In what is proving to be a busy week for digital payments news in the Middle East and North Africa, a fintech and a major bank have recently announced a partnership to accelerate digital payments in Libya.

There’s been a flurry of digital payments news this week from Saudi Arabia involving a wide variety of major names in the market, notably Ant International, Google Pay and Thunes.

MTN Group is reportedly in discussions with US and European companies to develop the infrastructure needed to power AI services.

Cassava Technologies founder Strive Masiyiwa has announced plans to build five AI factories in Africa over the next 12 months.

ZTE announced on Tuesday that it has completed the first phase a network modernisation project for telecoms provider Mobiuz in the autonomous Republic of Karakalpakstan and the Khorezm region in Uzbekistan.

According to local news reports, operator Vodacom Tanzania is planning a number of technology modernisation programmes likely to involve an outlay of more than US$100 million.

Vodafone Oman and digital financial service platform developer Software Group said on Monday they have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to collaborate on developing digital financial services in Oman.

Ericsson announced on Monday that it has signed an agreement with Zain Bahrain to supply RAN gear to the operator’s network capacity and enhance coverage of its 4G and 5G networks.

Airtel Zambia and tower company IHS Zambia are making good time on their plan with the Zambian government to expand network reach in Zambia, with 52 new telecoms towers expected to be up and running by the end of this month.

Four of Peru’s mobile operators – Bitel, Claro, Entel and Integratel - have obtained spectrum for 5G deployment. A fifth, Americatel, which had prequalified for the bidding process, reportedly did not participate in the auction.

African digital payments network Onafriq said it has formed a strategic partnership with Visa to launch Visa Pay, a cloud-native Payments-as-a-Service platform designed to expand digital financial access across the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Vodafone Idea is pushing back against a fresh demand from India’s Department of Telecommunications (DoT), which is seeking INR94.5 billion (US$1.1 billion) in outstanding adjusted gross revenue (AGR) charges from both Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel.

Hughes do Brasil, a subsidiary of Hughes Network Systems, a major name in satellite and managed network services, and Soil Tecnologia, a startup in automation and monitoring solutions for central pivot systems, have announced a partnership that, the companies say, aims to bring connectivity and automation to agribusiness irrigation projects in every corner of Brazil.

Pakistani telco Ufone 4G says it has partnered with domestic digital healthcare platform Oladoc to bring affordable and accessible healthcare to millions of Ufone’s subscribers across Pakistan.

Airtel Gabon and Moov Africa-Gabon Telecom signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on Thursday to share digital infrastructure, which they say will improve connectivity and accelerate digital transformation in Gabon.

dLocal, a payment platform that connects global businesses with emerging markets, and international money transfer company Western Union have announced a strategic alliance to enable digital payment methods on Western Union's online platforms in Latin America.

Vodacom pledged to invest ZAR435 million (US$25 million) into the Northern Gauteng Area of South Africa this financial year to meet growing connectivity demand.

Digital Parks Africa (DPA), a South African-owned data centre provider, has partnered with iXAfrica Data Centres, which owns and operates East Africa’s first hyperscale, AI-ready data centre in Kenya, to bring what the partners call world-class data centre services to Southern and East Africa.

Iraqi telco Asiacell says it has launched the country’s first Voice over Wi-Fi (VoWiFi) service that enables users to make and receive voice calls in spaces with Wi-Fi coverage in areas – especially indoors – where cellular signal quality is poor.

Safaricom said on Tuesday it has launched two new tailored solutions aimed at ride-hailing drivers and boda boda operators (a.k.a. bicycle and motorcycle taxis) in Kenya that include connectivity, insurance and financial advice.

Open RAN (O-RAN) has long been touted as a disruptive technology in mobile infrastructure with the concept of splitting the RAN into three components, encouraging a more modular architecture that claims to improve operator bottom lines.

Around 3.1 billion people are not connected to the internet despite living in coverage areas, highlighting a massive global usage gap.

America Movil central American subsidiary Claro CENAM signed an agreement with Proximus Global to support the monetisation and security of its application-to-person (A2P) messaging services across Latin America.

Industry body the GSMA has warned that a large connectivity usage gap is limiting Ghana’s economic potential.

The London Internet Exchange (LINX) announced on Monday it has signed a co-operative agreement with internet exchange incubator Asteroid to take over its interconnection operations in Kenya.

Odata, a Brazilian provider of data centre services for Latin America, has announced a US$1.02 billion green financing deal focused on sustainable data centre infrastructure investments.

The Ghanaian government has reportedly appointed KPMG to advance plans to merge AT Ghana and Telecel in a bid to stem mounting losses from its acquisition of the former, while building a stronger rival to market leader MTN.

Can countries balance access to an undoubtedly popular and convenient service with an effective response to predatory lending practices, data abuse, high interest rates, and aggressive debt collection practices, to name only a few? That’s the question about digital lending that regulators in Kenya and Nigeria are trying to answer.

Digital payments giant Visa has announced the launch of Visa Pay, a mobile solution that provides access to digital payments and account-to-account money movement, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

Apogeo Space, an Italian SME that says it is developing the first private national constellation of picosatellites for IoT telecommunications, has announced a strategic agreement with Telespazio Brasil to expand its picosatellite IoT services into the Latin American market.

There has been a flurry of announcements from Nigerian operator T2 Mobile in recent weeks. If that name doesn’t seem familiar, that may well be because until August the operator had been known as 9mobile. Here are a few brief updates.