Novagist

If you were born to an electrical engineer father and civil engineer mother in post-independence Nigeria, chances are, you were expected to take after your parents by aspiring to become an engineer, with the only question being which specialty you’d pursue. Oreoluwa Somolu-Lesi, founder of Women’s Technology Empowerment Center (W.TEC), one of Nigeria’s foremost women […]

In January 2017, Cameroon’s government, which is primarily francophone, shut down the internet in the anglophone region due to protests. This was the country’s first ever internet shutdown and it ended in April 2017 but a second one which lasted until March 1, 2018, started in October 2017. Both shutdowns cost the economy about USD […]

The State of Health Tech in Nigeria, a report about the health tech businesses challenging the nation’s healthcare problems, was officially unveiled at TC Townhall: The State of Health Tech in Nigeria. The report takes a look at 75 startups, operating across 12 subsectors, with solutions ranging from diagnostics to telemedicine, the amount of capital […]

On December 10, 1948, at the United Nations General Assembly in Paris, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, was drafted. The 30-point document has become a guide for humanity to treat each other with dignity and as deserving of the best quality of life possible regardless of nationality, race, religious leanings, political ideologies, and every […]

Like a phoenix, Rwanda is fast rising towards a future that is inclusive, innovative and self-reliant. It is in this vein that last year, the Rwanda Environment Management Authority (REMA) began drafting a law seeking to regulate the country’s use of genetically modified organisms if and when it adopts their use. This policy framework would […]

L-R: Chairman, Association of Licensed Telecom Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), Gbenga Adebayo; Managing Director, Vodacom Business Nigeria, Wale Odeyemi; Chief Executive Officer, Communication Week Media, Ken Nwogbo; Commercial Director, Vodacom Business Nigeria, Solomon Ogufere; and Chairman, Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON), Olusola Teniola during the 2019 Beacon of ICT Awards held in Lagos […]

Despite infrastructure hurdles, companies in Africa are taking the innovation route to reduce losses in the food value chain. Cold chain facilities play a prominent role in these efforts. An estimated 1 in every 4 people in sub-Saharan Africa is malnourished. Yet, a third of the food produced for human consumption every year gets lost […]

Hockey, handball, gymnastics, wrestling, weightlifting, ball games–ancient stone engravings suggest that a lot of modern sports we know today existed in ancient Egypt around the year 2000 BCE, in the form of organised tournaments with teams, referees, winners and losers. As with many other aspects of our lives since the dawn of the technology era, […]

The British High Commission to Nigeria and EFInA (Enhancing Financial Innovation & Access), last week, convened an interactive session tagged Powering Financial Inclusion Through Fintech, to discuss furthering financial inclusion in Nigeria with key fintech stakeholders. According to the EFInA Fintech Landscape Report 2018, which was unveiled at the event, there are currently 210-250 fintech […]

Rwanda is quickly becoming an innovator’s paradise. Technology companies and manufacturers from within and outside the continent are moving to the country to either set-up innovation hubs or manufacturing plants. Last year Andela, which originally launched in Nigeria, announced it was launching a pan-African tech hub in Kigali. The hub will recruit and train software […]

From Lagos to Dakar, conversations abound about the future of work and how innovation continues to disrupt what we think we know. New technologies like artificial intelligence and robotics still generate understandable uncertainty about what roles humans will be able to play in the labour force in another five years. Countries with very little investments […]

Starting and running a business has some striking similarities to adventure games. The excitement and potential pitfalls against a background of courage that’s required when seeking adventure in games, remain principal ingredients to succeed as a founder, especially when it’s a ‘first’. We talked to four founders, who despite challenges, run their own tech ventures […]

In the month of March, TechCabal deeply explored diversity in the technology industry by putting out a portrait series and exhibition event which featured 50 women working in diverse capacities in the Lagos technology sector. We also explored what  inclusion models within the African context should look like, one of which is the need for […]

On the 23rd of March, as part of the Tech Women Lagos series, Adia Sowho, Managing Director – Nigeria/VP Commercial at Mines, shared her experience as a decision maker and leader at innovative and technologically complex Nigerian businesses with an audience comprising women from different backgrounds and roles (and men too). In the Tech Women […]

The State of Health Tech in Nigeria is an industry report looking at the healthcare landscape and solutions innovators have created to address problems in the system including access and affordability. The report examines 75 active and 15 inactive health tech startups across 12 subsectors. It also takes a look at the challenges that exist […]

The technology industry wasn’t always a boys’ club. Sub-sectors like software programming were akin to what nursing is today; very female-centric. How gender is now distributed in the technology sector belies this history. Nonetheless, there are women who, regardless of what obstacles exist, have and continue to push boundaries and limits in the industry.