Africa’s top smartphone maker is quietly building a presence in the continent’s renewable energy sector, moving beyond phones into solar power and electric vehicles as its core handset business slows.

Transsion Holdings, the Chinese company behind the Tecno, Infinix and Itel brands, controls about 50% of Africa’s smartphone market. But that dominance is under pressure. In the first half of 2025, the company’s Africa revenue fell 4.45% to CNY 9.65 B (~USD 1.3 B), while handset revenue dropped 18.41% year-on-year.

The company is now pivoting to “new energy” mobility and renewable energy products. Through its Itel and Oraimo brands, Transsion has launched a variety of home solar energy systems designed for African households with unreliable electricity. Its solar products, which are quickly gaining ground in the Nigerian market, provide an economical power solution for regions where many households still rely on generators and burning wood, coal or kerosene for lighting.

In electric vehicles, Transsion introduced its TankVolt brand of electric two-wheelers and tuk-tuks in Uganda in 2023 and has since expanded to Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania and Ethiopia. It later launched Revoo, another electric motorcycle brand, which entered the Nigerian market in 2025. The company now ranks among Africa’s top three EV brands by units sold.

Transsion is applying the same playbook that made it Africa’s smartphone leader, leveraging affordable products tailored to local needs, backed by extensive distribution networks and after-sales support. It is also offering financing options through partnerships with financial institutions.

On Monday, Transsion deepened its renewable energy bet through NewTrails Capital, a Chinese growth-stage fund, in which it owns a stake. NewTrails completed a USD 55 M investment in Spiro, considered Africa’s largest electric vehicle and battery-swapping company. The deal closed Spiro’s latest equity round at USD 270 M, one of the largest single fundraising closes in African clean technology.

NewTrails Capital operates in Shanghai, Shenzhen and Nigeria. It views Spiro as an “infrastructure-like business” and sees the company’s battery-swapping network as part of a broader energy transition across African markets.

Spiro has deployed more than 100,000 electric motorcycles and established over 2,500 battery-swapping stations across seven African markets, including Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Nigeria and Cameroon. The company has raised about USD 557 M in total disclosed funding.

Transsion’s push into renewables comes as competition in smartphones intensifies. Chinese rivals including Xiaomi and Honor have eroded its lead, particularly in low-end smartphones. The company is seeking a main-board listing in Hong Kong to fund its expansion into electric vehicles, home appliances and renewable energy.

Africa’s electric two-wheeler market is poised for growth. Annual sales of motorbikes are projected to rise from 1.9 million units in 2023 to 2.3 million by 2030. The continent’s EV market is estimated to reach USD 28 B by 2030.

Transsion is betting that the distribution networks and local market knowledge that built its phone empire can now power its next act in renewable energy and electric mobility.

Nigeria’s top fintech companies are reeling as a new move by the central bank to restrict any payment firm from dominating both consumer and merchant markets puts their playbook at loggerheads with the rules and a hard ceiling on their ambitions.

In a circular issued earlier this week, the Central Bank of Nigeria said any licensed financial institution that controls more than 25% of the consumer-issuing market will be restricted to a maximum of 15% market share in merchant-acquiring activities. The restrictions apply to groups of related entities, preventing firms from bypassing the rules through subsidiaries. The rules take effect on December 31, 2026.

Consumer issuing covers services that enable consumers to make payments, including bank accounts, payment cards and digital wallets. Merchant acquiring is the infrastructure that enables businesses to accept payments, including payment gateways, Point-of-Sale terminals and merchant settlement systems.

The move has significant implications for companies like Moniepoint, OPay, PalmPay, Paystack and Flutterwave, many of which have spent years building strong merchant-payment businesses and are increasingly expanding into customer-facing banking services.

Moniepoint controls roughly 38.5% of Nigeria’s POS market, according to industry data, while OPay holds about 27%. Both companies have built massive customer bases by focusing heavily on underserved consumers, small traders and informal businesses.

The new rules come as fintechs make aggressive moves into banking. In January, Paystack acquired Ladder Microfinance Bank, which followed the launch of its consumer payments app, Zap. In April, Flutterwave secured a microfinance banking licence. Both moves were designed to give the companies greater control over funds and deposits, converting payment users into banking customers.

The CBN said the restrictions are designed to prevent excessive concentration in Nigeria’s rapidly expanding digital payments ecosystem, which surpassed NGN 1 Q (~USD 733 B) in 2025. The regulator also cited concerns about systemic risk and the emergence of operators with substantial market presence across key payment activities.

The rule effectively forces dominant fintechs to choose between consumer and merchant markets. A company that controls more than 25% of consumer payments cannot hold more than 15% of merchant acquiring, and vice versa.

For Flutterwave, valued at over USD 3 B, and OPay, valued at USD 2.75 B, the restrictions could force a strategic rethink. Traditional banks could also be affected if they seek to build a substantial market share in merchant acquiring while maintaining their dominant positions in consumer banking.

The CBN has given operators until December 31, 2026, to restructure their operations. Monthly market share reports will be submitted to the regulator for monitoring and enforcement.

As it stands, the era of building across both sides of the payments market may be coming to an end for Nigeria’s fintech giants.

Mobile technologies contributed USD 240 B to Africa’s economy in 2025, equivalent to 7.8% of the continent’s GDP, according to a report released this week by the GSMA, the industry body representing mobile operators globally.

The sector supported roughly 13 million jobs and generated USD 45 B in public revenues through taxes, spectrum fees and license payments. The mobile industry’s economic contribution is expected to reach USD 290 B by 2030 as digital adoption deepens.

But the report also highlights a striking disconnect. While mobile broadband networks now reach most of the continent, nearly 1 billion Africans who live within coverage areas do not use mobile internet. Only about 9% of Africans live outside mobile broadband coverage. The challenge, the GSMA said, has shifted from expanding networks to ensuring people can afford and use them.

The usage gap

Affordability is the primary barrier. Smartphone prices remain out of reach for many low-income households, and data costs discourage regular use despite improvements in coverage. Limited digital skills, online safety concerns and social barriers also constrain adoption.

The report comes as African telecom operators reposition themselves beyond traditional voice and data services. According to GSMA Intelligence research, 79% of operators in Africa now identify becoming a digital transformation partner as a primary objective, deploying artificial intelligence, expanding digital services and opening network capabilities to developers through standardised APIs.

“Africa’s mobile industry is entering a new phase of development,” said Vivek Badrinath, Director General of the GSMA. “Having connected millions of people and businesses over the last decade, the focus is increasingly shifting towards unlocking greater value through AI, digital services and new forms of innovation.”

Operators are expected to spend more than USD 76 B on network infrastructure by 2030. Mobile-enabled services are increasingly supporting financial inclusion, digital commerce, healthcare delivery and education across the continent. Africa remains the world’s largest mobile money market, with millions relying on mobile financial services where traditional banking is limited.

Closing the usage gap, the GSMA said, could unlock significant economic opportunities by bringing hundreds of millions more people into the digital economy.

Three years ago, Swvl was a cautionary tale. The Egypt-born mass transit startup had gone from a USD 1.5 B valuation to a market cap of just USD 9 M, its stock had crashed below USD 1.00, it had just USD 2.9 M left in the bank, and a Nasdaq delisting warning loomed. The company that had once burned through USD 161 M in a single half-year was running on fumes.

Today, Swvl is reporting revenue of USD 8.2 M for the first quarter of 2026, up 68% year-over-year. Its operating loss has narrowed 71% to just USD 174 K, pushing its operating margin from negative 12% to negative 2%. The company is framing itself as “approaching breakeven”. And it is using that improved picture to justify a push into two of the world’s most competitive transport markets: the UK and the US.

Swvl’s struggles had, at one point, made it the poster child for SPAC-era hubris. The company had raised nearly USD 100 M from investors, including Beco Capital and VNV Global. It went public via a SPAC in 2021 at a USD 1.5 B valuation. Then the wheels came off. By December 2023, its accumulated losses had reached roughly USD 329 M. Its operating cash flow burn for the year was USD 9.1 M. Analysts at Wolfpack Research described the company as “a few breaths away from bankruptcy”.

Swvl pulled back. It abandoned its consumer ride-hailing business and refocused on B2B enterprise mobility, providing transport solutions for companies, schools and governments. It cut costs aggressively, trimming operating expenses down to 23% of revenue in Q1 2026, down from 34% a year earlier. It prioritised recurring revenue, which now makes up 88% of total revenue. Dollar-pegged revenue reached 44% of total, up from 35%.

The strategy appears to be working. In FY 2025, Swvl reported net income of USD 1.3 M, its first full-year profit and it entered 2026 with a USD 38.2 M sales backlog. Meanwhile, Egypt revenue surpassed its 2022 peak and GCC revenue more than doubled year-over-year in Q1.

Now Swvl is betting that a leaner cost base and a recurring-revenue model can fund expansion into developed markets. In June 2025, it signed its first SaaS contract in the UK, offering its mobility management platform to enterprise clients. The company has flagged Texas and Chicago as early targets for its US entry, and secured a USD 2 M investment in February 2025 to support US expansion.

It’s an ambitious move as the UK and US are crowded, mature markets with entrenched competitors. But Swvl is no longer selling itself as a ride-hailing app but rather selling software that helps companies manage employee transportation; a B2B play that requires less capital and offers more predictable revenue.

CEO Mostafa Kandil framed the UK contract as “a validation of our platform’s global relevance”. Swvl still has work to do. as it’s not yet profitable on an operating basis. But for a company that was nearly out of cash three years ago, going from navigating survival to chasing scale breeds optimism.

Africa’s highest-valued startup, Flutterwave, has been on a dealmaking spree, announcing a new stablecoin partnership every few months. But beneath the flurry of press releases, a clear strategy is taking shape. The Nigerian fintech is building a multi-rail settlement system that bypasses the correspondent banking network that has made cross-border payments into Africa slow and expensive for decades.

The latest addition to its stablecoin roster came on June 16, when Ripple took an equity stake in Flutterwave as part of a Series E round that values the company at USD 3.2 B. Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin, its Ripple Payments network, and the XRP Ledger will be integrated into Flutterwave’s infrastructure across 34 African markets.

The Ripple deal follows a string of similar announcements. In October 2025, Flutterwave designated Polygon as its default blockchain for stablecoin settlements. In January 2026, it launched merchant stablecoin wallets. Earlier in June, it partnered with Tempo, a Stripe-incubated payments-focused blockchain, as a complementary settlement rail. Flutterwave has also joined Circle’s payment network.

The logic behind this multi-chain approach is grounded in the reality that no single blockchain is optimal for every use case. By maintaining relationships with multiple partners, Flutterwave can route transactions across different rails depending on corridor requirements, transaction volumes, and operational needs. The company is not betting on a single blockchain but shrewdly building a settlement layer that works across several of them.

For businesses and individuals, the payoff is potentially significant. Sending money to sub-Saharan Africa currently costs an average of around 8% of the transaction value, well above the UN’s 3% target. Transactions can take days to clear as they bounce through correspondent banks in London or New York. Stablecoin settlement reduces both the cost and the time to near-instant.

Flutterwave CEO Olugbenga Agboola has framed stablecoins not as a standalone product but as a faster settlement layer sitting on top of the company’s existing payout infrastructure. For businesses managing treasury across multiple African markets, he described stablecoins as a liquidity and FX management tool that continues to function when traditional banking rails are closed.

Flutterwave is not the only African fintech pursuing this strategy. M-PESA partnered with Abu Dhabi’s ADI Foundation in January 2026 to bring blockchain and stablecoin payments to its 60 million users across eight African markets. Paystack has flagged stablecoins as a “major theme” for its next decade and is finalising a stablecoin license in a key market. Chipper Cash has partnered with Ripple to facilitate cross-border crypto payments. Paga partnered with the Sui blockchain in May 2026 to integrate stablecoin payment rails.

Global payments companies are also moving in. Mastercard partnered with Yellow Card in May 2026 to accelerate stablecoin payments across Africa. MoneyGram launched its own stablecoin, MGUSD, and partnered with NALA for stablecoin payouts across Africa and Asia. Tether invested in LemFi to expand USDT-powered remittances into Africa and Asia.

The race is on to replace correspondent banking with stablecoin settlement. Flutterwave’s strategy is to build infrastructure that can work with whichever blockchain wins.

Moses had been a CDcare customer for three years, completing 21 orders without a single default. When he fell behind on a laptop instalment, he reached out to the company himself, offering to pay with interest or return the device. CDcare’s response was a single word: “Ok.”

The next day, an agent showed up at his home unannounced, spoke to his landlord, shared screenshots of Moses’s account, including his national ID number, he claimed, and told the landlord that CDcare had been calling Moses with no response, though call logs showed he often answered their calls, however briefly.

The incident, which sparked a furore on social media in April, highlights a growing tension across Africa’s buy now, pay later (BNPL) industry. BNPL has exploded across the continent, offering millions of cash-strapped consumers access to smartphones, appliances and other goods they could not otherwise afford. Nigeria’s BNPL market is projected to grow from USD 1.55 B in 2025 to nearly USD 4 B by 2031. Across Africa, the sector is forecast to expand from USD 5.2 B in 2025 to approximately USD 16.8 B by 2031.

But the rapid growth has been accompanied by mounting complaints. In Nigeria, defaulting customers have reported intimidation, public embarrassment, and persistent harassment by agents enforcing payment. One dispatch rider in Ibadan told News Digest that agents who once called him “boss” now scream at him like a criminal. A food vendor in Bodija said agents contacted her guarantor and circulated her photograph after she missed two payments.

The problem extends beyond Nigeria. In Kenya, BNPL phone financing has drawn scrutiny for opaque terms, digital lockouts and aggressive collection tactics. Devices are remotely disabled after two to four missed payments, sometimes without notice. For informal workers whose livelihoods depend on their phones, a lockout means lost income. Customers describe devices locking despite recent payments.

Kenyan BNPL provider Lipa Later was placed under administration in March 2025 after months of financial strain. In South Africa, consumer advocacy groups have filed complaints over BNPL services preying on financially vulnerable consumers, with some providers charging high fees for even one day of late payment.

Regulators are scrambling to respond. Nigeria’s Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission set a January 2026 deadline for all digital lenders to register, banning harassment, name-calling, threats and public shaming of borrowers. The commission has placed more than 100 unregistered loan apps on its enforcement radar.

In Kenya, the Central Bank has licensed 227 digital credit providers as of April 2026, up from just 85 before 2025. The Treasury has proposed tougher rules extending oversight to BNPL, peer-to-peer lending and pay-as-you-go arrangements.

Despite the regulatory push, consumer advocates say enforcement remains weak. The underlying problem, they argue, is structural. Most BNPL providers in Africa operate without sharing data, allowing delinquent borrowers to cycle through multiple platforms simultaneously. In Kenya, default rates for small-ticket digital loans have reached 83%, with broader segments defaulting at up to 40%.

CDcare, for its part, published a detailed explanation of its process in April, stating that physical visits are a last resort after repeated unsuccessful engagement attempts and that agents are trained to maintain professional conduct. The company said it does not disclose customer financial information to third parties.

For Moses, the visit lasted minutes. He cleared his balance two days later. But the incident shows how a lending model built on trust can break down when the pressure to recover payments overrides customers’ sensibilities.

Tyms AI today announced the launch of its human-first AI platform, built to help medium and enterprise businesses run their operations faster and smarter. The platform combines AI software and intelligent agents that handle day-to-day work across finance, sales, marketing, customer service, compliance, and more, freeing teams to focus on the judgment-driven work that drives business outcomes.

Tyms is designed around a single principle: people, not AI, bring the wisdom, judgment, and taste that move businesses forward. Where most AI products position the technology as a replacement for human workers, Tyms positions it as the engine that removes repetitive work and accelerates teams toward their goals.

“Our mission is to empower humanity to do its best work,” said Allan Rwakatungu, co-founder and CEO of Tyms AI. “I’m an entrepreneur from a developing country, and I believe business is the catalyst for progress. We built Tyms to help businesses around the world do their best work, with AI handling the drudgery and humans focused on the work that actually matters.”

Rwakatungu brings more than two decades in technology to Tyms. He was a software engineer and architect on MTN’s Mobile Money platform, founded mBet, the Ugandan startup that became betPawa, one of Africa’s largest sports-betting companies, and founded Xente, a pioneering licensed fintech that serves thousands of corporate customers and processes millions of dollars in payments.

He co-founded Tyms with Arron Cleary, a prolific angel investor behind African startups including Yobante Express, Asaak, Badili and Rocket Health, and an early backer of Xente. Together, the Ugandan founder and his Australian co-founder pair an operator’s and an investor’s view of what businesses need to put AI to work.

How Tyms works

Every person in an organisation, and every customer they serve, gets their own AI assistant. These assistants perform what Tyms calls “the invisible work” across a business: collecting, searching, analysing, synthesising, monitoring, reporting, executing background jobs, and more. Because the assistants bring real intelligence rather than mechanical execution, they move work forward not just quickly, but in the direction of each business’s specific goals. Humans then apply their judgment and taste to finish the work.

The platform is available today on the web, with mobile, chat, and integrations with workplace communication tools such as Microsoft Teams and Slack planned later this year.

“A lot of people in AI talk as if people will be replaced. We disagree,” Allan said. “People are the only ones with wisdom, judgment, and taste. AI doesn’t have those things, and that’s why humans are best placed to do business. Tyms is built around that conviction.”

More than a product

Recognising that successful AI adoption requires more than software, Tyms is launching two additional offerings alongside the platform:

• Best Work Masterclasses: immersive AI training programmes for professionals in finance, compliance, sales, marketing, and other functions. The classes ground experts in the technology so they can accelerate in their domain.
• AI Advisory: a consulting practice for medium and enterprise organisations covering AI readiness assessments, implementation support, and ongoing guidance to ensure successful deployment across people, processes, systems, and data.

“Handing your team an AI copilot is not a strategy,” Allan said. “Businesses need to prepare their people, processes, systems, and data for AI. We help them do that, and then we help them succeed with it.”

What’s next

Tyms is opening conversations with medium and enterprise businesses about pilots and deployments, and with model providers, data centres, cloud providers, and solution providers about strategic partnerships. The company is also opening its seed funding round.

A USD 50 K dispute over a former sales head’s unpaid wages sent the Dutch parent company of prominent Nigerian logistics startup Kwik into bankruptcy. A year later, the fight has moved to a new front involving a corporate restructuring that creditors say was a sneaky move to put key assets out of reach.

The trouble started in the Netherlands when a former employee, Adam Grant, won a settlement of USD 75 K over a wrongful termination dispute. Kwik paid the first USD 25 K installment but held back the rest, citing concerns over French income tax. The Amsterdam court rejected that argument. In May 2025, it declared Africa Delivery Technologies Holding B.V. (ADTH), the Dutch parent of the Nigerian logistics startup Kwik, bankrupt.

A court-appointed trustee stepped in to sell the parent company’s assets and raise money for 41 unsecured creditors, who, according to a liquidation report published early this month, are collectively owed roughly EUR 3.2 M (about USD 3.4 M). Those assets included intellectual property and full ownership of a French subsidiary, which in turn owned 99% of the Nigerian operating business.

But a twist came months after the bankruptcy was declared when management executed a move that changed everything. On October 16, 2025, ADTH’s French subsidiary issued 10,000 new shares to a Dublin-registered entity called Kwik Now Limited. It resulted in the bankrupt Dutch parent’s controlling stake of 100% being slashed to a paltry 14.1%.

Control of the operating company was effectively moved out of the court’s reach. When the trustee asked who owned Kwik Now Limited, management reportedly said the question was “not relevant,” according to a detailed liquidation report.

What began as a personal labour dispute had snowballed into an international legal battle. The initial bankruptcy petition was bolstered by other creditors, including Nigerian startup lender B54, which claims Kwik defaulted on a USD 50 K loan, and media company Guardian Nigeria, which sued over unpaid warehouse rent.

The Dutch court-appointed trustee is now investigating whether the share issuance was an unlawful “siphon” of value away from creditors. A key focus will be the directors of the bankrupt company, who could face personal liability under Dutch corporate law for failing to file financial accounts properly or for mismanagement.

The trustee’s investigation is also examining whether the founders failed to pay mandatory share capital and whether late or missing annual accounts create a presumption of mismanagement under Dutch corporate law. A further interim report is scheduled for July 29, 2026.

Throughout the entire process, Kwik’s founder and former CEO, Romain Poirot‑Lellig, has maintained that the company’s Nigerian operations are healthy and that the legal troubles are confined to the holding company. The company previously stated that it serves over 300,000 merchants and had recently raised fresh funding. However, the latest liquidation report paints a troubling picture for the creditors left behind in Europe.

Kora, the payment infrastructure platform, has joined the International Air Transport Association’s IATA Financial Gateway (IFG), connecting global airlines to Africa’s payment ecosystem through a single, reliable infrastructure layer.

IATA Financial Gateway is the airline industry’s dedicated payment orchestration and management platform. IFG brings together global, regional and local payment partners to provide airlines with the right mix of payment options to maximise acceptance, reduce cost, and better serve customers in every market. Through this integration, airlines and travel agencies using IFG can now accept payments across Africa via Kora, including cards, bank transfers, mobile money, and local alternative payment methods, without having to build or manage multiple complex integrations independently.

Africa is one of the fastest-growing aviation markets in the world. The continent is expected to add more than 300 million new passengers by 2050. Yet global airlines have long faced a fundamental operational challenge when entering African markets: fragmented local payment rails, FX complexity, disconnected settlement systems, and the burden of managing multiple payment service provider relationships across Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Egypt and South Africa. This partnership removes that friction. One connection through IFG gives airlines access to Kora’s full African payment infrastructure, with the settlement reliability and local compliance that enterprise operations require.

Dickson Nsofor, CEO of Kora, said, “Africa is not a market to figure out later. It is a growth opportunity that demands serious infrastructure today. Our partnership with IATA signals that the rails are ready. Global airlines no longer have to choose between expanding into Africa and managing payment complexity. With Kora inside IFG, they get both.”

IATA currently represents over 370 international airlines globally. With Kora now part of IFG, those airlines gain direct access to Africa’s payment stack across all markets where Kora operates.

IATA Financial Gateway (IFG) enables greater flexibility in travel payment processing for the world’s airlines and travel suppliers, helping them build a cost-effective travel payment strategy. Kora’s participation strengthens our ability to serve airlines operating in or expanding across African markets,” said Kamil Al-Awadhi, Regional Vice President, Africa and Middle East.