This Is Connectivity

OP-ED - Video podcasts are just chatshows with visible microphones

Twenty-five years of podcast evolution has come full circle. Adam Wakefield argues audio's so-called limitations are actually its greatest edge in the attention economy.

Digital Transformation

OP-ED - My former teacher wants to put a conscience in AI. I have thoughts.

Smart legal contracts might be AI's best guardrail. But the system they're designed to protect was never neutral to begin with.

Artificial Intelligence

POD - Natasha Blycha on why AI without law is just code without conscience

Emerging technology lawyer Natasha Blycha unpacks why smart legal contracts may be AI's most important guardrail, how Africa's slower adoption could become a strategic advantage, and what a Mennonite community taught her about choosing the right technology.

Market Intelligence

OP-ED - Afrexim walked away from Fitch. Cassava's creditors can't.

Western rating agencies helped blow up the global economy, paid their fines, and kept it moving. Now they're the arbiters of African creditworthiness. But dismissing their scrutiny doesn't make the numbers disappear.

Digital Transformation

OP-ED - After the launch party: who actually benefits from AI?

What gets measured depends on who builds the scale.

Artificial Intelligence

OP-ED - Cue ominous film score: is the AI agent apocalypse upon us?

Last week, an AI startup watched its entire value proposition ship as a native feature. This is the story of what that moment reveals — and what some are betting it doesn't.

Venture Capital

OP-ED - Cupid's cash flow: the matchmakers have marriage problems too

When venture capitalists push portfolio consolidation, they're not just playing cupid. They're managing their own performance pressure.

Fintech

The Trajectory Africa Distilled #02: Infrastructure-building Opportunities in Fintech

Trade credit, stablecoins, neobanks — where the smart money is heading next.

Career

OP-ED - AI augmentation in 2025: what Accenture's layoffs and a homeless Nigerian app founder reveal about the future of work

The question isn't whether you're augmented. It's whether you can deliver.

Policymaking

OP-ED - Nudge, don't shove: what Australia's social media ban gets wrong

Prohibition makes for a satisfying sign. Behaviour change is messier.

This Is Connectivity

OP-ED - Self-driving VC: Boardy, QuantumLight, and the end of the warm intro?

AI is automating the art of the warm introduction. What happens when connectivity becomes a product rather than a relationship?

Digital Economy

OP-ED - Bitcoin sells out? From peer-to-peer currency to Wall Street collateral: the maturation no one asked for

Bitcoin needs institutional stability to fulfill its promise. But that stability requires exactly the gatekeepers it was designed to circumvent.

Venture Capital

The Trajectory Africa Distilled #01: The Limits of Digitalisation in African Markets

In the opening instalment of her seven-part email series, Tayo Akinyemi explores why African fintech companies opt to build physical infrastructure to enable digital solutions - and identifies five opportunities emerging from this constraint.

Social Media

OP-ED - Week one of making YouTube Shorts taught me why my colleague calls it "twerking for the algorithm"

When viral reach comes at the cost of analytical rigour, African creators risk becoming content farmers rather than discourse shapers.

This Is Connectivity

OP-ED - AI is dismantling consulting's oligopoly. If McKinsey's using ChatGPT, what are you paying for?

Ten years ago, a social media agency owner told me my consulting ambitions were naive delusions. He wasn't entirely wrong. But neither of us saw what was coming.

Infrastructure

OP-ED - GPUs to gigawatts: how Africa’s energy potential could re-shape the AI landscape

As AI’s hunger for power grows, Africa’s untapped energy reserves could redefine the continent’s role in the global tech race.

Artificial Intelligence

OP-ED - Africa's AI awakening: from Western brainrot to homegrown tech sovereignty

As Gen Z in the West abandons social media's endless scroll for "meaning," Africa is laying internet connectivity infrastructure at scale. Will it import yesterday's engagement-maximisation playbook or build for actual human flourishing?

Market Intelligence

OP-ED - What do SAG Ventures and Balloon Ventures have in common? The intermediary trap

Prince Nwadeyi's published research and Joshua Bicknell's operational experience expose the same problem: entrenched incentive structures don't serve those closest to real economic activity.

Startups

POD - Prince Nwadeyi on building financial services solutions corporates commission but won't execute themselves

Prince Nwadeyi unpacks how aligning incentives across value chains turns corporate muscle and founder execution into profitable innovation, and why Mustard Finance Group's reported 99.9% repayment rate proves the model works.

Impact Investing

OP-ED - M-KOPA’s decade of discovery: when patient capital buys time to pivot

M-KOPA’s lengthy path to profitability shows how patient capital can buy the time (and permission) to pivot until the real business emerges.

Digital Transformation

OP-ED - What can standing in an iPhone 17 queue in Tokyo reveal about digital power and control? Plenty.

Scarcity and sovereignty play out differently in Tokyo and Nairobi, but the underlying lessons for Africa’s tech builders are strikingly similar.

Fintech

POD - April Long on why chasing 'impact' almost killed her fintech whilst bulk traders quietly transformed Africa-China trade

Pyxis (rebranded Waka) CEO April Long reveals how her obsession with serving SMEs blinded her to the aggregators actually moving $286 billion in trade - and why accepting this reality saved her venture.

Market Intelligence

OP-ED - Boring is beautiful, but can $50 million pyrethrum flower power fuel a natural insecticide industry revival in Kenya?

When development finance meets agricultural nostalgia, the unit economics must be interrogated.

Digital Transformation

OP-ED - Lessons from 25 Years of Africa’s internet story: a preview of Russell Southwood’s reflections

Drawing from an upcoming African Tech Roundup podcast, this op-ed unpacks Russell Southwood’s reflections on lessons, blind spots and enduring questions.

Market Intelligence

OP-ED - Who controls the narrative? First-party data, truth and power in Africa’s digital economy

As powerful actors spin persuasive stories, the challenge is documenting reality with first-party evidence, resisting myths, and shaping narratives that serve more than self-interest.