The Nigerian government has increased efforts to policing the mining sector, raiding dozens of unlicensed operations since April for stealing lithium, used in production of electric vehicle batteries, smartphones, and power stations. The crackdown comes as Nigeria attempts to formalize its mining industry in a bid to par down illicit activities and to optimally harness the products. The global demand for lithium has increased because of the transition towards renewable sources of energy. However, corruption plus lack of government structures in the out-of-bounds regions has caused a number of unlawful mining activities, which empowered the militia in the north. Earlier…
Author: Modupeoluwa Shelle
Co-Creation Hub of Nigeria has introduced an enter-market initiative called ‘Let’s Build, Africa’ built to assist African startups to expand and find a market across the continent. CcHub which was founded in 2010, initiated Nigeria’s first open living lab that convened technologists, developers, entrepreneurs, tech -based companies, investors, and hackers to enhance the use of social capital and technology in the promotion of economic development. It has since broadened its network to encompass a range of pan-African innovation facilitators such as CcHub Design Lab based in Rwanda, iHub and eLimu from Kenya, Growth Capital for CcHub, and CcHub Syndicate. “Let’s…
South Africa’s Revio, an order to cash management platform aimed at helping merchants improve their payment processing, has renamed itself to Precium, marking a growth from a local processor to an international player. Established in 2020 and starting operations in 2021, Revio is an Africa-centred payment orchestration platform that reduces the pain points, cost, and risks associated with payment operations for merchants, allowing them to serve and acquire customers. Global and local merchants can accept more than 70 payment methods through a single PCI-compliant platform and standardized API, and can add configurable routing and retry rules, as well as proactively…
The Nigerian Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC) has released the National Genomics Sequencing Consortium, which is expected to improve the country’s public health systems. According to the director-general of NCDC, Dr. Jide Idris, it will equally strengthen our health security, this being the core of NCDC mandate, as well as place Nigeria as a key genomic research destination in the global south. “We all know the various contributions of genomic sequencing to health security. These range from rapid identification and characterization of pathogens, diseases surveillance and outbreak detection and patterns of transmission. “Overall, genomic sequencing enhances our ability…
On the 5th of June every year, individuals all over the world celebrate World Environment Day with the intention to spread awareness and foster actions towards protection of the environment. This year’s theme is tagged ‘Land Restoration, Desertification, and Drought Resilience’. According to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, wherein it stated that about 27% to 40% of the global land is degraded, and up to 600 million people are affected. Frequency and severity of droughts were 29% higher as compared to the year 2000 and if no measures are taken, drought may impact on more than three-quarter of the…
Again, Burkina Faso tops the list of the most neglected displacement crisis globally for the second consecutive year, as indicated by the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC). Burkina Faso is one such country in Africa with an overlooked refugee crisis that is more severe than many others. Violent attacks have been rigorously implemented in Burkina Faso since 2019 which led to a huge 707,000 new displacement internally. Burkina Faso remained no better for the worse in 2023 when another humanitarian crisis emerged in the country, as hundreds of thousands of people were left unreachable of any assistance. The Cameroon crisis is…
The Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni spoke on live TV, stating how France “continues to exploit poor, African countries” hence contributing to the increase in immigration to the European continent. Though it went viral late 2022, the video, however, was taken from an interview given by Ms Meloni on 19 January, 2019 when she was a Member of Parliament and the leader of the right-wing political party, Brothers of Italy. This came amid tensions between the two countries on migration issues that involved Italy’s refusal to allow a migrant rescue ship to dock in, which France denounced as “unacceptable behaviour”.…
The German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) has announced a grant of USD 12 million to support investment companies working in various agricultural fields in the states of eastern Sudan: Gedaref, Kassala, and Port Sudan. The project, which is headed by Moaz Osman of the African Enterprise Challenge Fund (AECF) seeks to fund 60 crop farming and livestock farming alongside the renewable energy project. Out of all the above projects, 50 of the projects will get grants of between 50,000 and up to 250,000 US dollars while 10 projects will receive between 250,000 and up to 750,000…
A Ghana-based startup of battery network solutions, Kofa, which is preparing an e-motorcycle for introduction in its domestic market, has eyes set on Kenya and Togo in the near future. Kofa’s visions are to develop an affordable and customer-oriented power system that relies on portable batteries and renewable sources of power. It has unveiled a multi-use high-capacity battery system called Kore2, together with a battery swapping system for the continent of West Africa, to support a decarbonized future for the region. “Our key value proposition, Kofa’s batteries, deliver high-performance power, stable more than PETROL, costs 30% more competitive than PETROL…
Egypt’s Birdnest, a prop-tech that specializes in power generation, has raised an undisclosed amount of pre-Series A funding to grow its market share in the home base of Egypt and in global ones. Birdnest is a start-up established in 2020 by Mostafa El-Nahawy and Ahmed Fadda that uses features such as smart interior design and smart rental management to optimize revenue potential for landlords and value to occupants. The startup has initiated external funding by raising pre-seed and pre-Series A funds from Beltone venture capital and CI venture capital. While the exact sum has remained anonymous, it is invested in…