Fintech

POD - Nikolai Barnwell on building PawaPay without the VC machine, and why mobile money beats cards

PawaPay CEO Nikolai Barnwell on why payments, not "fintech", is the real problem worth solving, what a decade at 88mph taught him about funding, and why he is betting the continent's rails on mobile money over cards.

Digital Transformation

OP-ED - When "lower value human capital" meets the AI bill that costs more than people

Standard Chartered CEO Bill Winters apologised for the phrase, not the thinking behind it. Meanwhile, the numbers from Microsoft, Uber and Nvidia suggest humans may have been the bargain all along.

Artificial Intelligence

OP-ED - When the AI subsidies end, the cheaper option might be human

The subsidised AI rates we are all enjoying have a sell-by date. When it arrives, the comparison between an expensive agentic system and a fully-loaded human salary may look rather different.

Venture Building

OP-ED - Are founders and funders on the same page? Notes from an unreleased PawaPay conversation.

Hindsight from someone who watched 88mph's death rate from the inside. Fundamentals focus from someone who has held PawaPay back from the fintech funding boom.

This Is Connectivity

OP-ED - AI tools are taking us somewhere no human has ever been. Just not in your voice.

A study involving Google DeepMind researchers and a festival-shortlisted short film surface two persistent anxieties in my journalism practice.

Fintech

The Trajectory Africa Distilled #03: The Infrastructure Behind Productive Lending

Open banking regulation, fragmented data, and punishing cash reserve ratios explain why creditworthy borrowers and affordable capital so rarely find each other in African markets.

Market Intelligence

OP-ED - What really happens between "send" and "received"

A Nigerian software engineer on currency volatility, rate buffers, and why transparency beats the "zero fees" promise every time.

Artificial Intelligence

OP-ED - AI in Africa's context gap: a PwC partner, a Wits researcher, and a Ghanaian founder walk into the same problem

A PwC partner says African organisations' AI tools are 'pretty useless' without clean data. A Wits computer scientist explains why. And a Ghanaian AI founder is betting he can close the gap. Part 2 of 2

Market Intelligence

POD - Russell Southwood on monopolies, M-Pesa, and candid framings of Africa's digital economy

Analyst and author Russell Southwood reflects on a quarter-century of observing Africa's digital transformation. From yellow pages cold calls to fibre-to-the-home rollouts, Southwood makes the case for holding optimism and realism in the same hand.

Digital Transformation

OP-ED - The US$140-million (R2.4-billion) reality check

PwC’s latest Africa Cloud Business Survey says 98% of African organisations plan to expand their cloud architecture and 37% are implementing agentic AI. A sit-down with the man behind the numbers unearthed qualifications more revealing than the statistics.

Digital Economy

OP-ED - When the crowd becomes the mob: prediction markets and the price of 'truth'

A journalist threatened over a betting market. Insider trading on military strikes. Billions wagered on geopolitical chaos. The question must be asked: are prediction markets indispensable truth machines or sophisticated casinos with geopolitical consequences.

Social Media

OP-ED - X marks the spot: your platform is someone else's country

Open-sourcing a candid disagreement with Future in the Humanities (FITH) Founding Chair Prof Iginio Gagliardone about Mastodon and X. What are the tradeoffs of building an African intellectual project on platforms that might extract more than they give?

Digital Transformation

OP-ED - What good navigation looks like: no machine sails itself

From Block's standing ovation to Monday.com's manifesto to a South African consultancy that started with the social system, Part 3 asks what good AI navigation actually looks like when you prioritise the human element and demand results over rhetoric.

Fintech

POD - Seyi Ebenezer on why African startups should stop chasing cheques and start building books

Payaza's co-founder and CEO Seyi Ebenezer makes the case for debt over venture capital, explains why credit ratings are the ultimate negotiating weapon for African founders, and passionately advances the idea of a pan-African credit rating agency built by the continent, for the continent.

Digital Transformation

OP-ED - The mine, the machine, and the intern

From post-WW2 coal mines to modern codebases, history suggests AI transformation will rise or fall not on technical capability alone, but on whether organisations deliberately redesign the social systems that surround the machine.

Artificial Intelligence

OP-ED - How solo sailors sleep

Solo sailors don't forecast the ocean. They set an alarm and pay attention. In the age of AI disruption, that pragmatic sensibility turns out to be rarer and more valuable than anyone is admitting.

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.