What is Happening in Tech Today!
📦 Chowdeck just hit the brakes. If you’ve ever ordered food in Nigeria, you’ve probably heard of them. They went from 20 to 120 employees in a year—crazy growth, right? But now, they’re cutting 86 contract staff because, well… they grew too fast. The plan now? Scale fivefold by 2025 with a leaner team. Let’s see how that plays out.
📲 Ever been spammed with texts you didn’t sign up for? Well, someone finally did something about it. Domino’s and Cold Stone’s parent company, Eat’n’Go, just got fined $1,997 for sending unsolicited marketing messages. Not the biggest fine in the world, but the message is clear: stop spamming people!
📡 Canal is still chasing MultiChoice. The French media giant wants in, but South Africa’s ownership laws are in the way. They’ve now extended their bid by six months. Will they break through, or is this another corporate waiting game?
📊 Namibia is all about data now. Remember when airtime used to be the big money maker for telcos? Not anymore. 70% of mobile revenue now comes from data, up from 46% in 2018. And in just Q3 2024, the telecom sector pulled in $43M from data alone. Streaming, social media, work—it’s all data, all day.
🤖 Arabic AI is getting serious. Egypt’s Widebot just raised $3M to build a Large Language Model (LLM) for Arabic. AI is booming, but most large models are built for English. This could be a game-changer for Arabic speakers.