This was a week of consolidation more than disruption across African tech. A telecom infrastructure giant closed in on a multibillion-dollar buyout, a Nigerian mobility company crossed the unicorn line, a Lagos grocery startup ran out of runway, and Kenya's fintech scene saw a striking founder reunion via acquisition. Underneath it all, stablecoins kept pushing further into everyday payments even as regulators moved to catch up, and governments started grappling more seriously with AI's downside as well as its promise.
The biggest story by dollar value was MTN Group's progress toward acquiring IHS Towers in a deal now worth $6.2 billion. IHS shareholders approved the takeover at an August 4 shareholder meeting, and days later IHS completed the sale of its Latin America tower operations, roughly 9,000 sites in Brazil and Colombia, to Macquarie Asset Management, tidying up the balance sheet ahead of MTN taking the pan-African tower company private. It's one of the largest infrastructure transactions the continent's telecom sector has seen, and it will reshape how Africa's largest mobile network controls the towers it depends on.
In mobility, Moove became Africa's newest unicorn, raising a $250 million Series C led by Mubadala that pushed its valuation to $2.1 billion. The Nigerian-founded company, which started by financing vehicles for ride-hailing drivers, is now positioning itself around autonomous fleets, a bet that vehicle financing was just the on-ramp to a bigger mobility infrastructure business.
Not every story was a win. GoLemon, a Lagos-based online grocery delivery startup, wound down its operations after failing to raise fresh capital, closing customer support by August 2. Rival PricePally has since offered priority interviews to displaced GoLemon staff — a small but telling sign of how thin margins remain in African quick-commerce and grocery delivery.
In Kenya, Cloud9 acquired social commerce startup Chpter in an all-stock deal, reuniting founders Tesh Mbaabu and Mesongo Sibuti with the company they left just months earlier to start Cloud9. It's a rare case of a founder buying back into the business they departed, and a sign of continued consolidation among Kenya's smaller fintech and commerce plays.
Stablecoins had a busy week: Yellow Card raised $40 million from Standard Chartered's SC Ventures, Sony Innovation Fund, and others to expand its stablecoin infrastructure, while cNGN, a naira-backed stablecoin, launched on the Celo network to ease cross-border payments. At the same time, Kenya began accepting crypto licence applications under new rules, with Binance, Luno and Yellow Card among the firms in line — a sign regulators are finally building rails for an industry that's been operating ahead of the rulebook.
Finally, on AI: Kenya opened its draft AI and Emerging Technologies Policy for public feedback, laying out ambitions around compute, talent, and digital sovereignty, even as a new report attributed to INTERPOL found AI now factors into more than half of reported cybercrime across the continent, a reminder that the same tools powering Africa's AI ambitions are already being weaponized.
Sources: TechCabal, Techpoint Africa, Nairametrics, Mobile World Live, Business News Nigeria, Yellow Card.