an email on 4 August that attackers had gained unauthorised access to part of its database, exposing limited information including email addresses and phone numbers. The bank said there was no evidence that accounts, passwords, PINs or funds had been accessed, and that banking services remained operational. It did not disclose how many customers were affected. Sterling Bank and Providus Bank reported similar breaches earlier in 2026. Read more

INTERPOL links AI to 55% of reported cybercrime in Africa

INTERPOL's African Cyberthreat Assessment Report 2026, released on 3 August and drawing on survey data from 36 member countries, found that artificial intelligence now enables 55% of reported cybercrimes across Africa. Losses more than doubled from $192 million in 2024 to $484 million. Read more

Federal Government orders all MDAs to appoint data protection officers

A compliance circular signed by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, dated 27 July and made public on 4 August, directs every Ministry, Department and Agency to appoint qualified Data Protection Officers, register them with the Nigeria Data Protection Commission and comply fully with the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023. MDAs must make budgetary provision for training, technical safeguards and periodic audits. Permanent Secretaries, Accounting Officers and Chief Executives are personally responsible for institutional compliance. Read more

South Africa's regulator moves on spam callers hiding behind SIM boxes

Presenting to the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Communications and Digital Technologies on 4 August, ICASA said it now has systems capable of physically locating the SIM boxes used to disguise illegal spam calls. The intervention builds on Consumer Protection Act amendments gazetted in April, which require direct marketers to register and let consumers place a pre-emptive block. Read more

DR Congo suspends its digital tax twelve days after signing it

The Congolese government suspended Interministerial Order No. 015 on 1 August, twelve days after signing it, following sustained protest from startups, online media and technology associations. The order would have charged up to $100,000 for certain categories of digital service and $5,000 for authorisation to operate a fintech or online bank. Ministers framed the pause as clarification rather than abandonment. By 6 August the Minister of Digital Economy had refused a formal moratorium but confirmed startups fall outside the order's scope. Read more

Kenya caps carbon credit exports at 10 million tonnes to 2030

Kenya's State Department for Environment and Climate Change released a Guide for Strategic Investment in Carbon Markets on 4 August, capping authorised international carbon credit transfers at 10 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent through 2030. The logic is accounting: once a reduction is authorised for international transfer, Kenya can no longer count it toward its own climate target. Forestry and land-use projects are excluded while permanence safeguards are developed. A domestic carbon exchange is targeted for end-March 2027. Read more

World Bank: AI could compress a century of progress into a decade

The World Bank released World Development Report 2026: The Promise of Artificial Intelligence on 4 August, its first comprehensive assessment of what AI means for developing economies. It finds that only 4.5% of jobs in low- and middle-income countries are at risk of automation by generative AI, against 14.2% in high-income countries, while 16.2% could see productivity meaningfully boosted. Its framework is "adopt, adapt, advance". Countries need not build trillion-dollar models but must adapt AI to local languages, institutions and data. Read more

Galafy launches a digital platform for spraying money at events

Galafy Ltd launched on 1 August, offering a digital alternative to the Nigerian tradition of spraying cash at weddings, birthdays, naming ceremonies and concerts. Guests fund a wallet and spray in real time; hosts, performers and creators receive into a Galafy wallet and withdraw to a bank account afterwards. The product lands against a real tension; CBN currency regulations and EFCC enforcement have made cash spraying a legal risk in recent years. "We're not trying to replace our culture," co-founder and CEO Adewole Akanji told The Guardian. "We're using technology to preserve it." Read more

Swoop moves food ordering into WhatsApp

Lagos food delivery startup Swoop opened a guided ordering flow inside WhatsApp on 4 August. After sending "Hi," a customer selects a delivery address, browses the restaurant marketplace, adds to a cart and pays without leaving the chat. The bet is that adoption does not always require a new app; WhatsApp already carries commercial traffic in Nigeria. What Swoop adds is structure, replacing loose back-and-forth with menus, prices, a cart and a confirmed order summary. Read more

AFF publishes The Fundability Architecture, its H1 2026 whitepaper on why African startups stall

AFF published The Fundability Architecture, its H1 2026 whitepaper. Its argument: African startups no longer fail for lack of money, but for lack of fundability. Funding fell from $4.6 billion in 2022 to about $2.2 billion in 2024; capital did not leave, the terms changed. Drawing on AFF Ecosystem Roundtable 7.0, the paper sets out six findings on what now separates startups that raise from those that stall. Free and ungated. Download the whitepaper