Think back to high school. Remember how the new dude always got all the girls whispering, or how the new girl got all the boys trying to walk her home? Now, if the newbie rolled into town with discernible signs of affluence (i.e. dope clothes, or an expensive scent), the singles market would get particularly frenzied. And when the newbie possessed a hint of exoticism (i.e. a foreign accent, or an unusual taste in music), even the kids involved in some of the most stable couplings might start feeling the pressure to reevaluate their options.
In this week’s African Tech Roundup, Tefo Mohapi and I discuss the pressure African tech startups are feeling in the face of local markets being invaded by experienced and well-resourced foreign-based interests. Local incumbents in many sectors of tech now find themselves fielding competition from abroad. In everything from venture capital investment to mobile money solutions, media streaming platforms and e-commerce solutions, the race to dominate is well and truly on.
In the light of all this, I pose a simple question, “What are you going to do when they come for you?”
This week’s episode will feature some insights from Nubi Kayode that may help us all find confident answers to that question. Nubi is a Nigerian Business Analyst at Accenture Ireland, and Managing Partner at DevShackAlpha.co. He co-founded EasyAppetite.com— Nigeria’s first online takeaway site in 2012, and managed to survive railroading attempts by foreign-backed competition, and set himself up to make a successful exit in 2014 when his company was acquired by CityChops.
Be sure to catch all the week’s most important digital, tech and innovation news from across the African continent:
- Find out about a Zimbabwean high school dropout who’s built an electric powered vehicle and a hybrid helicopter,
- Discover which two foreign money transfer firms have teamed up and become the latest to launch into Africa,
- Learn more about Kenya’s admirable obsession with building their own laptops,
- Hear what you can do to extend the runway for struggling Cameroonian startup, KwiiziBox, and
- Get the low-low on a South African-based video-on-demand platform that is calling it a day.
Tags: Africa, Africa 2.0, AfricaFilms.tv, African Tech, African Tech Conversations, African Tech Round-up, Andile Masuku, Andile's Take, AndilesTake, ATRU, ATRUC, Azimo, BICS, Buni, Burkina Faso, Business, Business and Economy, Cameroon, CityChops, Debate, DevShackAlpha.co, Digital, Discussion, EasyAppetite.com, Entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship, eServeGlobal, Ghana, HomeSend, Indiegogo, Innovation, iROKOtv, Kenya, KwiiziBox, MasterCard, Matsi Modise, Moi University, Nigeria, Nubi Kayode, SAITH Technologies, Sangulani Chikumbutso, Simba Mabasha, SiMODiSA, Simukayi Makuna, Somaliland, South Africa, Tech, Technology, Tefo Mohapi, Video On Demand, VOD, Wabona, World Bank, World Economic Global Shapers, Zimbabwe
Kenya Commercial Bank Gets Hacked?
25 OctSo, Episode 80 of the African Tech Round-up, aka the episode that nearly never happened, is finally out.
In an interview I just taped for the upcoming season of the African Tech Conversations series, Co-founder and Chief Credit Officer of M-KOPA Solar, Chad Larson, shared words he lives by that epitomise why I’m glad the team and I didn’t give up on publishing the podcast this week— despite the ridiculousness that made it nearly impossible to do so. “Done is always better than perfect,” he said. So, here it is.
There’s no doubt that this has so far been a bumper year for the world’s hacking community. Last week, one of Kenya’s biggest banks, the Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB), spent a fair amount of energy trying to convince its customers that their personal data remains uncompromised– this, following claims by a certain programmer who goes by @IrakChris on Twitter claiming to have accessed KCB’s client data through vulnerabilities found in the bank’s mobile app.
Meanwhile, Twitter, Spotify, Amazon, Reddit, Yelp, Netflix, and The New York Times suffered easily one of the world’s biggest coordinated distributed denial of service (aka DDoS) attacks last Friday which led to the sites either slowing to a snail’s pace or being knocked out altogether.
For all the details on these stories and more, tuck into this week’s show, and be sure to tell us what you make of the week’s headlines on Twitter, or via email.
Tags: Africa, African, African Tech Round-up, Amazon, Andile Masuku, AT&T, ATRU, Business, Comment, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, DDoS, Digital, Entrepreneurship, Equador, Innovation, Internet, Julian Assange, Kenya, Kenya Commercial Bank, mobile, Netflix, News, Online, Opinion, Podcast, Reddit, Ride Sharing, Spotify, Startup, Tech, Technology, The New York Times, Twitter, Uber, Video On Demand, VOD, Yelp