Kenya has emerged as Africa’s most dynamic electric mobility market, attracting hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital and startup investment. Now, a sweeping tax proposal could undo much of that progress, exposing a troubling contradiction at the heart of the government’s green transport push.

The Finance Bill 2026 proposes extending the standard 16% value-added tax (VAT) to imported electric vehicles, lithium-ion batteries and electric bicycles, reversing tax breaks that have been central to the sector’s expansion. The move comes just months after a national e-mobility policy was launched with fanfare, promising expanded incentives and green number plates.

There are fears that the disconnect between policy rhetoric and fiscal reality could derail Kenya from being a continental leader where e-mobility companies have been known to draw the highest funding in Africa.

Kenya’s electric vehicle sector has grown at a blistering pace. Registered EVs surged from just 796 in 2022 to 24,754 by the end of 2025, a more than 3,000% increase over three years.

The government projects annual EV sales could reach 70,000 by 2030, supported by battery-swapping networks and expanding charging infrastructure. Electric two-wheelers, known as boda bodas, dominate the market with roughly 24,000 units in circulation, followed by a growing number of electric buses and cars.

Driving that growth has been a sustained influx of capital. In the past 15 months, development finance institutions and climate-tech funds have poured money into Kenya’s EV assemblers and mobility-focused venture firms.

Zeno, a Nairobi-based electric motorcycle startup, raised USD 25 M in Series A funding in March to expand production and its battery-swapping network across East Africa. Spiro, an electric bike operator active across seven African markets secured USD 50 M in debt financing from Afreximbank and other lenders, months after a USD 100 M facility, as it pushes to put 1 million e-bikes on Kenya’s roads; a plan Kenya’s president appeared to endorse.

The International Finance Corporation has also taken an equity stake in ARC Ride, another Nairobi-based electric motorcycle company, and BasiGo has expanded it electric bus fleet. Meanwhile, Roam and Ampersand have significantly expanded their operations in Kenya, with the former opening the region’s largest electric motorcycle assembly plant with the capacity to produce 50,000 electric bikes a year.

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Electric motorcycles have gained traction across Kenya primarily because of their economics. Riders can reduce daily fuel and maintenance costs by as much as 40% compared to petrol-powered alternatives. Battery-swapping stations have emerged as the critical backbone of this transition, allowing commercial riders to exchange depleted batteries in under a minute without costly charging delays.

Infrastructure has followed capital. Charging and battery-swapping stations grew from 117 in April 2024 to 300 by June 2025, according to the Electric Mobility Alliance of Kenya, though 90% remain concentrated in Nairobi. Kenya Power reported that EV charging consumed 8.43 million kilowatt-hours in 2025, a 188% increase from the previous year, with revenue from e-mobility customers more than tripling to KES 190.8 M.

The proposed VAT reversal appears driven by urgent fiscal pressures rather than any policy rethink on climate. Kenya’s public debt has climbed to 67.6% of GDP, with the International Monetary Fund projecting the ratio could reach 71.6% in 2026 and 72.4% in 2027.

Persistent fiscal deficits estimated at 6.4% of GDP in both 2025 and 2026 have left the Treasury scrambling for revenue. President William Ruto is in talks with the IMF for a new multibillion-shilling loan to address a projected KES 1.14 T (USD 8.8 B) budget deficit for the 2026-2027 financial year.

The Finance Bill does not provide specific reasons for removing VAT relief on EV imports, but broader amendments targeting digital services, software and virtual assets make clear that the government is widening its tax net.

A 2025 industry study concluded that “all or almost all inputs for EVs are imported,” leaving the sector vulnerable to currency fluctuations, freight expenses, and import taxes.

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Kenya’s lead is not guaranteed. A Berlin-based analysis by Agora Verkehrswende and the German development agency GIZ found that Ethiopia and Rwanda have overtaken Kenya in electric mobility adoption, backed by more decisive policy action and clearer incentives.

Ethiopia now has more than 115,000 EVs on its roads, about 8% of the national fleet, after banning new imports of petrol and diesel vehicles in 2024. Rwanda, while smaller, launched an e-mobility strategy in 2021 and has restricted registration of petrol-powered motorcycle taxis.

Generally, recent data suggest that the use of electric vehicles in Africa is surging, from 19,386 in 2024 to 44,358 in 2025 (over USD 200 M in shipments), as soaring prices and fuel shortages compel countries to opt for cleaner and cheaper transportation.

However, Kenya’s approach has been more fragmented, driven largely by private sector innovation while policy lagged. The national e-mobility policy was only finalised in February 2026 after years of delays.

The Finance Bill 2026 is still making its way through parliament, and industry groups are expected to lobby against the VAT provisions. But with the Treasury under intense pressure from creditors and the IMF, exemptions will be a hard sell.

The tax proposal, nevertheless, represents an existential moment for Kenya’s EV startups. The country’s renewable-rich grid – more than 90% of generation comes from geothermal, hydro, wind and solar – remains a unique advantage. Yet if imported batteries and vehicles become 16% more expensive, the economic case that convinced riders to switch begins to fray.

“What we are building is bigger than the next funding round,” said one Nairobi-based EV executive, who declined to be named while the bill is under consideration. “But if the government keeps moving the goalposts, investors will eventually notice.”

A Kenyan court has ordered Safaricom to pay a local developer an indefinite percentage of its M-Pesa revenue, a novel remedy that legal experts say could reshape how intellectual property disputes are resolved between individuals and dominant corporations.

The High Court on May 8 directed Safaricom PLC to pay Peter Nthei Muoki and his company Beluga Ltd KES 1.4 B (about USD 10.8 M) in damages plus an ongoing royalty of 0.5 percent of gross M-Pesa revenue annually for as long as the company operates its parent-child wallet feature, M-Pesa Go, or any similar functionality.

The ruling marks the first time a Kenyan court has attached a recurring revenue share to a copyright infringement judgment against the telecoms giant.

It’s also the first time an individual developer has successfully sued the East African telecoms behemoth in a copyright dispute, while representing a rare victory for a solo innovator against a corporate giant in a region where such David-versus-Goliath legal battles almost never succeed. A separate case in 2025 ended in defeat for another developer who had sued over a “reverse call” feature, with the court ruling that ideas shared without a confidentiality agreement are not protected.

Justice Josephine Mongare, who delivered the judgment, noted the disproportionate scale between the parties. “Even David can prevail against Goliath,” she said, referring to the biblical narrative.

Muoki developed a concept called the M-Teen Mobile Wallet in October 2020, a system allowing parents to monitor and control teenagers’ spending through simple USSD menus compatible with basic phones. He registered the design with the Kenya Copyright Board before approaching Safaricom executives in early 2021.

After a meeting in June 2021 at a Nairobi restaurant, Sitoyo Lopokoiyit, then managing director of M-Pesa Africa, told Muoki the product was not workable because the intended teenage users lacked identification cards, requiring central bank approval.

Seventeen months later, in November 2022, Safaricom launched M-Pesa Go, a product with near-identical functionality targeting children aged 10 to 17.

Justice Mongare found that Safaricom had failed to produce critical internal design documents and that the company’s explanation of independent development through Huawei Technologies was not supported by credible evidence.

“It is not the duty of the CBK Governor to advise Safaricom on product features,” the judge stated, questioning why a major telecommunications firm would act on undocumented verbal instructions. The court also drew adverse inferences from Safaricom’s inability to produce material evidence of internal conception.

The royalty structure was calculated based on M-Pesa’s revenue growth following Muoki’s pitch. According to court documents, M-Pesa revenue rose from KES 82.65 B in the financial year before Muoki’s disclosure to KES 107.69 B in the following year, a 30 percent jump. The court reasoned that ongoing payments would fairly compensate the inventor without disrupting service for millions of users.

Justice Mongare described the KES 1.4 B award, equivalent to one percent of Safaricom’s M-Pesa revenue for the 2024 financial year, as a “negligible cost” to the company relative to its scale.

Safaricom has secured a 30-day suspension of the judgment and has said it will appeal. The company has not issued a public statement on the ruling.

The judgment comes as Safaricom reported record earnings for the financial year ended March 2026. M-Pesa revenue grew 13.4 percent to KES 182.7 B, contributing 45.6 percent of the company’s Kenya service revenue. Group net income reached 99.7 billion shillings, the highest in its history.

For independent developers in Kenya, the case provides a rare blueprint for protecting their work. Muoki’s success hinged on two key steps: registering his design with the copyright board before approaching Safaricom, and documenting his pitch in detail.

“If you submit an unsolicited concept without a confidentiality agreement, you have no claim,” said the judge in a separate 2025 case that dismissed a similar suit against Safaricom. “Copyright law protects the expression of ideas, not the ideas themselves.”

Muoki’s documented USSD menu flows and system structure qualified as protectable expression under Kenyan law, whereas a simple concept note did not.

Sabi, a Nigerian startup that began helping corner shops digitise their shelves, has vaulted to second place on the Financial Times ranking of Africa’s fastest-growing companies after a radical pivot into the traceable export of critical minerals.

The Lagos-based company reported revenue of  USD 46.5 M in 2024, up from USD 1.52 M in 2021, a compound annual growth rate of 212.56%, according to the FT ranking published on Tuesday. The jump makes Sabi Nigeria’s highest-ranked company on the list and the second fastest-growing in Africa behind Egyptian fintech Thndr.

Sabi was launched in 2020 by CEO Anu Adedoyin Adasolum and Ademola Adesina as a B2B digital commerce platform for informal retail merchants, offering inventory management and logistics services. By mid-2023, the company had amassed over 300,000 merchants and USD 1 B in annualised gross merchandise value. Around the same time, it raised a USD 38 M Series B round at a USD 300 M valuation.

But like many B2B e-commerce players across Africa, Sabi faced thin margins and capital-intensive operations. In June 2025, the company laid off roughly 20% of its workforce, about 50 employees, to refocus on commodity exports.

The shift was driven by an unexpected source of demand. Small-scale mineral traders facing the same market-access hurdles as corner shop owners began asking to use Sabi’s platform to sell their products. The company’s existing traceability and compliance tools, built originally for agricultural trade, proved adaptable to minerals.

“We realised that minerals were where Africa could make the biggest difference globally,” Adasolum told TechCabal last year. “The world was changing geopolitically, and minerals were becoming central to that change”.

Sabi launched TRACE (Technology Rails for African Commodity Exchange), a platform that verifies and tracks mineral shipments from mine to port using digital passports that log origin, labour practices, and environmental data.

The company now moves over 20,000 metric tons of lithium, copper, tungsten, and antimony each month, supplying buyers in the US, UK, Netherlands, Singapore, and Asia. It has facilitated the movement of more than 100,000 tons of lithium from Nigeria, ranking among the region’s top five lithium export enablers.

The pivot has positioned Sabi at the intersection of technology and Nigeria’s mining revival. President Bola Tinubu’s administration has attracted over USD 2.6 B in foreign direct investment into the solid minerals sector in the past 30 months, with reforms including a digital platform, stricter licensing and a crackdown on illegal mining that led to more than 350 arrests.

Solid minerals revenue rose to NGN 68.1 B (~USD 50 M) in 2025 from NGN 28 B in 2023. Four lithium processing plants are scheduled to open, backed by over USD 600 M in Chinese investment.

Sabi’s platform is now active in Nigeria, DR Congo, Tanzania, and Zambia, processing more than 20,000 tons of minerals monthly and targeting 5% of US imports in select mineral categories. The company has raised around USD 66 M in total funding.

“Traceability is the solution,” Adasolum said. “Every producer is verified, sites are audited, and every movement of material is logged”.

Sabi remains an outlier in a difficult environment for Nigerian businesses. The naira devaluation that began in May 2023 has depressed dollar revenues for locally reporting companies, dragging many off the FT list. Nigeria’s representation fell to 16 companies this year, behind Kenya with 17 and South Africa’s 51.

Mining still contributes less than 1% of Nigeria’s GDP, according to NEITI, but the government aims to raise that to 10% by the end of 2026.

“We’re doubling down on the part of our business seeing the most demand,” Adasolum said at the Moonshot conference in Lagos, referring to TRACE. Whether a startup built on soap and biscuits can help deliver that target remains a test for Nigeria’s broader ambitions.

Chimoney, a fintech startup that built a unified API for cross-border payments across 41 currencies, is shutting down, Founder/CEO, Uchi Uchibeke, announced today.

The Nigerian-Canadian startup, which served hundreds of businesses across North America, Africa, and Latin America, raised under USD 1 M over its four-year lifespan, a sum Uchibeke now acknowledges was insufficient for its venture-scale ambitions.

“The product worked,” Uchibeke said in a candid post-mortem. “It was distribution. I spent too much of my time building and not enough time making sure people knew what we built.”

Chimoney emerged from Techstars and secured a FINTRAC MSB license, Uchibeke shared, later becoming one of the first companies in Canada to receive a Payment Service Provider license under the Bank of Canada’s new RPAA regime. It was also among the first production providers of Interledger, the open protocol for connecting disparate payment networks.

A U.S. company paying a freelancer in Lagos often faces the hassle of navigating multiple rails, currencies, and compliance checks. Chimoney wrapped those complexities into a single API supporting bank transfers, mobile money, stablecoins, and Interledger. But regulatory and audit costs across multiple jurisdictions proved unsustainable on flat revenue and thin capital.

Uchibeke explored strategic alternatives before deciding to wind down. “None of them closed on terms that made sense. So I chose to shut down cleanly instead of dragging the company forward on hope.”

He notified investors in February and clients in April. Every client wallet balance is being refunded through August 31, 2026, the founder announced, with migration playbooks published for developers who built on the API.

Notably, Chimoney’s corporate entity and PSP registration are being preserved. “That license is hard to get, and I believe it will only get harder. I am holding on to it,” Uchibeke said.

His takeaway for other founders: “Either raise properly or bootstrap with a profitable beachhead. I tried to do both and did neither well.”

Uchibeke is now building APort, a separate company focused on pre-action authorisation for AI agents, which has already created the Open Agent Passport.

Nigerian businesses have lost ground in the latest Financial Times ranking of Africa’s fastest-growing companies, a fall driven by the currency devaluation that President Bola Tinubu initiated in 2023, according to the report published on Tuesday.

The FT list, compiled with research firm Statista, measures compound annual revenue growth between 2021 and 2024. For companies that report in local currencies, Statista converts figures to US dollars using year-end exchange rates. The sharp decline of the naira during that period depressed dollar equivalent revenues for Nigerian firms, pushing many down or off the ranking altogether.

“We are putting the breaks on our Nigerian investments,” Lexi Novitske, general partner at Norrsken22, an Africa-focused tech growth fund based in Lagos, told the FT. Novitske said the fund has increasingly turned its attention to Egypt and South Africa.

The start of a new presidential election cycle in 2026, continued uncertainty about naira stability, and concerns that the government is squeezing businesses too hard are damaging investor confidence, she added. “The macro factors are better, but a business has to realise returns, and sometimes the government doesn’t seem to understand that.”

South Africa dominated the 2026 ranking with 51 companies on the list of 130 fastest-growing businesses. Kenya overtook Nigeria for the second spot with 17 entries, followed by Nigeria with 16, Mauritius with 12 and Tunisia with six, a first-time appearance in the top five.

Egyptian fintech Thndr topped the list for the first time. The company offers broking services to a poorly-served mass market and has acquired 1 million active users, many investing for the first time. Fintech, IT and software businesses made up nearly 40 percent of the list, though manufacturing companies represented the third-largest sector.

The ranking measures revenue growth only, not profitability or job creation. The minimum compound annual growth rate required for inclusion this year was 9.27 percent. The list does not account for the shock of the Middle East war, which the International Monetary Fund has said could ripple through 2026 in the form of higher fuel and food prices.

Sub-Saharan Africa’s GDP grew 4.5 percent in 2025, but the IMF downgraded its 2026 forecast by 0.3 percentage points to 4.3 percent. For Nigeria, the path back up the ranking may depend on whether the economy stabilises and the strain on businesses eases long enough to rebuild investor confidence.

Egyptian logistics startup Bosta has delivered a rare act in Africa’s tech scene, a cash exit. Beltone Venture Capital and UAE-based Citadel International Holdings sold their joint investment stake, booking a disclosed 75% IRR.

The figure is striking given the context. Between 2022 and 2024, The Egyptian pound lost roughly 60% of its value against the dollar, a devaluation that erased portfolio value for many investors. Egypt-based VC Beltone and UAE-headquartered Citadel placed their bet in 2024, when the worst of the currency slide was stabilising, meaning they locked in that 75% within about two years.

Behind the numbers is a company that has rapidly scaled from an idea into a market leader. Bosta was founded in 2017 by Mohamed Ezzat and Ahmed Gaber, two entrepreneurs who set out to overhaul a logistics sector long plagued by inefficiency and unreliable service.

From its base in Cairo, Bosta built a full-stack delivery platform for e-commerce businesses, offering merchants digital tools to manage shipments and access next-day delivery. Within a few years, the startup had delivered over 20 million parcels and served more than 25,000 businesses, cementing its position as a prominent technology-led logistics player. In 2025 alone, Bosta boasts 37 million shipments and EGP 27 B (~USD 510 M) in gross merchandise value, while maintaining a 95% delivery success rate.

A cash exit is not the norm. A recent report tracking VC-backed exits across Africa since 2011 found the continent producing more exits than ever, but a 33% decline in funding alongside a 36% jump in exits means the apparent increase is partly arithmetic. Many 2025 mergers were all-stock deals. Investors walked away not with cash, but with equity in private acquirers and value that may not hold when sold.

Bosta’s transaction works differently. It injected actual liquidity. Beltone retains a separate undisclosed stake in Bosta through its own fund, while Egypt’s listed fintech Fawry, an early investor since 2017, has said it will stay in through the planned IPO.

That leaves an unnamed buyer. Paying a price that yields a 75% IRR for selling investors suggests someone deliberately building a position before Bosta’s planned USD 170 M listing on Egypt’s exchange later this year. The cap table now shows a VC fund taking cash off the table, a strategic fintech staying, and an anonymous buyer stepping in, a deliberate staging ahead of a public debut.

The deal marks Beltone’s fifth exit since 2023 and the second from the Citadel joint fund. A cash exit turns a paper valuation into returns that can be recycled. That, more than the percentage, is vital in a cash-starved ecosystem.

Africa has more than 5,000 angel investors and 75 active networks, but the capital they deploy at the earliest stage of startup funding remains remarkably thin, according to a survey released on Monday.

Angel groups that responded to the African Business Angel Network (ABAN) survey invested just over USD 4.4 M in 2025 across the continent. Individual angels write cheques typically below USD 25 K, with more than 90% of them investing at that level, up from 76% in 2024, the report said.

The figures expose a critical gap in a year when overall venture funding into African startups rebounded. Most of that capital flowed into later-stage companies, leaving early-stage ventures scrambling for smaller tickets.

When angel capital does find its way to startups, the outcomes are strong. Sixty-five percent of angel-backed companies went on to raise follow-on funding, the survey found, a rate that suggests the capital is effective at validating businesses for institutional investors. But the pipeline remains constrained.

Meanwhile, the investor base is shifting. Women now make up 37% of surveyed angel investors, according to the report, up from previous years. The African diaspora accounts for 33% of angels and has participated in more than 270 announced deals, representing 60% of all angel investments over the past decade.

Diaspora investors are increasingly organised. Nearly half of all angel networks now have at least 25% diaspora membership, according to the report produced in collaboration with Briter Intelligence and the United Nations Development Programme.

But liquidity remains a persistent problem. Twenty-one percent of angel networks identified limited exit opportunities and lack of liquidity as their biggest challenge in 2025. Unlike more mature markets, Africa lacks functioning secondary markets where early investors can sell stakes, making it harder to recycle capital into new deals.

Some investors are engineering their own exits. Isaac Ewaleifoh, a diaspora-based angel with a portfolio of 100 deals, told the survey he targets exits within two to three years and has achieved 10 exits, seven through secondary sales.

The funding squeeze comes as traditional sources of development capital retreat. The dismantling of USAID and pullbacks by European governments have tightened external funding, putting more pressure on domestic and diaspora sources to fill the gap.

Angel networks are now active across 37 African countries, though 80% of deals remain concentrated in Nigeria, Egypt, Kenya and South Africa. The ABAN survey received responses from more than 60 angels and network managers across the continent. 

The rand is back in that familiar place where local traders start leaning closer to their screens. A SARB rate decision is already enough to move USD/ZAR, but when it arrives alongside G20 tensions, the setup becomes sharper. South African traders are not just watching interest rates now. They are watching confidence, diplomacy, commodity flows, and the dollar all pulling at the same rope.

For traders in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, and Pretoria, this is the kind of market that feels quiet one moment and jumpy the next. Why? Because the rand is rarely driven by one story alone. It reacts to the SARB’s tone, global risk appetite, foreign investor mood, and even what happens in metals and energy markets. It’s like a taxi moving through Sandton traffic, smooth for a few minutes, then suddenly stuck because one road ahead has changed.

That is why forex trading South Africa has become more interesting for traders who understand that local policy and global tension now sit on the same chart. A rate decision can give the rand direction, but G20 related uncertainty can quickly change the wider market mood. You might see USD/ZAR fall after a confident SARB tone, then bounce again if global investors run back to the dollar.

Why the SARB Decision Matters Now

The SARB decision gives traders a local anchor in a market full of moving parts. It tells investors how the central bank sees inflation, growth, household pressure, and rand stability. For South Africans, this is not just policy talk. It can shape borrowing costs, business confidence, and the way foreign investors judge rand assets.

Interest Rates Shape Rand Sentiment

Interest rates often work like a magnet for capital. When South African yields look attractive, the rand can find support, especially if investors still feel comfortable holding emerging market assets. But here’s the catch. That support can weaken quickly if global risk appetite turns sour.

You might notice this during busy trading sessions. The rand may strengthen after a firm SARB message, but if the dollar gains globally, local optimism can fade fast. That’s when experienced traders stop asking only what the SARB said and start asking how the world reacted to it.

Inflation Keeps the Market Alert

Inflation remains one of the biggest reasons traders care about central bank language. If inflation looks sticky, the SARB may sound cautious. If price pressure cools, the market may start expecting future policy relief. Why does this matter so much? Because currency markets usually move before ordinary people feel the change.

The rand behaves like a weather vane in these moments. A small shift in inflation expectations can quickly change how traders view interest rates, and that view can show up in USD/ZAR within minutes.

That gives local traders a useful signal, but not the whole picture. The SARB may set the tone at home, while global politics decides whether investors are brave enough to follow it.

How G20 Tensions Add Pressure to the Rand

G20 tensions can change the global mood very quickly. When major economies clash over trade, energy, debt, security, or policy direction, emerging market currencies often feel the pressure first. The rand is one of those currencies that reacts fast because global traders use it as a liquid way to express risk appetite.

Global Risk Can Override Local News

A supportive SARB decision can help the rand, but it may not protect it fully if global investors suddenly become cautious. In that case, money often moves toward the US dollar. Simple as that.

Think of it like a clear road with storm clouds forming in the distance. Locally, South Africa may look stable for the day, but if global sentiment turns defensive, the rand can feel the wind before the storm arrives. Traders who ignore that bigger picture can get caught by sudden reversals.

Commodities Sit in the Middle

South Africa’s currency also has a close relationship with commodity sentiment. Gold, platinum, iron ore, and broader resource demand can all influence how investors look at the rand. If G20 tensions affect trade expectations or global growth hopes, commodity linked currencies can react quickly.

This is why a trader in Cape Town watching USD/ZAR may also need one eye on gold and another on global headlines. It sounds like a lot, but that’s the reality of rand trading. The currency often moves like a tide, local at the surface, global underneath.

By the end of a volatile session, traders often realize the rand was never reacting to one thing. It was reacting to the mix.

What This Means for South African Forex Traders

This market rewards traders who connect the dots instead of chasing the first candle. A SARB headline, a G20 comment, a dollar move, and a commodity shift can all arrive close together. That creates opportunity, but it also creates noise. And noise can be expensive.

Traders Need a Wider View

South African traders should not treat USD/ZAR as a chart that lives alone. The dollar index, US yields, gold prices, emerging market sentiment, and SARB commentary can all matter. It’s like listening to a full band. One instrument may be loud, but the full rhythm tells you where the song is going.

For retail traders, this wider view can make a big difference. A rand move after the rate decision may look strong at first, but if global risk sentiment does not support it, the move may not last.

Risk Control Becomes Even More Important

When local policy and global tension collide, price action can become sharp and uneven. That makes position sizing, stop placement, and patience more important than usual. Traders who jump into every move may find themselves trapped when the market snaps back.

The smarter approach is to wait for confirmation. If the rand reacts strongly after the SARB decision, check whether the dollar, commodities, and broader risk mood agree with that move. If they don’t, the trade may be weaker than it looks.

For South African traders, this is a market that rewards discipline. Not panic. Not guesswork. Discipline.

Conclusion

The SARB rate decision and G20 tensions have made South Africa’s forex market far more interesting. The rand is being pulled between local policy signals and global uncertainty, and that mix can create meaningful trading opportunities.

But the real edge belongs to traders who understand the full story. When the SARB speaks, listen closely. When G20 tensions rise, widen the lens. The rand can move calmly for hours, then suddenly shift like traffic after a closed road. In this kind of market, the best traders are not just watching the move. They are asking what is really driving it.

For decades, the mobile phone in Africa meant one thing to telcos: voice minutes. That era is ending. Across the continent, data and digital financial services have surpassed traditional calling as the primary growth engines, and the latest batch of financial results signals a fundamental shift in how millions of people across the continent now communicate and manage their finances.

Airtel Africa, which operates in 14 sub-Saharan countries, reported full-year 2026 revenue of USD 6.4 B in results released Friday. The company’s customer base reached 183.5 million, but the real story is where the money came from. Data has become Airtel’s largest revenue contributor, with data revenue growing 35.2% in constant currency, fueled by smartphone penetration rising to 49.5%.

Each customer now consumes 8.9GB of data per month, up from 7GB a year ago. Meanwhile, Airtel Money, the company’s mobile money arm, grew its customer base 21.3% to 54.1 million people, processing annualised transactions worth over USD 215 B in the final quarter alone.

Airtel is not alone in this transition. Safaricom, Kenya’s biggest telecom operator, released its financials, Thursday showing its mobile data business overtook voice calls for the first time in the year ended March 2026. Data accounted for 42.1% of the company’s connectivity revenue, narrowly edging out voice at 41.3%.

Data revenue rose 14.4% to USD 646 M, while voice revenue grew just 1.3%. Messaging revenue plummeted nearly 12% as users migrated to WhatsApp and other internet-based platforms.

Average monthly data consumption per subscriber climbed 16.6% to 4.92GB, and the number of customers using more than 1GB of mobile data monthly jumped 22.4%. To keep usage growing, Safaricom has leaned into lower pricing; average rates per megabyte dropped 12.1% during the year, but heavier internet usage more than made up the difference.

MTN Group is following a similar trajectory. The continent’s largest telecom operator, operating in 16 African markets, returned to profit in 2025, with group service revenue rising 22.9% on a reported basis to USD 13.6 B. Data revenue jumped 37.7%, and fintech revenue rose 30%, the company reported. MTN served 307.2 million customers and recorded 23.3 billion mobile money transactions in 2025. Average monthly data use per customer hit 12.5 GB, up from 10.8 GB the previous year.

Two forces are driving this transformation, mainly. First, smartphone penetration is rising steadily, now at nearly 50% across Airtel’s footprint, enabling millions more people to access the internet affordably. Meanwhile, Safaricom reported 33.2 million smartphones connected to its network, up 21.2%.

Second, mobile money has moved far beyond basic person-to-person transfers into savings, lending, insurance and merchant payments, embedding itself directly into daily commerce.

It’s a necessary pivot for telecom operators. Voice revenue, long the industry’s bedrock, has flatlined across most markets due to price competition and saturation. OTT platforms like WhatsApp and Zoom have eaten into traditional calling and messaging revenues, forcing telcos to find new streams. Data and fintech have answered that call.

The same administrators who were appointed to rescue Copia Kenya have now filed an insolvency petition against the e-commerce platform, a rare twist in a case that reveals the breakdown of efforts to revive the once-buzzy startup.

Anthony Makenzi Muthusi and Julius Ngonga of KPMG filed the petition at the Commercial and Admiralty Division of the Milimani Law Courts, according to a gazette notice. The administrators were appointed to manage Copia’s assets in 2024 but now say the company cannot meet its debts. The case is set for a hearing on May 11, with creditors and other interested parties allowed to support or challenge the application.

An insolvency petition is typically filed when a business cannot meet debt repayments on time or when liabilities outweigh available assets. The filing marks a shift from the administration process launched nearly two years ago.

Copia was founded in 2013 by Tracey Turner and Jonathan Lewis, who had previously built and sold social impact fintech companies in Silicon Valley. The company built its brand around serving consumers outside major urban centres in Kenya, using a network of local agents and proprietary logistics to reach low-income and rural households. It targeted a market of about 750 million people across Africa with collective purchasing power that traditional retailers had largely ignored.

Investors poured money into the vision. Copia raised more than USD 100 M between its launch and 2022, including a USD 50 M Series C round led by Goodwell Investments that year and a USD 20 M extension in late 2023 led by Enza Capital. Its backers included the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, the German development finance institution DEG, LGT and Microsoft founder Paul Allen’s Vulcan Capital.

The downturn was rapid. In April 2023, Copia exited the Ugandan market. By mid-2024, the company could no longer meet its payroll. It placed its assets under the management of Muthusi and Ngonga of KPMG as it searched for a path to stabilise operations and attract capital. The restructuring led to plans for more than 1,000 job cuts.

The macroeconomic environment has worsened for Kenyan e-commerce ventures, with slower funding activity, higher logistics costs and tighter consumer spending. A new digital tax that took effect in December 2024 has also been cited as a risk to traders, threatening to push small businesses off formal e-commerce platforms and back into informal markets.

The court proceedings at the Commercial and Admiralty Division are expected to determine the next stage of the company’s future, including whether operations continue under a revised structure or move toward formal liquidation.