The African Tech Round-up Podcast Celebrates Its 100th Episode

This is our 100th episode! To everyone who’s ever listened in to the show, interacted with us via social media, recommended the podcast to other people, made an audio contribution, emailed a comment or question, been featured as a guest, attended one of our live events, tuned in to a live stream on Facebook, or even come on board as a podcast/event sponsor, thank you. We all did this. The love is real, and we salute you!

To celebrate this milestone, we’re publishing live audio taped at the African Tech Round-up LIVE: State of the Startup event we hosted a couple of weeks ago. At the gathering, Andile Masuku facilitated a lively panel discussion featuring special guests, Indresen Chetty (Managing Director: TRACE Mobile), Dominique Collett (Senior Investment Executive: RMI & Alpha Code), Ben White (Founder & CEO: VC4Africa) and Daniel Rubenstein (Co-founder: My Treasury).

Check out this State of the Startup highlights video from the:

Happy listening and here’s to the next hundred episodes!

First published in AfricanTechRoundup.com

Talking Access To Higher Education With Bola Lawal Of ScholarX

It’s been barely a week since we hosted the African Tech Round-up LIVE: State of the Startup event in Johannesburg, and believe it or not, next week will mark the 100th podcast we’ll have published in consecutive weeks.

We’ve done our best to deliver the biggest digital, tech and innovation headlines from Africa and beyond while offering candid analysis and commentary, as well as useful insights gleaned from some of the Africa’s leading entrepreneurs, executives, investors and technical talent.

The conversation we’re sharing on this week’s show brings things full-circle in that the I finally got to meet the Texas-based Nigerian, Bola Lawal, in person at our recent event– after we interacted online, brought together by the podcast. It’s humbling to realise how this little podcast has grown into a lively international community of people– Africans and otherwise, who are actively involved and/or care deeply about the continent’s growing tech ecosystem.

Bola is one of the co-founders of ScholarX, an app designed to help African students access scholarships abroad. In this chat, he talks about how ScholarX is committed to helping Africans access the very best education possible through scholarships, and he gives his take on the emergence of MOOC’s and eLearning in general.

First published in AfricanTechRoundup.com.

 

Etisalat Nigeria’s Creditors Call In Massive Debt + Simon Dingle On Bitcoin And Blockchain Tech

Mobile telcos on the continent are certainly having a rough time of it on the continent. In the same week that MTN South Africa CEO, Mteto Nyati, announced his resignation, a consortium of banks including Guaranty Trust Bank, Access Bank and Zenith Bank reportedly assumed control ofEtisalat Nigeria over an outstanding $1.72 billion loan.

Media reports suggesting that Etisalat Nigeria failed to meet its debt servicing obligations since 2016 have led to speculation over what might have contributed to this crisis– could it be unsound management decisions or simply an unfortunate consequence of operating in Nigeria’s recessionary environment?

In this week’s African Tech Round-up, Simon Dingle joins me on the show to comment on the week’s biggest headlines and to discuss the import (or lack thereof) of Bitcoin reaching price parity with gold, as well as to share insights on the exciting potential of blockchain technology to revolutionise monetary regimes on the continent.

First published on AfricanTechRoundup.com.

 

Nokia’s New Dumbphone Dominates Headlines + The Kalenga Conundrum

Whatever you think of Nokia’s re-introduction of the legendary 3310 device, you’ve got to hand it to HMD Global for completely owning Mobile World Congress 2017 in terms of capturing headlines. In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to recall any other major announcement made at the world’s premier mobile showcase this year.

In this week’s African Tech Round-up, I’m joined by Zambian author, speaker and marketer extraordinaire, Musa Kalenga, to work out how much of the hype surrounding Nokia’s new, old “dumbphone” is actually deserved, and whether the handset has the potential to do well in Africa should they decide to roll it out here.

You should also tune in to hear Musa factor in on some of the biggest headlines from the last couple of weeks, as well as to hear him unpack insights from a second book he has in the works, The Kalenga Conundrum— which is just one of the many projects keeping him very busy in the wake of giving up his client partner role at Facebook Africa in recent weeks.

First published in AfricanTechRoundup.com.